by Ron Meredith, President
Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre
WAVERLY, WV - -There's a lot of talk about aids and cues in the
horse world and a lot of it just confuses people. One trainer talks about using your legs
as aids and another one tells you to cue your horse with your leg. Neither one probably
knows what he's talking about. So it's no wonder horses get confused.
Horses don't care what a trainer calls the things he or she does,
they just need to understand them in a horse logical way. As a training method, heeding
uses methodically applied directional pressures to create shapes the horse feels.
Pressures that create shapes are called aids. Once the horse understands what shape you
want when you apply a particular pressure, you can associate a cue or signal with that
shape. So now you can use that cue to tell the horse exactly when you want him to give you
the shape. You teach with aids. You ask with cues.
Notice what goes into an aid. It's a pressure. It's applied so it
indicates the direction you want the horse to go. And it is applied methodically and
consistently. That's not the same as forcefully or insistently or repeatedly. A lot of
people use swear pressures instead of aids. Instead of touching the horse with a whip or
even just pointing it at him the right way, they slap him with it. Loud swear pressures
get a reaction from the horse but they don't teach shapes.
Aids are horse logical. The horse reacts to that pressure or aid in
a predictable way that is just natural or instinctive for a horse. For example, if you
start approaching a horse from behind, he will turn his head one way or the other to see
what's coming. If you're a little to his left, he'll turn his head to the left so he can
watch you coming. If you're a little to his right, he'll turn his head to his right.
If you're coming too fast or he's a spooky kind of horse, he may
move off and ask questions later. If it's open in front of him, that's the direction he'll
go. If it's not, he'll turn in whatever direction he feels he has an opening. Once he's
far enough away to feel safe from what might be a predator, he'll turn to take a good look
by putting both eyes on you to figure out what's coming. Those are horse logical responses
to the pressure you put on the horse as you approached him from behind.
Cues are conditioned responses or signals that are not necessarily
horse logical. Cues are supported by rewards. You use a pressure to create the shape you
want. You give the horse the cue as soon as he creates the shape. Then you reward him with
scratching or something else he likes to tell him that was what you wanted. Eventually you
can stop using the aid because as soon as the horse gets the cue, he gives you the shape
and looks for his reward.
Once the horse understands that a particular cue indicates a shape
you want, you don't need to use the aid to get that shape. Conditioning the horse to
respond to cues instead of just to aids is kind of like putting an automatic transmission
on a sports car. Now anyone can drive it. A cue is something a trainer can sell with the
horse. The owner can ride it and cue it and doesn't have to understand all this stuff
about aids to get the shapes he wants to play people games on horseback.
What happens when you stop supporting the cue with a reward? The
horse will start backing down the learning curve. First he learned the cue meant he got a
reward for giving you a shape. Now he gives you the shape when he gets the cue but there's
no reward. Pretty soon he stops giving you the shape when he gets the cue because there's
nothing in it for him and there's no horse logical reason to create that shape.
When you put cues on a horse, you've got to monitor the horse's
response to those cues. When the horse starts to ignore the cue, you need to drop back to
the aid that was used to teach the shape you wanted in the first place and remind him of
the relationship between the cue and the shape. Retraining horses to respond to cues is
what helps keep trainers in business.
One big difference between an aid an a cue is that the cue only
produces a particular amount or level of the activity you want. An aid or corridor of aids
can produce that activity to varying degrees. You might train a horse to take its left
lead when you poke his left shoulder with your toe but he'll only give you a particular
canter at a particular speed and with a particular degree of flexion. If you use a
corridor of aids to ask for that same left lead, you can moderate the speed of the canter,
the number of strides the horse takes in a given period of time, or the degree of flexion.
