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Errors-To: <alexa@dragonet.es

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From: Abby Greiner <sallust@ici.net>
Subject: dressage: inspiration

Hi All -

I was recently looking through Reader's Digest and found some quotes that were quite pertinent to our contact discussion, and riding in general. Here they are:

"The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world" - Lao-tsu (this is my new mantra)
"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept." - Ansel Adams (sometimes there's nothing better.....)
"No day in which you learn something is a complete loss" - David Eddings
"Nothing is as frustrating as arguing with someone who knows what he's talking about" - Sam Ewing (like your horse!)
"The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for." - Louis L'Amour
"Truth is eternal, knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them." - Madeleine L'Engle

Happy riding! :)
Abby Greiner
sallust@ici.net

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Subject: Horse intelligence - translation of article about a scientific project

Translation of article from Cavallo Horse Magazine January 97 quote:
Can horses really think? Cavallo-author Karin Müller found the answer at Evelyn Hanggi in the USA

The QH mare Tinkets Remedy stands motionless behind a rope in the round pen. She watches a blank white board and tips her ears forward. In the near apple trees some birds fight, under that a video-camera is running. A pen rushes over the paper. Every movement of Tinkets is being registered and controlled exactly. Behind the board something moves. Two women hang down a shovel and a ball and red plastic chalk over the front of the board.

Behaviorist Evelyn Hanggi let fall the rope. Going with focus, almost rushing Tinkets moves towards the red chalk and touches it with the nose. Good girl, Evelyn Hanggi praises the girl. The mare stands already one step further, holding the head down expectantly into a plastic crib. Here she gets a small portion of her favorite food. Tinkets Remedy is very well food motivated as this is named, an important premises to make horses have fun in work and science.

While the mare is trying to get the last crumb out of the crib the test things are drawn up again and disappear behind the board. Tinkets trots back to her start position by herself and the game starts anew. The certified biologist Evelyn Hanngi, President and Chairwoman of the Board of the Equine Research Foundation in California, leads the project Horse Sense in Aptos. She wants to study the intelligence of horses and develops test settings, which shall say something about the learning ability of the horses.

Tinkets Remedy just showed her learning ability. For ten times in a row she pointed with her nose to the correct item. With this she recognized a so-called When-then-paradigm. Tinkets was trained to always point at the chalk when ball and shovel appeared together. In behaviorism this ability is called conditional discrimination.

The mare meanwhile recognizes several pairings of different items. This task needs a thinking ability which is up to now only known and scientifically proved to be present with primates, doves, rats, seals and dolphins. The conditional discrimination ranges on place 7 within the eight-range rank-order of learning ability, and is thus the second highest step.

Besides the study of learning ability the scientist also studies the short-time-memory. And on the side she looks into one of the most discussed themes in horse studies: Do horses have the ability to see colors - and if yes, which? She found further clear evidences that horses are not at all color-blind but can really differentiate between several colors. According to her results all horses have a high grade of stereoscopic effects and get used to new requests and test demands faster and faster. Evelyn Hanggi proves with this what experts like Linda Tellington-Jones and Freddy Knie claim long time already: Horse learn to learn faster. They quickly grasp new requests and test demands and need less and less time to solve a task. They even rival for the attention of the humans.

Our data prove that horses are no dumb animals, but animals which have to be treated with respect and kindness Evelyn Hanggi states proudly her results which are not so new, but at last scientifically enforced. Contrary to the basic research of Prof. Bernard Grzimik in the 50's she is the only scientist who studies and tests the learning ability of horses on such a high level at the moment.

The test rows with different tasks last app. 20 minutes. All 4 horses are running to rows maximum a day. The rest of the time the QH, the young Paint and the two Anglo-Arabs spent either on the pasture, or are ridden or worked at the ground according to Pat Parellis method of PNH. The Parelli-method is for Evelyn Hanggi an ideal supplement to her test rows, because in both cases the basis is the concept to influence the horse as natural as possible without punishment.

Evelyn Hanggi stresses that the horses have the free choice to work at this experiment. They can always leave the work ground. We do not exert any pressure but work by positive enforcing via praise and food. This shows them that they have solved the concerned task correctly. We add groundwork which helps to further the concentration of the horses. This combination has lead to enthusiastic horses which want to work and clearly love the experiment. This can be observed several times during the year by voluntary helpers. The international organization Earthwatch gives interested people the possibility to watch the project and work on the project for one or two weeks. Under supervision of the scientist and her team the voluntary helpers assist in the test rows, evaluate them, video and watch and learn. "This is a great way for the public to get into contact with scientific work and in our case to get first hand knowledge about the extraordinary learning abilities of horses" says Evelyn Hanggi. This works. Even if most of the helpers have already years of experience with horses they get new aspects of a different way, a partner way to deal with their horses. A lot of Earthwatch participants are impressed about how intelligent horses really are.

The practical side of horse keeping is as well included. Grooming, groundwork and stable work belong to the project as well. And for the horses the stable routine cannot be short enough. The horses almost fight for being the first when testing starts. When the things are build up for testing, the candidates excitedly rush around at the pasture gate. And if the helpers need to much time when testing, this may well be acknowledge with an impatient snort and pawing.

Evelyn Hanggi is convinced that horses also will reach the eighths step of learning. She is sure that horses can think abstractly and logically and can solve complicated thinking task. This would mean that they are only one step below humans.

Earthwatch (sorry list, only the German address, but I am sure they will give you more information: Earchwatch Germany, Rissener Landstrasse 193, D-2259 Hamburg, Tel: 040/810235.

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Conversation between
Michael Stevens <mjs1@npl.co.uk>
Craig Stevens <cpszzz@concentric.net>
(ed. note... Michael and I are not at all related)

On 6/2/97: From another mail in which Michael was mentioned

I was asked by Barb:
I don't suppose you have read Salomone la Brue? I understand from Michael that la Brue covers Pignatelli in some detail....

I thought Michael might have found the translation so I e-mailed him and asked:
I am not sure of Barbs spelling on the name, but it occurred to me that I don't think I have read this author though I do know the name. Have you? Is this a translation that I don't have?

Michael responded:
I think it is "Salomon de la Broue". I know he wrote a book, but I don't know if there are many copies about today. Podhajsky mentioned him as a known author. Newcastle reviewed the contemporary literature, and covered la Broue. It was he who said that one section of la Broue was taken straight from Pignatelli. If this is so it would be very interesting to read la Broue to get some first-hand insight into Pignatelli's methods, since Pignatelli didn't write anything himself. I am not aware of a modern translation of La Broue.

I replied:
OK, I know he is available in French but I thought I might have missed a major translation..

Michael responded:
I had an interesting ride yesterday. I was asked to try out a thoroughbred that a friend had bought for eventing. The horse was rather dead to the leg, particularly in walk. He did loosen up in trot and canter, but the "engine needs oiling" to get him to go freely.

As an experiment I tried pushing him on strongly in walk to see the reaction. He started stamping his front feet and moving in a way that seemed a bit like a Spanish walk - something I have never ridden. I doubt very much if he has been trained to do it.

Since he seemed to be getting a bit angry I gave him a trot around and then a walk on a lose rein to relax him again, and I didn't pursue it. I guess he has some stiffness that prevents the hindquarters getting active but the best he can do is to exaggerate the action of the forehand when you drive him on.

Have I accidentally hit on something that could be turned into a Spanish walk, do you think; or was it just a corrupt pace caused by driving him beyond his capability?

The following quote is from Beaudant, "Training the Horse Under Saddle"(original translation-by Craig Stevens copyright 1993)

" VI. Front leg extension -
While in a halt, lightness, make the right leg extend by the effect of the right rein in the direction of the haunch left; urge with legs and prevent the forces from passing forward, except for the right leg that is rendered free by passing the weight of the forehand to the left shoulder. Forces not able to be forward move through to the right front leg, this holding itself as much as these forces are urged forward more.

A precise and well chosen small example : skin of an animal into which one blows; When the air arrives in the paws they extend more the stronger that one blows. This is the action provoked by legs of the horseman that makes the legs responding extend until the point of the hoof.

VII. Spanish walk -
Ask for the complete extension and horizontal of an front leg. Remark: one wants always to go too rapidly and it is not necessary to try the Spanish walk before having obtained the complete extension and horizontal of the front legs. Only then, being stopped, asked for the complete extension one leg. - push the two legs simultaneously by sitting down properly, the hand permit the execution of a walk. - Halt - Lightness. - To reward, resume with the other leg.

Little by little use less and less the legs and to act only by half halts by raising the hand giving the most extension possible.

Spanish walk only raising one leg. - One step executed to the right maintain the contact with the mouth with the right rein now keeping the weight on the left shoulder and to resume an walk on the same side. To intermingle later the walk of one legs alone increasing with the walk executed by the two legs alternately elevated. To arrive to the Spanish walk slow or rapid half tense reins, the horse obeying to simple small pressures of fingers on the reins."

I continue:
Beaudant's understanding of this work is a much deeper understanding then most of the people who try this work.

Riding is about the mental manipulation of certain kinds of refined matter. Matter, in the sense that I am using it, is a type of electrical energy that used by the horse to control the forces in his own body. In the highest levels of the training process this matter can be directed in a very concentrated pure form. The way Beudant controls this force is through the combined focus of the horse and rider and shoots the energy though the limb and allow it to escape out the leg as a leg extension and then combines this effect alternately as the Spanish walk.

Those who claim the Spanish walk is not a classical movement do not know the Spanish walk as anything but a showy gesture. When it is understood as Beudant understood it. It is classical.

Classical riding and training is not about movements. Movements are the shallow end of a very deep pool. Classical riding is a mental discipline which seeks the direction and concentration of the horse-rider ensemble. It has very little to do with the form of the horse or rider in themselves, but rather the underlying consciousness which joins both. The concentration and direction of these forces is the domain of the art and is also called in other systems, ki, chi, prana, etheric energy, life force etc..

Horsemasters of the past did not know this in this way, but forces do not have to be understood to be used. Gravity is a force which has always existed but did not always have a name.... The use of forces in this manner is one of the things people sense when a master works a horse. The on-looker feels these forces as a thick rapport between the horse and the trainer. The master seems to be working in the "fog" or energy cloud.

Traditional training brings this skill by extended and intensive practice. You can develop these skills in other ways.

Centered riding is one such attempt. There is much to commend this effort, but it eventually fails because of its focus on forms. Center riding is a hallmark in the history of equitation because it is an acknowledgment of a connection between the inside of man with the inside of the horse. The nature of the art is that it never is bound by the form but is a pure expression of spirit. It animates a form, but is never bound by it. What is wrong with riding and competition today is the complete attempt to subjugate the spirit to the form.... The spirit does not live in a ridged container. This is why the only suitable judge is you and the horse because only you and the horse can perceive the spirit. As your understanding grows the quality of the animating spirit is better able to express itself through you.

This is why I was very annoyed at the negative comment by the petty folks who flamed your "ride" a while back. They have no right to judge. I "know" you and from where I sit, you are a master in the works... not because of what you can or cannot do with a horse, and not because you have written books on riding, or know a lot... All that is not important, what is important is your attitude to the work and your passion for the horse. Nobody should put you down but instead encourage you to experiment and screw up as much as you can... You learn by mistakes and difficulties, not by being given the facts....

Your love of the horse should protect the horse from you doing major damage and they say you have to ruin 50 horses to make one.... It would nice to skip that part and you can if you can work under a master, but there are too few and they are not easy to find. Many famous masters are not masters and many unheard of horseman are.... Only you can discriminate and know the difference. People who take lessons never become masters, only people who think, love and serve the horse do. Of course these future masters can take lessons too, but never believe anyone except the horse and their own experience. When they work with a teacher they do not follow the teacher they follow the horse....

I hope you find the translation helpful. It will be published soon but all of my published translation are proofed by a native French speaker and this one has not been proofed yet and so will not be released for awhile. I do not speak French and have taught myself the language so I could read the horse books and so what I release must be checked to be sure that they are correct. This is why I am reluctant to share much of my work. I will share parts but to send you a mistake is not something I want to do. Most of the work must be pretty good or so my horses think so as they have become spectacular as a result of my education....

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A partial conversation on the net between Craig Stevens and "name with held" Pending approval to post ..

Craig stated:
The correct use of the inside rein is very advanced... but isn't like everything people do when they ride... the only are aware of what is supposed to be active and ignore everything else. Riding is about a complete awareness not a partial focus.... Grasp(over view)... a quality not even thought of by most.

"name with held" responding :

Something to think about, on the subject of "complete awareness" etc. Psychologists have a term "gestalt" which you may have heard, and means, "a basic pattern or structure that gives something its identity as a unified whole, rather than the sum of its parts". There was a school of Psychology (in Germany originally, surprisingly enough) based on the principle that "perception and behavior exist as whole, unified patterns, which cannot be analyzed in terms of their individual elements nor understood as the sum of these elements". You could call the followers of this sort of approach the "lumpers".

Of course this became fairly unpopular later in this century as everyone liked to be reductionist and analyze things into little bits as much as possible, these people could be called "splitters". Even though I am a scientist and so do have to break things down into little bits a great deal to understand them I feel that to make sense of anything it all has to be put back together again to be theorized about (which you may be surprised to know is actually not done much by most scientists). Therefore I am much more a "splitter then lumper" at heart (very unfashionable!).

It seems to me that at the moment dressage is being analyzed into little bits as well. A lot of the modern books seem to be doing this and teachers often break things down entirely into, "inside rein should do this" "make your left hip do that" etc. and so on. While I know that there are many, many details we have to get right in order to ride as efficiently for the horse as possible, I somehow think that maybe the attention to detail alone might lead more easily to heavier handed, mechanistic riding such as can sometimes (often?) be seen in modern dressage competitions.

If there could be more emphasis on "feel" and responding to feedback from the horse and a more gestalt approach to riding, i.e. not concentrating solely on where each seat bone is all the time and so on, but doing whatever it is to get a feeling of oneness with the horse, perhaps this might lead to a lighter kind of riding. The gestalt approach is the one used by the 16th century riders, I think, as they do not go into the details of what they did very much as they did not analyze things down to the detail we do today. I don't know, what do you think??

My response:
I think you are a very smart lady ;-) See if you can follow the fairy tale below:-)

There are many ways to express this idea and many levels. The nature of thought is to fragment. The mind see everything in three parts; itself, the object of its reflection and the space in between. This is because in its lowest aspects it is very slow. This is the result of its suspension between the higher mind and the feelings. These have a contrasting polarity. The float of the concrete mind in essence floats because of it position between the contrasting poles. Suspended, it hovers in a weightless state, metaphorically speaking.

There are two points of union, one is in the physical body and the other in a place metaphorically termed the soul. The soul is the causal body it is the origin and know no separation. It manifest through the mind and feelings and grounds itself in the body.

High thought moves toward formlessness, geometric, color and soundless sound are higher aspects of the mind. The higher feeling, such as true art, love and self sacrifice also move to formlessness and have similar manifestations to high mind.

So what does this have to do with dressage? Equitation in its purest form is a very powerful means of aligning the lower bodies, releasing the lower mind from its float. The horse as a being is made of the same subjective material as we are. We are not two separate beings but in reality one homogeneous whole. The horse is missing some of the subtle materials we have. The rational mind is missing and the higher feelings are also not present in the same way that they are in us. What we call a soul, in the horse exists in what we call the higher mind.

The emotional range of the horse is instinctive and collective. He live in the herd mind and in nature he has the most primitive sense of individuality. He is a collective being with one soul animating many horses, whereas the human is one soul animating on form.

When we work with the horse and "train" him, we impart a sense of the individual to the horse. He develops a individual personality. This is most noticeable in upper level horse. They are quite special. This is the gift the horse receives from us.

We receive a bridge to our higher mind and an alignment of our "lower" bodies. That is that we to "train" a horse must join our feeling, body and mind into one, when this occurs we live in our higher mind. This is the lowest aspect of our "soul" and the highest aspect of the horse. This creates an energy bridge between our personality and the our soul and the horse's personality and his soul. It becomes mutually enlightening. We bring light to each other.

Most horse people have some sense of this. They get as sense of peace, joy and release of life stress because of the relationship with the horse. The great ones and the masters of equitation live in the high mind and interesting enough so do beginners... It is a simple state in which rational thought becomes so accelerated that hovers in the light, witnesses the silence.

No conscious awareness of this is necessary to participate in the experience. The horse has the same experience. He uses our rational mind and high feelings of love to align with his own soul... It is for both of us a light show of sorts :-)

Modern dressage and competition is a wedge which blocks this whole process because it draws people into a belief in forms and not in the underlying spirit.

In equitation everything is about lightness and balance. The art is the development of both qualities. The high art of riding is based on lightness, not as the end of the training but the source of all. It is a quality which is present from the beginning and should never be lost.

Of course everyone thinks that lightness is a characteristic of the aids, but it is not. Balance starts in the mind and lightness is the conformation of the state of psychological balance. Without balance all training is bad. The horse is stronger than us and faster, the only hope we have is to be smarter. The only way we can demonstrate our intelligence is not through forcing movements, but through the control of our own bodies. When we control our own body we can control the aids we apply. Through the aids(and this is the correct word for what they are) we can contact the horses mind. If we control his mind then we control the horse. The single largest mistake everyone makes is that they try to always control the horse's body. This is the source of all resistance. The horsemaster never ever tries to control the horse's body but only concerns himself with the mind to mind communication. Do you follow this? Am I being clear? Seek lightness, everything else is easy then. It is possible to bring a horse to GP at a amazing speed with no stress and have both the horse and rider smile.... It is possible to do the same thing with a rider, but they are much slower to do than a horse to train. Mental balance is a simple thing and people are not and so this makes it very hard to learn because it is so very easy.... there is much more to this but this is one way to explain it....

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