The Dressage Process

Clever Hans and Classical Dressage June 30, 2010

In 1900, a German named Wilhelm von Osten claimed his horse, Clever Hans (Kluge Hans), could perform mathematical calculations and count out the answer by tapping his hoof on the ground. Initially, everyone assumed the owner had to be using some trick, but no one could understand how he was doing it. Furthermore, the horse would answer correctly even if someone else asked the question.

Eventually it was shown that Clever Hans only “knew” the answer when he could see the questioner and the questioner knew the correct answer. In tests in which the questioner did not know the answer, Hans didn’t either. Ultimately it was concluded that Clever Hans was sensitive to unconscious, involuntary movements and changes in posture of the questioner. It was discovered that as Clever Hans was getting closer to the correct response the questioner’s tension level would go up. At the moment the horse gave the correct answer, the questioners tension would release and he would make a tiny, involuntary movement — a very slight change in the position of the head or body, or very slight changes in facial expression. This movement was all Clever Hans needed to know he should stop tapping.

There are some important lessons to be taken from this. The first is that no matter how quiet our seat or subtle our aids, we should probably be working to make things quieter and more subtle! It turns out that our clever horses don’t need very much in the way of physical guidance.

The next idea is that no matter how well we think we understand the training process, we are probably missing an entire subtext of subconscious aids, cues, and rewards. We have to assume the great riding masters and authors of the past were missing it as well. I suspect this is why they left us with such a mechanical description of how dressage works.

The words and phrases of dressage like “bend the horse around your inside leg” and “push him up to the bit” are mechanical because they literally tell us to “bend” our horses and “push” them to the bit by physically pushing, pulling, and bending. Without interpretation these statements are terribly confusing since we are not capable of physically bending a horse or pushing him anyplace he doesn’t want to go. This is why we have to go through a process of teaching the horse to bend, to step up to the bit, and to move from our leg. It is only after the horse understands these ideas and the aids for them, that it will feel to the rider as though he bent the horse and pushed him to the bit.

It’s easy to see how the great riding masters managed to teach their horses the concepts and aids so deftly they thought they were actually bending, pushing, and elevating their horses. This is much the same as Wilhelm von Osten thinking Hans was actually performing mathematics. What is not as easy to see is, how do we consciously do what the masters just did?

If you were to try to teach a horse to perform arithmetic without understanding what was really happening with von Osten and Hans, the task would seem impossible. However, if enough trainers did try it, some small percentage would get the same result as von Osten for the same reason. In all likelihood, those trainers would be as blissfully unaware as von Osten and believe their horses were actually performing math. However, once you understand the hidden language of von Osten was simply, “tap your foot until I tell you to stop,” teaching a horse to apparently “know” 3+2=5 is not a problem at all.

There is a direct parallel between teaching a horse to tap his foot and riding circles, serpentines, and transitions. Although the conventional mechanical language doesn’t provide a very good explanation of how we make those circles round, loops even and transitions accurate, once you learn there is hidden language, life gets simpler. The hidden language of dressage consists of what I call the “five first tier basics.” They are: go, stop, turn in, move out, and soften. We build from these to create all of the figures, movements, and qualities we want in our horses. Being aware of and understanding these first tier basics makes it easy to see that we don’t ride circles – we ride individual strides emphasizing the first tier basic or basics necessary to create a circle. The same is true for every other movement and figure in dressage.

To visualize how riding with the five basics works, think of keeping a horse on a circle by alternately asking him to move out to the circumference and then preventing him from moving out too much and falling off the circle with turn-in. (Figure 1 -A-) His speed, stride and frame are adjusted with go, stop, and soften. If the horse should run through the aids and off the circle, he is not responding to stop and turn in basics (Figure 1 -B-).

In the conventional explanation of the aids, we keep a horse on the circle by “pushing him from our inside leg to our outside hand and leg”, or “keeping him between our leg and hand.” These mechanical descriptions are as false as the illusion of Hans doing math. The irony is, Han’s illusion was based on the idea that he did understand what he was doing — the mechanical aids illusion is based on the idea that the horse doesn’t.

Find out more about The Hidden Language of Dressage” at my website: www.mikeschaffer.com