Sidedness ... and a Blinding Flash of the Obvious ...

This morning while playing with Merrida, my young 2.5 year old Warmblood, I had a thought about a challenge that many of us face with out equine partners, sidedness. This is our horses sometimes natural and sometimes created, preference for humans to be on one side or the other; their tendency, because of bi-lateral vision to be more comfortable with humans, more responsive, etc on one side or the other.

What I was noticing is how our tendency as humans is to be really HAND centered. When Merrida continued to want to put me on her Left side, my instinct was to block her nose, or yield her nose over with steady pressure ... All of this obviously is staying with our human tendency to be direct-line. Which we all know tends to kill our attempts at creating a relationship with our horses.

So, after my session as I began to do my usual de-brief of what went well and what I could have done better, I thought about what might be a better tactic. I realized that when my horse doesn't want to give me her right eye, that actually means that often times my LEFT Hindquarter yield is broken ... (because when they are preferring to have you in their Left eye ... they also are not yielding their left hip!). I know right ... Blinding Flash of the Obvious ;). Needless to say, Merrida and I spent a while playing with our Left HQ yield ... asking her to OFFER me her right eye, instead of being made to yield it to me. AND .. Things kept getting softer and softer.