No Spurs
We’ve had “No Stirrup November” for quite a while. Now there’s a new challenge: “No SPURS November.”
I don’t ride my horse, Imagine, with spurs now, not in November or any other month. I don’t need spurs to communicate to my partner what movement or transition I need from him. He listens for my aids, which traditionally are leg, seat, and hands, with anticipation of earning a reward. But reaching that point was far from as simple as just tossing my spurs into the tack trunk to gather dust for a few weeks. It took a clear, honest understanding of my horse’s true motivations.
Riding without spurs is an admirable idea based on animal welfare, but just taking off spurs doesn’t address the underlying reasons why we use spurs in the first place. If we want to ride successfully without spurs, we need to face up to the fact that traditional training is centered around the horse, avoiding something uncomfortable.
When we start talking about riding without spurs, I think that we have to first pull out why the rider is using spurs.
From the horse’s perspective, you cannot simply stop riding with spurs and expect the same response you got while wearing them. Even if you don’t touch the horse with them, every horse that’s been ridden in spurs knows when you have them on.
To understand that difference from the horse’s point of view, you must go back and look at what motivates the horse to move in the first place. Where is the value for the horse to respond to your cues? If the horse is moving off the aid only to avoid the sense of discomfort that a spur can cause, then what’s going to make them do it without the spur? Kick harder? More leg, more leg? How many times have you heard someone yell, “MAKE HIM GO!” And then when he won’t go, “Ok, put on the spurs.”
There’s not a magic spurless button to break this cycle, unfortunately. To successfully ride without spurs for the horse’s welfare, you must go back to the beginning and retrain the response to the cue in a different way with a different motivation. A positive motivation. You train your horse to recognize your light (spurless) aid as an opportunity for a reward.
That’s why Imagine listens so closely for my lightest aids now: my cue is his opportunity, and he doesn’t want to miss it.
To take it one step deeper, you also need to be able to break down larger skills into smaller components so you are able to assess the motivation and value you have created for your horse to respond to your aids a certain way. If you aren’t able to identify why you are not getting the response you are seeking, you will end up resorting to less refined cues with increased pressure.
As much as I love the idea of the idea of putting the spurs away for a month, unfortunately it is going to take more than a month to teach your horse a new way of interacting with your aids. It takes a whole new approach centered on reward instead of pressure, and that’s a challenging change for you, the rider, to make. (Believe me, coming from decades of traditional riding, I know what a challenge it is!) But the results in harmony and your horse’s welfare are so worth the effort!