The Importance of ‘Release’ for the Horse

This is probably the most important concept for your understanding between your horse and yourself.

A horse responds to release as an understanding of what has been set up by us the leader of the dance, between us and our equine partner. The thing is as humans, we don’t account for this. If we release at a particular moment when the horse is trying to work us out, it might not be in our favour as our timing might be out and what we thought we were trying to get across is not relayed to the horse.

The horse may see a different point of view and in the ‘release,’ no matter how the horse reacts it’s the horses processing an outcome.

Timing of release is crucial.  Why?

The horse may learn an undesirable trait in our opinion, but because of ‘release’ the horse sees it as a positive outcome to its need to be free, release of pressure and the horse strives to duplicate this outcome because there is peace even if the horse is using defensive behaviour to achieve this. The horse doesn’t look at good and bad it looks for relief, no pressure, no claustrophobia place. So, the importance of relief at the appropriate moment, is so important in a horse’s understanding, of learning respect and just living with us in an uncomplicated manner.

‘Release’ in the beginning for our presentation to the horse, it must be obvious to the horse, no fuss just back off for a moment let the horse digest that its our deal to the horse, to meet in the middle and help the horse understand what we are offering, a better deal. That’s the moment people refer to as ‘join up’, harmony, understanding, starting the olive branch for unity between horse and human. Its our main form of communication.

Food offers comfort, but release offers sanctuary, and a place for the horse to be comfortable and wanting to be part of our lives.

They are gregarious, herd animal. We want them in our herd not looking for another place to be.  This is huge, an important concept to understand.  Until people really understand this, in my opinion, we as the horses’ trustee, friend, partner, provider never really grasp just how much the horse relies on us. Its existence in evolution is because of us in what we saw and desired in that magnificent animal, because horses, a species 6000 years ago was on the way out. So man has learnt to respect the horse and as with other truly domesticated animals’ offering the above ‘release’ is, game breaking in working with them. We are just fortunate that the horse’s makeup, through evolution allows us to have an almost symbiotic relationship with them.

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