John Lyons,one of the great natural horsemanship trainers, uses a tool he calls “ the calm down cue “ . This tool asks the horse to lower its head on cue.

. When a horse lowers its head to the heighth of the withers or slightly above or below, depending on the horse’s conformation, a magic thing happens. The horse calms down and relaxes. One of my favorite trainers says that a horse cannot think with his head up in the air. If you can get the horse to lower its head, it put its brain back into thinking mode , instead of reacting mode. This is real important when you are training a horse and they are not with you. They will be high headed and not paying attention to you. So you can move their feet, forwards , backwards, sideways and lower their head and they will settle and start thinking again. I’ve seen this work with the toughest of horses.

The other thing that happens , when you lower a horses head back to their thinking mode , is that they will engage their hindquarters. Nancy and I call this the point of engagement , or the sweet spot. When the horse’s head is up , they are using the muscles on the lower part of their neck to propel them forward . They then can block the energy from their hindquarters and stay on their forehand.When they lower their head ,the lower resistance muscle become placid and the upper neck muscle engages. This muscle is directly tied to the hindquarters via the topline.Once this engagement happens, the horse has to do its inherent gait, be it a running walk, foxtrot or rack.This is the first lesson that we teach at our clinics and to our colts. It is the easiest way to gain engagement and gait. More on this next time. Happy Gaiting!