Training Your Own Horse – Part 6 of a 6-part series

Use of the Whip
by Alice Trindle

For those of us who most often ride in Western tack, the concept of riding with a whip may be foreign. As I heard Curt Pate describe once, "It is difficult to hold a dressage whip when you are roping!" However, as we study horsemanship and listen to the masters from many continents, we discover that the whip--when used mindfully--has many benefits for every discipline.

By "whip" I mean a family of extensions of our arms, ranging in length from approximately one to two meters. Unfortunately, this tool has been characterized as a torture device for horses. In the right hands, with clear purpose, it can have many useful and honorable attributes.

Purposes of the Whip
Artificial Aid
The natural aids include seat, leg, hands, and focus. Artificial aids, such as the whip, spur, and rommel, should be used as reminders of the clear intentions we first establish through the natural aids. I don’t want to create a situation in which my horse only moves due to the tap of the whip. Rather, I will use the whip to remind him to move after my focus, seat, legs, and hands say “Go!” The whip should not become a crutch.

Extension of Your Arm or Leg
For those of us who are vertically challenged, (i.e., a little short and riding a rather large horses or rather tall and riding a smaller horse), the whip can be an excellent way to communicate to specific body parts without negatively affecting our body position or giving mixed, confusing signals with our legs. Being on the short side myself, and often riding rather large horses, I have to be very careful about the use of my leg pressure, particularly if I am wearing spurs to enhance the movement. I cannot get my leg back to influence the hip or some lateral movements without touching the horse too high on his ribcage. The dressage whip can allow me to keep my seat, hands, and focus in the correct position while using the whip to point and talk directly to the body part that needs to move.

Enhance Movement & Balance
In your groundwork, round or square penning, work-in-hand, developing high school maneuvers, and in riding, the whip can be a wonderful tool to help enhance movement, balance and clear communication of your intentions. Exercises using two whips can greatly help your balance and posture in the saddle, as well as enhance the balance of your horse.

Develop Your Multi-tasking Skills
Combining clear leadership, focus, balance, rhythm, timing, and feel together with another living, thinking, feeling creature is not easy. Any time I can further advance my multi-tasking skills, I know I am on the right track.

Use as a Reprimand
Schooling and learning require some measure of discipline:
• The discipline of providing good leadership for our horses
• The requirement to care for our animals
• The appropriate demand of a response from our horses

The word discipline should first relate to the human’s role of instructing, guiding, and educating both our horses and ourselves. Using the whip to correct should always happen with mindful intentions, in which you clearly have pictured the correct response and are ready to reward the slightest try in that direction. The use of the whip to discipline the horse must be u

sed in that mindful sequence, and never used as punishment.

Tradition & Honor
A final purpose of the whip is related to the traditions of riding schools and the honor one earns after many years of study. To ride with a willow stick is one of the highest honors afforded in many riding schools across the globe. Similar to our true vaquero tradition of earning the honor to ride straight up in the bridle with the rommel reins attached with one horse hair to a beautiful spade bit, you only earn the right to carry a willow stick as a whip after many years working with and studying horses.

Cautions for Using the Whip
• The whip is not to be used for punishment. There is no room for that type of aggression with horses.
• Avoid using the whip in a nagging or nit-picking manner, particularly without clear intentions of the desired outcome.
• Do not use the whip for trailer loading education. The whip has a bite to it, and this can distract from the desired intention of sending the horse into the trailer. In frustration, the horse will often kick up at the whip and not focus on the right answer of flowing into the trailer. Instead, I use a whirl of the end of the lead rope or an extension of my arm like a fiberglass/carrot stic

k, or team up with another knowledgeable human.
• Be vigilant about the end of the whip when it is around the horse’s eyes. In particular, the popper end of the lunge whip can cause serious injury to the eye. Be Careful!

Exercises
For a review of general work in hand exercises and liberty work, visit www.tnthorsemanship.com/articles. You can also review last month's article on liberty work, either there or at www.nwhorsesource.com.

Ski Poles and Swords
This is one of my favorite riding games that uses either a whip or a fiberglass stick. The basic principle is to use the whip as a visual aid to get the human to free up the upper and lower body, focus, and allow the horse to accomplish more with less.
While holding the whip as if it were a ski pole, put a slight twist in your torso and bring the ski pole back toward your horse's flank, as if you were planting the pole vertically. This movement and positioning will affect the horse's hindquarters. If accompanied by getting the inside eye and a little inside rein, you will affect the horse’s inside hip and hind leg to cross under the belly. 

Next, switch to holding the whip as if it were a sword, and place it in your outside hand. As you direct the inside eye for a change of direction using the inside rein, extend the sword forward, as if to reach around the outside arc of the circle in the direction of travel. This movement and position will affect the forequarters of the horse. 

To begin with, I use the whip in this exercise on a series of half turns, or changes of direction with forward motion. For example:
• Start tracking to the left with the whip in your left hand as if it were a ski pole.
• Now think of changing directions around your left leg and flowing back off to track right. Your left hand will have the left rein and your ski pole.
• Put that twist in your torso, opening your shoulders by drawing back on your left hip and bringing your right shoulder forward. The whip is placed perpendicular to the ground (ski pole position), near the flank. Don’t dip your shoulders!
• Once you have accomplished the change of direction by stepping the left hind foot under the belly and you are riding off to the right, you are ready for the sword.
• Change the whip to a sword position. See in your mind's eye a half turn change of direction around your right leg. Look right, slightly guide the right eye with your rein, and extend the sword out in an arc to affect the left eye until you have changed directions.

Advance this exercise by riding with two whips – the inside of the bend contains the ski pole, and the outside of the bend holds the sword. Soon you will be riding with little or no rein and experiencing the joy of your horse following your natural aids with the help of the whip!


Author's Note
It has certainly been my pleasure over the past 12 months to write these articles for the readers of Northwest Horse Source. To share what the horses have been teaching me is truly a gift from the Creator. In this month of spiritual celebrations, let’s remember how fortunate we are to have horses in our lives!

~Alice