How To Ride A Spooking Horse Through Trigger Stacking
Two Schools Of Thought
This year we have seen a lot of trigger-stacked horses in Wellington. What became very clear after posting a few of those videos is that there are two very different schools of thought when it comes to comprehending the needs of the dressage horse.
In the first school of thought, riders will command forward at all costs. The horse is thought to simply be spooking regardless to the extent of fear to which they are exhibiting.
The second school of thought is to de-escalate a trigger-stacked horse in order to give them a positive and safe atmosphere.
Like most topics here on Dressage Hub, this one has also become polarizing and I am not sure why. I believe that there is a middle ground in which, yes, you need to ride your horse forward but you also need to create a safe and positive atmosphere for your horse. Without this, the partnership cannot be successful in the dressage ring.
How To Ride A Spooking Horse Through Trigger Stacking
In this video, Olympian Robert Dover finds the middle ground of working through the lesson on a horse that is trigger stacked upon the start of the lesson. They work through a variety of ways on how to minimize and de-escalate a trigger stacked horse. It does not always have to be pretty but it does need to be fair.
More On Trigger Stacking
In many of the dressage disasters that we have seen on Dressage Hub they are not fair, in fact they are the opposite and borderline abusive depending where you personally draw that line. You can learn more about trigger stacking here: https://youtu.be/uTaBxHNrzZM
To help people understand what we here at Dressage Hub we posted a few additional videos. One is a veterinarian talking about Anoxia and fear is triggered in horses that are trained using rolkur.
You can watch that video titled – That Horse Is Not Spooking, He Thinks He Is Dying here: https://youtu.be/zO8_F5bQMPw
The second video we published discussed trigger stacking and how to understand the elements of fear in horses and how this test is not a simple spook but rather a combination of triggers to send this horse into a state of fear and flight. You can watch the video on the basics of trigger stacking here: https://youtu.be/OU2tE-cCzlo