Last weekend I spent two days teaching at Kingsbury Hill Farm in New Hampshire. I taught there earlier this summer as well and it was nice to see some familiar faces again. It was nice to see how much several of the horses and riders had improved since my previous visit. It also reminded me that I’ve been meaning to jot down some “Notes on Riding in Clinics.”

The two things that I think stand out the most for me are equipment issues. The first is spurs. In a nutshell, wear them. They should be blunt, about an inch or so long, and positioned about where your half-chap ends. Simply putting spurs on doesn’t mean that the spurs will be used. As riders we need to be able to use our spur at will, not randomly. If our leg position isn’t secure enough to choose when we use the spur, put them on lower. The lower they are the less likely they will be to touch the horse’s side. If they are too high, they will touch the horse’s side even if we don’t want them to. Spurs are a part of our language for communicating with horses. They aren’t mean or unkind, but they do allow us to make a point to a horse more clearly. Sometimes we have to ask a horse to go forward or move over; the spur allows us to do so articulately.

The second equipment item is nosebands. Nosebands are not ornamental. They should not hang on the horse’s face like a Christmas tree decoration. They should fit snuggle around the horse’s face. The purpose of the noseband is to encourage the horse to keep his mouth closed around the bit. This in turn allows us to use the bit to communicate with the horse. If a horse’s mouth is open, there is no communication through the bridle. As a corollary to this, the bit works best when the horse’s mouth is closed. Too often I see horses with quite strong bits and nosebands that are not fitted to be effective. A properly fitted noseband will make a less severe bit more effective than a severe bit hanging in an open mouth.