The Kiss

I tend to think that all of us in the horse world are pretty similar even if we participate in different disciplines. Surely, we're birds of a feather and all that, regardless of the fact I ride English but you might ride Western, right?

Well, sometimes this rosy picture of oneness crumbles apart as I realize that there are indeed vast differences that accompany individuals from other disciplines. Last week, I bumped into this realization yet again while schooling a dressage horse in our arena while a Western lesson took place. The Western rider and I stayed out of each other's way no problem. But I couldn't help being distracted by her trainer's instructions for schooling her horse. To be polite, they sounded far too simple. Almost easy, in fact.

You see, in the dressage world, giving your horse a cue to do something (which happens at minimum every half-second), nearly requires a Graduate degree in Physics. For instance, a dressage trainer would tell you to make your horse canter like this:

"Half-halt-on-your-outside-rein-and-then-step lightly-into-your-inside stirrup-and-lift-your-ribcage-on-that-side-and-now-deepen-your-outside-sitting bone-and-draw-your-hips-forward-and-count 1,2,1,2-and-and give a squeeze-with-outside-leg-at-2."

Whew.

It's no wonder dressage riders carry around the stereotype of being too serious and slightly uptight. Constantly wrestling with that much data input and output would be enough to give someone an anxiety disorder. Interestingly, though, after a while we all get used to it. Until I observed the Western lesson, that is.

The Western trainer told her student to get her horse to pick up the canter by making a kissing noise. If you've ever hung around Western trainers, you'll notice quickly that they use a kissing sound for pretty much everything. Want your horse to step over a pole? Kiss to him. Want your horse to turn through a gait? Kiss. Pick up a right lead canter? Kiss. Left lead canter? Ditto.

Admittedly, when I first encountered this Kiss phenomenon a few years back, I struck an uppity high-brow dressage attitude. Where were the nuances of training and riding? I asked. How was a horse supposed to tell from one slurpy wet kiss whether he was supposed to a.)canter, b.)go backwards, or c.) get in a horse trailer? Where was the micro-managing and hair-splitting of signals that we dressage riders had perfected? Surely, no horse could rightly perform without this impressive library of cues such as when, where, and how often the rider should contract her right inner thigh. And yet there were all those Western horses doing all kinds of things with just the prompting of their riders' lips pressed together.

Huh?

I won't hide that my uppity attitude towards this Western riding came from a big dose of envy. Yes, my belief that the myriad of dressage cues ranked superior to Western training came from the simple fact that I had tried the Kiss... and failed miserably.

Several years ago, I was helping my lovable cowboy friend Mark compete some of his horses. I was doing very well with them except for one large problem: I couldn't make them canter. Despite my years and years of training and instruction all over the world, I could not make his horses canter even one stride. I used the most sophisticated signals that my butt and legs could muster and still nothing happened. Embarrassed, I asked Mark for help.

His horses only responded to a Kiss, he explained. A what? Were we talking about training horses here? Mark got a good chuckle that I'd not only never heard of such a thing but likely could not pull it off. A quick note: Mark's perception of New Englanders like myself is that we are, in his words, "frosty." That's his polite way of saying we're tight-lipped and rigid. I prefer to think we're simply reserved and cautious, but Mark had his own ideas, thus dubbing me the "Ice Princess," which I guess for a dressage trainer is pretty suitable.

After demonstrating several rounds of an appropriate Kiss, Mark told me to ride off on his handsome stallion and give it a try myself. Already deeply humbled that I, the well-heeled dressage trainer, was taking advice from someone with a Texas drawl in blue jeans, I was determined to nail this thing. I launched into a big ground-covering trot with his Arabian stallion, aimed for the corner where I wanted to canter, and then squeezed my lips together. And made a sound like spitting out a cherry pit. I tried again quickly and this time sounded like I was sucking food from my teeth. The horse kept trotting. I pursed, blew spit. We never cantered.

Mark told me if I were ever going to nail that Kiss, I'd need to be a whole lot less "frosty." That meant, of course, I needed to act like less of a dressage rider. Like not sitting stone-faced with a broomstick stuck down my jacket. Like not trying to cue his horses with one-hundred fidgety nuances of cues at once. Just relax a little... and Kiss. And don't Kiss with that tight-lipped uptight look on your face, he said in his slow drawl. Maybe practice at home with a mirror like a teenager, he smirked, or read some romantic novels.

Of course, I'm reticent to admit this, but I did go home and practice. And I just never got any better than that sour cherry pit noise. I never managed any well-articulated slurpy sounds that even remotely resembled what I heard in Western arenas. Damn! Maybe what I previously thought was the world's easiest riding cue would be forever elusive to me. I, however, prefer to think that my tight-lipped failure at the Kiss simply means I belong in a dressage saddle giving mind-boggling cues to my horses. So, nowadays whenever a Western trainer asks me to ride his or her horse, I politely decline because I'm still at home practicing that Kiss with a mirror.