Week 5 – A tactful tradition: the role of flexibility in horse-riding / dressage

This early draft was authored by Helena Miton.

Introduction

One initial challenge common to (most) techniques is to achieve a given goal or end state while working with materials which creates specific constraints to which craftsmen have to adapt. This is particularly true and crucial whenever the materials have properties that aren’t constant. For example, craft cheese-makers’ expertise lies in their ability to adjust to variation in milk, i.e., raw material (Paxson, 2011). Techniques can also follow the opposite logic, and adjust the end goal to the material’s specificities.

In the case of dressage, goals are rigidly defined, while the fact that they have to be achieved with horses brings about substantial variation and calls for flexibility in the rider’s course of action. Noteworthy aspects of dressage traditions include that flexibility is (1) required in order to teach horses, i.e., to transmit cultural contents from one species to another, and (2) explicitly represented as important by members of equestrian traditions themselves – at least under the concept of tact équestre

Horse-riding and dressage

In its simplest definition, horseback riding includes a primate sitting on an equid’s back, with the actions between the two usually (but not necessarily) mediated by a set of artifacts (bridle, bit, reins, saddle). It makes for a fairly complex system, and its transmission,  simply because it systematically involves two agents (the horse and the rider), can also take forms that differ from other techniques’. Horse-riding traditions have to be learned by and preserved in not one, but two populations, and in two different species: humans (horse-riders) and horses.

Horse-riding is only one among several uses made of horses, and encompasses a set of different practices. Within this set, dressage, we consider the branch of equestrian sports focused on obtaining a seemingly effortless execution of some prescribed movements. In the historical sources used here, dressage was inscribed in institutionalized, often military, circles – in other words, not as sports, but more genuinely as a technique. Horse-riding (and especially dressage) techniques have, for an embodied practice, an unusually abundant written record, of which we make use here. This is especially true of European dressage tradition, which we will focus on here. Citations were chosen to be representative, and all horsemen cited are among the most well-known of the French tradition (they were all military officers), over the 17th-20th century period.

Technical movements as rigidly defined practices

Most movements that can be seen in Dressage competitions find their origins (at least) several centuries ago – some of which can even easily be traced back up to Xenophon’s writings. For instance, both passage, i.e., a collected trot with extended times in the air (see video below) and piaffer, trot on the spot, with no forward motion (see video below), have survived through centuries with no major change in their definitions.

Passage (Source: Wikimedia)

Piaffer (Source: Wikimedia)

Of course, changes have occurred, at least on some movements that have also survived over the last several centuries – i.e., some movements have evolved; some others have simply disappeared. It might be worth noting that rigidity – and rigid definitions – do not automatically lead to faithful transmission, and even less so to stable traditions. Rigid definitions can still lead to drifts and changes in practices, where, while the definitions remain stable, the associated practice does not. One dramatic such example is how rollkur, also known as hyperflexion, emerged and stabilized from the prescribed attitude of « bas et rond » (« low and round »). It has now been technically banned from competition, although the practice is still debated, with some practitioners and the Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI), to distinguish both based on whether the neck’s flexion is obtained with or without force, banning only the former but not the later – e.g., van Weeren, 2013). Other movements, like galloping on three legs, have also virtually disappeared since.

Dressage can be considered as an extreme case, with extremely rigid goals. Other uses of horses – especially when they imply more task-oriented functions – i.e., gathering a herd of cattle – don’t necessarily ask for as well-defined behaviors from the horse.

Rules about how to be flexible

Writings on horse-riding abound with ‘adjustment rules’ that complement this general concept or goal. They are usually more precise in their meanings, and describe how to adjust or act on one specific part of the system. They typically describe how to adjust the rider’s actions and behavior depending on the horse’s actions or state. Take for instance this quote from Nuno Oliveira: « The hands have to be like cement when the horse resists and like butter when the horse yields. », which describes how the rider’s hands are supposed to act in relation to whether the horse resists or not. Or let’s take another -older- example, this time from La Guérinière, about the leg/spurs action: « it is recommended to always precede the contact of the iron (spur) by the application of fat-of-the-legs, this is a rule that should never be lost sight of, lest it would provoke defenses »[1].

These rules define some hierarchy or order in the rider’s actions, with increasing intensity until the horse reacts. This is also echoed by other contemporary ways to teach horse-riding. To make a horse move forward, legs are supposed to be used first, then if the horse doesn’t react, the whip is to be used on the shoulder, and if this still leads to no (or insufficient) reaction, then use the whip behind the rider’s leg. As mentioned in La Guérinière’s quote, it is assumed that disrespecting this ‘natural order’ would tend to jeopardize the horse’s training.

These rules are walking a fine line between rigidity and flexibility, as they define a distribution of behaviors over the possible states of the horse-rider system. They also order the sequence of behaviors – actions gradually become stronger and are stopped whenever the desired reactions from the horse is achieved. They can, ironically, be seen as fairly rigid rules that prescribe flexibility.

It is also worth noting that such rules require some expertise on the part of the rider to be able to categorize, for instance, when the horses resists or when it yields – this echoes the use of maxims in dry-walling (Farrar & Trorey, 2008), for which even if maxims are freely circulated between craftsmen of all skill levels, they make most sense once at least some degree of expertise is achieved.

Variation: flexibility is needed for performing technical movements

The necessity of equestrian tact is argued for, early on in the traditions, as coming from the variation horses themselves bring, especially as living beings. In Alexis L’Hotte’s words, « The instrument on which the musician acts is by itself inert. As a result, the conditions it presents are invariable, the same action will always produce on it the same effect. It is wholly different for the instrument that the horse-rider makes use of. Life, will animate the horse, and, from there, a thousand and one nuance in its manner to present itself and reply to the actions of who is riding it. There is there, for the horserider, a whole maze of difficulties, in the middle of which he can only get lost, if he doesn’t have for guide this peculiar sentiment I talked about: the equestrian tact (tact équestre). »[2] In other words, flexibility is required as horses bring a fair amount of variation that they need to overcome if they are to achieve rigidly defined performances.

In Extérieur et Haute Ecole, one particularly famous horseman – Etienne Beudant – describes and names 18 horses he rode. Although this only describes -and in no exhaustive way- the part of Beudant’s career that took place in Morocco (approximatively 15 years), this text provides a glimpse of the variation to which horse-rider might be confronted to. The details provided on each horse varies considerably, from Embarek, which is described as a Moroccan horse « worth no attention », to some of the horses Beudant became famous for, like Mabrouk or Robersart II. They offer a unique opportunity to gauge the (considerable) individual variation in horses by (1) physical characteristics, (2) temper, and (3) training or past experiences.

Physical characteristics

Horses have been selected for different characteristics, often in relation to the function they were selected for. Even within the same use of horses, racing for example, the type of racing influences some of the physical characteristics. While trot races have selected for horses that able to trot at high speeds without starting to gallop, gallop races have obviously selected horses for their gallop, rather than their trot.

In some cases, a horse’s physical characteristics are even directly presented as an obstacle to the rightful execution of some movements. Among the horses described by Beudant, it is the case of Voltigeur, « whose conformation did not allow to suppose its success »[3]. Conformation and soundness of horses have also been proposed to be judged, more generally, in relation to specific uses (Marks, 2000). Contemporary veterinary science also suggests that some breeds (in particular German sport breeds) are assumed to be more fit for dressage than others, at least in competition (Barrey et al., 2002).

Mental characteristics (‘personality’ or ‘temper’)

Mental characteristics are no less of a source of variation for the horse-rider than horses’ physical conformation. In Beudant’s list, some horses are described as especially insensitive, and so, in (sharp) contrast with a number of horses he described as more sensitive/reactive or easily scared – it is the case for instance of Robersart II or Mabrouk. One horse, Mimoun, had seemingly taken the worst of both worlds. He is described as both ‘extraordinarily fearful’, getting scared of things that no other animal would be scared of, and yet lacking any impulsion, desire to move forward or sensitivity – up to the (remarkable) point that Beudant gives up on teaching him something he taught all his other horses – the use of the whip action on the shoulder.

Such characteristics impact the horse-rider’s course of action. Ideally, technical movements are performed by calm and relaxed, yet energetic, horses. While especially sensitive or nervous horses require to be slowed down and reassured, « colder » horses require to be made more energetic.

Training and past experiences

Overall, training and past experiences can influence performance in both positive and negative directions, facilitating or hindering some practices. Beudant’s examples, because he attempted to solve difficulties encountered with the horses he describes, are mostly negative. By contrast, more positive effects of training and past experiences can be found when he describes others’ experiences after he trained horses. 

In the worst cases, horses can become rétif (restive), i.e., having either no or only defensive reactions to their riders’ actions and demands. In Beudant’s list, Nethou II illustrates that well, and is described as retive. Mabrouk is also described has having been distraught over jumping obstacles, and having him jump in a calmer attitude (a form of re-training) is described as challenging.

On the other hand, riding well-trained horses can be particularly useful when acquiring new skills as a rider. One measured example of horse’s age influence is on how much they lean on curves – a behavior that training aims to avoid or minimize, with older horses leaning significantly less (Greve & Dyson 2017). This also suggests something about how horse-riding traditions are maintained: by making use of experts in both human and equine populations. One principle and saying in horse-riding is « A vieux cavalier, jeune cheval; à jeune cavalier, vieux cheval » (« Old rider, young horse; young rider, old horse). In such a case, the tradition is -at least in part- scaffolded by pairing a trained horse to an untrained rider, or the other way round: the novice partner learns from the trained (expert) one.

All those differences (physical, mental, in amounts of experience) from one horse to the next impact (1) what is the starting point of the training, and (2) which path between the initial state and the goal might be available. The variation generated by horses themselves might thus come as obstacles to achieving specific, rigidly defined, performances. Now, we turn to another possible reason why flexibility is required, which is in relation to how to train horses. Training horses, is to some extent, a way to transmit cultural contents between species (Guillo & Claidière, 2020). Flexibility might be required not only in order to achieve rigidly defined performances but, also in order to support successful cultural transmission.

Flexibility is required to transmit horse-riding practices from humans to horses

Horse-riding can’t be disentangled from training horses: the cultural transmission is built into the practice. Riding horses also contributes to transmitting cultural contents to them, because it reinforces (learned) behaviors. Flexibility is not completely random or arbitrary, but a set of models or ideas that create a form of scaffolding for the horse to learn or reinforce its behavior, as suggested by the rules on how to increase the intensity of the rider’s actions in relation to the horse’s behavior.

One aspect in which flexibility is manifest in rider’s behavior is in selecting and ordering, not only actions by intensity, but also by selecting and ordering which exercises to ask the horse for. Similarly to the rider’s actions, exercises can be ordered through a form of ‘natural’ progression, based on how difficult they are and what are their pre-requisites. The flexible selection of which exercise to use (building from easier to more difficult versions), or how to ask for it, are both tools available to the horse-rider to teach rigidly defined practices to horses.

Let’s take the example of the shoulder-in: it is taught by starting with the shoulder-fore, which is a less demanding version of the shoulder-in, while retaining some of its main characteristics (i.e., the horse moves forward but in the the bend). Another way to scaffold the learning and performance of a shoulder-in is to use a circle, or ask it right after having turned from an angle of the arena – in that way, the bend is already fixed and the rider has to maintain it rather than ask for it anew. This is used to facilitate the exercise for both horses and riders. A shoulder-in itself can also be used to help horses transition to canter, as it places the horse in the right balance to facilitate it. Similarly, it is possible to prepare some ridden exercises by practicing them on the ground, with the rider, on foot, beside the horse.

Views from above of the shoulder fore (left) and of the shoulder-in (right).

Tact équestre: the ideal of flexible (rider) behavior

One way in which the centrality of flexibility in dressage tradition has been acknowledged by horsemen themselves is through the concept of tact (équestre). It can be found pretty consistently across a few centuries in written records.

From Beudant’s Extérieur et haute Ecole, it can be defined as « the genius of equitation », the « feeling of the horse » – it is the à-propos which indicates to the rider the way and moment to act, the intensity and duration of her action. It is what makes success and helps out. »[4] In François Baucher’s (1796 – 1873) Oeuvres complètes, it appears around a hundred times. « This is a warning which should caution the horse rider’s tact of all kinds of contingencies, and make him understand that principles, even the most exclusive of them, are subject to some variations. »[5] This citation is particularly worth noting given that Baucher’s ambition was to create one, almost scientific, universal, method for horse-riding – which owed him a number of criticisms from both his contemporaries and successors. Finally, from Alexis L’hotte (1825 – 1904, in Questions équestres): « All equestrian action requires, to obtain the effect we expect, what no effect would give: the about and the measure, in other words, the tact équestre. »[6]

Tact is understood, overall, as an ability to act in a manner that is fit to the situation. Additionally, the tact équestre so defined includes (at least) two types of cognitive skills. The first part refers to perceptive skills (‘feeling’), while the other relates more to decision-making and motor skills (i.e., when, how and by how much to act).  An open question here is thus, how to transmit and maintain a tradition of flexibility – especially when flexibility is expected to shape different types of cognitive processes?

Conclusion

As far as riding horses is concerned, flexibility can be the pre-requisite to achieving (more) rigidly defined performances or outcomes. This is by no means an exception among techniques. Several other technical domains also show a pattern in which expert performance requires flexibility. This includes a wide range of crafts, ranging from cheese-making (Paxson, 2011) to dry-walling (Farrar & Trorey, 2008). Dressage offers a rare case study: it combines rigidly defined practices (which are maintained through traditions over fairly large amount of times) with a living materials, horses, who bring a fairly large amount of variation into the practices. Flexibility, in this case, might be required not only for performance, but also in order to transmit practices from humans to horses. Flexibility, in this case, occurs both by having gradually more intense actions from the rider until the horse reacts and by selecting exercises and ways to ask them. Finally, flexibility is also acknowledged by horsemen themselves, under the label of tact équestre – which leads to another question: how flexible behavior itself is transmitted and get embedded in traditions? 

References

Barrey, E., Desliens, F., Poirel, D., Biau, S., Lemaire, S., Rivero, J. L., & Langlois, B. (2002). Early evaluation of dressage ability in different breeds. Equine Veterinary Journal, 34(S34), 319-324.

Baucher, F. (1867). Oeuvres complètes: méthode d’équitation basée sur de nouveaux principes

Beudant, E. (1923) Extérieur et Haute Ecole

Farrar, N., & Trorey, G. (2008). Maxims, tacit knowledge and learning: Developing expertise in dry stone walling. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 60(1), 35-48.

Greve, L., & Dyson, S. (2016). Body lean angle in sound dressage horses in-hand, on the lunge and ridden. The Veterinary Journal, 217, 52-57.

Guillo, D., & Claidière, N. (2020). Do guide dogs have culture? The case of indirect social learning. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 7(1), 1-9.

L’Hotte, A. (1906). Questions équestres. Plon.

Marks, D. (2000). Conformation and soundness. In Proc. Am. Ass. Equine Practnrs (Vol. 46, pp. 39-45).

Paxson, H. (2011). The ‘art’and ‘science’of handcrafting cheese in the United States. Endeavour, 35(2-3), 116-124.

van Weeren, P. R. (2013). About Rollkur, or low, deep and round: Why Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein were right. The Veterinary Journal, 196(3), 290-293.


[1] « il est recommandé de faire toujours précéder le contact du fer par l’application des gras de jambes, c’est là une règle qu’il ne faut jamais perdre de vue, sous peine de provoquer des défenses. »

[2] « L’instrument sur lequel le musicien agit est inerte par lui-même. Il en résulte que, les conditions qu’il présente étant invariables, une même action produira toujours sur lui un même effet. Il en est tout autrement de l’instrument dont se sert le cavalier. La vie, la volonté animent le cheval, et, de là, mille et une nuances dans sa manière de se présenter aux actions de celui qui le monte et d’y répondre. Il y a là, pour le cavalier, tout un dédale de difficultés, au milieu duquel il ne pourra que s’égarer, s’il n’a pas pour guide ce sentiment particulier dont j’ai parlé : le tact équestre. »

[3] « dont la conformation ne permettait pas d’en supposer la réussite »

[4] « le génie de l’équitation, le « sentiment du cheval ». C’est l’à-propos qui indique au cavalier la façon et le moment d’agir, l’intensité et la durée de son action. C’est lui qui fait réussir et tire d’embarras. »

[5] « Ceci est un avertissement qui doit mettre le tact du cavalier en garde contre toutes sortes d’éventualités et lui faire bien comprendre que les principes, même les plus exclusifs, sont sujets à quelques variations. »

[6] « toute action équestre exigeant, pour obtenir l’effet qu’on attend, ce qu’aucun effet ne saurait donner: l’à propos et la mesure, autrement dit, le tact équestre. »

8 Comments

  • comment-avatar
    Mathieu Charbonneau 9 October 2020 (15:52)

    Levels and scaffolds in tradition and learning systems
    Dear Helena, I enjoyed your draft very much. Specifically, I find the relation between rigid use of the techniques and the necessary flexibility of their transmission in order to obtain this rigidity fascinating, not to mention the problem of a system of mutual learners. Two clarification questions.

    (1) You mention that rigidity in the definitions of horse-back riding techniques (say, “bas et rond”) may not guarantee their faithful transmission, suggesting some drift in the practices can occur. Can you detail a little bit more this idea? The way I understand it is that there is a rigid notion of what some horse behaviour should be, but underneath it there is drift on the behaviour of the rider. As the rider’s behaviour is gradually changing, this underlying variation does not show in the behaviour of the horse until some critical point is met and then there is a larger ‘jump’ in the variation space of the horse’s behaviour? If this is correct, what role would you give to flexibility/rigidity in understanding such process?

    (2) There seems to be two forms of transmission happening in your case study. First, there is the dressage of the horse itself, by some expert or advanced rider (new horse, old rider), and then the learning of riding by a more “naïve” human individual. However, I’m not clear as to how those two cases are connected. In the latter case, the horse itself serves more of a scaffold for a human learner to learn riding skills from human teacher (it involves two humans, and the horse is a form of prop, as a bicycle (with an attitude) would be), whereas in the former it is a specifically interspecific transmission of knowledge. Do you agree those are two quite separate systems of learning, as the ‘/’ used in your title suggests? Or are there some more complex connections between the two, linking them more closely?

  • comment-avatar
    Helena Miton 13 October 2020 (02:04)

    Reply to Mathieu
    Dear Mathieu,

    Thanks for your thoughtful questions. Let me have a stab at answering them.

    (1) I think your first question is pretty great to ask a few other questions, including at which scale or level do you consider a behavior or practice. It is especially difficult to pinpoint whether the drift occurs in the rider’s or the horse’s behavior, because the horse’s behavior is, in no small part, a response to the rider’s. For the idea of « bas et rond », the drift occurs mostly at the populational level, rather than within an individual’s practice. A possible telling of how it would have happened goes as follow: the concept is vague enough that the rider’s idea of where the horse’s head should be isn’t especially well-defined, and there is a fairly large of ‘accepted values’ for it. There is one ‘exaggerated’ version which might have a number of ‘advantages’ – i.e., it blocks the horse and is somehow more ‘stable’ (it’s at the end of the continuum of where the horse’s head can be, so it’s possible to ‘lock’ the horse there). In other words, there is variation in the practice because the mental model riders are after is fussy, until their practice reaches another attractor. For illustration and a quantitative assessment of a related drift in horse’s head position in high-level dressage, see Lashley et al 2014 (reference below).

    There are similar drifts caused by the iteration between mental representations and -slightly inaccurate- models when it comes to laterally bend a horse. Most models used, because they are either mimicked with hands or drawn, represent the horse’s spine as making a « C » shape. Most, or at least some, riders then try to bend their horse too much, which usually results in movements executed wrongly. So why does this happen? Actually, the « C » model was unrealistic in the first place and put riders in quest of an impossible movement, because not all of a horse’s vertebras actually have the required degree of freedom to make this shape.

    (2) Unfortunately I can’t embed a picture in this reply, but the idea goes as follows: old/expert rider —(trains)-> naive horse, who then becomes experienced -> can be used to train a new rider. You are right in thinking the horse as more of a scaffold in the second half of this causal chain. The horse is more of a pedagogical tool embedded in the transmission of horse-riding skills between two humans. I hope this answer your question!

    Lashley, M. J., Nauwelaerts, S., Vernooij, J. C. M., Back, W., & Clayton, H. M. (2014). Comparison of the head and neck position of elite dressage horses during top-level competitions in 1992 versus 2008. The Veterinary Journal, 202(3), 462-465.

  • comment-avatar
    Bert De Munck 14 October 2020 (08:45)

    Bert De Munck
    Dear colleague, In addition to the excellent comments already made, I don’t think I have much to add. It’s an extremely interesting case study and a wonderful paper. As an historian, I just wanted to learn perhaps whether the relationship between rigidity and flexibility might have changed throughout history? In what sense did the instructions in the manuals transform? Not unrelated to that: I would like to know more about the sources you have been using? What are the variations, types etc. and do they differ in terms of what you can learn from them and which ideas emerge from them? Also, in a next version, I would welcome some references and comparison with similar cases. I assume there is also work on dogs, for instance?
    In all, excellent piece, which only needed to be expanded in my view.

  • comment-avatar
    Helena Miton 19 October 2020 (22:14)

    Reply to Bert de Munck
    Dear Bert,

    Thanks for those great questions – that’s a lot of food for thought, and I’ll do my best to respond to all of them.

    First, about whether relationship between rigidity and flexibility might have changed throughout history. It has definitely known some variation, with some time periods or initiatives leaning more strongly on the rigid side and some others more on the flexible side. On the more rigid side can be found Baucher and his ambition of designing a scientific method for riding (especially in his early work); but a similar point can be made for the last 20 years or so of dressage, as in international sports, and how some movements have codified. On the more flexible side, Beudant, which I quote abundantly here, and whose writing is quite explicitly directed at contradicting Baucher’s idea of a scientific method.

    Another aspect of this relationship between rigidity and flexibility that might vary more across time is what is included in it exactly. Overall, the relationship between rigidity and flexibility exhibits remarkable consistency, and some aspects are very consistent over time, like the idea of adapting to a horse’s temper – which can be found as far back as Xenophon’s On horsemanship (4-5th century BCE, Greece). But other aspects are much less consistent – varying between considering the sequence of exercises a horse should be trained on as fixed to considering the ability to adjust this sequence as part of good horsemanship.

    In what sense did the instructions in the manuals transform? It might not sound surprising to an historian, but some of the instructions in the manuals reflect some transformations of the — like horse-riding officers becoming a less socially distinct category (and how much equestrian education is assumed in the reader). Another thing I’d be particularly curious to explore (and might through a bit of Natural Language Processing / Text analysis, if I get the occasion to) is which metaphors or analogies are used to talk about different aspects of horse-riding. Just for illustration purposes, I was trained with metaphors of ‘elastic’, elasticity or springs abounding, but I would assume them to have been much less frequent a few centuries ago. As a side-note, the illustrations that come with the instructions have changed a fair amount, from more classic drawings to more schema like (although this is probably constrained and scaffolded by advances in drawing and printing). Instructions themselves might have evolved from something fairly unstructured to things that are more recipe-like or step-by-step, but that’s more a feeling I have than something I have really examined in details.

    Sources I have used are mostly what would be considered ‘classics’, i.e., most scholarly inclined dressage riders would know about them. I also selected writings from horsemen that were fairly central in networks that has been reconstituted by (mostly amateur) historians (these two criteria being of course absolutely not independent from one another). Of course, this introduces a number of hard-to-avoid biases, starting with some form of survivor bias, but still seemed to me like a good way to have a first stab at the topic. They are all from military officers or riders that were trained mostly in a military setting, but this uniformity is mostly due to the fact that this is ‘where’ the well-documented tradition resides, so-to-say. I’m currently trying to expand it with the (much less abundant) records of using similar dressage movements for show / circus. Hopefully, this also addresses your question on variations and types.

    Finally, I agree that dogs would be a particularly relevant point of comparison, but don’t know much about it. As far as I know, explicit or extensive discussions on how to train dogs might be much harder to come across, and also to some extent more recent too, than the ones about horses.

  • comment-avatar
    Blandine Bril 21 October 2020 (23:25)

    Is horse riding/dressage so specific?
    Thanks Helena for discussing this specific technique that involve two organisms from two different species. In your draft you consider that horse riding-dressage tradition is something very different from most other technical traditions as it concerns two organisms (from two different species, a human and a horse) that have to be very finely synchronized while performing very rigidly defined goals.
    If we understand well the ideas you develop in your draft, you consider as something unique the “movements that can be seen in Dressage competitions” as being rigid. On the other hand, you outline as flexibility the rider movements/actions when the couple rider/horse performs figures such as “piaffer” (see paragraph Rules of how to be flexible”) as well as the various possibilities for teaching the horse (for example “shoulder-in”).
    However, rigid figures are not specific to horse dressage. If you consider teaching the horse, is this so different from teaching young classic dancers who must learn very well-defined (rigid) figures some of which are several centuries old? This rigidity of what has to be learnt characterizes lots of other skills including more cognitive ones. Second, the need for synchronization between two organisms is true of many human activities such as fighting sports for example (judo, fencing, etc.).
    What would be interesting is to consider what is really specific to horse riding. In the following we give a few examples of situations that may be considered analogous to the ones you discuss in the paper.
    Concerning the flexibility on the part of the horse rider, you point to two different questions that should be more clearly differentiated. (1) Necessity for the rider/trainer to adapt to the horse’s personality. Here again this is true of any learning situation. Back to the young dancer. S/he have as well his/er own physical characteristics, personality, temper, and experience, and the teacher must adapt the way s/he interacts with these individualities of the young dancer. This is the same thing you consider for the horse. In both cases the teacher’s pedagogy must be flexible and be customized for the learner depending on his/er level of expertise. This is similar to what you describe in the paragraph “flexibility is required to transmit horse-riding practices”. (2) Again, when you discuss the two ways to teach “shoulder in”, the fact that there is two ways of doing similar thing is true for many different skills. The fact is that typically, there is more than one way to solve a (motor) problem, this being true for any organism of all species.
    All this to say that what would be really interesting to develop in the case of horse riding is to show the many similar aspects of the transmission of other technical skills as well as what is very specific of horse riding, in particular the necessary and constant synchronization of the rider and the horse. How would the nature of the expertise that “lies in the ability to adjust to variation” be different or similar when the elements involved are inert and stable, changing during the process (your example of cheese-makers) or living organisms such as a horse or a human.
    Another aspect of your work that would be fine to develop more systematically is the changes (or similarity) in the ways this tradition of Dressage has been discussed in terms of techniques and expertise in the literature since the sixteenth-seventeenth century. What is considered important in terms of skills and/or teaching.

    Thanks for your reminder of my (Blandine) 2013 seminar about “le geste technique” which brought back our interesting discussions about your work on horse riding, a “technique” that was unfamiliar to me.

  • comment-avatar
    Helena Miton 5 November 2020 (05:20)

    Dressage is specific because riders aren’t horses (reply to Blandine)
    Thank you so much Blandine for these thoughtful and detailed comments – all my apologies for not answering earlier. You do understand absolutely correctly what I consider as rigid (I.e., performances and movements), and as flexible (roughly, the strategies used by the -skilled- rider). You are absolutely right in pointing out that a lot of the ‘adjustments’ or aspects of flexibility I tried to present are not unique to horse-riding. Please keep in mind that this is a very first draft of the chapter, and it aimed mostly at starting to present a set of constraints and their associated behavioral constraints. One main aspect is that it, in the first place, it creates a fairly unique chain of individuals – contrary to the case of humans-only traditions, it involves individuals from a species that is usually considered as not having culture per se, or at least as having much more limited (social) learning capacity. Parsing out what is proper to horse-riding is the next step I had in mind, but haven’t really reached yet. From your comment (and please correct me if I’m wrong), I guess some important questions would be, In relation to your point (1) what is peculiar to « horse-oriented » pedagogy? What’s common to pedagogy as used with other humans? One major difference seems to me to be that the teacher here doesn’t have any direct experience of what he is trying to teach. To the best of my understanding, most teachers of technical traditions in humans have themselves expertise of the skills they are teaching and experience of acquiring these skills. Horse-riding departs from this case in that the rider only has the experience of being a rider, not of being a (trained, or in training) horse. Finally, I’ll try my best to make the final version more systematic with regards to what was considered important through the timespan I’m considering.

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    Sarah Michelle Pope 24 November 2020 (20:18)

    High-stakes rigidity?
    Thank you Helena for you chapter. I had not considered animal training from this perspective until now and dressage seems a perfect combination of flexible training that is used to achieve a rigid outcome.

    I particularly like the section on ‘rules which prescribe flexibility’ because it really highlights the benefit of responding to specific contexts by adjusting behavior. Part of my chapter (Week 8) discusses how high-stakes contexts might promote familiar strategy-use – for example, you might be less likely to try a new route to work if you have an important meeting first thing, or less likely to try a new recipe when your mother-in-law is coming to visit. I’m curious to know if this would apply to dressage training. Do you find that techniques become more rigid when the stakes are higher (perhaps failure could injure the horse/rider or even during a competition)?

    Also, like Bert, this make me think of scent and service training in dogs. I have family that trains search and rescue and diabetes dogs and there are certainly some similarities in terms of modifying training practices to match personality-types!

    Just a quick note – I had some difficulty with the dressage terminology, specifically I found that some terms weren’t defined until much later in the text. It may be helpful in the final version to include more immediate definitions for us dressage newbies. Oh, and I liked the gifs!

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    Helena Miton 27 November 2020 (22:47)

    Reply to Sarah
    Thank you Sarah for your comment and great questions. From my own experience, moments that I would think of as ‘high stakes’ are usually ones in which, as a rider, you are in physical danger of falling from your horse, or the current course of action might lead your horse to sustain some injury. Usually, those happen when the horse-human system (so-to-say) is in a state that it shouldn’t be – strong fear reaction and lack of control over the horse’s behavior would be the most frequent cases. Usual responses tend to err on the side of reflexes (re-establishing balance, changing trajectory before encountering a physical obstacle) and I would personally have a hard time knowing where these fit on a flexibility – rigidity continuum.

    With regards to high stakes as in competition, for example, I think there is some anecdotal evidence in both directions, but it might also depend on which level you consider (choice between strategies versus ‘online’ flexible adjustment), and I think I just don’t have access to the relevant data or contexts to provide you an answer (at least for now). A proper answer would require to compare professional riders in high and low stakes (e.g., training at home) contexts, while what is usually available for analysis is only their public performances in competition or similarly public events. Without such data, it might difficult to determine what comes from stakes or from the task they perform. Riding for competition/sport rather than using a horse for other goals (e.g., herding) seems to lead fairly systematically to more rigidly defined goals, against which each competitors’ performance can be judged. This can be illustrated by competition based on moves used for herding cattle (e.g., « cutting »), the goals for competition have more narrow and rigid definitions than.

    Finally, I agree that the comparison with dog training would be very relevant, but I haven’t had much luck finding good archival materials on the topic – any suggestion or reference will be very warmly welcome.

    Oh, and I’m glad you liked the gifs! I’ll also make sure each term is properly defined the first time it is encountered in the text for the full chapter, thanks for pointing this out!