FORWARD
What is "forward" in working with horses? Is it that feeling of a horse surging forward underneath you, leaping off your leg, your spur or your whip, moving like a freight train, rumbling with power? Is it the easy maintenance of speed? When someone says "your horse isn't forward enough", in our modern riding world, what do they usually mean?
In the old French way of working, the word "forward", "en avant", has to do with relationships, not physicality, not direction, and not speed. Your horse can be totally forward at the standstill, and not forward at all at a sustained gallop.
Forward is about curiosity, it's about engagement.
In our relationships, I'm considered forward if I ask you to dinner, rather than waiting to be asked. If I reach to take your hand rather than waiting for you to want to hold mine. If I lean in to steal a kiss instead of hoping you notice I'd like one. Forwardness is an engaged and interested state of mind.
It is the same quality we seek in this old way of riding.
Forwardness is not something you can demand from your horse.
It is not something you can "take" from him at the point of your spur.
Relationships that happen as a result of pain or fear are not relationships worth having. They have only one aspect, the imagination of the one with the power. Relationships that happen as a result of mutual curiosity and respect, on the other hand, those are relationships that flower with potential.
Working with an engaged horse, you find something new with every ride. And cultivating that quality, you learn something new with every horse: every new pairing opens a whole new world.
