Years ago a colleague of mine and I taught the gentle art of microsurgery to aspiring orthopaedic surgeons. These ­doctors were taught to join minute arteries and nerves using an operating microscope, and incredibly fine suture material. This they had to do without any damage to the tissue they were working on. At the end of the course they all expressed the opinion that they had not realised the delicacy of animal and human tissue before.

I wish that riders and trainers would realise the same, as far as the horse is concerned. Although the horse is a large animal, it is made of the same delicate tissue as we are. The horse is extremely sensitive, both physically and emotionally.

Here two aspects of this sensitivity of the horse (and also in humans) will be discussed. The first is that of the mouth and surrounding areas, and the second that of the neck. In this article some of the physiological and biomechanical principles of horse riding that are centuries old, are briefly elucidated.

Before we look at these issues, some concepts have to be explained first. In any system (e.g. a horse or rider or even both as a unit) the whole is not made up of the individual parts, but rather it is the whole that determines the function of its parts. So when we work with horses, we should work primarily with the whole, and when this is correct, the function of the parts will fall into place.

On the other hand, it is also known that should we change even a small detail of the horse’s functioning such as changing the position of the head and the shape of the neck, the ramifications in the rest of the body may be enormous. All this can be explained by how the nervous system works.

The horse’s mouth

A fine and delicate balance exists between all the muscles of the horse and between those of the rider. In 1987, a physiotherapist, Edward Ayub, pointed out that in humans a disturbance in the balance of the muscles of the neck, head and mouth may lead to observable deviations in posture. In the aforementioned structures it may lead to abnormal positioning of the head and neck.

As in the horse, ewe necks in humans are very common! Several conditions may give rise to a disturbance in the functions of the muscles in the neck and head. In the human and even the horse, it may be due to nervous tension or the acquisition of bad habits. In the horse the latter is usually induced by the rider and trainer.

Disturbances in the head, neck and shoulder muscles are seen as the shortening of some muscles and the lengthening of the muscles opposite them. The functions of these muscles have been shown to be intimately interrelated and once disturbance occurs in one area it spreads to all the others, which will either shorten or lengthen. A simple example is the horse with a hollow neck where the upper muscles are shortened and the lower ones lengthened.

In his book, Irrwege der Modernen Dressur, Philippe Karl goes in depth into the sensitivity of the tongue and mouth of the horse. Contrary to what is commonly assumed, the snaffle mainly affects the tongue of the horse, and not the bars.

The horse’s tongue is richly endowed with sense organs and is therefore quite sensitive to what the rider does. Excessive pressure on the horse’s tongue by the action of the rider’s hands, will create discomfort, irritation and, at its worst, pain in this delicate structure.

Needless to say, any of these will elicit a reaction from the horse which usually is an increase in muscle tension. Especially affected will be the muscles of the tongue and the small muscles linking the hyoid bone (wish bone) to the upper parts of the neck and breastbone and the shoulder blades. All these muscles will then have disturbed function, and since these muscles are small, they have to – for them – react intensely in order to elicit a reaction.

This increase in effort in the small muscles leads to a spreading of tension in the rest of the body. Important is the disturbance of function in the horse’s large and smaller neck muscles. As we will later see, the latter muscles exert an important effect on the rest of the horse’s musculature.

The head and neck

Nobel Prize winner, Sir Charles Sherrington, wrote in his book, The Endeavour of Jean Fernel: "Mr Alexander (founder of the Alexander Technique) has done a service to man by insistently treating each act as involving the whole integrated individual, the whole psychophysical man.

"To take a step is not an affair, not of this and that limb solely, but of the total neuromuscular activity of the moment – not least of that of the head and neck."

Here I am going to look at this important point from the perspective of the horse. Riders and trainers have had a fascination for the position of the horse’s head and shape of the neck since time immemorial. There is a very good reason for this, as we will later see. People observed horses in their natural state and have noticed that majestic and beautiful movements are made during a specific shape of the horse’s neck and position of the head.

Unfortunately this gave rise to the problem that man started to force the neck and head of the horse into what they considered to be the ideal position; a problem, which seems to be on the increase. Just look at the harsh hands of riders, the frequent use of training aids and more recently the emphasis on things like Rolkur.

All this is done because riders and trainers do not question what they are doing, and also do not realise what harm they are causing. This is mainly due to a lack of understanding of the delicacy of the function of the horse’s neck, and that the horse carries its neck in a particular way in its natural state or when allowed to for a very specific reason.

The neck

In the beginning of the last century scientists discovered one of the crucial functions of the neck, one which interests us. Apart from carrying the head and moving the head in different directions the position and shape of the neck determine the postural attitude (carriage) and the way in which the horse moves.

The neck is thus positioned by the horse in order to see properly, but also to act in a specific way. This should not be the task of the rider, since the rider does not know what the correct position of the neck should be during any specific situation. Here we have to realise that unfortunately the horse knows best.

The smaller muscles in the neck contain a large number of minute sense organs which measure the length of the neck muscles. These little organs supply the nervous system of the horse with information regarding the length of the muscles in the neck, and on the basis of that, the nervous system feeds information back to the muscles of the rest of the body to elicit a specific carriage and appropriate movement patterns. For example, shortening of the upper neck muscles of the horse, commonly leads to hollowing of its back and lifting of the head.

On the other hand, we find that when the horse arches its neck, the back is rounded and the hind feet are brought under the horse’s belly. Turning the head from side to side also elicits important responses, as will be explained by the following example.

On television I watched a rhinoceros being offloaded at his new home. When he got out of the crate, he looked to the right and went into a canter right. Something caught his attention to the left and he turned his head in that direction, with an immediate and impeccable flying change into canter left. For all this and his excellent bending to the left and right he would have been awarded very high marks in a dressage test!

The proper way

So what we see here, is that we have a well worked-out system which the horse can rely on to not only carry the rider, but also to do what it needs to in a proper way. The emphasis here is that the horse must position his neck and head on his own accord. When the rider tries to do it for the horse, the wrong muscles are lengthened and shortened, some muscles are even compressed, and tension is created in the neck muscles.
When this happens, the wrong information is sent to the nervous system and what comes out is the wrong action. What we literally have here is "garbage in, garbage out".

As has been pointed out above, nothing works in isolation. Shortening of the neck by whatever means, seriously affects the action of the back and hindquarters. This in turn will have serious effects on what the neck does. In the midst of it all, the horse will try to escape from the constraints put on it by the trainer or rider by various means. The most important outcome will be an increase in tension.

Instead of shortening, we as horsemen should work on lengthening of muscles. Here I refer again to the book of Philippe Karl and also to one written by a German veterinary surgeon, Dr Gerd Heuschmann, Finger in der Wunde (an English translation is available as Tug of War: Classical vs Modern Dressage). In the young horse, both advocate the stretched forward and downward position of the neck. In the more advanced horse, the arched neck is lengthened and not shortened!

The relationship

What then is the solution of this dilemma we as trainers and riders have put the horse in? The answer is simple, we have to rid ourselves of a lot of incorrect baggage, and then go back to what is known as natural horsemanship, realise the importance of taking things slowly and rid ourselves of the idea that the human should be the "alpha leader" in the horse-human relationship.

The relationship should be built upon the principle that the relationship should be equal. In 1771 Richard Berenger stated that, "a real horseman will endeavour rather to work upon the understanding of the creature, than upon the different parts of his body".

We thus have in horses innate mechanisms that allow them (and also in humans for that matter) to do the correct thing in terms of what the environment requires of them – e.g. flexing the head to left, leads to canter left.

We as riders and trainers should allow this to happen and refrain from trying to force the horse into something that it already has. This can only happen if the horse is working as a unit and is in a relaxed state of mind, shown for example by a gentle chewing of the bit.