Romy wrote:
I often see that when using my body language, it's not posture that matters but movement.
I noticed that too. Although I would rather say: posture does matter, but only in movement
.
I noticed (drawing hindquarters is often such a revealing exercise!
), that if I didn't get a good response from my cue at first, I sometimes try to get the response by doing the same movement a bit further and longer. It usually doesn't work.
But if I stop the old movement cue and start a new one, this time with more verve and expression in the beginning of the movement, then the results are usually much better.
I also found that I often replicate my body cues in a too simplified form. For example I would explain the drawing of the hindquarters just like Romy did. Maybe I would add a shoulder movement as well.
But when I really imagine myself doing this task with Mucki, I realise that there is so much more to the cue than just the positioning of hips and shoulders.
There's a certain bend to my knees right from the beginning that gives the movement power and lightness before it even started. There's a luring quality to the draw with my hip and leg and finally a smooth transition to what Romy called the second step of the movement: the pushing or blocking the horse's shoulder with my inner hipbone. With that blocking movement comes a lifting of my whole body as well and while I had my hip tilted backwards before and the upper body more bent over, now my breast opens upwards, my hip tilts forwards and my whole body becomes upright.
Maybe the movement I described is more what I use for travers than just drawing the hindquarters, but it shows how many many-faceted and complex a body language cue is in reality. And sometimes, I'm not even aware of all those facets and subtleties. But I have the feeling like the horses pick up exactly those subtleties and use them to differentiate a "cue for travers" from "just taking my hip backwards"...