Relaxing the jaw

I'm not going to presume to tell you how to do the exercises designed to get a horse to relax their jaw, you can't teach what you don't know, but I don't want to leave everyone hanging. So here are some helpful resources to get you started:

"Twisted Truths of Modern Dressage" (expensive but worth it)
"The New Method of Horsemanship" (free)
"The Education of Horse and Rider" ($7) 
"Equitation" (free)


WARNING:
There's a fine line between using flexions to get the horse to relax and accept the hand and using them to abuse and dominate the horse. I feel confident that those of you who regularly read this blog are not at risk of using these techniques to abuse your horses, but since it appears that so darned many people have fallen into the trap of misusing these flexions *cough ROLLKUR cough* I'm going to add a word of caution.

As an example, here are two methods of relaxing the jaw I pulled from Baucher's book.Can you see how these methods could become dangerous and abusive in the wrong hands? Gently moving the bit in the mouth to encourage chewing could so easily become sawing on the mouth and pulling to get the horse to "submit."

Crossing the reins under the jaw

Pulling the reins away from each other.

Froissard was so worried about people using this information incorrectly that in his book he prefaced the flexions with this:

"Since, aside from their suppling action, these exercises are a powerful means of domination, they also are rather dangerous and their practice requires great discernment. The trainer must be experienced enough to know which should be emphasized, which should be played down and which should not be employed. He must, moreover, be possessed of both innate and acquired equestrian tact, a somewhat rare commodity. Nothing is, we know, as dangerous as a little learning, but even an experienced trainer might fall into the trap of blithely and fragmentarily applying what may have been but a casual discovery on his part."

-Jean Froissard, "The Education of Horse and Rider"

When the trainer does not have innate and acquired equestrian tact and tries to employ the use of flexions bad things happen. Unfortunately you can't watch an international competition these days without seeing the evidence of that all over the place.

Poor use of flexion

Poor use of flexion

It's enough to make a person want to avoid the use of flexions at all cost in revolt of this abuse, but I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If gentle, moderate use of flexions will help my horses become the best that they can be- then, by golly, I'm going to learn how to use them.