Settle - Commit

Settle - Commit  is one of the things George Morris pretty much eliminated from jumping in arenas with his Show Hunters innovation. George, I think, is primarily a visual teacher he likes forms. His fascination with apparel is one indication of this, maybe, critique another. This is not to say he is not a great rider with feel. I just think that some riders with developed feel have difficulty "seeing" the energy in feel when not on the horse they are observing. It is also not to say he is not a good coach for competitors, which is an entirely different skill from teaching riding or riding. Coaching is about preparation, strategy and recovery from difficulty.

But at a riding teacher, if you cannot see the energy that would cue your physical senses to the degree that they put you "in the saddle" of the horse you are observing, all you have left is visual forms that have no real dynamic energy connected to them. You would, for example, be prone to want to critique still photos of riders if your eye went to forms, not energy, and teach rider how to "look" good.

Some background, Show hunter classes used to be strictly for fox hunting horses that hunted. In post War 1950ish horse shows, typically held at a local National Guard Armory (because they very often had large indoor arenas, parking lots, etc.) were organized by military riders who also acted as judges, stewards and otherwise ran the horse shows that were seasonal, four per year at the most. People didn't have time to show every weekend because they were riding doing other things with their horses. These military officers/show organizers most likely hunted on the posts where they were assigned. Before WW2 there was a separate military Masters of Fox Hounds association equal in size of membership hunts to the MFHA for civilian hunts. Therefore, every horse show had to have a Hunter class to show off the skills of those particular horses. The Hunter classes had more natural jumps with lots of brush, sometimes split rail fencing and other things that would be encountered in a hunt field. In big shows like Madison Square Garden they would bring in enough dirt to make a bank for a drop.

Morris changed all that. The officers retired, civilians took over, he became "The" big name trainer and George got to make changes. By the 1980's we had "modern" Hunter classes. My assessment was George patterned these after dog shows. In a dog show what counts are grooming, conformation, elegant forms of movement that produced pretty pictures and a dog handler's job was not to work the dog but rather to display it. Riders in Hunter classes became more like handlers. Perching over the saddle "so the horse can move freely", as they said, became the standard in the new Hunter classes. Morris's perching technique and traditional unity through a deep seat came into direct opposition and perching won out as did the crest release.

Sorry that's a lot of background. But important, perhaps.

Also, in the new Hunter classes strides became like little gods. Morris must have felt that the evenness of stride embodied the hunt horse flowing across terrain. Again visual. Sometimes you see those flowing moments in a hunt, but it can be just as ugly as it can be beautiful, like a rush hour traffic jamb or like bumper cars at a bottleneck. But Morris convinced us to think Hunters was all romantic visuals of a hunt with impeccable apparel. (by contrast, if you do real Staff work with a hunt you learn to get blood out of your apparel between hunts). The end result is a Show Hunter now can no longer hunt and a hunt horse would score poorly in a Hunter class. Hunter no longer means hunter.

And finally, settle commit. In a hunt field (a group of horses hunting) when approaching an obstacle, things can get weird fast. Green horses and poor riders get a refusal and all the other horses get that alarmed feeling the "something is really wrong with that ditch, log or stream. When you come flying into one of these scrums you'd best be able to settle your horses fast and look for a line and a moment to commit to the thing no other horse will try.

It must be just you and your horse with no distractions. You settle your horse and before you commit, you say, "coming through". Wise hunter riders there will line up behind you and everyone is back in the hunt. Similarly in the woods where trees refuse to fall in on stride increment's, you must settle and commit at a distance that provides the power strides to get over the tree, and then the next, and so on. Flying through the woods "letting the horse" determine the striding of a series of downed trees is for fools and people with so much money that they can afford a packer hunt horse that has that kind of automatic distance function. Very expensive.

But in a Morris Show Hunter ring every distance is meticulously measured. Settling is completely unnecessary if you stay on the line. This is why today's instructors focus so much on strides and lines as opposed to unity and balance. They are essentially preparing the student to be a horse handler, not a rider. And this is why so many riders who have an instructor who came from the Morris method send kids off to even the lowest level horse trials or event and the horses have no idea what to do out on a cross country course. With settle - commit gone, along with the dressage based use of seat that is required to settle a horse, thanks to perching, these kids don't stand a chance and are often placed in danger. But it's OK, they just need to buy a stronger bit and it will all be fine.