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I've got you Horses as a species tend to be afraid. ......of pretty much everything. I always try to remember that the horses we ride today were the ones whose ancestors escaped when their friends and relatives were being eaten by lions. Some of them are more talented
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Here’s a post I stole off one of the ubiquitous Classical Dressage message board on Facebook: My young horse was trotting nicely, enthusiastically on a chilly winter day. Suddenly he dropped a shoulder and started bucking. What should I have done? Well, given where the question was displayed, can
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There is much debate these days about the “best” jumping position. For over thirty years now, it has been very common for riders in the hunters, equitation divisions, and even the jumpers to favor a position in which they lean their upper body well forward onto the horse’s neck.
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Cornered! Unless you answer to "Nuno" or "Willi" (where the W is pronounced like a V) when you train, you really need reference points. If your internal gyroscope is so finely tuned that any deviation from perfect balance is immediately detected, disregard everything which follows. However,
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I must have been traveling too often, staying in too many hotels.... You know how down by the ice machine next to the elevators they always have vending machines? The ones with a big Plexiglas window and a whole mess of snack items—Sun Chips and Fritos and Ring Dings
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I knew TBs are smart, but how did my mare find an internet connection in her new run-in shed? We didn’t wire it for that, but she clearly read my blog and decided she wanted to stay a hunter princess wannabe. That is, until her stomach over-ruled her heart
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Unless you're incredibly pigheaded, you don't have to live with your decisions. That's because you can change them! I have said time and again that a rider's most important character trait is self awareness. Question yourself constantly. When you do something, do
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Coming Out of the Closet - The Plan - Part 3 When I realized my little knucklehead was terrified of everything, I had to come up with a new plan. See The Horse You've Created and The Plan for Part 1 & 2 of this ongoing adventure. To
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It's 20 years ago. I "sort of " know how to ride. (At that point I'd already been doing it for almost 30 years and ridden I-1.) I'm having a lesson with Maj. Lindgren. The horse—a lower level one—is on a
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Put De Posit Here, Not Dere Bill Steinkraus was a show jumping icon of the 1960s and winner of the individual gold medal in that discipline on Snowbound at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. At a clinic I attended years ago, he was speaking of schooling a hot horse that
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You hear a lot of contradictory advice about training the walk. One line of reasoning goes: Unlike the trot or canter, the walk has no natural impulsion to it. Without this willing self-motivation, the rider can easily introduce tension or restriction that's hard to get rid of. The
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I’ve been thinking lately about fear – both the long-range, abstract kind (I am being a bad parent and therefore my child will grow up to become a social abomination) and the concrete, immediate kind (my horse will refuse to jump that giant brush and I will crash into it
