The mounting block is a great tool. That being said, too many rider’s teach their horses bad habits at the mounting block. A few mounting block tips:

The halt is generally a mirror image of how the horse was carrying itself in the forward movement. When learning how to maintain straightness in your horse it can be hard to feel the crookedness. As you develop feel, it will become easier to identify when your horse loses their balance and affects their straightness.

Everything about domestication is unnatural for a horse. We limit movement, confine them without a way to escape, we limit forage types, and we put them in small caves (trailers) to transport them away from herd members just to name a few offenses. Domestication requires a lot of compromise and inconvenience on the part of the horse.

Yes, a day late. Sometimes life just makes priorities change.

Yes late…. Oh the wind. Depending on the day in Texas, it is either closing us north or blowing us south. We are in that time of year where it is just warm and blustery or cold and blustery. At our horse, the horses still have to be worked. Many of us have adversion to riding in the wind. We feel the horses are more reactive, so we get nervous and feed that anxiety to the horses.

Everything is dangerous to a horse until proven otherwise. It is your job to prove otherwise. It is not the horse’s job to be brave for you.

A huge pet peeve of mine is walking into a lesson and seeing a rider that’s been on their horse less than ten minutes and they are trotting the horse around. The rider skipped all the walk warm up and when they did walk, they did not walk straight or with a purpose.

Pay attention to the little details to avoid bigger problems. Many of the large problems we have with our horses can be avoided by not missing their small communications.

Corrections are sometimes necessary when training horses. I try to avoid them as much as possible by trying to keep training easy for the horse to understand with logical progression. That’s easy to do when I raise and start them. I handle a lot of rehabs and restarts. Unfortunately, that means the horses usually come with habits that may not be safe for the human part of their herd.

Slow down. If I find myself repeating one thing frequently it is this: We are always in a hurry. In a hurry to catch our horses. In a hurry to groom. In a hurry to tack up. In a hurry to get our ride in. We rush through the exercises just to check a box.

Relationships. Horses establish relationships with their herd mates. They need herds to feel safe in a world of predators. The most well adjusted horses live with other horses and have the safety of the herd. When you are with your horse, you are part of their herd. The boundaries of the relationship you establish are important.

In order for your horse to be balanced in a turn, they must be connected to your outside aids. Most horses want to keep their barrel rotated to one side. In one turn your horse will be leaning into the turn and in the opposite turn, they’re leaning away from the turn. When you turn the direction that their barrel is locked, and add your outside aids you will just create more lean without getting any bend. When you turn the direction in which the horse is leaning to the outs

Working with horses is hard. This skill set requires us to continually evolve and work on self improvement. I often hear riders talk about what they want from their horses and how they want their horses to behave. It got me thinking. What if our horses could tell us what they want from us and how they want us to behave. Here are some thoughts that I think horses would have:

New tasks may not be pleasant for horses. The tasks may be physically or mentally more demanding and the horse may have the responses of bracing, evading or even fighting.

We want our horses to find some relaxation in their work sessions. Training is stressful for them. When they get confused, we need to pause. Too often I see riders do the opposite. The begin demanding. A kick to the side, jerk of the reins. Horses can only have one response to that…brace and become defensive. You would not relax or want to participate if someone kicked you in the side or punched you in the face. Your horse won’t either. Try a pause. Break the information dow

The devil is in the details. It is easy to pick up a book of exercises or scour the internet for training advice. Without the proper lens to understand the exercises, you can create more problems than you fix.

A day late

If you and your horse do not have a good relationship on the ground, you do not belong in the saddle. I see a lot of horses walking over top of their handlers, dragging their handlers around, handlers begging horses to go forward or trying to hold them back. I see many who can’t back their horses on the ground or move them laterally. Horses that do not go straight and balanced on the ground but are expected to go straight and balanced with a rider. Tense horses on the gro

If you want to make progress with your horse, you must do less more frequently. Our nature is to push and keep setting new goals. The horse does not share your goals. Their goal is eat, sleep, poop and be with friends. We need to train the horse in a way that we teach them to think, and not react. That will not happen with too much pressure.

Yes I know it is late. My schedule has been a bit unconventional lately.