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.

The more educated you are, the less fun it is to watch equestrian events. The Olympics are well

Tips to keep your horse sound

The more you manage the face, the more you lose access to the hind legs. When we fuss with the reins the horse will brace in the jaw. When the jaw is braced, the pelvis is braced. If the pelvis is braced you will lose range of motion. If you are struggling to keep the haunches tracking straight, be sure your hands are not restricting the jaw. Lift and give. Don’t pull and take.

Trainer’s Tip Tuesday

Quality slow work creates smooth work at speed. Too often in our slow work we wander. When we wander, we allow the horse to lose straightness and slip into poor postural habits. Many of he behaviors we don’t like in our horses can be corrected with slow work focusing on straightness and good posture. Even spending 15-20 minutes of thoughtful, intentional walk work can make huge changes in your horse in just a few weeks.

You won’t hear me arguing about how much the heat sucks. I spent 12hrs in Satan’s butt crack working today. I took three showers. I went through three sets of clothes including bras. It SUCKED. I had ice cream at 4 in the afternoon and laid on my bed after a cold shower giving myself a pep talk about not dying and convincing myself to get dressed and get back outside.

We need to be less focused on the end goal and more focused on each step of the process. When we become too focused on te end result we skip steps and push the horse to hard, too fast. This will eventually create more problems we need to fix.

Not everything your horse does requires a response from you. That is a hard concept for us. With the mindset that we must address everything, the horse gets shut out of the conversation.

I love it when I write a post and the universe eats it. Round 2

Several days late.

Awareness

A day late

In this world of insta everything, we expect insta changes in our horses. We don’t like a behavior, we want to fix it once and we want it magically gone. Poor posture, we want to work for a week and have it fixed. Lameness, we want a potion to eradicate it over night.

Do not spend 5 strides preparing for a transition. If your horse is balanced and straight, they should be able to perform the transition within a stride or two at the most. If this doesn’t happen, then you need to do more work on straightness and balance not more poor transitions. Stop, regroup, try again. Do not beg or chase a transition.

You can’t train pain. A painful horse will brace, compensate, recruit incorrect systems to perform a job until they can’t and hit a wall. Painful horses often have mysterious, rotating lamenesses that have unclear diagnoses.