I hadn't realized it had been quite so long since I'd posted on here.  Trying to get back to updating the website a bit more regularly, and also doing a bit more on the blog, but we'll see how long that lasts!

So what's new here?  We have a couple of empty stalls which are looking for boarders.  Oh and our beautiful Thoroughbred mare Moyie is getting more heavily pregnant by the day!  Her foal is due May 6th....  I'm sure there will be many, many photos!  Daddy is a gorgeous APHA young stallion named Most Wanted Outlaw, so we're excited to see the cross between him and Moyie.

Other than that, our long-standing students are still doing well and looking toward the next show season.  A new student is making great strides with her little Mustang mare who has been somewhat difficult in the past, and a long-standing boarder is now taking lessons and doing great (also looking forward to show season).  

So, all in all, we could use a couple more horses (and lesson students) but everyone here is doing great.  

Lainey x

That’s right.  I am a perfect, faultless, flawless rider, and I’m reminded of that every day when I get onto my flying unicorn.



You did get the sarcasm, right?

Because the “perfect” rider is right up there with that beautiful flying unicorn. 

Mythical. 

Sure, there are many very very good riders, and also some wonderfully naturally talented riders, but none of us is perfect.  And it’s almost a certainty that the day we smugly congratulate ourselves on how good we are….that’s the day a horse will knock you down a peg or six. 

I don’t remember who it’s attributed to (maybe Winston Churchill?), but the line about horses being great levellers is very true.  Horses don’t care how good or clever you think you are.

And back to those annoying people who have a natural talent for riding.  As you can no doubt guess, I’m not one of them, and what skill or ability I have has been earned with blood, sweat and tears.  Sometimes quite literally.  I’ve ridden a lot of “bad” horses - I could often tell which horse I’d be riding for my lesson:  It was the one doing handstands in the lesson before mine!  Though I have to say I was also given the privilege of riding my trainer’s dressage horse a few times, which was extra special as I used to ride his mother and had known him since birth.  Actually even before then, as I rode her while she was pregnant.

So the point of today’s post, I guess, is just a reminder that there is no perfect rider, and anyone who says they are a perfect rider is deluded, a liar, or both.  I’m sure even Charlotte Dujardin, with her incredible Olympic dressage scores, feels there are things she can still work on and improve.  And I think that’s one of the key things about riding horses well.  We never stop learning, and we also never stop teaching the horse.  Every interaction with our horse, we’re teaching them something.  We are responsible for making sure we’re teaching something we want them to learn!

We must also make sure we recognise and reward even tiny improvements, whether ridden or handling.  For example, my QH mare, a few months ago, inexplicably began pulling/rushing backward when bridle or halter were removed (and as I’m the one who does that 99% of the time, I was confident it wasn’t caused by “operator error”).  We’ve been working on it, starting off actually undoing a cheekpiece to remove the bit and building it up slowly.  Last week, she not only stood for bridle removal, but actually dropped her head to make it easier, and she got lots of hugs and loving for that.  Now we just need to maintain that return to normal routine.

So I guess what I’m really trying to say is this.  Give yourself a break. 

I’ll leave you with this one thought, which is something I tell all my students. 

“I don’t expect perfection.  All I expect is that you strive for it.”

  Happy riding :)

Okay, okay, so I meant SECS.  But it made you start reading, didn’t it?!

  SECS.  Just a few of the many important aspects of riding correctly (but using more/others didn’t give me the chance of a fun title for this post).

Straightness    Energy    Connection    Suppleness

So, let’s start with the most basic, and possibly the most important of the four.  STRAIGHTNESS.  Now, as was touched on in a previous blog post, straightness really means correctly bent.  If your horse isn’t “straight”, they can never give you their optimum performance.  The old adage was that if you looked down, you should just be able to see the outer edge of your horse’s inside nostril.  But, of course, straightness actually must involve the whole of your horse’s body. 

And don’t underestimate how much your own posture influences the horse’s straightness.  If you drop your weight more onto one seat bone, your horse will compensate for the shift in weight, thus affecting straightness.  You should feel that your horse’s hindquarters are moving evenly behind you, their shoulders sitting squarely in front of you, and their head and neck looking nicely central in front of you.  Remember to watch the ears - one ear tilted lower than the other indicates a tilted head - if the right ear is low, the nose is off to the left.  We could, of course, go on for pages about each element of even this short list, so I’ll move on now.  But the first key is that we need straightness.

Second comes ENERGY.  Now, try not to fall into the trap of mistaking speed - a flat, running trot, for example - for true energy.  True energy doesn’t mean speed.  It means impulsion.  It means having our horse moving freely forward into a soft, containing hand.  Many times, the first time a rider experiences a “true” working trot, they can be a little unnerved by the power of their horse.  I know I was.  But a good working trot is a powerful pace. 

My favorite description is that your legs are acting like having your foot on the gas pedal of a car, while your half halts are like having your other foot lightly on the brake.  So your legs are creating energy - revving up the car - while your hands are preventing any increase in speed.  So the energy is building up, but being contained and controlled.  Obviously this description is only really useful if the student also knows how to drive!  So our horse is now straight and energized.  We’re halfway there.

Next comes CONNECTION.  For me connection is a reminder that a truly round horse is round through their whole body, their whole spine.  Connection means that we’re not focused solely on “headset” (a term which I dislike anyway - a correctly positioned head is not “set” but should still be relaxed and soft, not “set” in any way).  To me, the head position is the last piece of this puzzle we call roundness.  A connected horse is one whose whole body is engaged and working correctly. 

So the quarters have lowered, enabling the hindlegs to push forward most effectively.  My old trainer used to tell us to have the horse “sit down in a chair” under us, to give that feeling of the hindquarters lowering as they drove forward more strongly.    The back has raised, as have the shoulders, lifting the horse’s weight off their forehand and letting them express the best movement of their forelegs.  The neck is gently arched, and the head is down. 

Remember, though, that a correct outline is not having the front of the horse’s face on the vertical.  A correct outline is where the bridle cheekpieces are vertical.  I would much rather see a connected, engaged horse whose head is a little above the vertical than a horse whose head is perfectly vertical (or often they are behind the vertical) but whose hindquarters are somewhere in the next county.  Outline comes from behind.

And, last but not least, we have SUPPLENESS.  A supple horse will be relaxed and free-moving, able to show off their paces as we want.  And as nature intended.  There are no shortcuts to suppleness.  Work your horse in properly, incorporating lateral work, transitions and circles before you worry about outline.  If you have your horse straight, energized, connected and supple…..the outline will come all by itself. 

The big thing about the suppling and warm up work is that it must be ridden correctly.  A half-asleep plod is not a warm up!  Give your horse a few minutes of relaxed, long rein, yet still forward thinking walk, then pick up your rein contact and start to encourage more impulsion.

So that’s it.  by no means whatsoever is this “all you need to know”, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but these four very basic principles are very important.

As I mentioned already, there are no short cuts.  Okay, that’s not technically true.  There are a lot of short cuts out there, otherwise no-one would have developed the chambon, the de gogue, draw reins, pulley reins, Market Harboroughs (or German Martingales, if you prefer) and the various multitude of gadgets out there.  And it seems like people also make up their own contraptions when the available gadgets just won’t do whatever it is they want them to do.  My tackroom?  I have side reins for lunge work, and I have……   No.  Wait.  That’s it.  My trainer taught me to work on and hopefully fix a problem without gadgets, and that’s something I try to stick to.  Just how I was trained.  Not a comment on anyone else’s training principles.

I think I’ve rambled enough for one post.

Happy Riding

x

I was reading a page on facebook the other day, where someone had asked people to post any “words of wisdom” that their trainers used as their personal mantra.  There were a number of very good comments, and it got me to thinking about the things I’ve been told over the years by my own trainer.

I think the biggest thing she drummed into us was straightness.  If your horse isn’t straight, it can’t go forward properly.  Seems so simple, yet it can be a real challenge.  Particularly when, like we were, you’re working with riding school horses to whom any form of straightness/forwardness/flexion/you-name-it is pretty much a foreign concept at the start.  Then of course you get into one of the weirdnesses of riding - where “straight” actually means “correctly bent”.

Of course, straightness also applies to the rider.  Since the horse will generally move under our weight, to support us, if we are sitting with our weight off center then our horse will be less inclined to be straight.  My own particular failing is a habit of “collapsing” my right side, so over the years I have learned to pay attention to the ‘space’ that I can feel between the bottom of my ribcage and the top of my hip bone.  If those feel even on both sides, I’m not collapsing my side.

Always remember, doing something wrong isn’t a bad thing.  The first step to fixing a problem is knowing that it exists.  It doesn’t matter how often your trainer tells you that you’re doing something, until you are able to feel it for yourself, you can’t correct it without being told.  And, often, by the time the trainer sees it, tells you, you hear and correct…..  The crucial moment - for example a gentling or release of the rein - has passed, leading you back into another cycle of work to reach that point once again.

Another thing I learned was that the rider shouldn’t create power they can’t yet control.  There’s no point in driving your horse forward with a strong leg if you don’t have the softness and acceptance in their mouth to allow you to contain it.  When that happens, all you get is a running and unbalanced horse, which I’m pretty sure isn’t what we’re aiming for!

A really simple tip that she gave me was to watch my horse’s ears.  Not to see whether they’re pricked, pinned back, flicking or whatever, but that they’re level.  If, for example, on a circle your horse’s inside ear is a little lower than the outside ear, the chances are that their nose is bent to the outside of the circle, even if their body positioning is correct.  And always remember, often the best, most sympathetic way to remedy this is not to use more inside rein, but more inside leg.  

I think that we have a very simple responsibility to our horse. 

Let’s be high-falutin’ for a second and quote it in the original Latin. 

“Primum non nocere” 

Okay, no need to run off to Google.  It simply means “First, do no harm”.  And we’re not talking about harming your horse physically (though of course that is not acceptable either), but I just mean that our first responsibility is to work with the horse that we have.  Yes, every horse can be trained, but if a horse’s heart lies in dressage, neither of you will be happy if you try to make that horse into a barrel racer.  So make sure you’re not doing your horse - and yourself - an injustice by trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole.

To be clear, I’m not saying you can’t use this hypothetical horse for barrel racing.  I’m just saying that it’s not their forte, so don’t expect them to love it.  On the flip side, if your horse’s aptitude is for barrel racing or other speedy pursuits, then the chances are they’ll get pretty grouchy if you persist in trying for that perfect fifteen metre circle at a collected canter.  Just saying.

So our first duty to our horse - and ourself - is to make sure we don't mess things up.  Try watching your horse move in the field, free, unencumbered by tack or rider.  Do they move the same way under saddle?  For the moment, let's assume your saddle fits correctly and your horse is wearing the most appropriate bit/noseband.  Just by saddling and riding them, we often change how the horse moves, and our aim - particularly for dressage, but really all the time - should be to bring out the horse's natural gaits at their best.  So:  First, do no harm.  You'll never make a horse with an upright shoulder give the same medium or extended trot, for example, that a more sloping shoulder will allow, but your job is to allow the horse to express themselves as naturally and beautifully as their conformation allows.

First, do no harm.

Of course, we do have to work with the horse that we have, and if our affinity is for a particular discipline, then of course we want our horse to do “our thing”, which is where choosing the correct horse comes into play.  But that’s a subject for another post, I think.  Maybe.  After all, there’s no such thing as the perfect horse or the perfect rider.  But maybe, if you’re very lucky, you’ll find the horse that’s perfect for you.

Happy riding.

Well, so much for my wonderful intentions at a regular, hopefully informative blog here!

Life has, as it always does, got in the way of my good intentions, but since it's not yet quite daylight enough to put the horses out, I'll take a few minutes to update this thing.

Yesterday saw the arrival of our latest boarder, a beautiful chestnut Dutch Warmblood mare named Ginger.  She settled pretty well with the established herd, quickly figuring out that if she got on Barbie's good side (yes, Barbie does have a good side!) then she was off to a good start.  As far as I can tell, after checking everyone over, only Moyie got a booboo (a cut just below her eye).  I have a feeling, though, that she may have done it to herself on a branch or something!  Probably trying for attention/sympathy since we had a new guest.

Other than that, our chickens are continuing to be happy and noisy.  Eggs are being produced at about 3-4 a day (rare days we get five), and is certainly more than it would have been when we had 5 roosters and only 2 hens!  Sadly, little Marigold, one of our white chickens, passed away a few weeks ago, but it was just through old age.  She slipped away in my arms, in the house, and is now buried close to her friends.

I think that's pretty much it for "news" around here, so I should probably finish my coffee then go put the horses out and get on with the stall cleaning.  Haven't yet managed to train them to clean their own stalls - without opposable thumbs they struggle with the muck fork.  Oh well.

xx

Sometimes we need to do a complete rethink on what we think we know.

For a long time I’ve been a huge fan of loose-ring French link snaffles, believing them to be kind and gentle bits.  And I’m certainly not saying they aren’t - I still think they’re great.  My QH mare wears an Abracon loose-ring French link when she’s ridden English, and she goes wonderfully softly in it. 

So, when I was starting to school our TB mare for dressage, I switched her to this same bit (fortunately they wear the same size).  She was…….okay, but not particularly soft or accepting of the bit.  After giving it a couple of sessions, and some thought, I tried a different French link bit - still loose-ring, but with a thicker mouthpiece, as I thought perhaps the mouthpiece of the Abracon was just too slender for her.  A little better, but still not the horse I knew she could be.

Even though I know better, for the final schooling session before our first foray into a dressage show, I switched her bit again, this time to a very thick, heavy single jointed snaffle with fulmer cheeks.  The difference was almost instant - she was softer and more accepting, and the very annoying habit of suddenly poking her nose/yanking her head forward was almost gone.  So we used the new fulmer snaffle for our dressage outing, and while we didn’t do great, we did place in both of our classes (intro and training level)!

So, the basic point of this short blog entry is that, even when we believe we’re using the one of the mildest bits around, sometimes it’s just not ‘right’ for the horse we’re riding.  I know - I know - this shouldn’t be news to me, and it really isn’t, but sometimes it’s good to be reminded of the basics.  While many horses do prefer double jointed bits because it doesn’t pinch the tongue/poke the roof of the mouth (in the most basic of descriptions of the action of a single jointed bit), some horses also don’t like the pressure on their tongue that comes from a double jointed bit.

Not rocket science, I know, and not an epiphany, but it’s always good to be open to changing our approach.

Seemed like a good day to start a blog on here.  

I'll keep it short (this time LOL) - just a quick hello and welcome to our blog.  

So.......welcome!

:)