Category: Training

Ottb vs Warmblood: Training Two Fillies

Sofiya and Boogie Rose

Two fillies, both about to turn 4, are beginning dressage training. One came from the track, the other from the breeder’s field. Each horse requires a slightly different approach, and each one offers a few advantages over the other, as well as a few drawbacks. Here’s a side-by-side comparison. Filly #1: Boogie Rose, 15.2 hand bay OTTB This pretty girl is dainty and elegant. Light on her feet, with athleticism to spare. She’s a worker-bee and thrives on exercise and discipline. She likes routine, attention, and is at her best when her energy is channeled into work. She also has…

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Getting Control of Your Horse’s Shoulders with the Leg Yield Hexagon

leg yield

Leg yielding can be such a useful exercise, but one of the most common things that goes wrong is the horse falling over his outside shoulder instead of stepping across his body with his inside hind leg. Here’s a simple exercise to help improve the quality of the leg yield you are getting and give you control over your horse’s shoulders by encouraging him to hold himself up instead of falling on the forehand. To begin, if you need to review what a leg yield is or how to do it, you can read about it here. The other easy…

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A Tool For Times Your Horse Makes You Nervous

bay horse trotting

My sixteen year old student did something the other day that I just loved. It was an easy and very effective way of working through the type of resistance from her horse that often makes her nervous. It’s a tool everyone can use anytime they need it. They had taken a little walk break, and  she was supposed to be getting him back into a trot and onto a circle so we could work on her right lead canter transition, which can be a little sticky. Maybe there was already some hesitation in the back of her mind just knowing…

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Proof the Horse Does NOT Do All the Work

FitBit Heart Rate Data from a ride

How many times have you been told horseback riding is not exercise, all you do is just sit there while the horse does all the work? Our sore legs and abs after a good lesson tell us otherwise, but it’s hard to help someone understand that without putting them on a horse. And I’ve never had a way to compare just how hard I worked when riding to other types of workouts, like running or biking.  Now with my Fitbit I can easily track just how hard I’m working while I’m riding, and track my rides over the course of…

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Video Analysis of My Ride and How to Make This Tool Work for You

Remy gets pats

This video I took to establish a baseline on where my horse and I are at riding different movements. There are plenty of mistakes, but I wanted to share it to discuss those mistakes for learning purposes, and to show how to use video as a powerful tool to improve your riding. Hopefully this doesn’t get taken out of context! The horse in this video is my 10 year old off track thoroughbred, Remy (Jockey Club registered as Mr. Painter). I’ve had him since he was 4. He raced a few times but was too slow, and retired young and sound,…

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How I Focused My Look-y Horse To Get Good Work Instead of Spooks

It was one of *those* nights – early spring, nearing dusk, with a slightly gusty breeze… and of course, the indoor arena now had all the windows opened up after the long, cold winter. Alone in the ring, my normally quiet, sensible horse was on edge as he examined the new openings all around the ring, surprised each time he felt the wind blow INSIDE the arena, listening to previously muffled sounds that now added a constant murmur of background noise to our usually silent work space. Birds were chirping, cars were cruising passed on the road, and a train horn…

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Develop Your Eye for Correct Connection in Stretchy Trot

I can’t understand the words, but I don’t need to! What a beautiful illustration! So many riders think putting the horse’s ears below the withers puts the horse on the forehand, but that is only the case if it’s done incorrectly, as the first three diagrams show. I also see plenty of riders performing one of the first three trots, totally unaware that it is incorrect work!   The fourth picture shows a correctly ridden stretch where the horse continues to reach out to the end of the reins, instead of dropping behind the contact (often the result of a…

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5 Books for Training Your Horse Yourself

There are many reasons that riders find themselves training their horses independently, whether because they simply enjoy doing it that way, don’t have a trainer they like near by, don’t have the money for lessons and training, or a million other things.  These books are my favorites for when I’m working on my own. They are beautifully illustrated and discuss each movement individually from basic to advanced. Pictures and descriptions of how each movement should look, as well as signs that they aren’t being done correctly make it easy to educate yourself between lessons, and having that background understanding will…

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