Wild Rose Equine Services

12/24/2022

Its official! I am now a certified “ST Instructor” with Marijke de Jong’s Straightness Training program.
I discovered Marijke’s ST Program after watching a video on Facebook where I fell in love with the beauty of her liberty work. In 2017, I decided to join the ST Mastery Program with my mare Dominique and I’ve been littering my facebook feed with videos of me and Dominique doing ST together ever since, lol. You’re welcome 😂🤣😂
One of my long term goals with ST was to become a certified ST instructor on day. Unfortunately, in 2019 I had to quit riding as a previous knee injury caught up with me and my hopes of becoming an ST instructor disappeared. In order to be an ST instructor, a person must pass the 5 pillars of ST, which including riding, groundwork, lunging, work in hand and liberty. Fortunately for me, Marijke changed the requirements in 2022 and created a Basic ST Instructor Certificate for people (like me) who were dedicated to ST but unable to ride. As of December 2022, I completed all my requirements and I have officially become the first ever Basic Grade 2 instructor in Canada!
Thank you Marijke de Jong for the opportunity to become a part of a part of the ST Community. I look forward to spreading the word about ST as an official ST Instructor.

10/20/2022

I will soon be a Certified "Straightness Training" Instructor. If you would like to learn more about ST check out this excellent video on the 8 dimensions of Natural Asymmetry. Both my horses are left bended. What bend does your horse naturally have? https://www.facebook.com/marijke.de.jong.straightness.training/videos/456853733094425

10/18/2021

There can be more to lunging than simply going around mindlessly in circles. By using the dressage movements of shoulder-fore, shoulder-in and haunches-in while lunging, we can help create better balance, suppleness and self carriage in our horses. Here are some clips from my 6 month journey in using Haunches-in (while lunging) to help create a better balance with my mare Dominique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-K7KO23iUk

There can be more to lunging than simply going around in circles. By using the dressage movements of shoulder-fore, shoulder-in, haunches-in while lunging, ...

07/03/2021

Well, it’s been a LONG time since I posted on this page. I thought I would share a video of some liberty work with my mare Dominique.

Why do liberty? Liberty is a great way to help develop more effective communication between horse and rider. Liberty helps develop increased trust and a better relationship. Advanced liberty also helps the horse build better balance and learn to be in self carriage. So lots of great things to love about liberty … plus it looks pretty cool ;-)

The biggest help to riders is that it teaches people to be more effective with their body language.

The biggest reason to teach a horse liberty (or at least the prep work for liberty) is safety. When the horse can do basic liberty exercises (halt, back up, moving the shoulders and moving the hindquarters), the horse can focus more easily on us. They develop better respect of our personal space and as a result they are safer to be around. When they are spooky or nervous, they are less likely to jump into our personal space. If they get excitable, it is also much easier to regain their focus by simply going back to those basic exercises. I teach all horses (even those that I never plan on doing liberty with) the liberty prep exercises (of halt, back up, moving the shoulders and moving the hindquarters).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VgFY1zDiuw

Why do liberty? Liberty is a great way to help develop more effective communication between horse and rider. Liberty helps develop increased trust and a be...