“Epa and Rapper JC“ have a dance off
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Walnut update.
Since returning home from Holland, I have been training Walnut with MCI in mind. We have a long way to go before competing at a high level but I’m so proud of him and wanted to share this with you.
When Walnut arrived he had a weird body, roachy back, no core, no back end and snuffly front feet. Thanks to having a great farrier and a focus on strengthening work I’m not enjoying being proud of what I have achieved. He looks like a proper horse now. The message here is it takes time, time to fix things that weren’t comfortable for him before I could build muscle plus a relationship. He’s not going to love me if I make him hurt.
He no longer explodes and is really respectful of my aids. I invested 2 weeks of “reaction training” which basically means when I touch him with my leg he must react and go forward. But first I had to step back and look at the whole picture. He was behind my leg because he was uncomfortable, and a farrier can’t do magic with one shoeing session, it takes a while to allow the feet to reshape and work healthily. Did you know that 90% of lamenesses are in the feet! Walnut came with ridiculously deep thrush, it’s a luso thing as they have deep sunken frogs and upright boxy feet which hold the moisture and cause thrush. So I fixed that, the farrier teased his feet to grow in a positive way and boom. I got myself a great horse.

Now that he had comfy feet I felt I could then in my head do the reaction training as I wasn’t forcing an uncomfortable horse to run on sore feet.
I absolute love fixing horses and making them be the best they can be. I consider myself an under dog and so are all my animals, hence why a rescue dog works for me and I always have space for another horse 🙈
Anyhow, here are a few clips of us working on Monday before the snow. What do you think? I think I feel Grand Prix on the Horizon 😀
I am so excited to work with Gonçalo in December, I have loads of questions for him and I
Tori Tip Tuesday ….lets go sideways Gangnam Style!
I often see riders using all their leg strength trying to get horses to legyield to thr marker in tests. This creates resistance against your leg pressure and for those that add spurs to help them shove harder….what are you thinking! Would you move sideways in a forward relaxed manor with an inch of spur stuck in your ribs? No you would focus on the point of contact and push back against the spur or heel as a defensive reaction which makes you slowdown and go ridged. Then if you aren’t on track for your marker what do you do? You are using all your leg strength and you need to find more? If this sound familiar STOP and question your training. First teach your horse to move away from your leg contact. Give him a push with your leg and sit with your weight to the lead side. When he moves away STOP PUSHING and let him feel he can answer your request. At first, after a couple of strides he will probably stop travelling side ways and this is where you would ask him again. Just like riding a canter transition, when the horse steps into canter you don’t keep asking for the transition. This is Bear who is with me on a degree course here at Helmshore Uni. He’s now understanding my way of leg yielding. Watch my left leg ( I got groin strain holding my leg off for this video. The pain I am going through….dedicated to Tori Tip Tuesdays 🤣), I ask him to step away from the pressure then it’s my body language and weight aid that takes over. Legyield is the first lateral movement I teach, then I teach all the other lateral movements in the same way. Bear is a lovely Full Irish Draft Gelding who isn’t naturally gifted with suppleness. His legyield will improve so much more yet. I also teach all things in walk to my horses and riders. It gives the horse time to think and respond. Let him work the answers
Why I train with Gancalo
Why I train with Gonçalo…..It’s the accumulative detail that’s I have learnt over the years from Goncalo that makes riding for me an art that I am constantly trying to be better at. Believe me, if anyone in a training session came at my horse with a lunch whip in the fashion used in Charlotte video, I would get off the horse and go home. This will never be the case if you train the mind of the horse. Everything I train with Goncalo makes total sense to both me and the horse. I’m still astonished at , how his small details and techniques have such a dramatic effect on the horse. In this video you can see we are teaching JC the beginnings of his high school collected work towards piaffe and passage. There is no forcing there is no stress. It’s just pure understanding between Trainer horse and rider I go to great lengths to bring Goncalo to the Northwest so that riders in this area can experience some of the best training available in the world.This Clinic always fills but as an attempt to keep this available to everyone I keep ” New rider spaces” available in every clinic.Goncalos next Clinic is on the 23rd 24th, 25th of August. We have three lessons slots available due to a cancelation. You will be required to leave a deposit and you will be made to feel very welcome. Gonçalo coaches any level from prelim to Grand Prix as he will pick you up where ever are on your journey. This is a little clip of me, JC and Gonçalo working as a team.
Another JC Milestone
Another great weekend for JC. This time not in the dressage arena but out hacking.
I never thought I would manage to get JC to hack out safely without being a danger to himself and others. After 6 months of Arena hires under his belt and 2 competitions, to test our partnership, today felt like the day.
I’m buzzing! I’m lost without hacking in my horses weekly work as I believe showing them the big outside world is so important for their bravery in a competition and massively for their soundness. JC has all the ingredients to make a Grand Prix horse and at one stage I joked that he would be Grand Prix at home only as I would never get him around an arena. Now I know I’m going to get him around an arena and today has shown me that because I found a way.
I’m so excited to look forward to the next few years as a dancing partner for JC, I bloody love this little horse.
BELIEVE!!!!
By the way JC is 10 years old and today is his first hack. Don’t tell me you can’t hack as what you are really telling me is you have give up trying. Search for a way, don’t quit. Champions are horses with training, trainers are the riders with passion and belief. Success is as sweet as honey when you have had to take the long road. The definition of success is your own.
JC’s first BD Competition
I did a thing!!!
I took JC to his first BD Dressage Competition at Field House 😄😄😄🙌
Following our super success last weekend and how impressed I was with JC, I decided it’s time. The buzz I got from riding last weekend is a very strong drug as I’m still high as a kite and wanted a top up. This little horse is my favourite horse, not because he’s the best one I have but because he’s grown to trust me. Training him has taught me an awful lot more than I already knew. techniques I have used with other horses for the same problem haven’t worked and I have had to invent more. He is like that friend, one minute is the life and soul of the party oozing energy and confidence, then the next feeling so anxious that he finds it hard to do anything.
I have no expectations about JC competing and will keep the pressure off him for at least a year. There’s going to be some good tests and some bad tests until this little horse gains his dressage brave pants. I think this is his first dressage test ….EVER😀. JC is going to teach me that I can’t go out and always look perfect and get good results. I’m going to have to accept some painful scores but there is one thing for sure, I know I will get there. There being Grand Prix because he’s already working in these movements. I just need him to stay sound and Gonçalo to keep coming all the way to the UK to train us. I have the trust in Gonçalo like JC has the trust in me.
In his first elementary test today, we added some cool moves of our own. 4 spooks, a flying change and an error of course. We scored 64% which is amazing really with all our free style stuff.
The first test showed me what I needed to work on back in the collecting ring before his second test. It was obvious that the longer we stayed at the competition, more he understood what was happening and all was ok.
In the second test of course he was tense and looking at the video I had his neck a bit short. I don’t think he bre
Tori Tip Tuesday
🎓Tori Tip Tuesday
This weeks Tip is all about sitting straight. Watch my video and listen to how I work constantly on my position.
It’s crucial to sit straight for your horses soundness as well as your own body. Let your trainer help you identify problems with your straightness and then practice, fight to sit straight and most of all accept that your comfy position is wrong and it’s uncomfortable to sit straight at first.
(Apologies for twaffling on)
#tptiptuesday
TP Tip Tuesday
How many of us ruin our chances of riding a good test due to lack of confidence? This is a big thing for an awful lot of riders, me included.
When working in at some big venues, I would look around and see all these amazing horses with amazing riders. Their horses didn’t seem to touch the ground. Then I would compare them to my ordinary horse with a shuffly trot. I felt foolish and certainly not worthy of being in their presence. I would start to dread looking at the results board, I could see my name at the bottom of the list with an embarrassing percentage. Every where I turned I seemed to be in the way of someone else’s working in so I spent all my time trying to get out of the way. Look they are doing shoulder in, I better do shoulder in then as a big part of my warm up because it must be right as they are doing it……
It was my turn to compete and I was last to go. I asked for a late time because I had a long way to travel. But now everyone had ridden and had come to watch my test! Ok so I know I am going to come last, so I need to just try and make my score as high as I could so it doesn’t stand out at the bottom of a score board. They are all watching me because I am rubbish, like entertainment at the end of the day.
So I would ride my test to the best of my ability becuae I’m terrified of failure. This went on for a couple of years and I couldn’t stop myself thinking it. But when I went to the score board there was my score……at the top of the board, I had won!!!!! Something must have happened to the other riders clearly, as I didn’t deserve that score, maybe it’s added up wrong? Let’s grab my sheet and get out of their ASAP before someone realises it’s a mistake.
I had to do something about this huge problem because going out again and again obviously isn’t fixing it.
So I started to write down things I had achieved that year. Things personal to me that I was proud of which weren’t all horsey and not for
🤓 TP Tip Tuesday.
Haylage Hooks…….the game changer.
I’m pushing 54 and can put a big bale of haylage into the barn and flip it single handed. It’s so easy with these haylage hooks.
I’m surprised how many people have said “what a good idea that is, where do I get those from!”
For Sale on eBay for £15.49 GAME CHANGER!
#tptiptuesday
(No frills farmer look…..that’s because I’m real)
