Sneeze Atkinson dressage training

07/12/2024

Keep safe everyone. Take care with your horses 🪁🪁🫣💨

29/11/2024

Another stretchy flexi cob. Meet Bendy Brian showing his Pilates moves after his lesson today! 🥰

19/10/2024

The days coaching started like this. Thank you to those who still had their lesson! 💧

09/09/2024

🐴 DRESSAGE SOLUTIONS: To maintain your balance ... 🐴

Imagine that your upper body is like a broomstick and your horse is a hand trying to balance it. If your body (the broomstick) starts to tip, your hand (horse) will automatically move underneath to keep it up. You cannot lean right and expect your horse to go left.
~ Great Britain Olympic gold and silver medalist Laura Tomlinson

18/08/2024

Carl Hester tells us:
“Self-carriage is really easy to see. It’s that tension into the hand that we were talking about with Valegro, the first place you see it is through the whole of the top line of the horse. The best thing you can do for self-carriage is the give and re-take of the reins. It is amazing how you forget to do that when you ride on your own. That constant giving the hand, taking, giving, taking, making sure that the outline is stable, the mouth is soft. You only have to look at the mouth to know how it is working, the horse is carrying its own head and neck. People that ride on their own, it can be something that they forget they are doing, people put in too much power and that’s why they find self-carriage difficult, and I always think you’ve got to create balance and then put power in, that way around.”
https://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2021/02/balance-self-carriage-and-the-importance-of-rider-position/

26/07/2024

I’m a lucky coach. Not only do I get to spend all day in the beautiful countryside and interact with my favourite animal 🐴🐎 - I get to coach lovely people. All my clients are dedicated and have time and patience for their horses but particularly two clients this morning, (you know who you are) really have listened to their horses and reaped the rewards today. Then I got to ride the lovely Ceilo this afternoon. 😊🐴Thanks to you all! 👏

25/06/2024

Made me laugh! 😂

Never 👎 😂

29/01/2024

Ceillo and Lorain nailing the very useful, turn about the forehand to leg yield exercise.

23/01/2024

Take care today folks, it’s a bit windy🌪but on the plus side it’s getting lighter! Yay! 😃

22/11/2023

21/11/2023

Interesting article!

22/10/2023

A wet day coaching yesterday. Thanks to all my clients who braved the weather! Melvin learning his half pass yesterday…one of the dry bits! 😂💧

19/09/2023

💨💧With todays weather being not great for horsing around - to remind us, hopefully in a couple of days we can get back to riding in the ☀️ here’s the lovely Barney, who’s 17yrs old, having a schooling session on a calm sunny evening last week ☀️😅

31/08/2023

At some point, if someone rides numerous horses, along will come one who has either been draw-reined or hauled on to the point that the horse curls behind the vertical and pretty much goes there as its default position.

There’s a truism that it is much easier to mess up a horse’s mouth than it is to repair it, so the best way, obviously, is to never create the behind-the-bit situation, but that is not the issue once it has been established.

Sometimes a bitless bridle or a mild hackamore will help, if the tension is in the actual mouth, and the horse has learned to fear the bit. Sometimes lots of walking on a long or loose rein will help reestablish trust. But sometimes that curling under has become so ingrained that it never entirely goes away.

Behind the bit is usually posture created by humans. Many good trainers are super careful about “placing the head” and similar concepts, because they would rather have the horse above the bit than behind the bit.

The idea being that it is so much easier to carefully and gradually get a horse to soften in its head and neck and poll posture than it is to undo the tendency to curl once it has been implanted by bad riding.

And yet, despite that, we see and hear so much “stuff” about head set, and there is so much tack, so many bits designed to “place” the head.

Try to “unplace” an over-flexed horse to understand how much risk strong hands and the wrong equipment can produce, and how hard it is to repair the damage.

22/07/2023

Soggy day coaching today! 💦💦 even soggier riders but thumbs up for their dedication in the pouring rain! 🤩🐎

05/07/2023

Great explanation. 🐎

21/05/2023

Another ‘Black Beauty’ from yesterday. Remember stretchy, flexy, reach along way for your carrot guy - Buddy. His carrot stretches paying off. 🥕🐎

20/05/2023

Lovely day coaching in Herts. Got to school the lovely Mable, who’s getting back to her schooling after an injury. 🐎☀️