Journey Horse

07/05/2025

Beautiful long canter stretch without any change in balance or tempo. He's actually reaching forward and down moving into the contact. It's a very different feel and for the horse it is a reward and release. It's also a great skill for redirecting a horse whose body is getting tight from collected work to do this and easily return to collected work. A great reward for the tempi changes he just completed. THIS is in the Schooling Ring!

06/29/2025

Celebrate a Life of Legacy:
88 Years of Linda Tellington-Jones & 50 Years of the Tellington TTouch® Method

📅 Sunday, June 29th
🕑 2 PM EDT | Free on Zoom

Join us for a very special FREE webinar to celebrate the 88th birthday of Linda Tellington-Jones, and the 50th Anniversary of the groundbreaking Tellington TTouch® Method – a revolutionary approach that has transformed the way we connect with animals and ourselves.

✨ Linda’s influence spans continents and species – from horses to dogs, cats to elephants, wildlife to people. Over her lifetime she has:

🐴 Revolutionized the horse world with a gentle, trust-based approach to training.

🐕 Created a method now practiced in over 35 countries and translated into 17+ languages.

📚 Authored more than 20 books on animal care, training, and interspecies communication.

🏆 Received international recognition for her pioneering contributions to animal welfare.

🌍 Inspired thousands through her compassionate, intuitive, and science-informed work.

In this heartfelt celebration, Linda will share stories of the animals, events, and extraordinary people who have shaped her journey – and invite you to share your own memories and inspirations from your path with TTouch.

Whether you’re brand new to TTouch or a long-time part of our family, this is a moment to reflect, rejoice, and reconnect with a global community devoted to kindness, connection, and change.

💖 Come ready to be inspired.
🌿 Bring your stories and smiles.
🎈 Let’s celebrate together.

🎟️ Registration is FREE – follow the link to join us live!
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/kInfEa0xRier4Y8B82rNww

06/28/2025

06/27/2025

As flight animals, rushing through an exercise uses muscles for flight. One of the hardest lessons is to recognize the very subtle ways horses end up 'being' in flight mode... it doesn't have to be fast

"Take away the inertia." This is something I often find myself saying to students when they are riding various exercises with their horse. What do I mean by this? Usually, it means to slow down and help the horse move in a very step-wise and deliberate manner. This prevents the horse from throwing his body around while over-exerting his/her large mover muscles which can override and de-activate the deeper muscles that play such a vital role in organizing the horse's body. When a horse trots over cavalletti poles, for example, by surging forward and tightening his neck to pull the body along, he/she has activated unhelpful muscles (in this case, the ones that pull weight forward onto the forehand). Inertia has taken over. When we are building strength, we want instead to minimize the horse charging or flinging himself through exercises. Take away the inertia so the horse then synchronizes his different muscle systems to simultaneously organize AND propel the body.

06/26/2025

I didn’t grow up in a barn with chandeliers.
I didn’t get handed imported warmbloods or winter clinics in Wellington.
I rode whatever I could afford, wherever someone would let me ride.

I’ve hauled to shows in rusty trailers older than my horse.
I’ve trained in hand-me-down tack and boots with holes in them.
I’ve patched things together, gear, horses, life, with sheer grit.

No grooms. No sponsors. No trust fund.

Just work. And love. And more work.

Because dressage isn’t supposed to be about glitter and gloss.
It’s about a conversation, one you earn, stride by stride, over years of showing up.
It’s about feel. Patience. Timing. And truth.

I still muck my own stalls, braid my own horse, and coached myself from old VHS videos and borrowed books.
And still, I ride.
And its not for glory.
It's because something in me needs this.

So no, I’m not the polished rider with the perfect setup.
But I am the rider who never quit.
Who showed up when no one was watching.
Who forged something beautiful from sweat, stubbornness, and a secondhand saddle.

Call it blue collar. Call it rough around the edges.
Just make sure you call it dressage.
Because it is.

And it lives in my blood.

06/03/2025

Pros ride every stride. There is a big difference between being a rider and being a passenger.

Perhaps the biggest difference between a professional horseman (term inclusive of women) and an amateur is that the pro knows that they are always training or untraining a horse when they ride. Horses never stop learning while people stop learning when they prefer their comfortable illusions of self satisfaction. Horses pay attention to every rider's mistake during a ride. They log rider errors with meticulous accuracy, and they enter each experience into their massive database that they instinctively keep in order to survive. All this while riders blissfully "enjoy the ride".

Years ago I sold a nice mare with a gift for jumping to a family with a teen rider. I didn't hear from them for three years until they called offering the horse for sale to me with the implication that the mare was somehow flawed. I questioned them, looking for more specifics. Basically, the horse stopped being the dependable jumper she was three years earlier. I inquired about injuries, etc. but there were no circumstances that explained the horse's new unwillingness to jump except she had been untrained to jump. I explained what most probably had happened and they would not hear of it.

Here on Facebook we hear all kinds of "reasons" for nonperformance. The hyper-empaths go immediately to pain in the horse as the universal cause. The hormone focused people go there. Saddle fitters are apt to blame saddle fit. Every narrowly focused horse person has their specific "reason" why a horse is not performing, but the substantial truth usually is that the rider untrained their horse. All the other reasons might have contributed, but if a rider rides not believing that every halt, every turn and every footfall is a lesson to their horse, they risk untraining their horse.

Real horsemanship is consciousness, or to use the more contemporary term, mindfulness. As a spiritual teacher I knew years ago said, "You can't get away for the day". We need to embrace the challenge of being as present as our horses. Not a small task.

05/29/2025

05/24/2025

I have personal experience with this young mares dam line and wholeheartedly recommend her.

05/24/2025

Wholeheartedly recommend this young mare. I have personal experience with her dam line

05/24/2025

Oh my yes the benefits of Seeing The Work Through. I might add here the benefits of having seen the work from the beginning. Acquiring a horse that is already 'well started' without participating / witnessing the history of a Foal being handled up to their 3 to 5 yr old education can leave lasting questions.

•On keeping your horse•
(Especially if you are a trainer)

It's not just owners, but professional trainers that are rotating through personal horses.

They tell their audience that the more different horses they train, the more experience they get.
They also frequently say that they want to move up a level and their current horse isn't capable or suitable for that goal. It's a cycle every couple of years it looks like.

Both those things may be true, to a point. However these people are no longer seeing how their work matures, how it holds up over time and how it progresses through the life of that individual horse.

The horse industry prioritizes young prospects that can perform younger, sooner, and harder.
I would like to counter this with the idea that a program is only as good as the seniors it produces!

I want to see sound and content horses absolutely blooming between the ages of 18-28.
My mentors demonstrated this to me, as well as any other horseman I consider to be great. I hold teachers and professionals to a higher standard than regular owners.

When people move their horses on while they are still at the age of being profitable to sell, so they can move to the next young prospect they are robbing themselves of seeing their work through.

They are robbing themselves of the skills needed to bring out a horse to their full potential.

They are robbing themselves of the strength of feeling one's knowledge bottom out, and being able to work through that.

This kills off the opportunity to master feel.

Yes.
This is what is missing.
Seeing work through to the end.

I would like to say that in order to truly become advanced in training, it is important to keep your horse.
This is to witness the longevity and soundness of your work, to have a chance to watch it age and mature in front of your face.
I also believe it is vital to experience the depth of friendship that is possible with a horse that can only be forged over years.

Yes a variety of horses is excellent and necessary but we've taken that out of context.

This may not be feasible or realistic for everyone, and that is ok. Excellence is not feasible for everyone.

Yesterday I wrote about how the age at which we start horses to ride indicates what values we hold in our horsemanship.

I believe people would stop riding 2 year old horses if more of them witnessed how their horses aged instead of moving them through their program.

Today, I am following that up with writing about how keeping your horse may be the key to mastery.

The theme here is there are no shortcuts to honest, brilliant work.

Let's celebrate bringing a horse to their potential throughout their entire lifetime, instead of literally using them up before the age of 10.

And while we're at it, check out the health and happiness of your trainer's or programs senior horses to know what quality they bring to the table.

In this photo I am riding my first pony who has been in my life since I was 12. He is downhill built, post legged, had a neck injury that almost took his life, and yet him and I are still improving every single year over the last 10 years!!

I do not believe I've developed him to his full potential yet.

What are the people with significantly more expensive and talented horses going on about, when they say that they can't move up a level with the horse that they have?!

I will risk banishment by saying it may be more to do with a human skill issue than said horse's capacity 🤐🤐🤐
It does take extraordinary skill to bring out the best in an ordinary horse. There is no way around it.

I am a firm believer in slow burn, lifelong development for every horse. I start them with the intention of spending our life together.

Keep and develop the imperfect horse you have.
This may just be the gem we are missing right now.
Thank you for reading.