Destrier Sporthorses

10/25/2024

“At the moment, the biggest threat to the breeding of sport horses is that the majority wants the same; everyone is using identical bloodlines,

10/23/2024

Remember when we started him out in the field in Rosharon, TX. How the years have pasted and excited to see the accomplishments he has made!

Incredible pair!!!

Congratulations to Jessie Hughes and her Bronze Elite Friesian Sporthorse gelding Montgomery, who recently placed 3rd in a class of 51 for AA Training Level at the Region 3 Championships! Owned by Jessie and bred by Leah Stephen. By the Friesian stallion Ziare van Bluffview. (Jessie and Montgomery also hold the lead for the Friesian Sporthorse USDF Training Level National Champion for 2024!) 💙

📸 Andrew Ryback

10/11/2024

George Morris, top left, became well known for saying "More hip angle" at his clinics. In his picture he demonstrates a perfect Balanced or Fort Riley Seat jumping position. His feet are on the girth and "home" in the stirrups, just like the right picture of a US Cavalryman.

That right picture was posted in the comments of this page by a woman who sadly, I do not remember her name. She said that this picture is "uncle Eddie". Morris learned his jumping position, that won him international competition acclaim, from Gordon Wright, a former Fort Riley riding instructor.

The top center image is of show jumping Hall of Fame rider Michael Matz. Note that he is on the balls of his feet in order to add the additional flexibility of the ankle joint. Additionally, his feet are somewhat behind the girth or "back on the pegs", as motorcycle riders say, to help absorb the power of large stadium jumps.

These two changes to the original Fort Riley Seat are civilian adaptations for stadium jumping where there are no terrain changes. Note that all the top images riders are not leaning on their horse's necks in a crest release, and thus can follow the movement of their horses' heads and necks over a jump.

The bottom row of images shows riders jumping with their hands on the neck in a crest release, a jumping position that Morris eventually promoted. These riders have far less hip angle. Their feet have slid well behind the girth resulting in a very unathletic position.

When you see a tennis player waiting for a serve, or a linebacker waiting for the play in crouched athletic positions, you see a very agile stance, ready for movement in any direction. This is the basic athletic position for all sports that we also see in the Balanced or Fort Riley position.

Riders stretched out over the horse neck, as in the bottom row, are not athletically ready for movement in any direction. Their jumping positions are vulnerable and unsafe due to their extended hip angles. Quick changes in direction from their horses could put them on the ground. Perhaps this is why Morris constantly can be seen in his clinic videos yelling "More hip angle". Leaning on the neck makes establishing a proper hip angle, and thus a balanced position, more difficult and more dangerous.

10/08/2024

10/08/2024

Why do biomechanics matter?

No one uttered this term to me, in all my years of riding and lesson-taking, until I was well into my 20's. I heard lots of other words: contact, responsiveness, connection, rhythm, impulsion, suppleness. All of them felt like these ethereal concepts that had multiple meanings depending on who you talked to. They also had varying degrees of importance or ranking in terms of what you need first before the horse can offer the next thing, depending on who you talked to. I still see this all the time, and hear about how frustrating it is from other horsepeople trying to do the best they can.

Biomechanics are the physical relationships and structural laws that govern how living things move. Biomechanics are the HOW in all of those aforementioned ethereal terms. They are vital in understanding how to correctly develop a horse for riding. This is the first reason why biomechanics matter.

The second reason is because horses weren't designed to be ridden. I cannot overstate how important this is to understand if you want to ride horses and ride them well: horses were NEVER designed to be sat on. The horse is born with a specific set of biomechanical tools available to him, and they serve him very well...when they are needed.

The thing is, those tools were designed for maximum efficiency if the horse's life is in danger: used for brief moments, blips in between long stretches of calm. Those exact tools can cause injury, unsoundness, and degeneration if used every day, day in and day out, for years.
. . . . . . . .

I want you to look at these two photos.

The top horse is using what nature gave him (and what work with humans helped him turn into long-standing patterns in movement). The bottom horse has been given new tools and taught how to use them to move in ways that preserve soundness, not encourage degeneration.

The top horse is moving in a way that directly ties into the same sympathetic nervous system responses that kick in when a horse is in danger. The bottom horse is demonstrating all of the power potential the nervous system makes available when the horse is in danger, but accessing it through relaxation and completely different biomechanics.

The top horse is using the ground to support his weight in movement, putting a lot of pressure on his joints. The bottom horse is doing a lot of that supporting himself by virtue of his posture, putting significantly less strain on his joints.

You may have already figured out this is the same horse. These photos were taken approximately two years apart.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: the way to develop the bottom horse isn't to simply take the top horse and add contact, impulsion, responsiveness, ride circle after circle, do pole and hill work, etc. Whatever you apply to the ridden horse will only reinforce what is already in him.

You must teach him, literally from the ground up, a new way of moving, a different biomechanical perspective. Some horses will come by this easier than others, but not a one is born knowing how to put all of these things together on their own when the human asks it. Not a one.

We have to show them how.

PC: Mandy Helwege. Thank you for permitting me to share your lovely boy.

10/08/2024

Ever wondered how our anatomy compares to a horse’s? 🧐 Check out this colorful schematic of a human foot and a horse’s hind limb! Did you know that our heel is actually the equivalent of the point of the hock in a horse? 🦶➡️🐴

10/05/2024

This is the way I think about matching horses and riding students. I have taught both types of riders pictured here and every combination in between. The top is a beginner with a green horse and a new rider. The graph indicates the low skill level of the horse (left side) and the level of the rider (right side). This combination is absolutely the worst possible that an instructor might face. The bottom is a highly trained rider with a top horse ready for high level competition. This is a challenging pair to teach, but in a very different way.

The balance of the skill and training levels between student riders and their horses should always be in the very front of a riding instructor's mind. Teachers should always be asking, is the horse helping or hurting the rider's progress, and is the rider diminishing the horse's training? Beginner riders must ride horses that are consistently above the level of the rider, but not too far above.

Yes, the necessary teaching combination of a horse better skilled than the rider will always result in some untraining of the horse. This means lesson horses must constantly be tuned up by a better rider or a horse trainer to keep them at the appropriate higher level for the student.

"For the student" is the key phrase here. I see lesson riders struggling with horses that are not helping them learn, but rather hurting their confidence and sometimes their bodies. I sometimes hear instructors say things about these situations like, "I can ride the horse, so she has to deal with the horse". That statement reveals an instructor ignoring the necessary skill balance contained in this graph method of analyzing the balance between lesson horses and students.

Teaching riding is always about the unique rider and horse in the lesson you are giving in the moment, not about some general idea of horses and student riders. Instructors must have a refined focus on each student and each horse, and how they relate in lessons. If you are an instructor struggling with this balance of skill and training levels and not a horse trainer, it's a good idea to team up with a horse trainer to accomplish the goal of maintaining consistently effective rider-horse matches in your lessons.

The green line second image is of the other extreme in teaching, a highly trained horse and a highly trained rider. To effectively teach these combinations an instructor must be very perceptive regarding both the horse's skill level and the rider skill level on a very detailed level.

When rider-horse combinations like this came to me for help, it was usually because the "meshing of the gears" between the horse and rider had begun to "grind" at certain points in competitions. Either the horse or the rider was interfering with the other. Determining which of the pair to address and change is a great and interesting challenge for an experienced teacher in these kinds of lessons.

Every horse and rider combination that an instructor encounters falls between the two pictured extremes. I hope every instructor thinks about how combinations of horses and riders relate, and how other types of horse-rider pairs might fall on the graph range. If instructors are not thinking seriously about how horse rider combinations work or don't work together, chances are they are falling into the entertainment business and not focusing on their riding instruction business.

09/05/2024

Let the comeback begin! Love this! It’s not always about the height my friends🤣

06/23/2024

An entire industry has been created selling you the idea that there is a method to fix every problem.

What is extremely popular is a video for every problem, and for every fix there are three more problems created, for which there’s a method to fix too.

I get asked nearly daily to create a video about specific problems (I saw your video on trailer loading, but what about loading a chestnut mare into an Adam trailer?). These can be helpful to see, but the mentality over time has shifted into specifics instead of looking at the big picture.

Good, all encompassing horsemanship creates a foundation wherein problems melt away holistically. If you understand how all things connect, you stop seeing things individually, but as a whole. You have to fix the whole and stop looking for quick solutions.

Teaching people to be actual horsemen, to stop looking for quick tips and tricks, to start seeing the whole and the connection of all things, means rewiring our minds from conditioning and marketing over the past decades.

So if you have a problem, it isn’t living in isolation. It’s part of a whole picture. And you have to look at, and feed the whole, for the symptoms to melt away.

06/23/2023

06/16/2023

Don't forget to register for Dressage show this Sunday 18 www.snowdoniasporthorsecomplex.com

06/12/2023

06/07/2023

06/06/2023

06/03/2023

New 6- and 7-Year-Old Developing Horse Championships Announced

06/02/2023

When the four year old walk/trots with her new girl less than 24 hours after arriving at her new home! 😍

Did I mention she sat all winter after only 90 days with the trainer last summer??

Many thanks to Liza Messersmith for making this connection, to Equine Express,NA INC for getting her to her new home safely, and to KBT Equine for putting such a great start on our girl!

06/01/2023

Lots going on here at Snowdonia Sport Horse Complex! Please visit our website to sign up for these fabulous shows. www.snowdoniasporthorsecomplex.com/shows

06/01/2023

Cob sized double bridle

Comes with 2 sets of reins

Venmo or zelle works

Pm for price or to make an offer

05/31/2023

Don't Forget to register for this weekend show!😀
https://form.jotform.com/230828870102149

05/31/2023

05/31/2023

Edited by VideoGuru:https://videoguru.page.link/Best

05/30/2023

Interesting!

05/30/2023

Ruben Sierra became involved in Thoroughbred breeding and ownership more than 20 years ago with his eyes wide open.

05/26/2023

05/26/2023

Developing Empathy

Frustrated by your horse? Try this---

Go for a run. Yes, you, human rider. Intersperse your run with sets of push-ups. See how long it takes before you lose athletic buoyancy, before you “just can’t.”

Fatigue in a horse, which is pretty much the same thing that you just felt, creates leaning, tripping, stumbling, slow reactions, poor coordination, lugging on the hand, all sorts of what you may be mistaking for “bad behavior.”

The tired horse will feel just like a “disobedient” horse. And then what will happen to that horse if the rider doesn’t tune into the horse’s fatigue? You know exactly what will happen to the horse. It will get drilled on. Drilled on just when the exact opposite should happen.

Trainers who lack the ability to sense what the horse is going through are among the worst drillers, and they create tense, scared, resistant horses, and they then do something even worse, they blame the horse.

Change your mind set. Think how YOU would feel if you had gotten beyond your limits and then got ground on and punished to fix your bad behavior.

You think I’m kidding? You think this isn’t going to happen today, all across the world where people ride and drive horses? That unfit for the task horses won’t be cranked and pressured? Dream on.

The best thing that you can do if your goal is to become a competent trainer is to constantly be aware of your own frustration meter. And stop before you create damage, physical and emotional injury and distress. Get a little and end on that. If even a little seems elusive, DO NOT GRIND. Go walk, try again tomorrow. Don’t add fear and anxiety to the training process.

I will say this one more time---“Don’t add fear and anxiety to the training process.”

Why am I saying this so often? Because if I had learned this decades sooner, I would have been a far better trainer and horse person---That’s why. Learn, if you are capable of doing so, from the mistakes that others have made. Do not drill your horse.