Pine Meadow Farm LLC

10/31/2025

10/30/2025

10/29/2025

Every day there are clinics and riding lessons and round pen demos all over the world. There are lectures and videos and books about riding, how to ride, how to train.

But I think what any rider needs most can be encapsulated in just two words, "seat" and "attitude."

One is a physical skill. The other is an emotional quality.

When a rider has what is called "a good seat," or "an independent seat, " that rider's seat meshes with the motion of the swinging back of the moving horse in a harmonious fashion.

When a rider has achieved an independent seat, that rider can have soft, independent arms and hands. The rider with an independent seat and arms and hands will be able to be virtually a part of the moving, breathing horse in ways that do not interfere with or hinder or unbalance the movements of the horse.

The other word, "attitude," refers to whether or not the rider is in control of his or her emotions and thoughts. A "good" attitude describes the rider who is patient, and empathetic, and stays calm, who does not get frustrated or have issues with temper, and who tries not to use force or coercion, and tries to become educated in better ways.

If a rider has a good seat and a good attitude, the horses that rider rides have little to fear. If a rider lacks either of those, it doesn't matter how many clinics they attend or lessons they take or books they read or videos they watch, because in so many cases they already know what they need, and are simply trying to avoid the reality of having to achieve them.

(Photo--Klaus Balkenhol and Goldstern)

10/22/2025

Triple Crown premium horse feed offers fixed formulas, quality ingredients and digestive aids to promote a healthy digestive tract and happy horse.

10/22/2025

"I'm probably never competing at indoors, and that's okay.

Like many elder millennials, I was raised to believe that the world was my oyster if I worked hard for the things I wanted. Though I’ve certainly had my share of burnout and a good ol’ fashioned mental breakdown now and then, that philosophy has gotten me a lot in life. It’s allowed me to grow from the 4H kid who did backyard schooling shows to pinning in AA shows in the Adult Amateur Hunters—something I’ve always wanted, but wasn’t sure would ever happen.

I will never discredit hard work when it comes to achievement. You simply can’t get anywhere without effort, but 30 years chasing dreams in this industry has taught me something else as well—hard work is only one element of the puzzle. Over time, I started to wonder what “success” in horses really meant for me.

When livestreaming horse shows became a thing, I loved tuning into the indoors coverage. Watching classes like the Ariat National Adult Medal Finals, I thought, “Maybe one day I could do that?” At the time, I was barely showing 2’6” with my OTTB. Getting magical things like lead changes or jumping 3’ at a horse show felt possible, but hard. But hey, dream big right?

Flash forward over a decade later, and I find myself at the Pennsylvania National Horse Show watching and working with The Plaid Horse. Standing by the hunter ring, I watch my peers go in for the classic. This is just the sort of big, impossible goal I always dreamed about. Something that I didn’t know if I had the capability to do.

I looked at the course. The jumps were beautiful, but they were simply hunter jumps—adorned beautifully with flowers and ferns, but there wasn’t anything magical about them. The course was the kind and familiar outside inside, outside inside we love to see in the AAs, complete with a two-stride. I watched flawless rounds. I watched rounds that had a whoopsie daisy moment. And in between, I realized something—my horse and I are very capable of doing this course. No, we wouldn’t win, but we wouldn’t look out of place either. Would I stand a very high probability of leaning for my change or doing a nervous jump up my horse’s neck? Yes, but I also stand an equal chance of getting decent distances and making it around fairly cleanly.

I could execute the course, but that doesn’t mean I ever will.

As a 40-year-old graduate student heading towards a career that I chose for happiness instead of wealth, I’m still figuring out what that looks like for me. I think it includes horse shows, and I think it includes the hunters. But walking shoulder to shoulder with the best in the industry, I realized that the elite is a level I don’t need to reach. what you think you should want.

For a long time, the image of my equestrian Quality World was being “part of their world.” I felt like an outsider, and I wanted to be in the “in” crowd. I wanted to keep raising the bar, keep going to fancier shows, and do everything I could to experience the best this sport has to offer.

I’ve been so fortunate to experience a lot and have many dreams come true. But the older I get, the more I realize that my equestrian Quality World cannot and will not look the same as riders in the upper tiers of our sport. I’m not exceptionally talented. I don’t have the ability, or truthfully the desire, to devote as much work as it would take to get my skills to a level that would lead to more opportunity and being competitive in the big leagues. And I don’t ever see myself having the financial means to pay my way in, either in miles, training, or horse.

This gives me two options. I can cry and say, “It’s so unfair! This sport is only for the rich!” or I can adjust the ideal view of my Quality World.

As a 40-year-old graduate student heading towards a career that I choose for happiness instead of wealth, I’m still figuring out what that looks like for me. I think it includes horse shows, and I think it includes the hunters. But walking shoulder to shoulder with the best in the industry, I realized that the elite is a level I don’t need to reach.

At the end of the day, nobody was having more fun at Harrisburg than I do at the A shows I attend in Katy, Texas, or even schooling shows closer to home. People celebrated their wins and slogged through disappointment—same as any other horse show. The elite can duke it out for the best in the country, and I can save my pennies and work hard enough to find eight jumps and get my lead changes on a smaller stage. Both co-exist. One isn’t better than the other.

Does our sport need to be more accessible? Yes. Do I think it’s crazy that I was told the average price of a horse in the AA hunter ring at Harrisburg is roughly $500,000? Yes. There are a lot of things we could improve about this industry.

But my place—really, my happiness—in this sport is in my control. I’ve never chatted with a rider or a professional at any of these exclusive shows and had them sneer when I say I ride my beloved beluga whale (aka Oldenburg) when I can at the regional level. Most of the folks at the top, especially the trainers who have worked decades to get there and sacrificed everything they could, remember what it’s like on different rungs on the ladder.

I truly believe most of us just love this crazy sport and these complicated animals. Participating, at any level, is the real prize.

📎 Save & share this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/10/22/im-probably-never-competing-at-indoors-and-thats-okay/
📸 © Andrew Ryback Photography

10/22/2025

10/15/2025

10/12/2025

USEF Medal Finals Course.

10/08/2025

Conformation is barely understood today. Some people think it is "confirmation", but it is "conformation" because it is about whether a horse CONFORMS to an ideal. Like all ideals, perfect conformation is impossible. Therefore, we use it to measure how close a horse comes to the ideal. Conformation is further complicated by personal opinions. For example, I like short backed horses. Why? Because they have more agility and the kinds of things I enjoy most with horses require a high degree of agility. But that's me.

One of the most important of the many conformation elements is the structure of the legs. The images shown here indicate common conformation flaws of the hind legs. The far right horse has straight legs. Horses with this type of leg cannot reach well under their belly with the result being uncomfortable jerky gaits. The straight leg limits hind reach and thus acceleration and speed, as well as the ability to stop well using the hind.

The next horse to the left is "camped out". This is the worst horse for agility sports providing no speed and not much stop. However, if you want a horse for riding in less demanding circumstances, the straight or the camped out legged horses might do if the horse has a good mind.

The next horse to the left stands under. This usually translates into lots of stop and not much top speed, but reasonable acceleration as a result of its ability to reach under the belly. This horse might, for example, make a functional arena polo horse but not an outdoor polo horse where top speed is essential.

The horse on the far left of the four horses is ideal. Such horses, with a nice combination of hind reach and extension, are the best all around. You cannot go wrong with these hind legs.

10/07/2025

Welcome to Trainer Tuesday! Each week we ask trainers a question and gather their answers for you. These trainers have a range of experience, backgrounds, and focus points of their programs, so the answers have as much variation as you would expect and also probably much more similarity. This week....

10/06/2025

"Recently, USEF emailed their members regarding increases in membership fees. In my middle-class hunter/jumper training facility in Northeast Ohio, I predict I will be met one of two ways by clients tomorrow. The clients with a bigger show budget will not think twice about the increase, and those pinching pennies will complain that this $20 increase will keep them out of the show ring next year. Once again, I will feel unrealistic guilt as a trainer from an industry that expects us to make other people’s hobbies affordable.

“Noting that the membership fee structure has not changed in more than eight years,” the email clearly states. I have raised my rates multiple times in eight years. No one goes without a raise for eight years, even if it is just a cost-of-living pay increase. Let’s not talk about the increase in hay and grain in the last decade, which again, I completely stand behind. Because we all know, fuel is not cheap!

USEF is well within their rights to raise fees. On the flip side of the USEF coin, your members hate feeling nickel-and-dimed to death. We all wish you and USHJA would kiss and make up post-divorce and combine all your fees. Going to the show office on Sunday should not always be a surprise after additional USEF, USHJA, Drug Fees, etc.

I am far from wealthy, but I fully understand the truth that the cost of everything has risen substantially in recent years, and we need to adjust. I also understand what it is like to pay all the overhead that comes with running a business and still wanting to give back where I can.

Is there another option USEF? Why do we pay a membership fee to later be charged more fees? What if we thought outside the box a little?

One thought I had was, why not pay a larger annual membership fee and have no fees at the show? Let’s run through an example of how this could work.

The current fee is $80 annually, and say a USEF member goes to 10 shows a year, where they pay an additional $20 in fees at each show. That’s $28 per show. At every show, your members feel they are being double-billed for something that should be covered already in their membership to USEF.

What if, instead, USEF charges $200 annually with no fees at the office at the end of each show? So 10 shows become $20/show, 20 shows become $10 each, and you can probably charge more annually without any complaints. You could probably charge $300 annually, and its possible more people will horse show.

And there’s another fee we don’t understand—the drug fee. Nothing annoys me more than seeing a sold-out horse show but never once seeing a drug tester. I know we cannot test them all, but if we are paying for it, why not test the Champion and Reserve of each division? While there are surely dozens of excuses as to why this is not feasible, there is always a show vet at rated shows.

Inevitably, there is a steward staring at their phone more than the actual competition. I am sure someone much more creative than me can come up with a way to do better. I am positive there are ways to drug test more horses, because at the end of the day, the welfare of the horse is supposed to be our number one concern.

I am one of the few that is against the unrealistic expectations that we can make horse showing affordable to all. Let’s be honest, they don’t call racing The Sport of King’s for nothing. The hunter/jumper industry, especially, is a luxury sport. That will never change.

I don’t believe we should make it cheaper for those fighting to stay in it year after year, but we do need to make members feel appreciated and heard, with an expectation of transparency when it comes to fees. And we would love to see our fees going to fund fresh eyes from educated stewards and more of those people with the messenger bags and specimen cups that we sometimes rarely see at shows.

I am well aware that I do not understand the ins and outs of what it takes to run an organization as big as USEF. But I have also watched our local show organizations dwindle in numbers and die out when they refuse to embrace change and make their members feel appreciated.

Sometimes, the old ways need to be updated, and good enough is not always good enough."

📎 Save & Share this article by Ashten Logue at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/10/06/rethinking-usefs-approach-to-costs-and-transparency/
📸 © Heather N. Photography

10/03/2025

In a sport that prizes quick rounds, big wins, and moving up the levels, it’s no surprise that many riders look for shortcuts. But according to Geoff Teall, one of equitation’s most respected voices, rushing the process only guarantees that you’ll fall behind in the long run. In Geoff Teall on Riding Hunters, Jumpers and Equitation: Develop a Winning Style, he makes a simple but powerful case: when it comes to riding, the fastest way forward is often the slowest.

From the outside, riding looks deceptively simple. Keep your heels down, establish an even pace, maintain steady contact… those are hardly complicated ideas. But, as Teall points out, while the concepts are easy to understand, “they can take a long time to master.” That disconnect often leads riders to cut corners.

It’s human nature to want results right away. Maybe it’s moving up to the next division, skipping the flatwork to get to the jumps, or relying on gadgets that seem to promise a quick fix. At first, it might even look like it’s working. But Teall warns that riders who leap ahead too fast are setting themselves up for a harsh reality check later.

One of Teall’s most memorable lines is simple: “The fast way is the slow way.” His reasoning is straightforward. When riders skip the basics, they eventually have to go back and relearn them. That means more time wasted unlearning bad habits than it would have taken to do things correctly from the start.

He compares this to the old fable of the tortoise and the hare: the rider who builds steadily, brick by brick, eventually outpaces the one who sprinted ahead but crumbled under the weight of missed fundamentals.

Teall insists that solid equitation is about mastering small pieces and then putting them together into an effective whole. For example, you can’t have a good position without a good leg, and you can’t have a good leg without a correctly placed foot in the stirrup. These basics may seem minor, but they create the foundation for everything else.

Instead of being discouraged by how long it takes, Teall encourages riders to take pride in the process. Working through the physical demands of correct position—legs stretched down, weight in the heels, core strong and lifted, hands elastic—isn’t easy. But it’s those difficult, disciplined habits that make communication with the horse clear and effective.

A big reason people look for shortcuts is the myth of natural talent. It’s tempting to believe that if something doesn’t come easily, you’re just not cut out for it. Teall calls this a “ridiculous excuse.” In his view, talent is “a very, very small piece of the puzzle” compared to discipline and determination.

That’s good news for most riders. Success isn’t limited to the naturally gifted. The rider who shows up consistently, works methodically, and stays focused on the basics will eventually outshine the one who relies only on raw ability.

📎 Continue reading the article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/09/29/the-fast-way-is-the-slow-way-why-patience-wins-in-riding/
📸 © Heather N. Photography

Text