Rohirrim Horsemanship

05/05/2023

Haven't updated about Rosie in a while... Starting out with the good news - Rosie had outgrown her western headstall so we got a stunning new one with matching reins and breast collar from Royal Legacy custom leather. It is absolutely perfect! Not so good news is that we had a little bit of a setback in training/showing. Rosie has been on rest for a few months as she sprained a tendon on the medial side of her left-hind fetlock. I have probably been overly cautious, but we have now added in hand walking and we will start walking under saddle next week and very slowly start conditioning from there. A bright side of this is the past couple months I have been able to carve out more time to spend focusing on writing and mental health and Rosie seems to have enjoyed her break 😊🌻

01/12/2023

Interesting read!

01/11/2023

01/11/2023

Working on the accuracy of our pivots. After the accuracy, we can add a little more promptness to the ex*****on. Rosie says its hard to move fast when you're a big girl 😘🍑

01/09/2023

Yesterday I went to Malcolm Edmund's memorial service. Before going to the service it felt fitting to ride and, of course, grab some tacos. When I was managing the farm, whenever Malcom would come to trim & shoe the horses, we would eat tacos for lunch and talk about life. I will miss our talks and his positive and humble attitude, but I hope I can cary on even an ounce of his work ethic and kindness towards both humans and horses.

01/03/2023

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Meet one of the rarest Draft Horse breeds and join me for a ride at an award winning Equestrian Riding Center in England! In this episode I travel to Cumbria...

01/02/2023

Just wanted to share photos of Rosie from my wedding day. She took everything in stride, with all that was going on... lots of people, weird decorations, the people moving tractor, my long billowing dress...nothing phased her!

Also wanted to thank Royal Legacy custom leather for the beautiful bridle that I ordered for Rosie. The leather was such great quality and it looked so beautiful on her 🤍

12/30/2022

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Every year this joke makes the rounds and it sends the wrong type of message, so here’s a new version.

The answer to fixing the type of excitability that “necessitates” lunging for safety purposes is addressing the training and management factors that contribute to your horse having that much pent up energy and choosing to engage in explosive behaviours to relieve said energy.

Lunging is just a bandaid for the unwanted behaviour, it is using physical exhaustion or at minimum, relief of explosive energy as a means of addressing the BEHAVIOUR but fails to address the cause.

The problem with this is that routine lunging for the sole purpose of energy release before rides results in an incredibly fit horse who will have more and more energy to expend if the cause of their excess energy isn’t addressed and their energy will fail to tap out in the same duration of lunging as their fitness builds.

All that aside — don’t we all want the horse we can just get on and go?

Using this joke as a metaphor, aren’t we tired of always having to “lunge” the year to avoid misbehaviour?

Wouldn’t we rather address the factors that cause us grief rather than perpetually just slapping a bandaid on it and dealing with the very behaviour we admittedly do not want to deal with on a very repeated basis?

As someone who used to have the explosive horse who needed to be lunged to hopefully avoid him rocket launching me, I much prefer being able to get on that same horse with no prep and having it be safe than I did my lunging days.

12/30/2022

Yesterday and today we rode in our rope halter. I love to ride in a rope halter sometimes because it makes me focus more on my leg aids. Overall It is a really great way to tune-in with your horse and focus on lightness.

12/26/2022

We've had a very busy year with a lot of big changes, but hopefully I can be more active with Rosie's training updates. Rosie has had some time off the past few weeks bc of my wedding and honeymoon, but now we are back to work! The first few days back we focused on groundwork, but today we saddled up. We need to do some reconditioning so we mostly walked with some trot intervals, but she behaved perfectly and was so light when picking up contact (and also ground tied like a champ)😊

04/25/2022

Long read, but this is exactly why I am so insistent about proper mounting techniques with my students!

The way you mount up from ground to saddle at the start of a ride has important implications for your horse's body and mind. Riders rarely examine the technique they use to get from ground to saddle and their horses' responses to having to stand for it. But is the way we make the journey up onto our...

04/09/2022

So proud of the SO athletes I had the opportunity to coach at the Florida State SO Games! All of their hard work paid off. My 3 students brought home 2 golds and 2 silvers and a bronze in their classes! And Rosie did amazing as well😊🐴🏆

03/27/2022

Miss Rosie spent today at a Special Olympics clinic to help prepare athletes for the Florida Games. She was such a good girl for her riders😊

03/02/2022

Words of wisdom from one of the greats:

~Bill Steinkraus

“No. 1. Get your tack and equipment just right, and then forget about it and concentrate on the horse.

No. 2. The horse is bigger than you are, and it should carry you. The quieter you sit, the easier this will be for the horse.

No. 3. The horse's engine is in the rear. Thus, you must ride your horse from behind, and not focus on the forehand simply because you can see it.

No. 4. It takes two to pull. Don't pull. Push.

No. 5. For your horse to be keen but submissive, it must be calm, straight and forward.

No. 6. When the horse isn`t straight, the hollow side is the difficult side.

No. 7. The inside rein controls the bending, the outside rein controls the speed.

No. 8. Never rest your hands on the horse's mouth. You make a contract with it: "You carry your head and I'll carry my hands."

No. 10. Once you've used an aid, put it back.

No. 11. You can exaggerate every virtue into a defect.

No. 12. Always carry a stick, then you will seldom need it.

No. 13. If you`ve given something a fair trial, and it still doesn't work, try something else—even the opposite.

No. 14. Know when to start and when to stop. Know when to resist and when to reward.

No. 15. If you're going to have a fight, you pick the time and place.

No. 16. What you can't accomplish in an hour should usually be put off until tomorrow.

No. 17. You can think your way out of many problems faster than you can ride your way out of them.

No. 18. When the horse jumps, you go with it, not the other way around.

No. 19. Don`t let over-jumping or dull routine erode the horse's desire to jump cleanly. It's hard to jump clear rounds if the horse isn't trying.

No. 20. Never give up until the rail hits the ground.

No. 21. Young horses are like children—give them a lot of love, but don't let them get away with anything.

No. 22. In practice, do things as perfectly as you can; in competition, do what you have to do.

No. 23. Never fight the oats.

No. 24. The harder you work, the luckier you get."

~Bill Steinkraus

02/27/2022

Super proud of my Special Olympics athletes today!

02/19/2022

We got to go to Hope Equine Rescue, Inc for the western dressage clinic with Holly Winkeljohn today! No clinic pictures, but we did get miss Rosie weighed on the scale, which was a new experience for Rosie in itself. 😊

02/16/2022

From the schooling show this weekend 🥰 I'm so happy with how she tracks up in the trot. We entered some western classes because we are still waiting on our dressage saddle to arrive. She was a superstar, but the judge thought she was too forward (obviously 😂) We managed to snag a 4th in horsemanship though because we had a nice clean pattern and stayed consistent in our rail work!

02/12/2022

A couple of my students from the horse show today! So proud of them 🏅🐴

02/06/2022

Rosie was checking out our nice new fence that just got installed this weekend! We spent some time walking around first before we rode so we could check it all out first and let her sniff everything 😊

02/04/2022

You know your food-motivated horse loves you when she walks away from her haybale to you to be caught 🥰

01/27/2022

I never got around to posting these, but these were from our open house at the barn last fall 😊

11/23/2021

This past weekend I took Rosie to the Bartow schooling show and she did so great! It was her first Basic Level test, first time showing western dressage, and first time cantering at a show! We earned first place in the division with a 67.8% even with me accidentally going off test in the beginning 🤷🏼‍♀️

10/31/2021

It's officially the culmination of spooky season, so what better way to celebrate then checking out the spooky bleachers at the Bartow arena yesterday. 🎃 Rosie was definitely concerned about the bleachers, but luckily she has a very curious personality and became interested in sniffing them. She even stepped up on the first step with her front feet 😂

10/14/2021

I have been working with Rosie to improve her balance on her right and left sides. She is a little weaker on her right, so we have been working to strengthen that side, as well as improve lateral flexion to the right. She has been very light in my hands traveling left, and we have been working to achieve that to the right by doing exercises to stretch, strengthen the core and hindquarters, as well as create stability in the shoulders. Today we had some lovely moments of pushing and reaching towards the bridle to the right and she was nice and light in my hands traveling both directions. Overall, I am blessed to have such a nice young mare who gives me so much try ☺

10/13/2021

10/13/2021

Today I worked with Fancy for our first groundwork session. Here's a little video montage of how it went. Fancy definitely holds onto some stress, so the goal of our session was to relax and use her brain to think about what I was asking. As you can see, in the beginning she was a bit over reactive and was ignoring some of my cues. She also had a tendency to crowd into my personal space bubble when she felt nervous and would freeze up when I asked her to back away and switch directions (not seen in part I happened to get on video). Her behavior was a big indicator to me of her internalizing stress. So, to make it less stressful, we broke down the maneuvers and practiced backing and then stepping her shoulder over away from me as individual pieces and when she started using the "thinking side" of her brain more we put it all back together (second part of video). It's not perfect, but you can really see her start thinking about what I'm asking and not just trying a reaction!

Fancy was a show horse before her time off. She knows many skills, however, we still have some things to work on!
1. Hoof and dental care
2. Conditioning to get back in shape
3. Learning to think rather than throw out responses, and, not to internalize stressful situations

While she may be very skilled with showmanship and under saddle work, we are going to take some time to reintroduce work in a way that is less stressful for her. This means stepping back and taking things slowly and teaching her to look towards me for guidance.

10/12/2021

Parent's of Rockin' W students, please check out this event!

If you are a parent who would like to know more about horse safety and want to be a part of your child's horse obsession, this event is for you! Please contact Pam or Erica at Rockin' W to reserve your spot at this parent-only event. A complimentary drink will be provided to each parent! There is a $5 donation to attend the event. Thank you to our assistant instructor, Julia, for creating the idea for this event!

10/10/2021

This study was done on humans, but I think the faster recovery rate associated with massage can be influential among horse owners as well. Both for the recovery of ourselves and our horses. Healing is an important aspect of the training process. Through healing and recovery horses and humans can continue to optimally move and progress in training.

Using a controlled massage system, researchers found that treatment led to greater repair and strength recovery in mice.

10/07/2021

Sometimes your time in the saddle will be different from your training plan! Today I planned to do some canter work with Rosie, but instead we only worked on staying relaxed and pushing from her hind, using her core, and reaching and lengthening into a relaxed frame at the walk and trot. Why? We had a helicopter circling around us our entire schooling session which turned into some great desensitization time! Instead of getting upset when a training session doesn't go as planned, look at is an opportunity. Today we had the opportunity to learn to stay focused on our work when a giant noisy whirly bird is over us!
Take advantage of days with distractions! Maybe it wasn't your original plan, but you're helping your horse by teaching them to tune into you when things are 👀weird👀. Don't force them into situations so uncomfortable they shut down, but don't totally avoid the scary weird things either. Let your horse know that you are looking out for them and they can trust you and tune into you for guidance, but also that they still need to focus on what you are asking as their leader 🐴

10/06/2021

I have a couple new lesson slots available if anyone is interested! 🐴