Dunboardin Stables

09/22/2023

Superb day for Stephanie Klebes and Crafty Dreamer today at NHHJA in Northampton! Congratulations Stephanie!!!

06/04/2023

Feature hurricane force winds a Saturday Show day is in the books! Great job Ladies! On to Sunday!!!

06/02/2023

Good to be back at Falls Creek!!! Wishing Linda and PR Corona Red (Carlos) and Stephanie Klebes and Crafty Dreamer (Spider) a fantastic show!!!

05/28/2023

Something new at Dunboardin!!! Fun day! Thank you Leigh!!! BTW she never missed with the rope!!! Maybe we will have some Hereford's in our future!

03/12/2023

Some fun today!

01/01/2023

Jack!

01/01/2023

Spider!

01/01/2023

Happy Birthday to our wonderful OTTB's !!! Mac, Jack and Spider! *Mac 31!

11/24/2022

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

From Arlo Guthrie's same-titled album, released by Reprise.

08/05/2022

Congratulations to Maggie Beauregard and Kings Proud Sunrise this past week at New England Morgan Horse Show! Superb job at a wonderful show!!!

07/28/2022

All ready for the Sport horse in hand class! Good Luck Maggie and Sunny!

05/22/2022

We would like to congratulate Maggie Beauregard on her Master's degree!! Superb! Also, Congratulations to Bethany Gillmeister on her graduation as a vet tech from HCC! ...and as the new owner of Jim Edd Hancock JS!!! Aka Hank!! Congrats Girls!!!

05/16/2022

The Practice (with horses) Dilemma

Riders may well need more practice in order to become skilled technicians than one horse a day can provide.

Practice can so easily turn into drilling the horse, and a drilled on horse gets worse, not better.

So what are some strategies that the one horse rider can use in order to get to be a better rider that does not involve subjecting that one horse to endless pressure?

1. Off horse fitness, agility, flexibility exercise. Can kill two birds with one stone when it also helps around the barn, lifting hay bales, water buckets, sweeping, mucking, anything to push the human body into becoming more athletic. Although maybe not a popular option, this is a big one.

2. Study. Many riders never crack a book about riding. They are unaware of how much education is there for the learning.

3. Watching---And by that it means watching the skilled rider riding, not sneaking a look at your phone every 11 seconds.

4. Beg, buy, borrow steal other horses to ride in addition to the one you have. Trade work for riding, whatever it takes.

5. “Other---.”

So there are some ideas.

05/09/2022

To correct your seat and posture…

Imagine your pelvis as an old-fashioned goldfish bowl. To maintain your posture while you ride, keep the water in the bowl level. If your pelvis is tipped forward, the water will pour out onto the horse’s withers. If your pelvis is tipped backward, you will pour the water out onto the haunches.—Janice Dulak

Dulak is a Pilates master instructor and the creator of Pilates for Dressage® and the Ridermanship Training Program.

Illustration by Sandy Rabinowitz

05/04/2022

Just about right!😂

04/01/2022

03/03/2022

Still another reason for a slow, calm walking warm up,

Klaus Balkenol said a MINIMUM of ten minutes of walking, and to use a watch if you are the impatient type, as ten will feel like 20-----

15 minutes is better still.

Don't have time for this PLUS work? Do this instead of work---

Hard to accept? Top trainers are not top trainers because they fail to understand how horses operate----

03/01/2022

Fantastic!!!

BREAKING NEWS
~Carl Hester will headline the 2022 Absorbine/NEDA Symposium~

The New England Dressage Association is thrilled to welcome back six-time Olympian Carl Hester!

The Absorbine/NEDA Symposium will take place October 15-16th at Mount Holyoke College Equestrian Center in South Hadley, MA. This event will be Hester’s only East Coast appearance in 2022.

More details including auditing information can be found on the NEDA website:

https://www.neda.org/general/custom.asp?page=2022Symposium

02/17/2022

More on the German phrase that says “riding is only learned by sweeping.”

I remember an example of this one night, about 40 years ago, when I was spending a month at Walter Christensen’s dressage training stable, Stal Tasdorf, in Tasdorf, Germany. (photo of Walter teaching)

Walter’s main barn had a cobblestone type of floor, hard to keep clean because of all the indentations, and in various corners were funny little Hansel and Gretel type brooms, straight handles with what looked like a bunch of twigs wired to one end.

Everyone had left, all the working students, all the riders, and here was the master, then coach of the Swedish Olympic dressage team, vigorously giving the aisle one last cleanup before turning out the lights.

In the great scheme of things, why would it matter one iota whether the aisle was immaculate? Early next morning, when all the horses were being fed, hay and straw would get spilled all around, and who was going to see that floor in the middle of the night?

But that’s not the point, is it? And for those who do see the point, they probably would have been at one end of the broom. And for those who can’t grasp why it mattered to Walter, they’d have left it as it was.

To what extent can pride in a way of doing things be taught? Because that’s what’s at play here, I think.

And pride in one detail spills over into pride about other details, until it creates a mindset, a way of being. Or not---And in that way, sweeping teaches riding, tenuous as the connection might seem.

12/02/2021

😁

This should clear things up!

10/18/2021

To maintain a correct upper body position in the corners, imagine you are balancing on an exercise ball. If you lean your torso into a turn, your seat bones will push the ball (horse) in the opposite direction (below left). To help the horse balance, keep your spine straight and use your shoulders to turn. Your seat bones will follow. Try it on a ball, it works!

Illustration by Sandy Rabinowitz

07/11/2021

Good Luck today Ladies!!!Maggie and Sunny, Stephanie and Spider and his debut show Juliette and Theo!

06/29/2021

It is with broken hearts that we announce the unexpected passing of Matthew Spencer Lewis o… Kate Robinson needs your support for Matt Lewis' Children's Fund