Nicole Chastain Training Stables

02/09/2025

Am on the floor…

02/02/2025

Anyone help these dogs ❤️

01/28/2025

Great message, great company, amazing owner ❤️

Whether it’s your trainer or your barn bestie, send this to her or tag her in the comments to start her week off with something kind & motivating 🐴🖤

01/24/2025

This concept is third hand, in the sense that Jeffie Smith Wesson told it to me as something explained to her by Mr. H L M Van Schaik (photo)

So I may get Van Schaik’s message slightly garbled in translation, but the essence is that when someone goes to a riding teacher to get a lesson, almost invariably the teacher teaches the student where she is right now in her riding, rather than teaching her what she needs to be taught.

His point was that ideally and in theory the explanation of riding should begin at the beginning, and progress a-b-c-d-e-f-g and so on, but if a riding teacher actually took her students back to square one and filled in the holes in their basics, most students wouldn’t come back for many lessons. Too boring. Too basic. Too demeaning. Too lots of reasons.

And I do get that. I was thinking of a clinic, for example. Some clinician has been imported to teach riders she’s never seen, and into the ring comes a rider with an entire array of incorrect basics, wrong tack, wrong posture, wrong use of hands, wrong ideas, wrong attitude. And, yes, this DOES happen in real life.

So, does the clinician treat this rider like a total beginner and have her do nothing but walk while she attempts to explain where to begin? Nope. The rider would be angry because “she didn’t get her money’s worth” from the clinic.

So teachers like clinicians and those who have the once or twice a month haul in students are likely to mend and patch rather than to break down and start at the beginning and rebuild.

But the REGULAR instructor has a better chance of going step by step, if the student will allow it.

But that word “allow” is key, and reminds me of something said by Jack Le Goff, who, like Van Schaik, had been trained in the European military tradition. Jack said, “Americans don’t want you to teach them how to ride. They want you to teach them how to compete.’

01/16/2025

So true…

12/10/2024

12/07/2024

Thanks Rebecca L Algar for posting. Many don’t know this about our Donk friends. They are fine in Southern California for the most part (not in the mountains) but they really are stoic, small and tall.

Donkeys are not horses, and they do not have the water shedding hair function that horses do.

Remember, they are adapted to desert life.

Because of this, they need a shelter, etc to stay dry, or they run a very high risk of developing pneumonia.

Trees and shrubs are really not an adequate shelter for these creatures like they might be for horses.

You need to know, a donkey is a very stoic creature. Often you won't see them shivering, even though they are down right miserable.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2017-11-donkeys-winter-horses.amp

https://forum.chronofhorse.com/t/new-vet-study-donkeys-need-more-protection-from-winter-than-horses/439901

11/28/2024

Happy Thanksgiving!

09/08/2024

This is what happens to good girls(or boys) who tote kids around, keeping them safe endlessly caring for them. At 18 years old cast aside sent to auctions to be sold because kids lost interest. It’s heartbreaking. If anyone knows how to give this girl a soft landing she can be rescued through “auction horse rescue”. Message or call auction horse rescue and you can help save her or foster or adopt. Sounds like she would be wonderful for Littles.

08/30/2024

School horses are PRECIOUS SOULS!

A small stab in the heart is what you feel when you put up the day's riding list and you see riders sinking heavily in their shoulders when reading which horse they are assigned for the lesson. A small stab in the heart for that horse that for an hour will carry around a rider who has already decided that he does not like his horse. A small stab in the heart for the horse that did not choose the rider himself but still does his best, lesson after lesson.

Riding is a privilege and something you have chosen to do. If you chose to ride at a riding school, your instructor assumes that you actually want to learn how to ride. The instructor's highest wish is that you get good at it.

Often there is a plan and a thought as to why you are assigned to that exact horse. Before you mount up next time, ask yourself "what can this horse teach me today?" All horses have something to give, a feeling or a new tool in the box.

The art is actually in being able to get a lazy horse to move forward, to get an uncertain horse to gain confidence, a naughty horse to focus or a tense horse to be released. It takes work. If you think a horse is boring, it's more likely that you don't ride the horse as well as you think! It's not easy to be confronted with your own shortcomings, but it is in that very situation that you get the chance to truly grow as a rider.

The excuse that "it's not my kind of horse" is actually a really bad excuse. A good rider can ride any kind of horse. A good rider has trained many hours on different types of horses to become a good rider. A good rider can find and manage the gold nuggets in every horse.

If we absolutely want to ride, it is our duty to strive to do it as best as possible, even if it's only for fun. We owe it to every horse that carries us upon it's back.

Copied and shared with love for all of our horses, ponies and riders 🐎❤🐎