Marlaw farms

07/23/2024

The countdown is on to your favorite Labor Day tradition!

07/02/2024

Looking for a teacher who's too cool for school? 😜 Look no further than Marco! He's got the skills (always jumps great and an auto-change) the style (he’s flashy and handsome) with a sense of humor (he's a great teacher and can tolerate just about anything ) Perfect for kids wanting to show local or rated, Marco's your guy! 😎 IN barn lease only, contact Michelle Hawley 757-676-8656

07/01/2024

Lucy Cunningham demonstrated great skill in the historic Warrenton pony show, achieving second place in her first VHSA Children's Pony Medal Class with Woodlands Summer Rain. Additionally, she earned impressive ribbons in the Opportunity Pony Division and two second-place finishes in the Children's Medium Ponies over fences. Lucy has been diligently working towards competing in the Children's Ponies, and her efforts have paid off. Congratulations to Hazel Nash and her pony, Guardian, on their reserve finish in the Maiden Equitation and their notable ribbons in the Limit Division, I am looking forward to watching these young ladies grow and develop with their ponies!

06/07/2024

BY MARTHA RUSSELL I’m new to this pony game. Well, maybe not new. My 13-year-old daughter is on her 5th (?) pony. She’s a great rider (that’s coming from Mom, so take it with a grain of salt) and she’s now competing on her Large pony after qualifying her Small for Pony Finals and then […]

01/25/2023

“Unless you have several horses to ride and jump often, don’t underestimate the value of practice over poles on the ground. You can incorporated them daily with your flatwork with little or no impact on your horse in comparison to jumping. If you have access to cavaletti practice over them will give you a little more feel of a jump and emphasize a distance mistake more clearly than a pole. Even a low will be sufficient, and again be minimal stress on the horse compared to jumping higher fences.
Imagine if you practiced 25 poles daily, 4 days a week. That’s 400 times in a month you have practiced seeing and executing a distance in addition to the amount of jumps you may have jumped. Now that’s progress!”

To view exercises to improve your eye on Equestriancoach.com go to 👇
Exercises to Develop a Better Eye: Part 1-A http://www.equestriancoach.com/content/exercises-develop-better-eye-part-1
(Look for Part 1-B and 2 under the part 1 video)

Eye Exercise Tips 👇
http://www.equestriancoach.com/content/eye-exercise-tips

Winning Eye Exercises by John French 👇
http://www.equestriancoach.com/content/winning-eye-exercises

Cavaletti Safety Tips 👇
http://www.equestriancoach.com/content/cavalletti-safety-tip

01/06/2023

I’m kicking off the first blog post of 2023 with a different kind of senior session than what I’m used to! Ashton’s senior portraits were done at the pool and I love how they turned out! It was a nice change up from the barn. Check out the blog to see my favorites: https://catherinemichele.com/senior-swimming-pictures-in-virginia/

11/16/2022

***Important read!!! Sharing from a friend

Things your riding instructor wants you to know:
1. This sport is hard. You don't get to bypass the hard…..every good rider has gone through it. You make progress, then you don't, and then you make progress again. Your riding instructor can coach you through it, but they cannot make it easy.
2. You're going to ride horses you don't want to ride. If you're teachable, you will learn from every horse you ride. Each horse in the barn can teach you if you let them. IF YOU LET THEM. Which leads me to…
3. You MUST be teachable to succeed in this sport. You must be teachable to succeed at anything, but that is another conversation. Being teachable often means going back to basics time and time and time again. If you find basics boring, then your not looking at them as an opportunity to learn. Which brings me to…..
4. This sport is a COMMITMENT. Read that, then read it again. Every sport is a commitment, but in this sport your teammate weighs 1200 lbs and speaks a different language. Good riders don't get good by riding every once in awhile….they improve because they make riding a priority and give themsevles opportunity to practice.
5. EVERY RIDE IS AN OPPORTUNITY. Even the walk ones. Even the hard ones. Every. Single. Ride. Remember when you just wished someone would lead you around on a horse? Find the happiness in just being able to RIDE. If you make every ride about what your AREN'T doing, you take the fun out of the experience for yourself, your horse, and your instructor. Just enjoy the process. Which brings me to...
6. You'll learn more about horses from the ground than you ever will while riding. That's why ground lessons are important, too. If you're skipping ground lessons (or the part of your lesson that takes place on the ground), you're missing out on the most important parts of the lesson. You spend far more time on the ground d with horses than you do in the saddle.
7. Ask questions and communicate. If you're wondering why your coach is having you ride a particular horse or do an exercise, ask them. Then listen to their answer and refer to #3 above.
8. We are human beings. We make decisions (some of them life and death ones) every day. We balance learning for students with workloads for horses and carry the bulk of this business on our shoulders. A little courtesy goes a long way.
Of all the sports your child will try through their school years, riding is one of 3 that they may continue regularly as adults (golf and skiing are the others). People who coach riding spend the better part of their free time and much of their disposable income trying to improve their own riding and caring for the horses who help teach your child. They love this sport and teaching others…..but they all have their limits. Not all good riders are good coaches, but all good coaches will tell you that the process to get good is not an easy one.

02/19/2022

Bernie Traurig, Julie Winkel, Geoff Teall, Stacia Madden, Karen Healey, and Jim Wofford share their thoughts on the common habit of posting the canter.

01/26/2022

Though the undersaddle is only one class, it can be a big contributor to your overall results. Hear what the judges have to say about how to perform your best in the undersaddle.

11/20/2021

Best advice out there.😪

Originally written by Carrie Terroux-Barrett in 2019. It never seems to change.😪

So you think it's safe to rehome your old horse? Nearly every emaciated senior we get eventually has a previous owner contact us just shocked at how their horse ended up. They gave their senior away to a loving home with kids. Now a year or two later it's fighting for it's life from neglect and starvation. Truth is, the safest place for your old horse is with you. Period. Can't keep it for whatever reason? PUT IT DOWN. Save it a slow miserable death with strangers. And yes, the slow starvation of an old horse is painful and cruel. This isn't your great aunt in a nursing home with medical care and medication, this is a horse who's eventually going to start breaking down it's own organs just to stay alive. It's not pretty, and it's not natural. In the wild it would be killed by predators or a storm long before it's heart stopped. It never fails, every day someone sends me a listing for an old horse with "lots of life left". You know how many seniors I find great forever homes for? Not very many. Everyone wants a horse under 20. And the ones willing to take a senior are often shocked at the cost to maintain a horse over 25. All I see when I look at those listings is a walking skeletonat at a sale barn or a sheriff calling me about an emaciated old horse someone doesn't want in the next 12 to 24 months. Stop kidding yourselves that someone is going up care for your old horse. 9 times out of 10 they won't. Let it die fat, happy, safe, and with YOU. Bernadette was a free kid's horse, given away. Turned out well right? Moses was at a gymkhana last summer doing leadline, his owner a self professed trainer and rescuer. Again story book ending. Lily, a champion endurance horse given to a family for a special needs boy... came to us 2 years later a bcs of 1 and was said to be blind and crazy (she was neither). I can go on... twenty stories come to mind. Even an old horse we offered to take, who's owner sent it instead to a kid's camp in the mountains... we didn't get that one in time she died the day we picked her up. Owner was shocked. How could this happen? Well it happened because you gave away your old horse. So stop it. Right now. Can't afford to put it down? Call me. We will help. But for the sake of your horse, don't give your old horses away!

11/19/2021

So true at my house !!

From a lesson mom… 💗 Inspired by a lesson a few weeks ago.

10/17/2021

You don't have to ride your horse. It's ok if you don't ride your horse. It is not a requirement of horse ownership that you RIDE your horse.

I often hear people talk -
"(name) NEVER rides his/her horse! I don't know why (name) bothers having a horse, why does (name) spend all that money on board, and farrier, and veterinarian, and vaccinations and NEVER ride their horse? What a waste of money!"

First of all, it's none of their business what (name) does with his/her horse and his/her money. None.

Secondly, so what? Who care's?? If the horse is happy and well taken care of, then it's all good. I promise you that the horse is not standing in it's pen/pasture/stall saying to itself "Oh I wish (name) would come ride me!". or "Oh goody, here comes (name) to take me for a gallop around the barrels". Horses don't function like that. Horses look for and require food, water, shelter and companionship. Being ridden is not on their list of daily requirements for survival.

To be honest, I have a lot of respect for people who don't ride their horses, but are still willing to spend the necessary money, time and effort it takes to be a conscientious horse owner.

Maybe (name) has good reason not to ride, perhaps they have physical limitations, or too many demands on their time, or perhaps they just don't want to ride. Perhaps they struggle with their confidence and prefer groundwork, perhaps they don't like to ride or work with their horse when no one else is around. Perhaps they really just like to own a horse and derive as much enjoyment just being a horse owner, providing a good life for a horse they love and want to support, for as long as they can.

Perhaps we should not judge what people do with their horses, (or don't do), as long as those horses are well taken care of.

So next time someone says to you that they own a horse, but they don't ride, don't give them that stare of disbelief, don't put them down or make snide remarks. Instead, praise them for being a dedicated horse owner, for being willing to do what is necessary for a horse to have a good life, for being a good person, regardless of what they do, or don't do, with their horse.

Horses need good people, not all good horse people ride.

05/14/2021

Stop by the hospitality tent this weekend !!