Genesis Equestrian Center

01/19/2024

Really😳

12/26/2023

So here’s a question for you jumping mavens---
I see lots of “old time” photos like this one of Brooke Hodgson, (Equestrians from "back in the day"
Laurie Weiner · ·

Brooke Hodgson & Advance Ticket
Equitation division Champion
1968 Ox Ridge Horse Show





which depict riders in harmonious balance, soft, elastic, functional. Then I get just about any modern horse magazine and I see many photos of riders who are out of balance, have restrictive hands, are hunched like Quasimodo, have lower legs swinging back toward the horse’s hips.
What happened in the intervening decades? How did it get from this lovely style to now?

11/21/2023

Remember this?

In 1983 Jane Clark’s Boing, ridden by Leslie Burr (now Howard), tied for the open jumper championship at the Devon Horse Show in Devon, Pa. Bob Frankenfield Photo



CLICK to catch up on sport horse news from this week: https://conta.cc/47Gn39d

11/20/2023

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

10/28/2023

10/28/2023

10/08/2023

Very good article.

Boundaries and Peace

When I get a really pushy horse, the first thing I do is turn them out into my herd. I don’t work with them while I let them settle in. They might come in anxious, fractious, shoving people, chewing lead ropes, knocking people around.

Within a pretty short time, they settle into the structure of the herd. You can see their posture change from tense to visibly relieved. It’s as if they were literally begging for structure and some clear guidance.

The next thing I do is teach them my body is consistent in its positioning. I can’t be moved, but I don’t react, over correct, get after, or any other unpredictable movements. I’m calm, centered, and they can trust that things will stay that way.

Pushy horses are not happy. They are extremely frustrated. They spend their days trying to manage conflicting messages: “it’s ok for me to move my person over when she isn’t mentally available or noticing my needs, but other times I get smacked or je**ed on. It’s ok to come up close for a treat, but other times it’s not ok to be in her space. I get in trouble when I step on her feet, but she doesn’t seem to notice or mind when she’s leading me that I bump into her. She comes out to pet me, gets me agitated, anxious and pushy, and then leaves me when she’s had enough of my behavior- just when I need guidance the most, she is gone.”

Pushy horses are a sign of inconsistent boundaries or people unable or unwilling to be mindful of their own behavior, own body positioning, and disciplined enough to create and set good habits THEMSELVES a first. A horse is begging for guidance in their lives - what they don’t love is micro managing or over correcting. You can eliminate probably half of all problems with pushy behavior by just becoming aware of where you stand with your horse, how you touch them, what your position and behavior brings out in them, and being aware 100% of the time with them.

It’s easier to teach people how to correct, snap, jerk, or other dominance based approaches to pushy behavior. They might get quick results. It’s much harder to teach people self awareness and self discipline - but if they are the ones who created the problem in the first place, they are the root cause of the problem, and the only real solution lies in controlling their own behavior.

Photo by Jasmine Cope

10/06/2023

One day this summer I came into the barn to find that one of the riders had a horse that had pulled its shoe half off, and he wanted to know how to get hold of a farrier to pull the twisted shoe. He literally did not know how to do it himself. Despite the fact that there was an entire shelf of farrier tools sitting in the barn aisle.

Come on. people, don’t be whimpering infants about basic horse care. Learn how to be horsemen and horsewomen, not just helpless little riders who need someone to hold your hands about what to do when something goes wrong. Big vet issues, sure, actual shoeing, yes, but not knowing how to perform the most basic tasks is simply bad horsemanship.

What is worse, though, is being so entitled that you think those kinds of jobs are too menial. If you think that, you have been raised wrong.

09/25/2023

😂

04/18/2023

03/18/2023

Self importance is the enemy of growth

When many think of self importance, they think of arrogance. But the reality is that most of us are the most important in our own worlds to some degree- we think about ourselves endlessly- what others think about us, whether they like us, whether we will become afraid, if our feelings are hurt in a lesson by hearing uncomfortable feedback - it really is all about us.

As long as it is about us, we will perpetually draw energy away from growth, and back to our own self protection.

Most of us don’t mean to be self absorbed, but it’s a normal part of being human. It takes considerable self awareness (not the same as being self absorbed), a sense of humor, and the understanding that we are no better or no worse than another.

In my experience, the minute you can catch yourself in a stupid train of thought and laugh about it, you’re home free. Being human is absurd, and it’s a shared experience by all.

But as long as we’re worried about ourslelves- our image, our feelings, our worries, our whatever, we aren’t there for our students, our horses, or anyone. We have a limited cup to draw from.

When we forget about ourselves, when we see the commonalities in all and how silly, short sighted and usually wrong our own feelings and thoughts are, we can let go- and draw from observation of the moment. There is considerable power available in any moment, if we can get still enough for even a fleeting period of time, to notice it.

03/04/2023

If anyone, anywhere tells you to pull the horses head down (or uses leverage and gadgets to do so) they have no knowledge of healthy horse biomechanics or of correct training.
The horse's nose must always lead, with the poll highest and the gullet open. The base of the ears mustn't be lower than the withers. The jaw must be mobile. If the horse cannot chew and swallow, the hindlegs cannot operate correctly. If the hindlegs cannot operate correctly, the horse will not be able to jump, or stay off the forehand, or stay sound.
"Don’t be obsessed with the head and neck, learn to feel what the hindquarters are doing." ~ Glenys Shandley

03/02/2023

Same goes for all reins and whip lashes.

02/26/2023

Wise words

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A HORSE WHISPERER. There never has been and never will be. The idea is an affront to the horse. You can talk and listen to horses all you want, and what you will learn, if you pay close attention, is that they live on open ground way beyond language and that language, no matter how you characterize it, is a poor trope for what horses understand about themselves and about humans. You need to practice only three things, patience, observation and humility, all of which were summed up in the life of an old man who died Tuesday (July 20, 1999) in California, a man named Bill Dorrance.

Dorrance was 93, and until only a few months before his death he still rode and he still roped. He was one of a handful of men, including his brother Tom, who in separate ways have helped redefine relations between the horse and the human. Bill Dorrance saw that subtlety was nearly always a more effective tool than force, but he realized that subtlety was a hard tool to exercise if you believe, as most people do, that you are superior to the horse. There was no dominance in the way Dorrance rode, or in what he taught, only partnership. To the exalted horsemanship of the vaquero -- the Spanish cowboy of 18th-century California -- he brought an exalted humanity, whose highest expression is faith in the willingness of the horse.

There is no codifying what Bill Dorrance knew. Some of it, like how to braid a rawhide lariat, is relatively easy to teach, and some of it, thanks to the individuality of horses and humans, cannot be taught at all, only learned. His legacy is exceedingly complex and, in a sense, self-annulling. It is an internal legacy. The more a horseman says he has learned from Dorrance the less likely he is to have learned anything at all.

That sounds oblique, but it reflects the fact that what you could learn from Dorrance was a manner of learning whose subject was nominally the horse but that extended itself in surprising directions to include dogs, cattle and people. If you learned it, you would know it was nothing to boast about.

There is no mysticism, no magic, in this, only the recognition of kinship with horses. Plenty of people have come across Bill Dorrance and borrowed an insight or two, and some have made a lot of money by popularizing what they seemed to think he knew. But what he knew will never be popular, nor did he ever make much money from it. You cannot sell modesty or undying curiosity. It is hard to put a price on accepting that everything you think you know about horses may change with the very next horse.

From an article by Verlyn Klinkenborg 'Death of a Legendary Horseman' - NY Times July 24, 1999 - http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/24/opinion/editorial-notebook-death-of-a-legendary-horseman.html

Image is of Bill on 'Alkali' at 'Rancho Tularcitos' back in 1968 and is care of Steven and Leslie Dorrance - http://www.billdorrance.com/about.htm