Before we ask for frame, we always make sure our horses can ride on a loose rein relaxed. Even if we’re not riding bridleless, the foundation of all our training is knowing our horses can walk, trot, and canter relaxed on a loose rein. We find it’s so important and helpful when you start asking for more advanced things. Having the ability to have solid speed control just off your seat is so huge for both horse and rider. If you’ve seen us ride you’ll probably notice that our warmup is almost always riding around on a loose rein, once the horses feel good with that, we’ll move on to something else!#horses #libertyhorsemanship #libertyhorses #horsetraining #horsemanship #bridleless
Sometimes Floki acts like he’s a full size horse, and sometimes he seems like an extra large dog. 🤣This little guy is the biggest character and just LOVES coming out to work. He always tries to sneak out of the gate and tag along when we get other horses out. We may be biased, but we’re pretty sure he’s the best little mini. 😜❤️#horses #horselove #libertyhorses #libertyhorsemanship #rescuehorse #minihorses #minihorse #minihorsesofinstagram
Stop the Hate…
Stop the Hate!!!
It doesn’t help anyone, only hurts us all ❤️🙏❤️
The key takeaway we were going for when we started filming was that when you’re riding your horse at “neutral” (meaning not asking for something specific or making a correction, we recommend you keep your hand low and still, making sure there is no contact on the neck rope. Of course when making a correction you may need to lift the neck rope higher up the neck or use two hands. But Patrick got a little too invested when filming so this is what you get. We think it gets the point across. 😜And that it applies to your hands when riding in a halter and bridle too!
We just wrapped up an incredible 10 days in California with Square Peg! It was an amazing experience with so many highlights. We will be posting about our week in the next few days in more detail. Yet, we wanted to give one family a BIG shoutout for their accomplishments in just two days with us. A Mother, Son, and Daughter trio came to the clinic with goals of doing bridleless jumping. They all compete in 3 day eventing with their horses, but wanted to try it bridleless for the first time. It was the first time riding bridleless period for the mother and son, and the daughter had ridden bridleless a few times but had trouble steering. But after a few tips, all three of them absolutely…positively…crushed it!!!! I’m so thankful that they trusted us with this experience, because it turned out to be one special weekend for us all.
We recently moved the girls and boys team into one big pasture and it’s inspired us to start doing some more mixing and matching! We’ve created a new challenge where we go out into the pasture and just pick to random horses to work together. It’s created some fun variety, and forced friendships. 🤣Today we were working Leo and Tess + Nostalgia and Floki in two separate teams. Things were going well so we decided to put all four together. It was a fun challenge and the horses meshed together quickly! ❤️
Training Tip Tuesday:
Let go of your horses face…
PLEASE 🙏
Friday’s Thought of the Week:
Life is Hard… and that’s OKAY ❤️🙏
I was playing around with Leo yesterday and he gave this great example of our cues when asking for a large circle vs small circle!
We start with a large circle, and then spiral down to a smaller one. Can you tell how I’m asking for that change in size? 🤔
Our footwork and body language is something we talk about a lot at clinics, hopefully this helps show why it’s so important to your horse. 😊
Friday’s Thought of the Week:
Friday’s Thought of the Week: Traditional vs Relationship based training; where do we stand?
It’s been a little over a month since I’ve been able to get the boys out and work with them and I truly didn’t realize how much I missed them. Leo was the first one out and I just couldn’t help but show him some love…until I realized Avery was in the arena laughing at me. 🤣❤️
