One of the most important pre requisites for doing liberty off the ridden horse is having a really responsive ridden horse that you trust. When youāre working off a ridden horse, youāre basically asking your horse to be your legs. They have to be able to change speeds and directions quickly, without warning as you never really know what your liberty horses are going to do. š¤£And they need to be comfortable with your liberty horse acting silly and running around (because trust us, it happens!). Itās a job that requires a lot of trust between horse and rider, but we find itās a great way to help your horse gain so much self-confidence and responsiveness! #horse #libertyhorse #libertyhorses #horsetraining #bridleless #bridlelessriding #neckrope
Not sure if itās a blessing or a curse, but nothing will ever beat bridleless and liberty for me. š¤£I had a lot of fun playing with this cool little mare while we were in Florida last week. Sheās going to make someone a really fun partner!#horses #bridleless #bridlelessriding #neckrope #neckroperiding #libertyhorse #libertyhorses
Liberty allows ALL horses to release tension and connect with their human partner better! ā¤ļø
Do you have a way to relax and release tension scheduled into your daily life?
Yesterday, Triscuit kept chasing Leo around the pasture. Triscuit can get a bit possessive over the mares, and with Leo being gone for a week and a half he thought he needed to remind him whoās boss. Leo is extremely submissive and was doing nothing to warrant Triscuitās antics. So when he tried to do that again at feed time I stopped what I was doing, went into the pasture and pushed Triscuit away from the team and forward. Once he was moving forward I asked him to connect and do liberty. After he settled I brought him back to herd and they all ate peacefully. In the moment I didnāt think much of it, but really itās an example of what liberty is to us. It gives us the ability to connect, communicate with, and be a leader for our horses. And itās so powerful because ultimately itās their choice. š#horse #libertyhorses #libertyhorsemanship #horsetraining #horseconnection
Asking our horses to lower and relax their head and neck is one of the first things we work on bridleless after basic speed and steering control! Itās a great way to encourage relaxation and rhythm in their gates and helps prepare for the next steps in body control & collection work. And as a plus, itās pretty simple! Itās all about āinside leg, inside reinā but in this case the inside rein is the inside section of your neck rope. As soon as our horse softens and lowers their head just a tad, we release and follow their neck down with our hand.Before you know it theyāre starting to stretch down and relax! #horse #libertyhorses #libertyhorsemanship #horsemanship #horsetraining #bridleless #bridlelessriding #neckrope #neckroperiding
Before we ask for frame, we always make sure our horses can ride on a loose rein relaxed. Even if weāre 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 itās 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 youāve seen us ride youāll probably notice that our warmup is almost always riding around on a loose rein, once the horses feel good with that, weāll move on to something else!#horses #libertyhorsemanship #libertyhorses #horsetraining #horsemanship #bridleless
Sometimes Floki acts like heās a full size horse, and sometimes he seems like an extra large dog. š¤£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 weāre pretty sure heās the best little mini. šā¤ļø#horses #horselove #libertyhorses #libertyhorsemanship #rescuehorse #minihorses #minihorse #minihorsesofinstagram
Stop the Hateā¦
Stop the Hate!!!
It doesnāt help anyone, only hurts us all ā¤ļøšā¤ļø
The key takeaway we were going for when we started filming was that when youāre riding your horse at āneutralā (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. šAnd 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 absolutelyā¦positivelyā¦crushed it!!!! Iām 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 itās inspired us to start doing some more mixing and matching! Weāve created a new challenge where we go out into the pasture and just pick to random horses to work together. Itās created some fun variety, and forced friendships. š¤£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! ā¤ļø
501.c.3 non-profit provides liberty horsemanship education to underprivileged youth & rescue horses.
