Inside Track Training, LLC

12/20/2024

12/18/2024

Anyone looking for a nice horse at a great price?

12/18/2024

It’s that time of year where I get a little burned out, and take a bit of a social media break…

There are a lot of voices out there who have much to say, and little to show, and it gets discouraging for those of us who are in the arena, quite literally, day in and day out.

I think the most common experience in the horse world is well-meaning owners letting the voice of others become more important than their horses’.

As we approach the new year, I encourage everyone to leave in 2024 anything that isn’t serving their horses.

Specifically, any methodology that just gets louder when horses plateau, rather than listening.

Pull the shoes that are keeping an unbalanced trim locked in.
Shoe the horse that isn’t thriving barefoot.

Try a curb on the horse who hates snaffles.
Try bitless on the horse who hates bits.

Be skeptical of those who get defensive and dismissive when someone suggests a horse’s behavior may be a result of pain.

Be skeptical of those who use boundaries and pressure as domination.

Be skeptical of those who are dismissive of horses becoming less and less emotionally regulated when we remove boundaries, or who don’t empower them with the superpower of navigating mental and emotional and physical pressure.

Take everyone’s advice and opinion with a grain of salt. That includes famous gurus, both old and new.

Don’t put anyone on a pedestal.

Don’t take anyone’s feedback to heart if your gut says otherwise. Whether it’s a vet, a farrier, or a trainer.

Second opinions are good, third and fourth opinions, however many it takes, until you find someone who sees what you’re seeing, as the person who knows your horse best, are even better.

Our horses have no choice but to trust the decisions we make for them, so we should make sure those decisions are based on listening to our gut and our horse, and not just the loudest voice out there.

Seems like everyone’s trying to sell us something, even if they aren’t asking for our money.

The truth for each horse sells itself.

It’s loud out there.

What drew many of us to horses in the first place was the ability to withdraw and get quiet, just us and the horse.

We need to keep learning and evolving, yes, but there’s always going to be the necessity of going to the horse, and letting all that noise fall away, so we can listen.

12/18/2024

Some of us grew up running wild on a barely broke pony, an old barrel racing mare, and then once they got a job started taking lesson to learn to jump and go to horse shows. The refinement came easy under the coaching of a trainer with many more years of horsemanship under her belt. The journey doesn’t have to be the same for everyone, but Denny is right here, the journey has to evolve many, many hours immersed in this amazing world of horses.

It’s so easy to talk about the lack of horsemanship stemming from the suburban sprawl that puts young riders miles away from actually spending hours dealing with horses . It is also easy to complain about how those same non-horsemen have poor riding skills, also because of the suburbia that didn’t allow them to grow up spending the necessary hours wandering around the countryside learning what it feels like to be sitting on a moving horse.

Those are realities, and they are not likely to change, and will probably intensify as population grows.

Complaining won’t make someone into a horseman/horsewoman, and it won’t make that person learn how to ride better. But neither will pretending that someone can be a good horse person or a good rider without spending LOTS of time both dealing with horses and riding horses, because that strategy isn’t working either.
It needs to be told like it is.

"It" being the unvarnished, unpopular truth that the horse magazines avoid, the horse associations avoid, the horse industry avoids, probably because there is so much money invested in hiding the truth.

And what is that truth?

It is that right now, about to be 2025, it is absolutely possible for someone to become a great horse person and a great rider, just as it was possible in 1955 or in 1855, but the realities haven’t changed one effin iota from back then. The reality is that great horsemen/horsewomen, great riders have spent minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades IMMERSED in dealing with horses and riding horses.

They didn’t wish it. They didn’t hope it. They didn’t dream it. They didn’t fantasize about it. They didn’t have a Black Stallion/Walt Disney mythological concept of horses. They LIVED it. They DID it. They roderoderode, and they took care of the ponies and horses they had riddenriddenridden, and suddenly---not suddenly at all---they were horse people and horse riders.

Meanwhile the wishers and hopers and dreamers who did NOT spend the care time and the riding time remained less adept. IT-IS-THAT-SIMPLE. And all the denial in the world won’t make it different. There are a hell of a lot of Egyptians out there. They live in DE NILE.

(It will be interesting to see if this post gets shared)

12/15/2024

Should sound familiar to many of my students!

To prevent losing engagement and impulsion in the canter after your transition, imagine asking for the transition again on the second and third stride.

Avoid pushing into canter and think about lifting your horse into canter whilst maintaining a good balance that allows and encourages them to keep the weight on their outside hind leg.

A common mistake is for people to drop their weight forwards and to the inside, particularly if swinging their outside leg back for the transition, this kill the quality and can throw the horses balance out causing them to pick up the wrong lead.

Picture by Sandy Rambinowitz for Dressage Today

12/12/2024

The difference between relaxation and centeredness -

The goal for many for their horses is calm, or relaxation at all times. That can sound like a good goal, and a kind one - but ultimately, unfair and really quite impossible.

If we factor in the world at large, we realize quickly that being calm requires environmental control - can we really be calm in the face of all emergencies? Can we be calm if our friends horse has bolted, if the barn is on fire, if there is some factors outside our control?

What we ask the horse, in order to be calm at all times, is really to ignore the environment, and to flatten a nervous system and body designed for survival into only one mode we find acceptable.

Relaxation often is lost when energy or external input is brought in, and relaxation offers us no avenue for higher energy movements. A very relaxed horse cannot have the power required for upper level movements - no athlete is supremely relaxed in their endeavors

They are very focused, energetic, and alert

BUT

They should not be anxious

That is the different between relaxed and centered

Centered does not require calm, but can be calm when appropriate. Centered is the horse’s ability to have an adaptable nervous system, molding itself to the necessary requirements of the moment and the environment.

A centered horse can find balance even in moments of high energy or adrenaline, and is able to calm down when appropriate.

It is not appropriate to be calm in a barn fire. We need adrenaline to manage our way to safety - but panic doesn’t help. Therefore we need energetic clarity.

And this has to be taught by a centered person.

It’s easy to teach a horse to “relax” by controlling the environment fiercely or teaching them to tune out. It just requires repetition.

But a centered horse requires the education of a centered person- one who is highly aware, disciplined, attentive, and constantly engaging in appropriate dialogue with the horse - not micro managing, but guiding.

The first is easy to sell - it sounds good, makes people feel good, and requires very little of a person with high reward societally.

The second is a harder sell because of the work load involved, the self discipline and improvement, and low societal reward.

But, you gain the trust of a horse through low and high energy situations both. And that is what a true horseman aspires to.

12/10/2024

Comparative neurobiology of horse and human.

Horses and humans are both mammals.
Our brains may not be the same size, but they are almost identical in their structure and function.

Why can our brains look so similar but our behaviours and sensitivity to the world look so different?

The area in the picture highlighted is the prefrontal cortex or the (PFC). Its job in humans, horses, dogs, dolphins, elephants, cats, mice, rats, all mammals, and even birds is to carry out "higher executive functions" such as:

🧠 problem solving
🧠 decision making
🧠 reasoning
🧠 risk assessment
🧠 forward planning
🧠 impulse control
🧠 intention

Obviously, these executive functions are more advanced in humans than in other species of mammals, but this part of the brain plays a pivotal role in higher levels of learning beyond primal behaviours and learning survival skills.

So why aren't we seeing these higher executive functioning skills and behaviours in horses as much as what we see them in dogs, dolphins, elephants and even birds?

Ultimately it comes down to safety!

The latest neuroscience research suggests that when the brain feels unsafe it causes the body to produce stress response hormones and these stress response hormones cause the PFC to go "offline".
This means that subcortical regions of the brain (deeper parts of the brain) such as the primal brain (AKA limbic system, survival brain, flight/fight brain) completely take over to increase the chances of survival.

Feeling unsafe causes the feeling of fear and it is fear that gets this party started.

So behaviours come from two areas:

1. The PFC, carrying out problem solving skills, reasoning, impulse control, forward planning etc. that may be interpreted as "obedience" and "partnership".

2. The primal brain, carrying out reactive survival behaviours. This brain does NOT carry out impulse control, forward planning, problem solving, etc. It just reacts to the world. This brain heavily relies on patterns and consistency. This brain will cause freeze/flight/fight behaviours such as shutting down, bolting, biting, rearing, bucking, kicking, barging, etc.

Which brain is the domesticated horse spending most of it's time in?
It's primal brain!

This is why we don't get to see their full intellectual and cognitive potential because most of the time, domesticated horses are perceiving their world in a fearful way to some degree.

We can help our horses with this!

Feeling fearful is the OPPOSITE to feeling calm.
If we want to help our horses access their PFC then we MUST do whatever it takes to help them feel calm.

☝️ ONLY when a brain feels calm can it slow down enough to develop TRUE confidence. Only when the brain feels confident will it access TRUE cognition (PFC).

☝️ We first need to understand that when we get "bad behaviour" from our horses, it's not intentional or naughty or rude. What you are seeing is either a horse that is just reacting to the fear they feel or they are carrying out their "coping mechanism" in response to their anticipation of feeling fear.

☝️ Try to remove expectations that your horse should "know better".
"Knowing better" implies that all behaviours are coming from the PFC and there should be some impulse control and reasoning. Unless your horse feels calm, they can't access the PFC to "know better".

THIS STARTS WITH YOU!!!

You need to be consciously aware if YOU feel calm first. If you feel calm, your horse will have a better chance at feeling calm. Expecting them to feel calm when you don't is unfair.

The best way to create calmness is to intentionally be SLOW!!!
SLOW EVERYTHING you do down.
SLOW your movement down.
SLOW your talking down.
SLOW your walking down.
SLOW your breathing down.
SLOW your horse down.
If you feel too slow, then you're going slow enough.

Calmness is slow, not fast.

This will help you and your horse to connect and feel safe together.
When the brain feels stressed, the stress response hormones cause the body to speed up.

Stress = speed

We can reverse engineer this process and create a calm mind through slow intentional movement and a relaxed posture.

The by-product of a calm brain is confidence and cognition (PFC access).

Happy brain training 🧠
Charlotte 😊

Photo: Credit: Adult horse (equine) brain, sagittal section. Michael Frank, Royal Veterinary College. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

12/09/2024

And so it begins! 😍😍😍
Thank you Cayla Stone of Mythos Equestrian LLC by CST for getting this handsome young man started! So excited for his future!

12/08/2024

Do you try too hard as a rider?

Common issue in lateral work is "over-aiding" which surprisingly often leads to the horse not doing what the rider is asking for.

The rider tenses up because they are about to do something their perceive as difficult, so their seat immediately stops moving as fluently. The horse stutters.

The rider asks for the lateral step with a big, heavy, lumpy leg aid because, well you know, this is going to be difficult. But their hand has turned to a block of wood because they don't want to speed up. The horse feels convicted in the aids and blocked, so he stutters.

The rider tries to drive the aid home by pushing into it harder. Their weight slips to the outside as the muscles they are pushing with contract. The horse steps under their weight even though its the wrong direction according to the leg aids because their priority is keeping the pair of you upright. The horse "ignores" the rider's aid.

The rider turns their heel and grips the spur into their horse's side. The horse tenses, wringing his tail but stoically does nothing because the aids aren't making any sense. He feels the rider's frustration but what can he do? He has to keep himself under their weight.

The rider tells the coach their horse is stupid/ stubborn/ lazy (delete as appropriate) The coach says you're asking too strongly and you need to sit towards the movement not against it, ie weight aids 101. The rider is sceptical because their (limited) experience and lack of body awareness doesn't match what the coach is saying.

The coach shrugs.
The horse shrugs.
The rider knows they are right.
The rider goes on FB to find another coach, one that's not so stupid.
A year later the rider realises there is more to this than they first thought.

PS. Quick 2 ways to know where the weight is, from the floor:

The higher shoulder of the rider is the side with the weight if the heel is down.
The "pretty leg" has the tighter hip so the weight is pulled that way.

Beautiful photo by Jon Stroud of Fairuza and me in the warm up at Paris 2024. You can see how light my aids are as my lower legs are barely brushing the hair. The movement is led by my seat.

12/07/2024

12/06/2024

🖤🩶

12/04/2024

Each time we pick up the rein or use our leg, we’re really showing the horse who we are: what degree of self control we have, whether we can stick to learning when it’s hard or quit, what amount of self discipline we have- our emotional state, how we approach not getting what we want, how we break things down, how we behave when we get scared or challenged, wether we can plan and think logically or just react.

It’s way more than just executing technique : it’s displaying a pattern that goes along with who and how we choose to be, and announcing it to the whole world.

Photo by Jasmine Cope

11/29/2024

In recent months dressage has faced increased scrutiny, both from within and from outside of the horse world, and the Fédération Equestre Internationale recently held a special meeting to kick off in-depth discussions about the challenges currently impacting the discipline. We asked three particip...