Sporthorse Farm Dressage

10/21/2022

Blogger Sara Bradley covered the New England Dressage Association’s Fall Symposium, featuring Carl Hester, on Oct. 15-16. What follows is her coverage of Day 2. If you missed it yesterday, you can read her Day 1 coverage here. The second day of th...

05/15/2022

The pirouette mystery,

Some hints if you like.

Here is a photo of my longtime good Buddy Raymeister showing us a nice example.

Many things needed to happen correctly before this was available.

First off,

Always consider the balance in and around any and every movement you ride.

Yours…and the horses.

Your balance needs to be softly centered over the horses inside hind leg which carries both of you in the pirouette.

The canter approach needs to be in a slight shoulder fore to that lead and turn with a canter that is active but relaxed. Yes that is hard.

The hind legs need to support the rider and the horse and maintain rhythm so your movements during these six to eight strides of turning need to compliment not contradict the turn.

Your connection should not change during the pirouette. Poll should be flexed to the inside, outside rein should allow this positioning, and soft quick half halts that the horse understands the answer to, may help.

The horse cannot balance on or be supported in any way by the reins.

Inside leg at girth helps to keep the position to inside but allows the turn outside leg asks for each step of the turn.

No big changes of aids or balance will benefit if things go wrong you must think it through and try again with a better set up.

Often the horse will have same mistake tendencies in walk turns as in canter turns so practice those and make sure they are secure before trying canter pirouettes.

There is so much these horses will do and try for us when we strive to be the best rider we can be.

01/20/2022

LETS TALK ABOUT ULCERS AND ALFALFA!!!!

Thought this was neat and worth sharing🤔

Alfalfa and horses with ulcers
Research from Texas A&M University shows that feeding alfalfa to horses with the potential to be high performers either prevents or is therapeutic in treating stomach ulcers.

Something in alfalfa hay tends to buffer acid production, said Dr. Pete Gibbs, Extension horse specialist. Feeding grain, confinement, exercise and overall environmental stress factors are thought to cause ulcers, he said. Studies have shown that horses will heal if provided less acidic diets.

In the research, 24 quarter horses from 12-16 months old were separated into two treatment groups. One group was fed Bermuda grass hay and the other fed alfalfa hay to meet the daily roughage needs. The yearlings received forced exercise during the study. The horses were examined internally with an endoscope at the beginning and end of two 28-day trials.

It's commonly thought that horses turned out on pastures are better off than those that are confined. However, if grass hay is the only hay they are fed, horses can still get gastric ulcers, he said.

In this study, ulcer scores increased when alfalfa was removed from the horses diets, and they were turned out on pasture. Under the ulcer-scoring system, 0 signified no ulcers, with severity increasing to level 4.

Further work is needed to look at horses with varying degrees of ulceration to better determine the full extent to which alfalfa or alfalfa-based products might help from a feeding management standpoint.

Based on what we know right now, for horses that are kept in confinement, eating feed and getting forced exercise, it makes sense to consider some alfalfa as part of their diet, he said.

Until further research is done, he recommends, horses weighing between 1,000-1,300 pounds should be fed about 1 pound of alfalfa after a grain meal.

Follow this link: http://agnews.tamu.edu/showstory.php?id=224

01/11/2022

Take the Halters OFF.

This has been said before, but it is so important that it needs being said again.

In regards to your horses, one of the most dangerous ( and deadly ) things that can happen is leaving the halter on your horse. This is because it is easy for the halter to get caught on something like a tree branch, T-Post, gate latch, getting a back foot caught in it, etc . When it does, the horse will panic and could very easily break it's neck trying to get loose. I understand that many of you will say that your horse has worn it's halter for years and never gotten hurt. You have been luck "so far". There are many horses that wore their halter for years until the time that they got it caught on something and broke their neck.

I also understand that many of you will say that you can't catch your horse without it wearing the halter. "Yes" you can. If you can get close enough to catch the halter you are close enough to catch the horse without it. Also, for those that say that you board and that it is a rule that every horse wears a halter, then I would be moving your horse. You should care as much about your horse's safety as you do your children's safety. It is depending on you to take care of it. So Take the Halters off

Last, NO using a "breakaway" halter isn't an excuse. They don't always break , so the horse still breaks it's neck, or if it does break, it teaches the horse that if it pulls back that it can break any halter.

You need to remember that your horse is depending on you to do your best to keep it safe, the same as you do for your children. Therefore, their is NO excuse to leave the halter on so, don't try to make one.

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!

11/08/2021

10/23/2021

Jean Bemelmans – Understanding your horse Posted on October 19, 2021 by thm admin “Whether the horse is an Andalusian or a Trakehner, I don’t think this is the big question. If you have five Trakehners, then you have to find the right system for each of those five Trakehners. It doesn’t matt...

05/23/2021

Kyra Kyrklund is not only very wise, she is very funny: "In front of the leg is a bit hard to explain. It’s a bit like God – everyone has heard of him, but no one has seen him. It is hard to explain the feeling of ‘in front of the leg’ but when it happens, it’s like magic. It is a bit like explaining how strawberry jam tastes – it is easier if you have eaten it before or even tasted a strawberry. It is the same with the good feelings you get when you are riding: think about that feeling, give it a name, then it will be easier to get it back..." enjoy the entire article https://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2020/12/kyra-kyrklund-the-young-horse-the-first-step/

05/20/2021

Andrew McLean tells us:
“The horse must travel in-hand and under saddle free of any constant rein or leg pressure, otherwise he will switch off to them. At first, the concept of self-carriage seems simple enough. It means that the horse self-maintains his own rhythm, tempo, stride length, straightness, outline and rein and leg contact and engagement. It therefore implies that he mustn’t occasionally or constantly quicken, slow, drift raise or lower his head, lengthen or shorten his neck, lean or drop the bit, squirm away from the rider’s leg contact or fall onto the forehand. For the horse to truly carry himself, it is nor just about his outline as most riders imagine. And neither is it about the rider constantly maintaining the horse in all the qualities required – it’s about the horse being trained to maintain them himself.” Read more: https://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2014/12/principles-of-horsemanship-part-7-self-carriage/