Hidden Creek Equestrian Center, LLC

12/31/2025

Walk-Only Lessons: Making Them Valuable & Not Boring When Footing Won't Allow More

Okay instructors - we've all been there. Footing is frozen, muddy, slippery, or just plain unsafe for anything faster than a walk. You've got students scheduled. Canceling means lost income (for you AND disappointing students) but the thought of teaching yet ANOTHER walk only lesson has you wondering what on earth you're going to do for 45 minutes. Walk-only lessons can be INCREDIBLY valuable... if you know what to focus on.

STOP THINKING OF WALK AS "LESS THAN"
Walk is not the consolation prize when you can't trot. Walk is where so much learning happens:
1. Proper position without speed masking issues
2. Independent aids (you can't fake it at walk)
3. Precise steering and accuracy
4. Understanding timing and feel
5. Building strength without momentum helping
6. Lateral work and advanced movements
Some of the best riders in the world spend HOURS working at walk. There's a reason for that.

WHAT TO WORK ON IN WALK-ONLY LESSONS: (Don't forget to screenshot or save this post!)
1. Understanding the Walk Itself
- Learn to FEEL the footfalls (four-beat gait!)
- Collected walk to extended/working walk
- Counting strides between ground poles and then lengthening and shortening stride (if regular walk is 6, try to do it in 5)
- Walk-halt-walk transitions (square and balanced)
- Perfect halts. Feel if the horse is straight and square when they halt. Huge for precision!

2. Steering and Accuracy
Set up patterns that require precision:
- Steering between cones (space awareness is HUGE!)
- Box made with poles for turning practice
- Figure-8s through cones
- Practicing a "perfect" circle (not an oval!)
- Straight lines (harder than it sounds!)
- Finding straightness out of corners/finishing turns properly

3. Lateral Work (But Make It FUN!)
Connect it to whatever discipline they love and aspire to perfect. Dressage rider? Western rider? Jumper? ALL need lateral work! Walk is THE BEST gait for teaching lateral movements:
- Leg yields
- Turn on the forehand
- Turn on the haunches
- Shoulder-in
- Haunches-in (advanced)
- Gently lifting the shoulders

4. Pole and Pattern Work:
- Walking over pole patterns
- Counting strides through poles
- Ground poles with different spacing

5. Position and Balance Work:
- Dropping and picking up stirrups (coordination!)
- Stirrupless work (builds deeper seat)
- Ba****ck lessons to focus on seat
- Two-point at walk (builds strength!)
- Posting at the walk in slow motion (super controlled!)
- Practicing different seats: neutral spine, full seat, driving seat, half seat, light seat

6. Connection and Rein Work:
- Teaching connection through the walk
- Different rein usages: direct, indirect, leading, pulley
- Understanding how each rein usage moves the horse's body differently
- Bending exercises
- Halting WITHOUT rein usage (seat and core!)
- Soft, following hands

7. Dressage Test Practice
Walking through dressage tests is AMAZING for:
- Practicing corners
- Preparing for transitions
- Counting strides to know when you want the transition
- Accuracy and spatial awareness
- Building competition confidence

8. Games and Brain Work
Keep younger riders engaged:
- Simon Says (listening skills!)
- Around the world (coordination)
- Eyes closed work (body awareness - supervised while lead!)

STRUCTURE A WALK-ONLY LESSON:
10 minutes: Position work, dropping/picking up stirrups, different seat practice
15 minutes: Accuracy patterns - circles, serpentines, steering between cones, pole work
10 minutes: Lateral work (go slow, celebrate every good step, connect to their goals!)
10 minutes: Trail obstacles, games, or dressage test practice
Keeps them mentally engaged even without speed.

THE MAGIC OF MAKING IT RELEVANT:
When students see why walk work matters to their goals, they buy in. Whatever discipline your student rides, connect the walk work to it:
- Jumper? "Great turns and balance at walk = smoother courses at speed"
- Western rider? "Lateral work and soft hands = better patterns and trail work"
- Dressage rider? "Walk is worth the same points as canter - it MATTERS"

SET EXPECTATIONS UPFRONT:
"Hey everyone, footing is limiting us to walk today. We're going to work on precision, position, and movements that will make you SO much better when we add speed back. You'll be surprised how challenging this is!" Managing expectations prevents disappointment.

THE HIDDEN BENEFITS:
Sometimes slow work creates the biggest breakthroughs. Walk-only lessons actually IMPROVE faster work later because:
- Students develop better feel without speed
- Position issues get corrected before they're reinforced at speed
- Horses stay sound (not slipping or straining in bad footing)
- Riders learn that quality matters more than speed
- Connection and communication improve

Will some students be disappointed? Maybe. Especially younger riders who just want to go FAST but part of our job is teaching them that riding is more than speed. It's precision. Partnership. Feel. Control. The students who embrace walk work? Those are the ones who become truly skilled.

Bad footing doesn't mean bad lessons. It means creative lessons that focus on fundamentals students often skip over. Walk-only lessons can be some of the most valuable riding your students do all year - IF you make them purposeful, varied, and FUN. Great riding happens at every gait... including walk.

From Horse Riding Lesson Plans

12/26/2025

Season's Greetings to you all

12/22/2025

When you are the King Kitty of the Barn, and you receive your very own beautifully presented Christmas present, you undergo a seasonal name change.

From Smudge to Smug, of course!

Many thanks to the kind person who made this happen for our much loved Smudge ❤️

12/11/2025

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*** Why we must stop looking for the perfect horse ***

From an orthopaedic point of view, no horse is perfect. We must stop thinking that if we look hard enough, we’ll find the perfect horse. He/she doesn’t exist. All that happens is that we miss out on the “not so perfect” horse that actually would have been the perfect horse.

If we look hard enough, especially with our X-ray machines, we can find something wrong with every single horse. We will find some kind of change in a joint of most horses over the age of six or seven. Before anyone starts, that’s not because they have been started too young. I spend some of my spare time looking at the radiographs provided publicly for auctions, and I can always find something wrong. These are often unbacked 3 year olds.

I have posted before that X-ray changes often don’t correlate with pain, or even future pain/lameness.

In my opinion, X-rays should be used to plan what help the horse *may* require in the future, and not to write a perfectly sound horse off. And for the record, I’d never medicate the joint of a sound horse, based on radiographic changes alone.

I often hear people say that they’ve had 5 horses fail a vetting, and that the “perfect” horse must be out there. Actually, you’ve probably just missed that perfect horse. Obviously a horse that is lame at PPE (the vetting) is an absolute no. But a horse with some hock arthritis, or some close DSPs (“kissing spines”) that is currently out competing and has an uninterrupted competition record, may well have been your perfect horse.

I bought Johnnie as a 9 year old with significant hock arthritis. I took a chance, as his X-rays were very bad. He went on to be the most exceptional Event horse I have ever sat on, going from Novice to Advanced in two seasons, and then subsequently popping around 4*s like they were 90cm. His back X-rays were just as bad. He was the perfect horse.

X-rays are useful, but we must be incredibly careful with their interpretation. We must also be incredibly cautious when deciding if a horse’s behaviour is due to that pathology found on the X-ray, or whether it is just a sharp, fit horse. I am a vet, so will always question if a certain behaviour is due to pain, but I am also a horsewoman, so I don’t agree that every buck, rear, spook and nap is due to pain.

Photo of the not-so-perfect, yet absolutely perfect, Johnnie.

12/05/2025

I prefer the word 'fundamentals' over 'basics', purely because it has more syllables 😆

But, whichever word you choose to use, fundamentals really are the essential foundation upon which everything else can then be built.

12/05/2025

THIS..... (and we stopped taking horses for training a few years ago)

Why I No Longer Take Horses For Training?

When my career began twenty years ago, everything was different. I enjoyed riding horses and soon found a way I could get paid to do it. Fast forward a bit and I was working a steady job to pay the bills as I was building my business, and in the meantime was learning a lot, about horses certainly, but as much about people.

Horses are the easy part, people are not. Quite frankly, people are hard to please and at the same time are often unreasonable. I have met some great people because of horses, many were clients, but people are still the hardest part.

Here is a situation that played out enough that I have it memorized by word.

Client-I have a horse I need started.

Me-how old is it?

C-5 or 6, I really wanted it to mature before it. was started and now I dont have the time.

Me-what will be changing in your schedule so that you can keep riding the horse when it comes home?

C-oh I will find the time. I just can't afford to get hurt right now.

M-I can't either

Me- here is what I charge...per month, and I require 90 days

C-oh I can't afford that! What can I get for 30 days?

Me-........

C-and I want to be there everyday so that I can watch you and learn what you do. Can you work it everyday on my schedule?

If life was only this simple. The truth is that training horses is a very tough business. I have recently had numerous aspiring trainers reach out to me, which is great. But everyone needs to realize that that the industry needs to fix some things. If we dont do some things soon, I fear no one will be training horses in a decade, especially starting colts. And that is where I want to focus on.

We have too many people that have trained one or two and think they know everything and want to throw stones at everyone else that might do things differently. Then, what realistically needs to be charged to make the finances work is much more than most will pay. So why would a young person want to start something that takes considerable time to learn, doesn't pay much, and has a high risk of a short career?

So here is what I believe can be done. Take it or leave it.

Be reasonable, despite what you may think, ALL young, uneducated horses can have their moments. I know in the YouTube, TikTok age that doesnt happen, but in the real world it does.

Don't be cheap. It isn't the trainers responsibility to make horses affordable for you.

Understand that the process of training a horse is a VERY time consuming, thought out process filled with immense intentionality in everything and that doesn't end when you pick them up from the trainers.

And finally and most importantly, understand that horses are not programmable. Just because a trainer spends tons of time teaching a horse to do all the things, but you do everything differently they they did. You will get a different result. That wasnt and isn't the trainers fault. Ask the same way they did or expect something different.

I have just scratched the surface of the topic. Much more could, and maybe should be talked about. And to be fair the horror stories can be told from both the client and trainers perspective by many of you. So lets see if we can communicate better with each other and do our best to look at life from potentially others perspectives, not just our own, just like when we are working with our horses.

Luke Reinbold Horsemanship

11/26/2025

This is SO true! Leave your urgency, your frustration and your impatience in the parking lot. I see more sessions between horse and rider (potentially) ruined by the rider showing up without having their feelings and emotions under control, than by any other single factor.

Credit to Tamarack Hill Farm -

'THE ULTIMATE CULPRIT---The state of being that leads to destroying more horse training sessions than everything else combined?

A simple word that describes an intricate and complex web of emotions----“FRUSTRATION.”
Here’s a dictionary definition---"the feeling of being annoyed or less confident because you cannot achieve what you want, or something that makes you feel like this:”

Riding well is hard. Training a horse well is hard. Put the two together and it’s easy to create that perfect storm of physical, mental and emotional feelings of “being annoyed or less confident because you cannot achieve what you want.”

And we all know where that leads. Which also means that the horse is MORE nervous for the next encounter, so it becomes a huge snowball of negativity.

Maybe START every training session by being aware of the destructive power of frustration? I do not pretend to have any magic answer, but if anyone here has constructive advice, I know we’d love to hear it.'

Photo by Sue, preparing to bridle my good horse after doing a little groundwork, and after clearing my mind of the inevitable garbage of the day.

10/31/2025

😃

10/25/2025

😉

10/18/2025

Yes, it is 'sickness season'. If you, your rider, or anyone in your household is sick on your scheduled lesson day, please advise us as soon as possible and we will reschedule your lesson.

10/12/2025

Exactly this. I have been telling people for years that the welfare and safety of the rider comes first, the welfare and safety of the horse comes next.

Also, that sometimes its a 'No'. I haven't won any popularity contests saying 'No', but their safety and my peace are more important.

Safety before progress, because safety IS progress.

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The art of accepting “no”

My job as a teacher is to ensure the rider’s safety as a number one goal. The horse’s wellbeing is another very strong goal. And so when I work with people, these in my mind will always come above the rider’s fun, immediate wants, and sometimes even feelings.

It is never my intent to hurt anyone’s feelings or to make anyone feel bad. But an unfortunate side effect of keeping the rider and horse both safe and well is that feelings can and do come up.

In today’s world especially of immediate gratification, quick loss of interest and flipping between programs, many people can become disheartened or hurt when their desires or goals are shot down, because we lack so greatly a big picture goal. We don’t usually see training start to finish, and I rarely meet people who have been studying the same program and progressing for any real length of time: people bounce around enough that it is normal.

Dealing with plateaus, lack of progress or regression, and shut down of immediate desires becomes very hard to deal with.

In no way do I think riders should deal with teachers who never let them progress, or only tell them no - but in order to become a decent rider, a student has to develop the skill of hearing and accepting some degree of “no.” A teacher with a good education and strong principles will preserve the rider even in spite of themsleves.

I think it’s always great to ask why you got the no, to get an explanation and a plan for what it requires to get to a yes. But if you can’t handle hearing no, you aren’t going to make it far with a horse.

10/11/2025

🫢