Rocky Springs Ranch

07/04/2025

07/02/2025

My page is about the reality of horses. I started it because horses changed my life in powerful ways and made it good. For the past couple of decades, I have watched the reality of horses being replaced by fantasies that totally lack the power and good that I know horses to be.

These changes, that some people call "Disneyfacation", are insidious. They are easily exploitable for making money and for misleading people into dangerous situations. Social media influencers who monetize their channels and pages love how these romantic ideas of the horse run up their clickbait numbers by selling concepts of shoeless, saddless, bitless, bridleless, brainless to the fantasy lovers.

My work is to educate reality seekers about effective horsemanship that leads to powerfully positive experiences with horses. Therefore, I will make a suggestion. I would like people to watch Ginger Kathrens' video Cloud Stallion of the Rockies. The first episode was filmed in 2018 with others following. It can be found on YouTube and in the PBS archives.

I especially hope that young people will see it because the way that horses are presented today in films and on so much social media is a shallow facsimile of the true reality of horses. Real horses make for a real good life.

07/01/2025

Thank you Bob for another enlightened article.

Engagement is simple yet for some riders it is difficult to feel. Engagement is as simple as the difference between push and pull when moving forward. Riding up a hill is a good way to feel hind engagement IF you sit properly. A main reason riders cannot bring forth Engagement in their horse on demand is that they cannot feel the difference between the push and pull in their horse's movement.

Riding up a hill, in a correctly balanced seat encourages engagement of the horse's hind where the power is. Riders must remain balanced in a vertical, +/- 5 degrees, position because within that range they will not disturb their horse and cause it to rebalance.

I will note that some instructors tell riders to lean forward and grab mane when riding up a hill. This might be good safety advice for a rider who is so unfit as to be unable to sit correctly in a vertical balance, but it is wrong for the horse. Perching or leaning forward places the rider's weight over the shoulders and causes the horse to pull or swim forward using their front legs. I once saw a horse in a fox hunt that became stranded going up a hill as the horse stalled and began to dig a hole into the hillside with its front feet while remaining in place.

Forward engagement is push, not pull, and it is not an esoteric dressage term but rather it is the fundamentally correct power from the hind. Don't overthink it. Feel it.

Similarly, when descending a slope, we want to engage the hind to control the descent. If the horse should begin to slide on a slope, we want the hind engaged so the front feet can pick up. If a horse slides down a slope on its front feet, the feet can catch on a root or rock and cause a head over heels cartwheel down the hill.

06/25/2025

✨There’s something about the sound of quiet chewing in the stillness.
🐎The way a horse just stands there — not trying to fix you, just being with you.
✨And suddenly, the weight you’ve been carrying doesn’t feel quite so heavy.

No one asks you to explain yourself.
No one hurries you along.
You’re just allowed to be — messy, tired, joyful, anxious, human.

The barn doesn’t care if you cried on the way there.
It welcomes you anyway.
And the horses?
They listen with their whole heart.

It’s not therapy.
But it’s a kind of medicine.
The kind that reaches places words can’t always touch💕

🧡🐴

06/23/2025

Just chilling 😎

06/23/2025

Walk around the ponds yesterday, enjoyed the flowers.

06/22/2025

Yep that always gets you up fast

06/21/2025

Waiting on Taylor....