Catch A Dream Equestrian Program w/Marcia Kane

05/14/2023

Wishing a Very Happy Mother's Day to our two and four legged Moms today. Your are so extremely special to us today and every day ❤️

05/02/2023

04/29/2023

Crazy weather and temperature changes have our shedded ponies back in their light waterproof 💧 turnouts. Hopefully not for to long though.

04/28/2023

Sometimes you receive a Unique Gift 🎁 you never knew you needed or existed. Thank you Andy and
Andrea 😊

04/27/2023

Beautiful evening to teach under the double RAINBOW 🌈

04/19/2023

02/27/2023

Indoor Ring freshly dragged and ready for lessons. TRAILER Ins are welcomed. Call 443-532-8946 or send us a PM.

01/30/2023

It was great having Dapple Gray Magna Wave out today to work on five horses. They always appreciate having Malyssa out to work on them and she is just amazing at what she does. Thank you!!!!

01/15/2023

Horses/Ponies teach lessons that will last a lifetime. It really is more than riding.

BY PONYMOMAMMY It’s easy to overlook how much we learn from horses every day. I’ve been riding my whole life, and still have a new takeaway from every lesson. While the mechanics and nuances are the things we tend to notice the most, it’s the less obvious life lessons that tutor us the longest...

01/02/2023

Rang in the New Year with a Schooling Day to start off 2023. Perfect Weather, Perfect Company, & Perfect Ponies. Making new plans and setting new goals for 2023.

12/25/2022

Wishing friends/family a Very Merry Christmas from our family to yours.

12/13/2022

HAPPY National Horse Day to these two girls. They bring so much joy to so many!!! They truly enjoy what they do. ;-)

11/12/2022

Some times the best training tools are the simplest tools. If you know you know.

11/10/2022

***Important read!!! Sharing from a friend

Things your riding instructor wants you to know:
1. This sport is hard. You don't get to bypass the hard…..every good rider has gone through it. You make progress, then you don't, and then you make progress again. Your riding instructor can coach you through it, but they cannot make it easy.
2. You're going to ride horses you don't want to ride. If you're teachable, you will learn from every horse you ride. Each horse in the barn can teach you if you let them. IF YOU LET THEM. Which leads me to…
3. You MUST be teachable to succeed in this sport. You must be teachable to succeed at anything, but that is another conversation. Being teachable often means going back to basics time and time and time again. If you find basics boring, then your not looking at them as an opportunity to learn. Which brings me to…..
4. This sport is a COMMITMENT. Read that, then read it again. Every sport is a commitment, but in this sport your teammate weighs 1200 lbs and speaks a different language. Good riders don't get good by riding every once in awhile….they improve because they make riding a priority and give themsevles opportunity to practice.
5. EVERY RIDE IS AN OPPORTUNITY. Even the walk ones. Even the hard ones. Every. Single. Ride. Remember when you just wished someone would lead you around on a horse? Find the happiness in just being able to RIDE. If you make every ride about what your AREN'T doing, you take the fun out of the experience for yourself, your horse, and your instructor. Just enjoy the process. Which brings me to...
6. Riding should be fun. It is work. and work isn't always fun.....but if you (or your rider) are consistently choosing other activities or find yourself not looking forward to lessons, it's time to take a break. The horses already know you don't want to be here, and you set yourself up for failure if you are already dreading the lesson before you get here.
7. You'll learn more about horses from the ground than you ever will while riding. That's why ground lessons are important, too. If you're skipping ground lessons (or the part of your lesson that takes place on the ground), you're missing out on the most important parts of the lesson. You spend far more time on the ground d with horses than you do in the saddle.
9. Ask questions and communicate. If you're wondering why your coach is having you ride a particular horse or do an exercise, ask them. Then listen to their answer and refer to #3 above.
8. We are human beings. We make decisions (some of them life and death ones) every day. We balance learning for students with workloads for horses and carry the bulk of this business on our shoulders. A little courtesy goes a long way.
Of all the sports your child will try through their school years, riding is one of 3 that they may continue regularly as adults (golf and skiing are the others). People who coach riding spend the better part of their free time and much of their disposable income trying to improve their own riding and caring for the horses who help teach your child. They love this sport and teaching others…..but they all have their limits. Not all good riders are good coaches, but all good coaches will tell you that the process to get good is not an easy one.

05/14/2022

Caught her in her favorite bird watching spot.

03/23/2022

It's going to be a great lesson when you wear your unicorn 🦄 socks with pink fabric mane. Pony Fashion at its best.

02/13/2022

Dapple Gray Magnawave is just one part of our team that keeps our lesson & client horses/ponies in tip top shape. Animals aren't able to lie about how well something works. Our animals flock when they know Malyssa from Dapple Gray Magnawave is on the property. They are so animated during their session and the results are noticeable after.

Willow decided to lay her head in my hands during her Magna Wave session, so of course I happily obliged. A horses head weights about 11lbs. All that weight is balanced on just 7 vertebrae in their neck and supported by around 20 muscles that are responsible for moving their head around and keeping that weight in place. Holding some of that weight for them is a great way to help them release pill, tmj and neck tension.

01/28/2022

We are also on Instagram. Please go follow us @ Catch A Dream Equestrian Program.

01/28/2022

We are so excited about the 2022 Show Season with BEST. The first Show is less than two months away. We still have openings on our Show Team. For more information Please call or text 443-532-8946.

04/21/2021

Dapple Gray Magnawave has become part of the team that takes great care of our lesson and client mounts. Seeing the results in our animals that don't understand what each treatment is suppose to do is amazing. Thank you so much Dapple Gray Magna Wave .

04/07/2021

Thank you so much to Bay Equine Service for updating our ponies shots today and doing their Dentals. Really appreciate the time you took to explain what you were doing and the before and after was amazing. Also able to get in a quick ear trim on everyone. ;-)

02/04/2021

I think that many riders have not carefully thought through what is meant by the term "to apply the aids" when we are trying to get a horse to respond in some way to something that we have asked him to do.

At the most basic level, aids are communications. Humans communicate by gestures, by the spoken word, and in writing.

But horses don't speak a language of words, not primarily. They can learn short words like trot, canter, but if you say to a horse, "Bend to the right, and perform a small circle," you can say it in spoken words all day long and nothing will happen.

So we don't use our tongues and vocal cords to talk to horses. We use systems of pressure and release, so that the horse learns that by giving to certain pressures in specific ways will cause a softening of pressure from the rider. It becomes a pattern of conditioned response. The rider applies certain pressures for the right lead canter, the horse picks up the right lead canter.

But a nervous horse will not be a learning horse, so not only does the rider need to learn what specific pressures to use to obtain specific responses, the rider must also learn to apply them gently enough so as not to make the horse nervous.

And at first, a gently applied pressure may not get any response from the horse, because the horse does not understand what that pressure is requesting.

At this point it can get tempting for the rider to repeat the pressure harder or stronger. "If he didn't move left from my right leg pressure, I need to kick him harder," one might think. And, while the horse may move from the harder kick, if he does so because it was painful, and it has made him nervous, the rider has won the little "battle," but is in the process of losing the bigger "war," because a nervous horse is not a learning horse.

This training is not a battle of wills, when done by the better trainers. It is a process of teaching. Far better to repeat the gentle pressure persistently enough until the horse moves---heck, a horse can feel a fly land on its flank---It takes patience and persistence, but when done calmly, the trainer/rider can usually stay below the nervousness threshold of the horse while the horse absorbs the lesson.

After a few weeks of this, the horse will still be calm, but will also move calmly away from the leg. If the rider had kicked him harder until he moved away, the horse would have done it sooner, but tension would have been the by-product, and a tense, nervous horse is not a learning horse.

Such an important lesson for aspiring trainers to learn and fully understand and consistently use, and not just when they are "feeling patient." Patience isn't patience if we are only patient when we feel like it.