Crossroads Farm

11/20/2025

*** EQUINE DISEASE ALERT UPDATE ***

Clemson University Livestock-Poultry Health is suspending the use of Extended Equine Certificates of Veterinary Inspection (EECVIs) to transport horses into South Carolina for at least 30 days following an outbreak of Equine Herpesvirus Type 1 Neurologic (EHM- Equine Herpes Myeloencephalopathy) reported by Texas veterinarians during the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA) World Finals in Waco, Texas, held November 5–9.

According to reports, the WPRA event involved approximately 650 horses representing 30 states and four Canadian provinces. The event was followed by the Barrel Futurities of America (BFA) World Championships, held November 15–22 in Guthrie, Oklahoma. The remainder of the BFA event was cancelled on November 18 after a case of EHV-1 was confirmed.

Equine events in South Carolina may continue as scheduled, based on their risk assessments, and that they review the Certificates of Veterinary Inspection to ensure accuracy.

11/20/2025

⚠️⚠️⚠️CRF Students ⚠️⚠️⚠️ Out of an abundance of caution, if you have ANY contact with horses outside the CRF facility please reach out to me before coming to your lesson. We are not causing a panic over this situation, however precautions will be taken to ensure the health of our precious horses.

As we continue to monitor the current outbreak of the neurologic form of equine herpesvirus (EHM) infection, let's take this opportunity to discuss once more the importance of biosecurity measures to stop disease spread. We recommend the following biosecurity precautions for horse owners, particularly if their horses have recently traveled to horse shows or were exposed to horses that have traveled:

1) Monitor horses for clinical signs (including fever, discharge from the nostrils, toe-dragging or a lack of balance) and take the temperature twice daily. Temperature greater than 101.5 F is considered a fever.

2) Immediately isolate any horse(s) showing clinical signs. Equine herpesvirus is an aerosolized virus and is spread through shared airspace, direct contact, and contaminated caretakers or equipment. A good isolation area is a separate barn or shelter that does not share airspace with healthy horses.

3) Implement movement restrictions until the situation is evaluated.

4) Contact your veterinarian to evaluate your horse and to propose a comprehensive biosecurity protocol.

5) Increase biosecurity measures that include extensive cleaning and disinfection of surfaces and equipment that come in contact with affected horses: wash or sanitize your hands between interacting with horses; take time while filling water buckets and feed tubs, do not cross contaminate; minimize the use of shared equipment and tack.

6) Make sure your horse is up to date on vaccinations.

7) Establish communication with all parties involved (owners, boarders, trainers, etc.).

More resources and information regarding biosecurity are available on the Equine Disease Communication Center's website at https://equinediseasecc.org/biosecurity

To learn more Equine Herpesvirus (EHV), visit: https://www.equinediseasecc.org/equine-herpesvirus

11/19/2025

Fuzzy ponies and sunny Fall days. We have been quietly working away while the weather's been so nice. 🌞

11/19/2025

Lesson horses are the beating heart of Crossroads Farm and deserve all the love ❤️

🐎🙌 Let’s give the quiet heroes of the barn their well-deserved shout-out: lesson horses. They’re steady when we’re shaky, patient when we’re panicking, and always there for the next student with zero attitude (well, minimal attitude 😜).

Check out this week's Tuesday Video: “Lesson Horses Are the Real MVPs” — a tribute to those gentle giants who carry us through our lessons, our muck-ups, our triumphs and our “oops” moments.

💬 We want to hear from YOU:

Which lesson horse changed your riding life? Tag them, name them, and drop your favorite memory. Let’s celebrate these unsung equine stars together.

🔗 Full article (with video!) in the comments below.

11/09/2025

All the Fall colors 😍

10/22/2025

Longevity is the goal! Or it should be...

𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐚 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬

Polework is the most undervalued training tool we have and it shows. Everyone says they want a sound, confident, long lasting horse. But then you see ponies Grade A at seven years old, and you can’t help but wonder, how much jumping did that take? How many schooling rounds? How many miles on joints that aren’t even fully developed until they’re eight?

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 “𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭.” 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐢𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩.

At six and seven, horses should still be learning how to use their body, not hammering around 1.20m tracks twice a weekend. By rights, their job at that age should be rhythm, straightness, balance not chasing points.

And this is where people roll their eyes, because the truth isn’t glamorous, polework is where the real training happens. Not when you’re on top of a fence. Before you ever get there.

A horse that can’t regulate its stride over poles won’t suddenly fix it over a jump. A horse that can’t stay straight on the ground won’t stay straight in the air. If your polework is weak, your jumping is a lie. You’re skipping steps. And skipping steps comes with a bill later usually in the form of lameness or fear.

We don’t have a jumping problem. We have a patience problem. Everyone wants the result, nobody wants to put in the miles. Polework doesn’t “look impressive” on a sales video. It doesn’t get likes online. But you know who did polework religiously? The horses that were still winning in their late teens, the ones who stayed sound long after their peers were “retired due to injury.”

You put a young horse through poles like the set up shown below, and you will learn very quickly if they drift, if they rush, if they lengthen one stride and shorten the next, if they think their way through questions, or panic through them. That’s education.

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐝𝐨, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐲𝐞𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰.

It’s not talent that makes a future horse. It’s time. Time spent in walk over poles. Time spent in trot learning rhythm. Time spent building the brain before asking for the jump. Anyone can point a brave horse at a fence. A horseman builds one from the ground up.

And let’s be honest, this industry has stopped prioritising the horse. It’s not about producing athletes anymore; it’s about producing price tags. Horses are being fast tracked up the levels not because they’re ready, but because someone wants to sell them before the weaknesses start to show. We talk about welfare, but then applaud speed of production. The answer isn’t more jumping. It’s more polework.

𝗕𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆.

Photo credit: RFS

10/19/2025

Yesterday was magnificent 🤩

10/18/2025

Safety is not optional. Horses are unpredictable enough without cutting corners and allowing unsafe riding to appease unrealistic clients. I'm definitely "annoying " about my standards! 😂

One of the most important things an instructor can do is not harm their students or the public who admires them

The safety of my students is very important to me. When I give them tools and skills, I work hard to give them what THEY can do safely, and not what I can do.

I am a pretty laid back person in a lot of ways, but basic safety around horses is a topic I’m willing to be annoying over, especially given the wreck and injury stories equestrians love to share (many of which were preventable).

But I find alarming the growing trends and fashions that throw safety to the wayside - seeming to say, if you were as noble as me, if you had the relationship I have with your horse, you don’t need basic safety -

You can lay around on the arena under your horse. You can walk around barefoot beside your loose horse. You can stand on your head and trim. If you really are pure, no horse will hurt you.

Maybe that’s true for those individuals. Horses are very receptive to energy, that’s true. But reflexes, timing, and some athleticism are also very involved..

do I want my students laying on the ground next to their loose horse? Do I want them walking around barefoot in the pasture? No I do not.

In this day of confusing signals from professionals ,  I want to be able to contribute something positive. I don’t want to be the source of anyone  or their horses injury if I can at all help it.

Photo by Nicole Shoup

10/16/2025

Busy week of sunshine and smiles 😃

10/06/2025

What rain?? 😆

10/05/2025

Food for thought 🤔

Hunters were designed to mimic the challenges of the hunt field, testing style, brilliance, and natural ability. But according to Geoff Case, USEF R Judge, trainer, and clinician, today’s hunter ring has strayed far from those origins.

“Every time you change something and it makes something more difficult, it makes it harder for the horses to go around like that,” he said. “I feel like the hunters were creating dressage with jumps in the way. Essentially it’s the same eight-jump pattern everywhere you go.”

The result? A discipline that increasingly looks like performance art, polished, robotic, and predictable, rather than a sport designed to test horse and rider.

Case believes hunters have become overly rigid in penalizing anything that deviates from a narrow picture of perfection. Cross-cantering, missed lead changes, even headshaking are all faults that weigh heavily on a score. “It was supposed to mimic the hunt field,” he noted. “And now it’s something else entirely.”

That rigidity discourages brilliance. Horses are worked until they are flat and expressionless, their personality stripped away to avoid deductions. “To be crisp and jump their best, they need to be a bit fresh,” Case explained. “But we’ve worked the brilliance out of them. You take the personality out.”

The mindset around mistakes is also harsher in hunters than in other disciplines. Piper Klemm observed that hunter riders can be “debilitated by their 76,” while jumpers with a rail down might be frustrated but move on. Case agreed, adding: “You pop chip in the hunter ring and it’s like your life is over. You want to crawl in a hole. You pop chip in the jumper ring and, if the horse leaves it up, you laugh about it and show the video to your friends.”

That difference in culture drives a wedge between hunters and other disciplines. For perfectionists drawn to the hunter ring, small imperfections feel catastrophic, while jumper riders are often able to shrug off a mistake.

In Case’s words, hunters today have become “performance art more than a sport.” The pursuit of an idealized picture, a horse going perfectly quiet, in perfect rhythm, without the slightest bobble, has overtaken the original goal of showcasing athleticism in a natural way.

Even efforts to inject brilliance have fallen flat. When international hunter derbies were introduced, horses were supposed to be allowed to be expressive and a little fresh. But in practice, the judging didn’t change. “They were supposed to be allowed to play a little bit,” Case said. “But the way those things were judged changed very little, and that was still penalized. So people went back to the same old way.”

📎 Continue reading this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/10/01/art-or-sport-has-hunters-drifted-away-from-its-roots/
📸 © Lauren Mauldin / The Plaid Horse

09/24/2025

This weeks shenanigans 🤪. I walked 7 miles around the farm today, pretty typical for me on the daily. Taught 5 hours of lessons and ended the day with the cutest canter pair possible.