Kelner Horsemanship

10/14/2024

This horse has exceeded my expectations. He is a calm, quiet, thinking youngster. On our 5th ride he was exposed to the garrocha. Not much bothers this horse. I love my Spanish horse.

09/23/2024

WFEA day 2 world cup competition In Hamilton Montana. Today's results.
1st place, Tom Kelner
2nd place, Robert Borsos
3rd place Karen Silbernagle

Today there were 7 personal best scores.
Congratulations to all the competitors.

09/22/2024

WFEA World Cup in Hamilton, MT, day 1 results. Congratulations to all the competitors.

Robert Borsos, 1st place
Tom Kelner, 2nd place
Elise Kelly, 3rd place.

We also had 5 archers with new personal best high scores.

08/15/2024

I love what this guy has to say.

When someone leaves a comments or a like here, I often click on their name to see their riding images on their page. I do this to keep track of what today's typical riding looks like. I see all kinds of riding. Some images and videos show very good balanced riding. What seems to be a common riding flaw that I see recently is with head position. So many riders post pictures of their riding with their eyes looking down. This might seem a minor issue, but it is not.

When your eyes are down, your horse can feel that your balance is forward, more over the forehand. This will put your horse onto their forehand. When your eyes go down, your head that weighs 15 pounds (7 kg) goes down and forward, and usually your shoulders fall forward as well. The fact that your head is up high at the end of an effective lever that is your upper body, multiplies the forward weight that you place over your horse's shoulders.

The negative effects this has on your horse show up in several ways. It makes both upward and downward transitions more difficult for your horse. This is because Horses need to push off or reach under with their hind, and you have shifted their balance off their hind. Lead changes become more difficult for the same reason.

Worst of all for riders, looking down makes it more difficult to develop "feel". I briefly had an argumentative student who insisted on looking down. She would argue with me when I said "eyes up", saying "I like to see what my horse is doing". I'd explain that with eyes up you can feel what your horse is doing and that makes all the difference.

If you look down when riding, just stop doing that. If you have to look down, move your eyeballs, not your head. If you do this, many improvements will follow. You will sit the canter better because your head and neck position will no longer interfere with your hips swinging to the 1-2-3 beat of the canter. "Eyes up". It's simple and fixes a lot of things.

08/09/2024

07/08/2024

This is why we can't have nice things....
This fly mask was new on Friday morning...

06/18/2024