KitKat
I have lots of mixed emotions on this one….
But as hard as it will be, my beautiful girl will be offered at
🔥The Best of The West Sale🔥
in Gladstone NJ this September. She truly is a one in a million kind of horse and you won’t want to miss out on her. Huge thanks to Savanna for putting this little sneak peak together of her as we start gearing up to take a ton of sale footage.
✅ Kid tested ✅ parent approved #trickhorse #gypsy #gypsyvanner #irishcob #followingfinnegan
KitKat
KitKat’s third time ever around gun fire, and our first attempt shooting while she’s down 🥰 good thing this horse trusts people as much as she does. She’s gonna make someone an incredible partner.
I spent years saying a wouldn’t be that person with a mini….
I spent years saying I wouldn’t be the person with a mini 🤣
But they do come in handy for teaching kids the ropes (especially on the ground), without the danger factor of a large horse.
Love my little Minnie Mouse ❤️ These two couldn’t be cuter
Baby fever is strong around here ❤️❤️❤️❤️
#babyfever #summertime #filly #SaylorTheAzteca
Finn💕
I think at this point Finn’s lay down is better that KitKat 😳 He is such a sweet boy ❤️
#FollowingFinnegan #gypsyvanner #trickhorse
Our trot is coming right along 🤩 we might have to do a western dressage show this summer… or traditional dressage at this rate
How to set yourself up for failure to ride bridleless? Never ride your horse without the bridle (while you still have it on).
If you want to ride bridle-less, ride your horse with a bridle on and don’t use it. I cannot stress this enough. Tie your reins to your saddle and DON’T. TOUCH. THEM. Ride like that on crazy windy days, high traffic days, with other riders in the arena days, through spooky days. Do it with no warm up. And when you’ve learned how to manage your horse through inevitably difficult situations and ALL THREE GAITS, then you’re ready to actually ditch the bridle.
So many times people think that they can just ditch the bridle because they have a “great relationship“ with their horse and they supposedly ride off seat and leg. And maybe that’s true on a good day, when the horse is paying attention, and no out side distractions arise. However if that’s what you do, you just setting up the ingredients for a disaster. Because if you get rid of your bridle and a vent flaps, or your horse gets going too fast, they break into a faster gait, or a kid with an umbrella runs across the arena, you haven’t set yourself up to be able to manage the situation. You haven’t achieved the ability to mitigate things if they start to go awry because you’ve never had to. The conditions we ride horses in are not always ideal, and that’s something that needs to be taken into consideration during training as well.
You don’t just take your bridle off to see how good your relationship is. Because that’s how people get into wrecks. You can test that theory while your bridles still on and you don’t touch it.
(Unless of course you’re as cool as Luke Gingerich who does so much prep work with his horses they never have headgear on to begin with. But I can guarantee he didn’t just jump on there and hope things didn’t arise. He spent the time before hand teaching his horse how to handle those environments before he ever got on)
So here is k
I’m in desperate need of some lessons and I know that. This is not something I’ve ever taught before.
I can pick quite a few things apart about this video myself, that really need improvement. It’s really easy to get stuck on the end result, but without mistakes, you don’t learn. And without learning, there’s no progress. This is a TERRIBLE video (a bit embarrassing really), but just because we don’t post the really sloppy stuff doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. It’s so easy to get caught up seeing the highlights that everyone else posts we forget that those moments aren’t what the journey actually looks like. Working with horses is about all the mess in the middle that leads up to all the progress towards the perfection.
Here’s a reminder to all those who need it, especially with all the Internet trainers out there that can be extremely discouraging. It’s okay to look like a mess sometimes, just don’t stop there. And for the others, when you see crappy videos, instead of belittling others maybe just offer some encouragement. Even if it’s encouragement to seek help from a qualified trainer, it doesn’t have to be nasty or passive aggressive. The horse world is terrible for tearing people down, let’s focus a little more on building people up.
Learning together ❤️
Couple clips from our session today. I’ve never taught a piaffe before, so I’ll probably mess this one up, and learn what to do better for next time. But I do think it’s starting to come together. We’ve also started working on a rear using a different method than I have in the past and I’m really liking not standing in front of her to cue. Poor KitKat just gets to be the Guinea pig for it all.
#keepingupwithkitkat
We have a long way to go, but man we’ve come so far 🥰
Some day, the goal is to be able to skip with her in flying lead changes. For now, I’m happy we can just do a change at all at liberty.
#keepingupwithkitkat
Finnegan has been here for two weeks, and he’s already doing flying lead changes 🤪 kind of
Finn (like many others) really struggles with picking up one of his leads. When they’re this new to riding and don’t have very many buttons to push to set them up for the correct lead, sometimes you have to get creative. As he learns more body control, I’ll be able to set him up to take the correct lead from the trot (and eventually the walk) but we’re just not there yet. However since I’m trying to get him in better shape and wanting him to start getting used to loping under saddle, we’ve been loping in whatever capacity we can. Although no matter what trick I tried, I struggled to get him to pick up the right lead. I tried to ignore it in the beginning but a few rides in, I just kept persistently asking for the right lead when he took the wrong one. This guy is so smart and talented that he was able to figure out what I was asking and then execute it. If he’s already offering stuff like this now without being collected or having much for buttons, I can’t imagine what he’ll be doing in a few months. Super excited to hit the show pen with him this summer!
#followingfinnegan
Has your horse ever been difficult to bridle? Doesn’t want to open their teeth? Raises their head? May try going backwards?
Sadie went from the first clip in the video, to the second clip in the video, in 5 minutes. What did we do? Watch the full YouTube video posted below to see the method we used to get such a drastic change in just a few minutes.
https://youtu.be/5j1T-MGNqvg?si=nzEj4OBJjtvQ7g91
When the family reunion doesn’t go as planned 😮 I think we may have our work cut out for us before we hit the show pen😂
#siblinglove #FollowingFinnegan
I don’t think there’s anything KitKat loves more, than laying around doing not much anything 😂
The progression of starting a Spanish walk on day one, and in less than 3 minutes. Reggie will be Spanish walking in no time 😍
Training Tip: When starting the Spanish walk, work each leg individually until their pretty decent, then put them together. Going for alternate legs in the beginning is harder for the horse since your trying to alternate working left brain and right brain. By doing one leg at a time, you can work the left brain for a few minutes, right brain for a few minutes, and the horse will more easily understand the step itself rather than getting confused about which leg needs to be doing what.
#arabian #arab #gelding #spanishwalk #trainingtips #tricktraining
Phoenix has made so much progress recently ❤️
Let your horses learn how to think for themselves. Give them all the tools you can to prep them to find the right answer, but then give them the opportunity to do the problem solving on their own. Quit micromanaging every situation. It will make for a much safer horse in the long run. I see so many people trying to do all the thinking for their horse, which can create problems in the long term.
Set things like this up in as safe of an environment as you can, but then let them learn on their own as well.
We prepped this particular exercise with learning to ground tie while I stayed at a close proximity, learning to hobble, and teaching her to lower her head when she feels pressure at the poll. Then I walked away far enough while she was in a ground tie, and the temptation to follow overtook. But I love the thinking she is having to do in order to keep herself out of an uncomfortable situation. She’s looking to me for the answer, while having to come up with the solution on her own. They’re a million scenarios you can set up for your horse to learn valuable skills this this on their own, but dragging the lead rope is one of my favorite. Especially for horses who feel easily explosive when they get stuck or trapped, or horses that like to pull when tied.
I want to create horses who can think under pressure (pun intended), remain calm when they feel trapped, and either think in a way that allows them to get out of it, or wait for help in they do something unexpected that puts them in a predicament that requires human intervention. It’s safer for you AND it’s safer for them.
KitKat’s ab workout is better than mine 😍
I’m gonna have to up my game
#crunches #schoolhalt # inhandwork #dressage
I’m not much of a gaited horse person, but I sure couldn’t turn down the opportunity to ride this phenomenal racking horse stallion 😍
