Southview Farm is a premier dressage training and full-service boarding facility owned and operated by Sandy and Francis Tull. http://sandytulldressage.com/
Sandy, an accomplished Grand Prix rider and trainer, graduated from Morven Park International Equestrian Institute in 1974. She has trained most extensively with Violet Hopkins, Debbie Bowman, Carole Grant, and George Williams. Lessons are offered for riders of all levels and are customized to help students achieve their goals. Please see our website for more information and check out the results page for details about recent coaching successes!
Congratulations to Kim Robbins and Johannes T on taking first level champion both days at Wyn farms dressage show! They scored up to 72%! We can’t wait to see what this pair accomplish in the future!
“Sandy's Incredible support and direction helped prepare Johannes for a successful show with amazing scores” - Kim
Spring time = Cavaletti time
So your horse is lazy/ evades effort/ doesn’t give you “100%” (whatever that means?)? Thank your lucky stars 🌟🌟🌟
At least once a week I hear a rider moaning about a horse not putting the effort in or trying to get out of working properly. And it’s absolutely true, that’s exactly what’s going on but that’s a good thing! And here’s why...
Your job as a rider and trainer of horses is to make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard, that’s all. It’s that simple. Every time you interact with a horse you are training him whether you realise it or not.
Be careful of making a moral judgement on the horse’s perceived lack of motivation to do a job you decided he ought to do for you. You are the partner with the bigger, more complex brain in this pairing, don’t add meaning to a situation that’s not really there.
And it’s your responsibility to bring the horse along with you, you are leading the dance. It's why I think of that the FEI objective of the "happy athlete" would be better phrased as the "content athlete".
Your horse’s job is to consistently look for the easiest way out! That’s how a horse is trainable. He is looking for the loophole in your aids. When the horse understands the aids, he knows where the easy way out is. We need the horse to be seeking this place of lower pressure and higher comfort. Horses like feeling safe, being able to rest and having company.
Most of the time when training dressage we are using “negative reinforcement” techniques which sound a whole lot nastier than they actually are. Simply put, we teach an aid or behaviour by marking it as correct to the horse by REMOVING or stopping pressure, that’s why it’s called negative reinforcement. The negative is not a moral judgement on the technique, in fact techniques that rely on punishment are called “Positive Punishment”!
Now back to the effort piece - If your horse was genuinely putting 100% effort in, I can pretty confidently say 99.9% riders wouldn’t be happy riding your horse. The horses that are routinely putting 100% effort in are top racehorses and the best broncs, both on high adrenaline and performing like their lives depend on it. Horses usually give high effort when they are in high anxiety, that's how a prey animal is hardwired.
Most of us want a horse performing in a relaxed, content state of mind, at a certain lower agreed level of effort. Be careful what you wish for and be grateful for the tolerance our equine partners show us every day!
After what seems like forever it was great to be back in the show ring at Waterloo Hunt.
Have you ever gotten unsolicited advice from a fellow horse person? Have you ever sat in the audience at a clinic or at a horse show and all you could hear was “arm chair quarter-backing” from your…
USDF Certified Instructor Candy Allen discusses how to create more freedom in a horse's shoulder and achieve uphill balance
European dressage trainer Anja Beran, who has spent a lifetime studying classical equestrian ideals and applying them to training horses, tackles an often-stubborn problem with a surprising solution.
Part 2: Olympian Sue Blinks shows how her multifaceted approach works in teaching movements like shoulder-in and piaffe.
International dressage competitor and trainer Felicitas von Neumann-Cosel explains this important piece of the training puzzle.
A quietly pernicious, psychologically damaging, and sometimes even physically harmful aspect of the world of competitive riding is what, for lack of a better term, we might call "level shaming." It works like this---
Level shaming begins with an assumption that the higher the level, the more worthy the achievement, whereas the lower the level, the more insignificant the attempt.
Here are a couple of examples---
Let's say that an event rider is safely and confidently riding at the beginner novice level. Someone, however, maybe a friend, or family member, even a coach, perhaps, conveys the hint that the beginner novice level doesn't amount to much.
The rider gets conflicted. She doesn't feel confident about moving up to novice, but she now feels somewhat "ashamed" of "being a chicken," or whatever----
So she moves up, against her better judgement, and maybe gets in trouble, maybe gets herself scared, or the horse scared, maybe even gets hurt.
Or a trail rider has the option of doing a 15 mile ride or, next available level, a 25 mile ride. If he gets level shamed into taking on the 25, before the horse is ready, he may put the horse at risk.
A dressage rider has been competing at the training level. Her friends are moving up to first level, and, in subtle or not so subtle ways, they let her know that they are therefore "better" than she is.
Or the 3 foot 6 inch jumper rider lords it over the 3 foot rider----and so on.
Now the only way that level shaming has any power is if the rider being dissed gives a damn about what others think. But, usually, we are not that indifferent.
Ideally, the way to deal with those who do this to us would be to tell them to go $%^&(* # themselves, and I hope you will.
I find it easier to do at 78 than at 18, or 48, or whatever-8, so I understand how hard it is to not care what others think----
“The worst mistake a rider can make is to fail to discover and accept a horse’s personality. By oversimplifying horses and lumping them all together the rider risks ‘breaking’ them and taking away their spark.”
~Klaus Balkenhol
It’s 2016, and I’m knee deep in political coverage. I wake up at 2 a.m., am in the newsroom by 3 a.m., heavily caffeinated by 5 a.m., and rushing to the control room by 7 a.m. I live in New York, the city that never sleeps, and I wonder how long ...
Lateral work plays an essential role on the way to higher collection, which is expressed in a high degree of suppleness, carrying strength and self-carriage and is an indispensable element of the daily training of all my horses.
To prevent your horse’s shoulders from falling In or out...
"Imagine that the shoulders are a balancing scale. When one side (or shoulder) is weighted more heavily, the horse will lean in that direction. To prevent this, try to balance the scales." —Corinne Foxley
(Illustration by Sandy Rabinowitz)
It's so important that your equitation feels natural - there are important reasons for everything that compromises a good position. When you understand the function, the form gets easier. This is a well-said, simple explanation of why you want to keep your elbows in - essentially, it makes your arms an extension of your seat.
❣️WEEKLY MOTIVATION❣️
For all our followers just starting out in either riding, or with a youngster, project, difficult horse, newly backed or just hitting a wall in training here’s some Monday motivation for you. Photo’s 4 years apart of the same horse. Remember building new skills & muscle in both yourself and your horse takes time and patience and lots of learning mistakes before getting it right. Remember to not be disheartened when your pictures are not perfect at the start. When learning something new you usually feel like your starting from the beginning again as your body adapts to new feelings and moments. Tell yourself these are perfectly normal. It’s perfectly acceptable to not be perfect.
Screen shot this photo and whenever your having a tough week in your training or feeling disheartened have a look at this to remember with hard work you won’t stay in the same place forever. ❣️ beautifully produced by Horzehoods France ☀️ All Horse Wear available at www.horzehoods.com
USDF gold medalist Kamila Dupont offers advice and explains that addressing this issue begins with improving the horse's gaits.
Must read for equestrians making their golden years a time to shine in the dressage ring! See advice from Hilda Gurney & Vicky Stashuk-Matisi for vintage riders, proving age is just a number.
https://yourdressage.org/2019/04/16/vintage-riders-prove-dressage-gets-better-with-age/
Charlotte Dujardin presents a series of lateral work exercises to improve suppleness, straightness, transitions, and the quality of the gaits in horses.
Trainers Conference demonstration rider Sophia Schults on Samour M rides shoulder-in, the movement US national dressage young-horse coach ...
If the horse gets tight in the flying changes, ride the changes on a large circle instead of on a straight line, US Equestrian national...
POSTED/WRITTEN by Melissa Wanstreet of Starbound Equestrian Enterprises. For those who ride, train, own, or watch....Regarding others, as well as yourself:
We all know dressage is not easy. If you think about it, as riders, we get on a 1200+ pound animal and expect to have control of all four feet at all times. I mean, a mere inch of the left hind in the wrong direction can mean the difference of a score of 8 or 6, maybe even more, depending on the judge. We work day in and day out to make sure our horses are in tune with our aids just so we can dress up and let everyone judge our work from a single ride lasting less than 10 minutes.
Basically, we put in all our time, effort, and money, just to be judged. We signed up for this right?
Well, technically, we asked to be judged by a certified professional.
Not the peanut gallery standing on the sidelines who wasn’t brave enough to enter themselves, but came to watch and criticize all the horses and riders because it makes them feel like they actually know something.
Not the professionals who think they could ride the horse better because they have no idea what your horse was like when you started working with it, and don’t know that your horse probably wouldn’t move a hoof if they stepped foot in the stirrups.
Not the armchair equestrians who have never even sat on a real dressage horse, watching a YouTube video from home – made by some narcassistic sociopath with a page and a vendetta against any rider who decided they weren’t going to put up with her immature delusions.
And worst of all, not the experienced rider making jokes about the beginner amatuer, who maybe harbors a little more fear than the average horseman, who is just trying their best to get a little better.
Dressage is a sport to be judged. And I’ll be honest, I’m guilty of blindly criticizing, but I will usually catch myself and try my best to put myself in the riders boots. Because I know what it feels like to work so hard, and feel like you’re ready, only to show up and have everything fall apart at the seams underneath you. And at that point, all you can do is try your best to hold it together, pat yourself on the back for trying, and hope to learn something from your experience.
I think the time that you spend criticizing others says something about your own ego and insecurities, but I also think it’s a learned behavior. Amateurs may hear their own trainers judging someone else. One rider may make a comment, which can turn into a 30 minute slam session between peers about the current rider in the ring. And if no one ever steps up and says “Hey! We all have our bad days, lets focus on our own flaws”, then the cycle will continue.
Life is hard enough. Dressage is even harder. And no matter what you think, YOU DON’T KNOW THE WHOLE STORY.
Discover the origins of the horse and how it changed our world forever.
Thanks everyone- yes I’ll make prints of this and others. It’s the year of prints online. Sorry I’m very slow and it’s been difficult to know the right way to do it but I’ll let you know. It won’t be long. I’ll let you know here. Thanks 🙏
8023 N Center Road
Mount Morris, MI
48458
| Monday | 8:30am - 9:30pm |
| Tuesday | 8:30am - 9:30pm |
| Wednesday | 8:30am - 9:30pm |
| Thursday | 8:30am - 9:30pm |
| Friday | 8:30am - 9:30pm |
| Saturday | 8:30am - 9:30pm |
| Sunday | 8:30am - 9:30pm |
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when SOUTHVIEW FARM posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Send a message to SOUTHVIEW FARM:
