Peak Performance Equine

07/01/2025

The #1 EPM Support & Pathogen Cleanse. The 90-Day feeding regimen for horses. A Non-Prescription animal drug company.

06/26/2025

06/23/2025

Pictured is General George Patton jumping on a wooden bridge, probably at the Fort Riley Cavalry School. Such jumps were required because in war a military rider would inevitably encounter wooden bridges with obstacles. Lieutenant Patton was a Cavalry School graduate in the beginning of the 20th century. Military riders in that era could execute jumps like this when today few can.

When I began riding in the early 1950s under the instruction of a former military rider. My teacher, who was always mounted in lessons, did incredible things during our "follow me" rides out over terrain. When I taught riding, I explained to my students that on my best day I might be able to do 65% of what my instructor could do on a horse. I told them that they eventually might be able to do 65% of what I can do with a horse. Such is the downward progression of American riding during my 60 years of riding.

The result of this decline can be seen in the fact that many US Fox Hunts now hire Irish Staff to run their packs. Some Hunts breed slower hounds to accommodate today's riders. For those of you who know me and my barn, and know my apprentice Amanda, she was perhaps the best Staff rider in a local Hunt here in south Central PA.

For perspective, I sent Amanda to ride with the Genesee Valley Hunt in upstate NY. She had a great horse, Mosby, but returned to the farm from her trip saying she could not keep up with the 1st Field in NY. The reality is that some generational Hunts Like Genesee Valley have maintained standards while some have declined to become dress up trail rides with a nice tailgate.

I believe that this decline can be turned around if a cadre of traditional riding professionals is formed to offer something new that is really old, which is the traditional US balanced seat riding based on the French inspired Fort Riley Seat that included ranch riding principles. If this does not happen, the only remedy I see would be for serious US riders to train by hunting in Galway Ireland, training in the Czech Republic for their local steeplechases, studying dressage in Saumur.

America needs a horse center like Saumur in France or the Spanish Riding School. Since the 1970s our riding has devolved into superficial trendy "styles" from various disciplines. People need a place to go to see and learn balanced horsemanship that does not interfere with their horse's balance and movement.

06/22/2025

I just came across this photo of a USET show jumping squad from “back in the day.” Hugh Wiley, Carol Hoffman, Bill Steinkraus, Bert De Nemethy, Frank Chapot, Mary Mairs, Bill Robertson.

It seemed like half an hour ago---And now all but Mary are gone. Which leads me to this comment---

You think you have all the time in the world, but it flashes past like summer lightning. It is already the middle of June. Soon it will be the 4th of July. Summer will be half over.

All those things you want to do? Plan to do? Hope to do?

It’s too easy to wish and hope and avoid making those dreams come true by waiting for the right time. Now is the right time. Stop wishing and start doing. Now. Today. Don’t wait for a better time. THIS is that better time.

06/20/2025

“Focused Intensity” At many levels---

In order to explain why the so called golden era of USA eventing took place when Neil Ayer was USEA president and Jack Le Goff was USET coach, think of this analogy---

If you hold a magnifying glass under the sun’s rays over a piece of newspaper, and adjust it so that the sun hits the paper at just the right angle, the paper will smolder and then burst into flame.

There was an organization called the USET, different from the current USEF, whose sole mission was to create USA teams to compete at the highest competitive levels internationally, and the 3-day team headquarters was in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

The USET hired Le Goff, hired support staff, brought in the best American riders, got supporters to loan elite horses, provided funding in an overall program of focused intensity with one goal, to win the big ones. And the riders themselves brought their own personal versions of focused intensity, so that the system became virtually a cauldron of purpose and energy.

Plus the sport of eventing back then seemed custom made for our horses of available choice, galloping Thoroughbreds. And Neil Ayer hosted three "Ledyard International" 3-Day Events at his fam to expose more American riders to big time competition.

And for about 15 years our system ruled, but economics and the riders’ desire for independence gradually tore the system apart, the team headquarters was shuttered, the Europeans changed the basic nature of the sport into one which favored THEIR horses, and the USA gradually slipped into a second class status from which it isn’t an easy climb to get back out.

Le Goff, left. Ayer, right.

06/19/2025

The first step in the process of becoming a better rider is the desire to be more skillful, less ignorant, more in tune with how a horse learns and reacts.

If that is there, lots of doors can open. If the rider doesn’t much care, or worse, if the rider is a know-it-all, there’s not apt to be much day to day change, especially in terms of ability to train.

Simple hours in the saddle will make most riders more skillful, but that’s the easier part. But if the human’s attitude isn’t open to improvement, and if the rider isn’t open to learning more about how to train correctly, the result is that old saying---“She knows just enough to be dangerous.”

Many riders think that the ability to ride has mainly to do with the physical riding part. That’s an easy trap to fall into.

06/17/2025

06/09/2025

I just found out why one horse started refusing to eat alfalfa. He’s super sensitive.

06/05/2025

"Oh, you're just a trail rider." Many riders, particularly those in the arena disciplines, do not appreciate the qualities of a good trail horse. Any horse that can take a rider on a good long trail ride has to be versatile. The horse has to get along with other horses. It has to be open to new sounds, smells, footings, visual impressions and more without spooking. A trail horse has to listen to the rider in a crowd where other horses that might act up, take off, or otherwise threaten the peace and safety of the ride.

I have a lot of respect for anyone who can take a young horse and make it a good trail horse. The bottom line is these trainers have to build a high degree of trust with the rider in the horse. A good trail horse can handle mud, deep water, ice, rocky terrain, slopes, railroad tracks, pavement, traffic, ditches, logs, bridges, ticklish hedgerows, other animals from goats to cattle, or a bear to a rattlesnake, all without panicking.

I came up on a rattlesnake on a trail ride. It was coiled and threatening. At first, I thought the rattle noise was crickets. I was riding a well trained and valuable polo horse I quietly stopped and carefully backed up away from the snake without a problem.

I have had a trail horse with steel shoes that could be ridden over a bridge with a metal grid roadway you could see through to the creek below. We both could see the river 30 feet below as the horse's metal shoes made their way across the metal grate footing.

While trail riding with a group on a full moon night we once mixed in with a large grazing herd of deer as if we were invisible because the horses' scent covered up our human scent. On a January trail ride after a long snowstorm, my horse enthusiastically made a pathway through a five foot high snow drift for others. While crossing a hedgerow my horse's legs once got tangled in unseen barbed wire. He stood perfectly still while I dismounted and unraveled the tangle. All these are traits of a good trail horse. All these horses had been trained to face any circumstances on a trail ride.

If you think a trained trail horse is "just a trail horse", you are mistaken. Trail horses are among the best mounts because of their versatility, temperament and problem solving abilities. A trained trail horse can go anywhere in any season, at any time of day, in any weather. Please think for a minute and compare these trail horses to the specialized discipline horses we see today. I'll take a trail horse every time.

06/01/2025

Dressage is not really a discipline. It's a training method. In 1667 William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle published "The New Method of Dressing Horses". If you think that "dressing horses" means putting on blankets, you'd be wrong. European aristocrats preferred French as the language of horsemanship and "dressing" comes from the French word for training "dressage".

The "New Method of Dressing Horses" is about a new way to train horses that Cavendish observed in the Ottoman Empire when he traveled there to avoid the English Civil War. The Ottoman horse trainers used methods that were less harsh than those used in Europe. The new method was more aligned with the natural impulses of horses. It can be said that Cavendish was the first to introduce natural horsemanship to the West.

Therefore, originally dressage was not a discipline but rather a training method. We have forgotten this, and the disappearance of this practical perspective has been a great loss to horsemanship.

We are now seeing another training method, groundwork, evolving into a competitive discipline. The American Quarter Horse Association now has groundwork competition classes in their Versatility Ranch Horse Competitions. I suspect that eventually we will see something like a Groundwork Competition Association making groundwork into a discipline where people who enjoy doing groundwork can win ribbons.

It is not the worst thing to see training methods turned into competition disciplines, but it is a bad thing when these competitions become almost exclusively how people think of dressage or groundwork and the original purpose gets lost. Horses need quality training methods like original dressage and groundwork. We don't need more venues for ribbon chasing. Dressage and groundwork are essential training for all horses for every breed and discipline.

02/23/2025

02/21/2025

OK, so I agree with this theory, but I can’t claim that I came up with it because I heard it and read it lots of times---

The theory goes that one of the best but also riskiest ways to raise young horses to be able to deal with anything other than flat and manicured terrain is to raise them in big open places like Montana (where this horse came from), letting them basically deal or don’t over steep hills, rocks, roots, mud, ice, water, figuring out from the get-go where to put their feet so as not to flip.

And, yes, you don’t want to watch as a bunch of horses come flying down some rock strewn bluff, but if they CAN learn how to deal with that, and survive, then dealing later with something like this Radnor drop fence is no biggie.

Thoughts?

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