Terra Equestrian

01/29/2024

01/28/2024

01/24/2024

10/24/2023

08/30/2023

At some point, if someone rides numerous horses, along will come one who has either been draw-reined or hauled on to the point that the horse curls behind the vertical and pretty much goes there as its default position.

There’s a truism that it is much easier to mess up a horse’s mouth than it is to repair it, so the best way, obviously, is to never create the behind-the-bit situation, but that is not the issue once it has been established.

Sometimes a bitless bridle or a mild hackamore will help, if the tension is in the actual mouth, and the horse has learned to fear the bit. Sometimes lots of walking on a long or loose rein will help reestablish trust. But sometimes that curling under has become so ingrained that it never entirely goes away.

Behind the bit is usually posture created by humans. Many good trainers are super careful about “placing the head” and similar concepts, because they would rather have the horse above the bit than behind the bit.

The idea being that it is so much easier to carefully and gradually get a horse to soften in its head and neck and poll posture than it is to undo the tendency to curl once it has been implanted by bad riding.

And yet, despite that, we see and hear so much “stuff” about head set, and there is so much tack, so many bits designed to “place” the head.

Try to “unplace” an over-flexed horse to understand how much risk strong hands and the wrong equipment can produce, and how hard it is to repair the damage.

08/29/2023

08/22/2023

07/25/2023

07/22/2023

A surprising number of riders, including many with experience, bounce in the saddle at the canter. As the pace of the canter increases, the bouncing tends to increase. Riders who cannot sit the canter try to use various means to avoid the discomfort. Standing in the irons in various ways is a common "fix".

The reason riders bounce in the canter is because the movement of their hips is restrained by their shoulders being closed and tight. Closing one's shoulders stops the hips from moving forward in a synchronized or unified way with the movement of the horse when cantering.

Changing a rider's position by opening their shoulders can be helpful. Here I offer an image of the rider moving their hips freely like a child's swing. I have employed this image effectively when teaching riders to sit the canter. I tell riders who bounce at the canter to envision their body as the chains or ropes hanging from the top of a swing set's frame, with their shoulders along the top horizontal pole of the swing's frame. I ask the rider to open and push their shoulders back and open to make a straight line between their shoulders in the most relaxed manner they can. Then, when cantering, I tell them to envision their body swinging freely back and forth like the swing.

It is useful to also explain that the 1-2-3 beats of the canter are not on a single arc plane exactly like the seat of the swing, but rather there is a rotational movement in the swing of the three beats of the canter. After the rider opens up their shoulders and lets their upper body and hips swing with the horse's motion at the canter, they begin to feel the elliptical rotation of the horse's back in their hips during the 1-2-3 beats of the gait. At this step I use an image of an egg on its side to help them envision and feel the elliptical movement at the canter. When the rider is relaxed and they let the horse's movement move their body, they stop bouncing and can sit deep in the saddle at the canter.

This teaching method works with most students. When it does not, it is usually because the rider is carrying excessive tension in the upper body. I address this by having them walk, slowly trot and sometimes canter, in a circle on a lunge line with their arms outstretched like wings with no stirrups. This is important work because both the horse and rider greatly benefit from reducing and removing the rider's body tension that causes them to bounce at the canter.

02/21/2023

01/31/2023

What distinguishes a mustang to most people is the freeze brand on the left side of his neck.

01/07/2023

I don’t totally agree with this, but it’s some food for thought 💭

WHY NOT OUTSIDE REIN IN TURNS

I get quite a few riders who come to clinics who have a background in dressage to some degree. Perhaps the most challenging thing most face at one of my clinics is my suggestion they let go of the idea of using “inside leg to outside rein” when turning or circling. The use of inside leg to outside rein is pervasive in the dressage world and one of the first things that is taught to a young rider. I was taught it when I was a teenager. There are many times when the outside rein should be applied, but creating a balanced turn or circle is not one of them.

For the purposes of this essay, I am going to confine the discussion to the use of the outside rein. Perhaps I will talk about the rider’s inside leg in another post.

When I ask people why use the outside rein to help a horse turn to the inside there are two common explanations.

1. First, the outside rein blocks the horse from overbending its neck in response to the inside rein. In other words, the inside rein flexes the horse's neck to the inside, but the outside rein blocks it from bending too much.

2. Secondly, when turning or circling, many horses are unbalanced and will drift to the outside of the turn. To keep the horse on the line of the turn or circle, the outside rein can be applied to block the horse’s shoulders from drifting to the outside. In other words, when circling to the left the outside rein can stop the horse’s shoulders from outside of the line to the right, as if the outside rein was a fence.

(Some teachers will tell students to use the outside rein to encourage a horse not to fall on its forehand. However, that is a totally other topic and best saved for another time).

Q. What do these two explanations have in common?
They are both examples of a horse not accurately following the feel of the inside rein.

Q. Why doesn’t the horse follow the feel of the inside rein?
Because the rider is using the reins to only move the feet and ignoring directing the thought.

I will remind you of the two axioms, “a horse is always trying to do what its strongest thought is” and “everything a horse does begins with a thought to do it.”

So when it is necessary to apply the outside rein to maintain balance and straightness it is because the inside rein is only being used to move the feet and body and NOT to help a horse have the idea to turn or circle. The connection between the horse’s mind and the inside rein is broken.

Let’s look at the two explanations for using the outside rein.

1. The outside rein blocks the neck from overbending.
If the connection to the inside rein was soft and accurate, the degree of the bend of the horse’s neck would be equal to the amount of feel on the inside rein. A stronger feel equals more bend and less feel will result in less bend.

2. The drift of the shoulders to the outside of a turn or circle is caused by the horse’s mind thinking to the outside. It’s a resistance to the feel of the inside rein instead of going with the feel with its thought. It’s like a feel on the lead rope causing a horse to pull back. But instead, it is the feel on the inside rein causing the horse to pull to the outside.

Imagine buying a new car. The salesman tells you, “when you want to turn left, turn the steering wheel to the left but make sure you have a friend in another car on your right lane who can bump into you when the car drifts to the right.” Would you really want to drive that car?

To summarise, the outside rein is a bandaid to cover up the errors caused by a horse not understanding how to follow the feel of the inside rein with its thought. The outside rein addresses only the symptom of crookedness when a horse is turning, not the cause. It does work to keep a horse on the line of the turn, but it does not ever fix the problem of a horse not following with the feel of the inside rein.

Sometimes a student will explain to me that almost the entire world of dressage is committed to the outside rein when turning a horse. People have been using it for hundreds of years. The great masters of the French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, German, and English schools have preached the use of the outside rein. So who am I to say otherwise?

I think I know why the use of the outside rein became popular, but I can’t explain why it is still popular. Tradition? The fact that the outside rein works to prevent overbending and drifting to the outside so why look further? I don’t know.

But I do know that teaching a horse to follow the feel of the inside rein makes the use of the outside rein redundant and leads to a softer, happier, more comfortable ride. I know this. It is not a theory. I’ve proved it to myself and to students over many many thousands of rides.

No doubt some of you will be dismissive of this post, perhaps angry or offended. That’s fine. But I urge you to make sure that your reasons for relying on the outside rein to create balanced turns are better than my reasons for looking to teach a horse to follow the feel of the inside rein with its thoughts to create balanced turns.

Photo: Right rein (outside rein) being applied to the left turn

01/05/2023

12/09/2022

11/17/2022

The Frustration Trap

Getting frustrated while schooling a horse tends to lead to at least some degree of confrontation. That easily snowballs into fighting and force. The rider wants one feeling, the horse provides something different, the rider’s requests escalate into demands, the horse gets anxious and does more of what the rider doesn’t want, and it all starts to go downhill.

Now the horse gets put away fried---to some degree---the rider walks away unhappy with the result. So the next schooling session can easily turn into more of the same, frustrated and demanding rider, worried and resistant horse. We all know of some riders who are in a constant war with their horses, not nice to witness.

Humans are easily frustrated. Not to the point of throwing tantrums like three year olds, but neither are most of us islands of inner peace, like some ascetic monk, sitting on some mountain side, chanting OOOM for forty years.

So we need to ride with a self-guided frustration meter, and we need to use that self-awareness to tone it down when we feel ourselves getting tight, both physically and emotionally.

Maybe think---“This horse in a progression. What he knows right now, what he is capable of doing right now is what it is. I can carefully ask for little changes, or I can lose my cool and start to grind on him to DAMN WELL DO WHAT I SAY.

But if I do get angry and forceful, is this going to make this horse better? No, it is going to make this horse worse. If I get into it with him, not only have I not gone forward in my schooling, I have gone backwards, so now, in order to win back the trust I have lost by using force, it’s going to take even longer.

There are some people who can exercise this sort of self-control, and, generally, these people make better horse trainers than those who can’t.

photo---HLM Van Schaik---I never once saw him get forceful with a horse.

06/04/2022

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04/18/2022

Eddie was never quite right. He was perfectly sound, with an exceptional pre-purchase exam. He was sweet and generally polite, and he took pressure well under saddle. But he was just a little weird, a little aloof. There were a few bizarre instances ...

04/13/2022

04/08/2022

03/01/2022

Summer horse camp enrollment begins today!
blueequest.com

Two South Sound locations (West Side Olympia, Steamboat Island) offering comprehensive horsemanship / riding lessons and day camps for riders of all ages and experience levels. Call or text:...

12/03/2021

While these two common conditions can end equine careers, modern diagnostics and treatment—plus careful management—can offer hope.

07/02/2021

Less than two weeks to the start of horse camp! Openings available for 13 & over horse club August 10-12
blueequest.com

05/27/2021

There are still openings for our 7/27-29 horse camp and our 13 & over horse camp 8/10-12!
Enroll at blueequest.com

05/12/2021

Methods to limit choose lower grass species, limit grass intake, manage pasture for lower sugar concentration, soak hay, rotational grazing, strip grazing.

04/23/2021

There are only two spaces available for our 7/13-15 horse camp. We are also accepting enrollment forms for 7/27-29 horse camp (ages 5-12) & 8/10-12 (13&up) but are starting to fill up too!
Info & forms: blueequest.com

03/04/2021

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06/03/2020

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02/18/2020

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02/04/2020

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01/22/2020

Pretty crazy!

In 1995, tijdens de 10de Friese Ballonfeesten in Joure, vestigde menner Piet de Boer een nieuw wereldrecord door zijn koets te laten trekken door maar liefst...