Endeavor Farm

05/04/2025

GREAT day at the Buckhorn Farm Equestrian Center show! When your young rider scores well enough to win the dressage, when your client’s SIX year old goes to her first show and is PERFECT, and when your own young horse is as good acting as he is good looking…it’s a great day!!!

05/02/2025

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04/22/2025

Less than 4 weeks ago, “Meryl” arrived at Endeavor Farm. We purchased her as sort of a “rescue” and when she walked off the trailer, our worst fears were validated. Horribly underweight, she was a bone rack having eaten most of her muscle just to survive. Worse still was the thrush, which had infected and eroded all four of her frogs and had spread so far into the cleft of her frog that her heel bulbs were splitting apart. She had injuries, scrapes and wounds from fighting for food, a big mare who needed vastly more calories than her pasture mates. She was covered in fungus.

We don’t know much about Meryl’s history, but have some suspicions that she has been abused since she bolts away from rakes, muckforks and certainly knows the wrong end of a whip. But she is here now; that will never again be her story.

Slowly we have gotten her healthy, she eats with appetite and gratitude and has gained close to 200 pounds. Her ground manners are very nice, and every day, her eyes get softer, thanking us for the care we offer her. We are playing with her ever so gently, finding she is saddle broke, has some rudimentary semblance of steering and stop, and loving her for trying.

Today, Regan rode her for the first time. They both smiled. Petite Regan doesn’t really need to be riding a 17h green mare, but she is already a little too much in love. And we didn’t really need a rescue horse. But you know, sometimes you do something because it seems to tip the scale of the horse world in the right direction.

Here’s to Meryl. We’ve got you sweetie.

04/22/2025

“Harry Boldt me dijo una vez: Quien es un buen jinete?...No es el que puede hacer piaffe/ passage, puedes coger a alguien de la calle y enseñarle en diez lecciones, y si el caballo hace piaffe/ passage , podrá hacerlo. El buen jinete es el que se sienta en un caballo y le dice:…Quiero la nariz cinco centímetros mas abajo,…. ahora la quiero diez centímetros mas lejos…. ahora la quiero mas arriba…..Si puedes controlar “el marco”, tener el caballo en cualquier lugar que quieras tenerlo, entonces eres un buen jinete y entonces no tendrás ningún problema.” Jean Bemelmans.

04/21/2025

It’s all right here.

How would you like to go ringside for a clinic with champion international rider Gareth Hughes? Now you can! In this feature on , check out a full recap from his clinic at the New England Dressage Association (NEDA)’s Annual Symposium sponsored by Absorbine®. Go in-depth about how horses learn, building confidence, training tips, daily workout systems, stretching, dressage movements, and much more in this story: https://yourdressage.org/2025/03/04/gareth-hughes-coaches-riders-at-2024-absorbine-neda-symposium/. NEDA

04/21/2025

Yes!!!

"Applying tests of self-carriage more thoroughly in dressage tests and all other riding tests has the potential to save horse sports. Riders should be required to demonstrate self-carriage in all gaits and movements.

This would ‘prove’ to judges that horses are actually trained rather than held. If a horse is held in a certain movement, it means he is not trained to maintain it.

As a minimum standard, any so-called ethical training method should demonstrate the maintenance of desired behaviours (self-carriage) without relying on physical force."

Andrew McLean

04/20/2025

Johan Hamminga talks about canter – what is a good canter? “Here you see the inside hind leg is for a very short moment, coming earlier to the ground, that is the reason he is so uphill. The canter sequence is outside hind leg, diagonal pair, inside front leg, but when the diagonal is a little broken because the inside hind leg is for a short moment, earlier on the ground, then you have the best canter there is.”
https://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2020/07/thinking-about-canter-what-makes-a-canter-good-with-johan-hamminga/

04/20/2025

The Endeavor Gardens are just starting their seasonal show. Have been here for 23 years now, and I think they are still getting prettier each year.

04/18/2025

Contact – with the experts, Klaus Balkenhol tells us:
“All riders, regardless of their level of riding, are eventually confronted with ‘contact’ and all the problems connected with it. As a matter of fact, a contact that’s not been correctly established from the hindquarters, is not a real contact at all. To be able to sense this is part of the art that riding can become… The rider who follows this path consistently and patiently will be rewarded in the end. Even if the reward ‘only’ consists of an indescribable, beautiful, and satisfying feeling of lightness – almost weightlessness – in one’s riding, and the resulting harmonious cooperation between horse and rider.”
Klaus Balkenhol, read more from the experts:
https://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2021/10/contact-what-is-good-contact/

04/18/2025

Beautiful Bella…finding her balance and her happy ears!