Southerly Wind Stables

12/25/2024

🎄🎁🎄

12/17/2024

Our barn gift came out just perfect this year! Thank you Easy Tags and Darla Lee for your help on this!

11/29/2024

💋🎄

11/28/2024

🫶🏼

11/08/2024

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
~Theodore Roosevelt

09/25/2024

Horsemanship first and foremost always…I think teaching horsemanship has unfortunately become a lost art. 🖼️

All I Want To Do Is Jump

I ran a fairly large lesson program for almost 20 years. This is a statement I have heard over and over, both in my lesson barn days and from colleagues today.

All I want to do is jump.

There are a few problems with this. Let's start with the horse. I love the old horseman's saying " horses only have so many jumps in them ". Is that 100, 1000 before it becomes lame.... No one knows....but horses certainly weigh a lot and the concussion landing on those small little legs is significant. Horses also get bored, burned out....and let's face it...sour.
Respect for the horse . The riders job is to do the best thing for the horse. Most horses only need jumped a few days a week. That means if a lesson horse works 5 days a week, only 2 of those are jumping days. 3 of those are purely flatwork or hacking.

Riders : most of jumping well has NOTHING to do with jumping. Riders need to work on pace, transitions, straightness, their position, effectiveness of aids, balance, ability to change positions smoothly ( from 2 point to sitting etc ) and so much more.

So if you are one of those students who Just Wants To Jump , please replace that with "I want to be an effective rider and horseman or woman . I want to do what is best for the horse "

And instructors who cave to this plea from students
Only YOU can set the CULTURE of your barn. Talk frequently about horsemanship and doing right by the animals.

09/13/2024

If you know you know. 💔

07/21/2024

👇🏼💋✌🏼

This hit home…

So many little horse people around this country everywhere started right here.

𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝗽, 𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘀𝗼 𝗯𝗶𝗴 𝗶𝘁 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿. 🩶

07/18/2024

Apparently NASA has a poster hanging with bees that reads:

"Aerodynamically a bee's body is not made to fly; the good thing is that the bee doesn't know".

The law of physics says that a bee cannot fly, the aerodynamic principle says that the breadth of its wings is too small to keep its huge body in flight, but a bee doesn’t know, it doesn’t know anything about physics or its logic and flies anyway.

This is what we can all do. Fly and prevail in every moment in the face of any difficulty and in any circumstance despite what they say.
Let us be bees, no matter the size of our wings, we take flight and enjoy the pollen of life.

❤️💋✌🏼

07/15/2024

🏆💋

07/01/2024

FROM A PARENT:
One of my friends asked "Why do you pay so much money for your kids to ride horses?" Well I have a confession to make, I don't pay for my kids to ride horses.

So, if I am not paying for them to ride, what am I paying for?

- I pay for those moments when my kids become so tired they want to quit but don't.

- I pay for those days when my kids come home from school and are "too tired" to go the barn but go anyway.

- I pay for my kids to learn to be disciplined.

- I pay for my kids to learn to take care of their body.

- I pay for my kids to learn to work with others and to be good team mates.

- I pay for my kids to learn to deal with disappointment, when they don't get that score they'd hoped for, but still have to work hard in the grading.

- I pay for my kids to learn to make and accomplish goals.

- I pay for my kids to learn that it takes hours and hours and hours and hours of hard work and practice to create a champion, and that success does not happen overnight.

- I pay for the opportunity my kids have and will have to make life-long friendships.

- I pay so that my kids can be in the arena instead of in front of a screen...
..I could go on but, to be short, I don't pay for horse riding, I pay for the opportunities that horse riding provides my kids with to develop attributes that will serve them well throughout their lives and give them the opportunity to bless the lives of others. From what I have seen so far I think it is a great investment!

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