Misthaven

09/22/2024

I have been lucky enough to work with some of the best teachers…I strive to pass this knowledge on and keep it flowing forward to future generations.

What next?

Our great teachers are aging, and with them is slipping away centuries of knowledge.

We are lucky enough to have classical texts, cavalry manuals, books and thoughts laid out by their teachers before. But these manuals and texts don’t come with years of feel taught - it’s pretty hard to read the words and enact them without a masterful hand to shape you along with it.

Karl Mikolka wrote in a letter once that in the span of 44 years he had acquired and kept five serious students that he considered “torch bearers.”

Many of these people, these best students of masters, have quiet lives. No website, little presence. You hear about them from those who knew them and can confirm their presence in the SRS, or Neindorff’s school and so on - but a google search turns up practically nothing.

What happens in a few more decades?

In reading these texts, my lessons come full circle, and concepts come to life for me. But I really don’t know how one could navigate the texts without a hand saying softly here, sit over there, straighten here- release, release, release.

Who will give the next generation these lessons of centuries old information?

This is something that bothers me considerably as I consider my own opportunities : my teacher spent decades under a master, and years in a school hall. Where are our school halls? Who has horses capable of high collection for students to learn and feel on? And how can we produce these without examples not just to see but to feel and experience and absorb as part of our being? How can we teach two dimensional text without that third dimension of experience and feel?

I don’t have any answers-
Just concerns, and some curiosity for the future

09/20/2024

09/19/2024

Truth

After 30 years of teaching Clinics I find these statements below very True.

A beginner Rider wants to work on Intermediate Horsemanship.

An Intermediate Rider wants to work on Advanced Horsemanship.

An Advanced Rider works on the Basics.

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Lead Changes

09/18/2024

https://youtu.be/VeOK8pBSwbo

Until mankind starts realizing the horses foot is not just a capsule with parts in it, we will continue to have epidemics of varrious lameness issues. When y...

09/15/2024

The two pictured dressage riders demonstrate the one of the most egregious" changes in dressage over the past several decades. The left rider is balanced in shared unity of motion with his horse. His saddle is minimal and does not aid or restrict his position. By contrast, the modern dressage rider is leaning back with the help of a saddle with a high cantle and huge thigh blocks or knee rolls that allow her to lean back and use her body weight to increase her ability to apply greater rein pressure.

The visual difference between the riders is inescapable. One rider is relaxed and balanced while the other is unbalanced, "water skiing" off their horse's mouth with the help of a saddle that contains her imbalance. One rider works with their horse's energy while the other opposes their horse's energy with significant force.

Centuries old horsemanship is the distillation of the experience of thousands of riders with countless horses over centuries. This leaning back to enable riders to use their body weight to apply greater force to control their horses is not new. Because it is wrong, as evidenced by blue tongues and blood from horses' mouths, and because it is counter to true unity with one's horse, there has been a long standing rule of horsemanship to stop it. That rule states that riders should not be allowed to lean back more than 5 degrees behind vertical.

In our new commercial era of modern riding, each discipline has more or less created their own separate "horsemanship" with their own set of rules and standards. Many of these separate "horsemanships" have subordinated the protection of the horse in favor of fulfilling the expectations and desires of the riders. In this case of excessive rein pressure, abandoning the 5 degree rule gave modern dressage riders permission to use more physical force to impose on horses at the horse's expense and to their detriment.

Furthermore, abandonment of the 5 degree rule has required external supports in saddle design to deal with the rider's intentional imbalance when leaning back 10, 15 or even 20 degrees. Without the high cantles and giant thigh blocks, a rider leaning back past 5 degrees would likely fall off their horse.

This is one more example of how today's flawed riding that undermines the wellbeing of horses can be fixed. There is no need to ban certain bits and equipment. The need is to improve riding to the level that it is no longer destructive to horses.

If the 5 degree rule were to be reintroduced, riders would once again be required to ride in unified balance with and motion with their horses. This single change would greatly reduce the current level of excessive force applied to horses by simply making it much more difficult to develop the greater force levels that now cause the blood, blue tongues and the destructive hyperflexion.

A big part of these kinds of problems is that the well meaning advocates for the protection of horses are not educated enough to address the causes. Instead they address the symptoms related to equipment. Improved horsemanship is always the answer, and we have largely forgotten this.

09/07/2024

This!

"It is not the reins! It is the body of the rider which turns the horse. No inside rein! Never! The inside rein is the poison of the rider." ~ Manuel Jorge de Oliveira

Foto Siegbert Altenhofer

09/07/2024

What a beautiful day for a show!Couldnt be more proud of Crissy and her gelding Cash making their western dressage debut at the Lazy J mini trial today!Together they scored 65.41 and a third place ribbon out of 14 riders ,and the only rider doing a western dressage test (intro level test 1)!
Congratulations Crissy!You did so well!