Ahrens Horsemanship

11/20/2024

I made a last minute trip to Arizona to see an old friend. There were a ton of complications however, everything worked out in the long run.

11/18/2024

Happy to have the opportunity to be apart of the heart of the Heart of the Horse Trainers Challenge again in 2025!

‼️ANNOUNCING THE 2025 HEART OF THE HORSE TRAINER CHALLENGE PARTICIPANTS‼️

PROFESSIONAL TRAINERS
Lauren Henny
Kaylee Rice
Miranda Carlson
Colby O’Connor
Breanna Frey
Betsey Munday
John Harvey
Melinda Martinez
Oscar Martinez
Shelby Ahrens

AMATEUR TRAINERS
Vera Frazier
Ava Schuetzle
Lexi Sones
LeAnne Casey
Thomas Turnage
Suzanne Whitehead
Marla Patrick

PLEASE GIVE THESE TRAINERS A ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR GIVING RESCUE HORSES THEIR BEST CHANCE TO FIND LOVING HOMES!! ❤️

YOUTH AND VOLUNTEER DIVISIONS - we are accepting applications for youth and parent teams and volunteer/fosters until December 20th. If interested in fostering a Shetland or rescue horse and taking them through the training steps please send us a private message.

Bios and pics are rolling in for individual introductions so stay tuned!

09/27/2024

200%

Nuno Oliveira told us: ‘If the horse is happy, everything will be all right; if he is constrained everything will go wrong. And in case that it is necessary to use force, then one enters a domain that does not fit the equestrian art, neither for that matter, in the circle in which civilised people dwell’.
“I urge my readers to apply the aids to help the horse, not to put him in a mould.”
https://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2021/10/the-aids-and-the-horse-a-classical-approach/

09/23/2024

This was a great experience for me!

There is an amateur devision, so those of you apart of my local community if you’d like to participate get your application in. It’d pretty cool to have a few more representatives from Washington and you know I’ll help and support the best I can from start to finish 🙂.

We are seeking Professional and Amateur Trainers to participate in the Heart of the Horse Trainers Challenge offering over $15,000 in cash and prizes! This event not only promotes excellence in training but also supports the rescue of horses in need, ensuring they have brighter futures. DEADLINE TO APPLY IS OCTOBER 31st! Visit our web site for more information about this exciting and unique event and please share with those you think would be interested. https://hohchallenge.org/

09/21/2024

Headed over the bridge to Rocking M Ranch to teach a clinic. It’s definitely a nice fresh misty morning.

09/17/2024

Just enjoy the ride, enjoy your own journey. Don’t worry about what the trees, rocks, and moss think about your path. They’ll probably still be sitting there when you pass back through on your way back from another adventure.

09/16/2024

A few pictures from our W.E. clinic this weekend. The improvements of not only W.E. But horsemanship makes my heart happy. Thank you all for all your dedication to your horses.

09/13/2024

One of the stills Roy took of Mocha and I, it really sums up the day.
Photo Credit: Roy Stansell

09/05/2024

Working with the horse from the inside out isn’t something that is easily seen, sometimes for an extended period of time. The reality is in the long term, all that work will be present and valued but not always acknowledged on how it actually got there in the first place.

I remember asking Tom about the progression of horses in their early training and he pointed me to a section in his book True Unity and I realized that what he looked on as a foundation went beyond all things that I had learned and practiced in my riding career before meeting Tom.
He asked me to read out loud one particular line, which I did: "I don't mean that I'm trying to get everything completed, but to get enough there to where if the horse gets troubled he will come to me; or to where I can get him to come to me for security and cover."
This really does get to the in-depth feel that Tom had.
His reflections on the spirit of the horse.
Trust is the foundation of all good training.
Without it, and specifically if it has been lost or violated in the past, some form of resistance may occur. This can be outright pushiness, aggression, flight, freeze or perhaps some other avoidance behavior. If your horse exhibits any of these, first and foremost, start to establish a trusting relationship. As you do, and you make some progress, above all, do not violate that by thinking you can increase pressures or other aversives that have caused the original problem.
Tom told us that he wants to work from the inside of the horse. This is where the trust will come from. When you establish trust, then you can start to work from the inside out to achieve certain specific behaviors in a willing frame of mind.

Thank you Caitlin for the lovely photo❤️

08/18/2024

We’ve been working on some very uncommon behavior issues with Yankee for the past few months and decided it was time to really test out our work. We took him to a local ranch riding schooling show. Was he perfect? No, was he good most definitely! He showed his strengths and weaknesses throughout the day and gave me lots of insight to the next steps in his training. Placing second in ranch obstacles, second in ranch pattern, and fourth in ranch reining proved he’s got what it takes in the pen. No real issues in a new place and show environment, calmly waiting on deck, not worried about his trailer buddy or what’s going on in his environment because I wasn’t worried shows me he’s got a clear mind and knows I’m his team mate and everything is good. Those are signs of a good horse in my book.
There are a few key things that go into fixing behavior issues. One is that 90% of the time a human created these issues in the first place, this creates the first hurdle. The first instinct of the horse is usually that all humans are similar and will repeat what caused the undesirable behavior. While changing the behavior of the horse the human doing the “fixing” must change the outlook the horse has about humans in general. To accomplish this, the mental and emotional side of the horse needs not only to be activated but engaged with the human. Physically trying to change the behavior alone most of the time is just a band aid and the behavior has a greater chance of resurfacing.

The second key component is to test your work, test if mentally and emotionally the horse has changed his mind about his general conclusions of humans. We as the human need to take notes of both the positive and negative changes during these tests. That way we know what worked and what didn’t, remembering what we did that worked gives insight to help fix what didn’t. Areas that didn’t improve or improve as much are the next steps to help the horse change these unwanted behaviors. The more refined the human can be the better the results, the better the results are, the more minimized the chances of that undesirable behavior resurfacing are.

06/10/2024

Janet managed to catch some photos of Saturday’s W.E. clinic. It was a fantastic clinic, it makes me very happy when you see even the slightest improvement with horses and/or humans.
Just because my clinics are W.E. Based clinics doesn’t mean the things you take away from them only apply to the sport. They’re more horse and human team building skills that can be used everyday than only W.E. Based skills. It was just a fantastic weekend!

05/11/2024

It’s been a long time since Mocha has taught a clinic, I know she’ll do her best today though!

05/09/2024

Mocha getting ready for this weekends W.E. Clinic.

04/21/2024

WORKING EQUITATION CLINIC
This is a one day intro to Working Equitation with Shelby Ahrens hosted by Anlan Cathal Ranch, Port Orchard, Cris Polston. Clinic May 11, 2024.
AGENDA
- AM will cover basic dressage/flatwork foundation needed for not just Working Equitation, but everyday riding no matter what discipline you ride. Additionally, riders will be coached through riding a Working Equitation dressage test. 🏇
- PM will involve select obstacles used in the sport of W.E. that support riding thru other obstacles and the proper way to execute them followed by how to link those obstacles together as they would when riding a course.
OBJECTIVE
- This clinic is not only to answer questions and help gain understanding of what is expected in the sport of W.E. but, applying quality horsemanship for you and your horse that can be used no matter where or what discipline you ride. The sport of W.E. is a fun and exciting sport that anyone can learn and any horse can participate in. Come and join us for a fun filled day of horses, Horsemanship, and obstacles.
LOGISTICS
- Clinic fee $200
*****Deposit of $100 required to hold your spot by midnight 5/4/2024 Non refundable.
*****Remaining $100 plus $10 haul in fee can be paid upon arrival.
- Payments can be submitted through PayPal [email protected]
******NOTE - max size trailer is 3 horse slant due to limited parking*******
- 10 rider maximum
- Light refreshments will be provided, however please bring your lunch.
- There will be a 1 hour lunch break while we set up the obstacles
- Auditors welcome!!!!! $20 per person payable upon arrival, carpooling encouraged due to limited parking. We encourage auditors to RSVP in order to plan for handouts and refreshments.
- Your payment to ride means you are committed to coming. Pls make sure you can commit before paying. There will not be any refunds.
- No shows will not be refunded

03/29/2024

Identifying horse personality traits…. as much as I’d like to say A + B = C on this topic, it’s just not possible. Now I might be a little bit old-school, but the reality is this. The more horses you interact with the better you’ll be at identifying different personality traits.

Being around enough horses or someone else who has been around enough horses to identify the different traits that horses possess is the first step. During this step it requires lot of observation, and not just in the moment. Those observations then have to be remembered. A particular frame of mind is necessary I believe to achieve this. I hate to put this information into tech form but you need data and you need a lot of it, the more the better. After data has begun to be acquired, organizing that data needs to start. Also, while organizing that data, personal experience versus knowledge from a very educated horseman need to be weighed differently. At first, I would weigh the Horsemen’s education slightly higher than personal experience. At some point, however this table turns, and the personal experience that you have with horses, will then outweigh the previously learned education from the experienced Horsemen. The reason is that first hand experience will always be better than an experience taught second hand.

From the beginning of my career, I started separating different traits into different groups with personalities. Every horse that I come in contact with adds to all these different groups, thus creating a very detailed portfolio in my head. I use this portfolio to help identify different traits in every new horse and I use every new horse to test my portfolio and all my different groups of personality traits. So basically I’m checking and crosschecking not only my past observations, but my current ones.

This portfolio in my head consisting of thousands and thousands of horses is one of my most valuable assets as a horsemen. On top of the fact that ego doesn’t play a factor in the portfolio I’ve built over the years means that I can change anything at any time. The reason why this is so valuable is simply because it creates the baseline on how I approach teaching and training an individual horse.

In my opinion any professional in the equine industry needs to have a much more complicated portfolio of personality traits stacked away in their brain versus an individual with one or two horses. An individual who has two horses really only needs to understand those two horses to the best of their ability for the best quality of life and the best experience for the horse. The professional however, is going to see potentially thousands of horses in a year so they need to continue adding to those traits categories and where they fit in those categories and how to combined them altogether to do what’s best for the individual horse in front of them. For the professional or pleasure Horsemen this is potentially a major undertaking, but if the work is put in, it will not only make the relationship between horse and human better faster, but the quality of life between human and horse is potentially the best it can be. This in the big scheme of things this is our responsibility, after all we brought horses into our society we need to set them up for the most successful lives in this society we can.

03/15/2024

I’m not really sure if this concept going to make sense to anybody, it might be just something that only makes sense to my eccentric brain. Let’s just say a perfectly trained horse traveling in a straight line is at zero. Then we add a rider sitting in the middle of the horse balanced both left and right, front to back. The horse will still travel at zero or a straight line. If the rider of that horse shifts their weight to the right 5%, that horse is going to balance itself by traveling 5% to the right as well. The horse uses its balance to travel 5% to the right the same way the rider has shifted their weight. The horse is doing so naturally to keep itself balanced. This causes the horse to use 5% of its bend to the right to travel on a right bend. Once the rider returns to zero in balance on the horses back, the horse will return to zero and ride in a straight line again.

Now Instead of having a perfectly balanced horse that travels at zero meaning a straight line. The horse being rode travels at 5% balance to the right this isn’t zero so this is not in a straight line. The horse is traveling slightly to the right or 5% of a bend to the right. What I see a lot of riders do in this situation is use their reins to try and straighten the horse. The problem is this most likely this isn’t going to change the balance of the horse that is causing it to travel 5% to the right. Yes, the horse might travel in a straight line but, the body of the horse is still balanced 5% to right. that being the case, the body of the horse is not straight and most likely not traveling straight through the body. What actually needs to happen for the rider to correct this 5% to the right balance of the horse is, the rider needs to cancel out this out of balance by balancing themselves 5% to the left on the horse. doing so cancels the 5% balance to the right and brings the horse back to zero to travel in a straight line.
Changing the balance of the horse is a small adjustment. It’s not a big squeeze or a bump with the legs, it’s not shortening one of the reins, it’s an adjustment in the seat, torso, or even shoulders.

There are pretty much two points that I’m trying to express here. One point is that balance is very important and it’s a very natural way to guide horses in pretty much any direction and any speed. The second point that I want to express is an adjustment in the riders seat or torso is a much smaller adjustment for the horse and the rider than the reins. Since the seat of the rider is the biggest contact point on the horse it is potentially a bigger cue for the horse to respond to than the reins. The seat however is a lighter cue than the reins because it is adjusting balance, this makes it more of passive cue or adjustment Just an example why it is more productive to ride seat first, legs second, and reins last.

03/01/2024

A good coach does not want to be your crutch and they don’t see you as a meal ticket either. These higher quality coaches want to see their clients succeed without the constant of them being right there the entire time. They want to see that their clients have practiced the previous lesson and even added other past lessons every time they step out into the arena for the next lesson and most will notice and acknowledge the additions of previous lessons and accomplishments made. This does not mean there won’t be hard lessons or honest words from these coaches that may sting a little, especially if these words are in the best interest of the horse and/or clients. These coaches are confident in their program and they encourage clients to explore lessons with other coaches, trainers, and even attend clinics. These coaches have learned how to push the right amount for each individual client and horse team. They will admit when they make a mistake openly and these mistakes may have happened earlier the same day or maybe even 10 years ago. They don’t feel the need to upsell themselves to stir up more business, they know the work they do speaks for itself. A good coach knows what toxic relationships are be it between two humans or between a horse and human. They would rather work to remove the toxins from these situations than feed into them, turn a blind eye, or try to cover them up. These coaches may be very competitive but at the end of the day respect their peers and will sincerely congratulate them when they are successful no matter the level of success. In short most of the time these coaches are not in the game only for themselves, they are in the game to improve the game as well as the players of the game.

02/26/2024

A super busy and successful weekend! Our WE workshop was fantastic we had riders of all levels and everyone went home with a little bit more than what they came with. On top of that there was a tack sale going on all weekend and it seemed to be pretty successful as well. To top it all off I gotta phone call from a very important person to me! Love it when good things come together !