Sand Bar Ranch

03/16/2025

Congratulations to Morgan Goodman of RnD stables her mare Uptown girl threw a handsome buckskin c**t by Bridlewood Paparazzi 🦄💕

03/05/2025

Early morning stretch & workout for “Da Prince”. Prince is available for S or in barn show lease, we would love to see this guy take another rider to qualify for finals !

03/02/2025

Such a beautiful day to get out and play 🦄💕

02/27/2025

It was so nice to get back training outdoors , looking forward to the temps this week 🦄💕

02/19/2025

“Miss Evita”, just a casual trot through the river 🤣🦄💕

02/15/2025

This right here !

Why do the basics take so long?

The basics actually don’t take much time at all. Teaching a horse and rider the building blocks of balance and relaxation is not that difficult or complicated, as long as both are a blank slate.

What takes so much time is undoing poor basics, undoing poor movement patterns, and letting go of the wrong muscle memories and building the right muscle groups.

I’ve been riding with my teacher for almost a decade now. The first few years I barely made any progress, not because the work wasn’t good, but because I didn’t understand what she was even talking about. It went right over my head, and every lesson I had we sort of repeated the work of the last. My poor teacher repeated herself over and over, but I rode with others who’s work undid what she was trying to do, and I just wasn’t ready to understand it yet.

Then, when it clicked for me, I was all in- but my muscle memories, habits and understanding was counter productive. It took a long time (and I’m still working on it) to let go of the habits I had that stood in the way of progress. Same for my horses - they had habits that weren’t helpful either, especially the habit of coming behind the bit: some of it wasn’t my fault, some of it was. This was a very lengthy, uncomfortable and downright yucky phase. There didn’t feel like there was a lot of winning. This is where most people quit - they find a new instructor because they aren’t getting anywhere, or bounce around to different “methods.”

Then the break through: I finally understood where she was coming from, what the benefits were, and my horses were starting to buy into it too. We were finding harmony, beautiful moments sprinkled in, and getting successes to keep us motivated. This phase required lots of vigilance from my teacher and myself to not revert to old habits when we were tired, distracted or learning something new.

After these new, more productive habits were better cemented, upward progress was possible. It took so long. Not because the learning itself is fated to be arduous, but because I was in my own way for much of the time.

So why does it take so long? It doesn’t. But we make it so- and there’s nothing wrong with that process, because as Ray Hunt said, “you’re not working on your horse, you’re working on yourself.”

02/07/2025

02/02/2025

I love our late night rendezvous Jin Price, Thank you for bringing the “Delicious Delight”, AKA Ferdinand 🦄💕

01/20/2025

This!

HORSES IN TRAINING…

You pay that hefty training bill for the month.

You look to have you horse in training as little as possible so it doesn’t break the bank.

You’re disappointed when after 30 days or 60 days or 90 days, there’s still more work to be done or the goal hasn’t been met. Worse yet, it looks good, you take the horse home and it unravels piece by piece. All that money “wasted”.

When you pay a trainer, that money isn’t paying for a result, it’s paying for someone’s skilled effort.

At least for me, when someone gets unhappy that their horse “isn’t fixed yet”, or comes “untrained” after it’s been home a while, makes the task of training horses for other people, discouraging. Discouraging because the efforts are being made, usually my best efforts that are filled with compassion, determination and lots of ruminating on how to fix complex issues a horse may have. Their disappointment becomes my failure basically. I know that’s not an actual truth but it’s never rewarding when someone is disappointed due to their own expectations.

Training a horse is NOT like being a mechanic on a car. Its not a tune up, it’s not the simple replacement of a part. It’s an animal with thoughts, feelings, emotions, habits, talents, etc. You don’t just program them, tune them up or replace a faulty part and send it back good as new.

You arent paying for results to happen within your timeline, you are paying for the time it takes to reach a desired result. The more complicated the project, the bigger the investment. The more baggage a horse has, the more effort it takes to unravel the mess. The bigger the goal, the greater the investment.

People send their horses to certain trainers because they want the outcome that trainer proves they can achieve. The problem is, people want that result in the shortest time frame possible because time, again, is money. It takes the time it takes to create the vision and time costs money. People who have a diy mentality, value the effort so much more when they themselves invest their own energy into a horse rather than just paying for it. I really feel that those who do it themselves, come to appreciate the efforts it takes far more than those who sign the check.

Be nice to your trainers, they work hard. :)

Credit goes to:
Katy Negranti Performance Horsemanship https://www.facebook.com/share/1BPC3yLZYx/

01/16/2025

This right here, for any rider of any discipline!

More from Dr van Schaik, plus other experts, on how to become a good rider:
“The rider should do his utmost to be light on the horse and try to avoid all unnecessary movements. It is evident that the less of a burden the rider is for the horse, the better and the longer the horse will be able to serve his rider. The only way a rider can make himself light on a horse and avoid unnecessary movements is to make himself tall by using the abdominal muscles. This will prevent him from sitting like a sack of grain on the horse.”
https://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2018/10/the-seat-as-part-of-the-riders-position/

01/12/2025

Da “Prince “ &. Da “Pirouette”🦄💕

01/07/2025

Da Bear aka “Kodiak”, Melissa Olinger in the irons 🦄💕

01/07/2025

💕🦄The Abracadabra 🦄💕

01/02/2025

“Sand Bar’s Olympia “ Going back to Cali , Thank you Jin Price the bestest hauler ever 🦄💕. Going to admit I am very jealous 😜