Footloose Farm LLC

10/03/2025

Good stuff

07/27/2025

Love this!!

07/26/2025

❤️It's definitely a different way of doing thing. Than the mass, which is sad. It just feels lonely at times, but I know it's the right way to do things.

In some ways it’s disappointing being a trainer who puts the horse first, goes at their pace, does an incredible amount of useful ground work, focuses on biomechanics and correct movement and wants the horse to feel happy and confident.

It’s hard to find clients who not only want the same thing, but realize that doing it correctly takes time.

Everyone is in a race to the show ring to try to beat the other guy.

Every horse I train gets worked with at their pace. 10 minutes here and 15 minutes there and it’s little bits at a time. They get the days off that they need. I never wear them out, drill or over do it. I want them to get it, think about and come back again fresh in the afternoon or the next morning to try the next step for a few minutes. It’s slow and steady building blocks with me.

There’s no fluff and frill. There’s no 5 and 6 year olds practicing Grand Prix movements - that takes years and how many years depends on each individual horse.

There’s no race to the show ring. No competition to see who can climb the levels the fastest.

It’s about building a happy, healthy athlete who feels confident in their body and in their work. Those are the horses who last - physically, mentally and emotionally. Those are the horses that I train and put out into the world.

I wish more people were in it for the right reasons.

The horse first. The date of the show is unimportant.

🌻 © Cara Blanchard

📸 Max & Maxwell: Equestrian Photography

06/30/2025

How to feel about lunging?

A common statement I often hear or see is “my horse won’t lunge” and the truth of the matter is no horse naturally lunges themselves - it’s very much an unnatural thing for a horse. That’s not to say it’s of no use. Quite the opposite in fact! That said, everyone’s idea of how and why they lunge can vary greatly.

Lunging is a dance of subtle communication between horse and handler. How aggressive your posture is, the angle of your body to the horse, your aids, your eye contact, your voice, your intentions and your understanding all play a vital role in how your horse will react to you. It can either be a wonderful diagnostic tool to improve or it can become a hot mess of horse running around in small circles, dangerously out of control that can cause injury and a lack of confidence in striding.

The beauty of lunging is in working out why you are doing it. To the novice, it’s more about exercise and they don’t see any more than that. To the knowledgeable person, it’s a chance to see how even the stride is and how balanced the horse is. Do the hinds step into or beyond the front hoof print? Does the tail swing with the stride, does the horse bend softly through the entire body? Does the inside hoof track slightly to the inside of the front hoof print in a small circle, does the horse pay attention for the next command, can my horse spiral in/out while maintaining balance? Is my horse relaxed or finding lunging stressful? Do the shoulders fall in with the horse counter balancing to the outside?

Lunging is the chance to unburden the horse from our clumsy meat sacks and really observe how they use themselves on a circle. If our riding is good enough the horse will have learned to carry itself in a soft relaxed way lunging first. If the rider influences/interferes with the horse too much then you have not trained the horse to carry itself in lightness and lunging is a fruitless exercise.

Lunging should be trained. Start with a soft yielding circle in close connection at walk, following the horse’s movement and being mindful of where you are. Every part of your body can be used to communicate the message to the horse. Learn to raise and lower your energy to communicate speed/tempo this is the communication a horse responds to kindly. I often see horses completely checked out while lunging and their humans frustrated at having to nag with a lunge whip. True connection to the horse keeps it seeking communication and guidance, so this response is to preserve themselves mentally. Their mind has wandered elsewhere, away from the drudgery of lunging. The opposite is true for sensitive horses who get extremely tense, as a tense horse will counter bend, slip and the lack of footing sends them into a panic running frantically. This response from a sensitive horse is to protect their body, they are in flight mode. Neither scenario is beneficial.

Lunging is an honest guide to how your horse is feeling mentally and physically. I highly recommend Manolo Mendez's work if you are looking for a practical guide. Both lunging and in hand work can open new channels of connection and communication with your horse. I also find it’s one of the most useful tools for rehab work and can build a string topline quickly if it’s done thoughtfully. Some people won’t have read this far and dismissed it as voo doo ......I can remember thinking this way but the skill of horses is in the minute details, that’s where the magic happens.

Training aides and why they are unnecessary is a whole other post.

Happy lunging 🙂

Photo of my gorgeous ex PRE stallion Alegria Asombroso.

06/26/2025

06/21/2025

I feel like regular body work or therapies are very important as we ask are horses to be athletes. We love Casie Pelnar and all her knowledge of cranial sacral work and multiple other modalities!

04/23/2025

Yes very true. And we agree with also further points that our system doesn't support good development of young horses either. Poor breeding and lacking a training system are huge factors of why we have so many lame horses.

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, none of the horses on the U.S. show jumping or eventing teams were American-bred. Not one.

Every mount representing red, white, and blue was born and brought up overseas, while our own breeding barns churn out thousands of foals a year. For a country as vast, wealthy, and horse-obsessed as the United States, that’s embarrassing.

It’s not a fluke. It’s a symptom of a broken system. We are not producing our own elite equine athletes because we’re not breeding for them.

In many U.S. breeding programs, the decision to breed a mare often isn’t based on her competition success. It’s based on injury. She bowed a tendon at four? Breed her. She fractured a sesamoid before she ever showed? Put her in foal so she “doesn’t just sit.” She was too unsound to make it through a futurity season? “She has a nice head.” This is breeding as damage control. Not selection. Not strategy.

We’re taking the horses who didn’t last, who couldn’t compete, and we’re passing those traits: genetic unsoundness, poor conformation, low resilience, on to the next generation. And we’re doing no better with the boys.

The U.S. barn landscape is simply not set up to support stallions. Most boarding facilities don’t allow them. Trainers often discourage keeping colts intact due to behavioral concerns and limited resale value. As a result, some of our most promising bloodlines are literally cut off before they even have a chance to contribute. Meanwhile, Europe is building stallion careers alongside competition careers, backing them with systems designed to assess, preserve, and promote excellence.

Across Europe, breeding is a science, not an afterthought. Registries require mares to pass performance tests. Stallions must prove themselves through the same performance tests as well as competition and through the quality of their offspring. Longevity, trainability, reproductive soundness, and rideability matter, just as much as flash. In the Netherlands, the KWPN registry ensures that horses with structural and genetic flaws are actively removed from the breeding pool. They are building better horses on purpose, while performance testing is virtually nonexistant in the USA. We’re gambling on foals from horses who quite literally could not even finish the race.

Why do we do this? Because our industry rewards early speed, early sales, and early burnout. We breed for yearling sales, futurities, and young horse classes. We reward breeders who produce a shiny prospect, not a durable horse.

We need a complete shift in breeding values. That means stopping the practice of breeding injured or completely unproven mares and instead selecting those who lasted, who stayed sound, performed consistently, and demonstrated resilience over time. It also means investing in infrastructure that allows promising colts to remain stallions, rather than gelding them for convenience or marketability. We must begin to track soundness, temperament, and fertility across generations, using that data to make informed decisions. And we need to embrace modern tools: genetic testing, performance records, and international benchmarks, instead of relying on nostalgia or sentiment. Because right now, we are selecting for the opposite of what we need. And it’s playing out in rehab barns, in short-lived careers, and yes, on the Olympic scoreboard.

This isn’t a crusade against breeders. It’s a call for accountability, ambition, and change. If we want to see American-bred horses wearing stars and stripes again, not just in name, but in origin, we need to start breeding for more than emotion and convenience. We need to breed horses that can stand the test of time, not just pass a vet check at a sale. Until we do, we’ll just keep buying our best from Europe, and wondering where our greatness went.

01/23/2025

11/22/2024

Love this! Very true.

A Course About Straightness, of course!

11/06/2024

10/06/2024

Great insights. I try to help my students become riders, but also trainers; as that helps them so much in the future become more independent and problem solving is so important in daily riding.

There’s a difference between a rider and a trainer. I’m not talking about the difference between an AA and a Pro. A “rider” is someone who rides the horse, doing what the horse already knows. Certainly you can be a good rider or not so good. And you can even be a Grand Prix “rider.” And that’s nothing to sneeze at! Learning to be a really good rider is a huge accomplishment. You keep the horse where they are in their training. Hopefully through good riding you keep them fit, happy, confident, keep their minds and bodies sound. All wonderful things.

A “trainer” is different, though. A trainer is able to assess a horse, and come up with a path to improve the way the horse goes and then hopefully teach the horse new things. A trainer needs a very inquisitive mind, needs to be bold enough to push the envelope sometimes, and needs enough grit to work through the inevitable mistakes that will arise. Mistakes are no fun, especially when you’re on a 1200 lb animal, who might tell you that you made a big one 😳 But there’s no learning without mistakes. And as a trainer - that’s your job. Your horse is going to have to learn new things from you. New movements, yes, but also new concepts (that we often call “the basics”) that really change the way they use their body.

Are people just naturally “riders” or “trainers?” Sometimes. I’ve met some young kids who just intuitively wanted to train their horse, and not just ride him. But I’ve also met plenty of people who were “riders” and over time became very effective “trainers.”

Want to be more of a trainer? Learn to assess a horse’s strengths and weaknesses. Learn when to push and when to just cruise for a while. What do you do when you run into a problem that’s tricky or one you didn’t expect? All of these can be learned, mostly from horses who will teach you but hopefully from an educated and patient trainer who has run into whatever problem you’re having many times before. That’s why great trainers still work with another trainer themselves. Always more to learn. Always a new problem to solve, and no single person has all the answers. I’m so grateful to all the trainers who helped and are still helping me learn!!