En Pointe Equestrian

06/25/2025

🙌🏽The scoreboard doesn’t tell the whole story.
✨Not the nerves you rode through.
✨Not the soft try your horse gave you after weeks of struggle.
✨Not the quiet moment in the warm-up pen when you finally felt together.

We get caught chasing placings.
Comparing runs.
Measuring progress by how we stack up next to someone else.

✨But real progress?
💕That’s personal.

It’s the inside work.
The mindset shift.
🙌🏽The small wins that no one else sees — but you feel.

Because in the end, it’s not about beating anyone else.
It’s about becoming the kind of rider your horse needs,
one ride at a time.

And that journey?
Is always worth showing up for.

🧡🐴

06/24/2025

A horse cannot go to the hand if the hand comes to the horse.

The rider’s goal should be to maintain a soft, following contact—a feeling that is forward and slightly giving. In order for the horse to reach into the contact, there must be something for them to reach toward. If you ride on the buckle all the time (though it certainly has its place), there’s no consistent point of connection for the horse to seek.

The reins should be just short enough to allow connection when the horse is moving forward, pushing from the hindquarters, and moving through their body correctly. As the horse begins to engage from behind, the neck will naturally lengthen, and that energy will carry forward into the rider’s soft, receptive hands.

This process takes time, repetition, and feel—and it’s one of the most common and challenging concepts riders face.

Always remember: good hands come from a good seat. Without stability and balance in the saddle, true softness in the hand is impossible.

06/21/2025

Research shows the very strong interdependence between in-hand training, and under-saddle training.

If things go wrong under-saddle for any reason whatsoever, and you feel you cannot train a safe or adequate response it is sensible to dismount and revisit in-hand training.

Time spent on this necessary part of horse training will also be rewarded in a very real sense, for example, when needing to transport a horse under the stress of an evacuation or veterinary emergency.

This text is from 'Modern Horse Training: Equitation Science Principles & Practice, Volume 2', a practical blueprint for horse training grounded in the latest equitation science.

To grab a copy visit our webshop.

06/15/2025

Session 14 with Tigo - 6/14/25. I’ve been super busy with my day job and not able to get out to the barn to work with the horses, but I finally had some time. I needed to deworm the horses and decided I would work with Tigo on the syringe. The first time I ever brought out dewormer, he knew what the tube was and had a very strong “fight” response before I even got it close to him. He had the same reaction to the vet, the potential for getting an injection, and his oral sedative. The vet described it as a “feral defensiveness” where he turned to them ready to fight for his life to keep them away. He came to me with shoes, and my farrier said there was no way they had gotten shoes on him without sedative, so we know he’s likely had some experience with oral or injectable sedatives to get some things done with him. Since then, I haven’t shown him a syringe and have done feed through pelleted dewormer, and emptied syringes onto his grain. I had to establish trust and a partnership with him before I tried to work on this issue—I needed him to not see me as someone who does thing “to him” that he needed to fight, but as someone he does things with and won’t force him. I started by introducing him to the sight and smell of the dewormer with a fence in between us just in case he wanted to strike out at me. When it was clear it was safe and he knew he could move away from me if he hated the idea that much, I entered the round pen. In total, this session took just under 16 minutes from the start of this video and I cropped out the 3 minutes I spent working with him on the lead with no whip, reminding him of his shoulders, my boundaries, and getting him to use his ‘thinking’ brain. I spent time just showing him the syringe and then petting him with my syringe hand where he couldn’t see it, moved to scratching his face with my syringe hand where he couldn’t see it see it, then went to using our “touch” cue to touch a calm pausing muzzle and released the pressure by petting him where he couldn’t see it, to then moving to where he only got scratches when the syringe was on his face. In the end, he volunteered to investigate and put the syringe in his mouth himself three times: the first I didn’t do anything and praised him, the second I pushed a little of the apple flavored dewormer out for him to taste, and the third time he took all of it. I would have been completely fine putting it in his feed, but I love when a horse offers something themselves. This is something we’ll work on moving forward so he is less weary of it, but I’m super happy with how quickly this turned from a ‘no’ to ‘let me try it.’ Good boy Tigo!

06/14/2025

Change your perspective. 🙏🏼🙌🏼

05/26/2025

Session 13 with Tigo - 5/25/25.
He was super happy to see me two days in a row and put his nose right in the halter and gave me a soft little cuddle before we left his paddock. I even got to brush him out and scratch on him for the first time without him being mouthy, or needing to work him first!

We did some ground work and Liberty work first to make sure he was in his thinking brain, worked on side-passing away from and TO his handler, then saddled him up. After a free lunge to warm up to how the saddle felt and attaching some reins to his rope halter, I turned on the camera to video our ride!

We worked on his whoa, and noticed he immediately wants to move to the rail to halt, maybe because the trainer before turned him into the fence to stop him? So that will be something we address next session. We made sure he understood direction, yielding his haunches and the forehand in both directions, which is backed up by the ground person if he gets confused, and then we had our first trot!! He was stellar today and such a gentleman, I couldn’t be more pleased for a second ride in over a year. I love horses who are started lightly, and then turned back out to grow up and mature before being restarted—it was exactly what I look for when I look at prospects.

05/25/2025

Session 12 with Tigo - 5/24/25.

Our first ride! Zero cares about saddling or weight. If anything, he was quite bored with the whole process. He is a confident and inquisitive horse by nature, making him brave and not very spooky, and he likely had a lot of despooking done prior to purchasing him. He also had about 6 or 7 short rides before I purchased him last year, but he needed a lot of ground work and to grow up mentally before I got on him. He recently told me he was ready to be partners, and he was particularly agreeable this day, so we decided to see how he felt about being ridden after over a year.

Look at those nice “whoa”s using the voice cue I have been drilling into him with ground work—he knows to plant his feet (and turns toward the ground person a couple times as he would on the lunge line, which is okay and expected right now)!

Thank you to Tiffany of Discovery Horsemanship being my ground person to spot me! I don’t call myself a c**t starter, but I always suggest having a knowledgeable person on the ground for your first few sessions on a young horse.

05/24/2025

Another helpful post from Sue Hughes. This is one of my favorite exercises:
GETTING AROUND THE RING - INSIDE OF IT

You ride the center line and the two turns at the end. In Intro, Basic and Level One circles come next. In geometry circles have no beginnings or ends. In dressage they certainly do. If the test asks for a 20-meter circle at B or E, you start and end at that letter.

But let us talk about how to guarantee that a circle is round. There are no scientific studies for this but, it will be round if you divide it into 4 parts. Each part needs to match. Here is the formula. At trot, mares and geldings, any breed of horse and any height of horse (except for small ponies) it is the same.

For a 20-meter circle there are 7 posts per quarter.
For a 15-meter circle, there are 6 posts per quarter.
For a 10-meter circle, there are 4 posts per quarter.

There is something to remember about starting and ending circles and diagonal lines too. The RULE says that figures and transitions should be marked at the riders’ leg. The funny thing is that there are about 2 feet of the horse’s head and neck that reach the mark before the rider even begins and ends the maneuver.

Visualize a change of rein across the diagonal. Your horse's nose and front hooves, then head, neck and shoulders are past the letter in advance of you. So, aim ahead of the letter, not at the letter. You will hit the mark exactly.

For advanced riders, if there is a flying change on a diagonal, it belongs at the end of the line, not at the wall and certainly not in the corner.

Back to riding a circle. The aids do not stay the same per quarter. Here is a system that could work for you.

First quarter. Coming off the wall your outside rein should be against your horse’s neck. Put your outside upper leg against his shoulder to peel that off the wall. Your inside rein will start to say “look where we are going” with a leading rein. As soon as his tail is past the letter, he is entirely off the rail.

Second quarter. You are supposed to bend so inside leg to outside rein for each stride to keep his entire spine following the curving line of travel,

Third quarter. This is the hard one as that is where circles can get large. Use a firm outside rein on the neck and even more firm outside upper leg to swing the shoulders around. You should be looking at the letter at the end of the circle.

Fourth Quarter. Some horses get annoyed and say well “make up your mind” they cut in and are glad to get that over with. Others realize they are out of balance and get wiggly. So best results come from the support of a diagonal half halt - inside leg to outside rein.

Exercise to help

Other steering/balancing challenges are loops and serpentines. A practice steering exercise is to ride a diamond shape from A to E, E to C, C to B, and B to A. Steer almost entirely with the outside rein. Repeat this exercise in the other direction. This is also is good practice to look where you are going. It keeps your eyes up. How many instructors have said that to their riders over and over, and you to yourself.

The turns at A and C are tight. Swinging the front end around the back end is a precursor to a turn on the haunches. This is a reminder to you as a rider that “The Basics” are to be respected, not denigrated.

05/20/2025

05/17/2025

Truth…