StableManners, LLC

12/27/2025

12/26/2025

Let’s talk about tempo.

Tempo is the speed of the rhythm.

Imagine the two horses pictured out hacking together, trotting up a lane.

They will both have a 2-beat trot rhythm, BUT the tempo of the trot will (most likely) be different.

👉 The big bay may be 1....2....1....2....1....2 (slower tempo)
👉 The small grey may be 1..2..1..2..1..2..1..2 (quicker tempo)

Try to imagine the speed at which you would be rising up and down to the trot on either horse.

So, what tempo is correct?

To some extent, the correct tempo that you’re aiming for depends on the horse you’re riding. It should look natural for the horse - as though he is going somewhere, but without rushing.

It should remain the same throughout each movement, with no increase or decrease in speed, and it should be easy for the horse to maintain without losing balance.

Illustration created and copyrighted by HowToDressage

12/26/2025

Backing up is a low-impact exercise with no moment of suspension. It can be done in-hand and ridden. You horse should move his limbs in diagonal pairs.

Executed correctly with relaxation, impulsion and with the head lowered, the movement increases the throacic vertebral rotation, encourages core recruitment of the abdominals , thoracic sling and hip flexors. It also contributes to back mobility, the ability to collect and good posture.

This exercise requires your horse to carry more weight on his hindquarters, and maintain increased hindlimb, lumbosacral and back joint flexion throughout the stride cycle.

For maximum benefit ask your horse to back up in-hand daily. Start with 1 or 2 steps and progress to 20 steps. The aim is good quality, long, marching steps.

12/24/2025

*boop*

12/23/2025

In the pursuit of an honest education, one is bound to realize their entire view has been wrong, maybe more than once.

This is extremely uncomfortable and humbling. It's easy to want to give up here - but if you keep pressing on, you eventually get to the bottom of the truth: you have so far to go still.

After a while you pass the misery of shame and discomfort and settle into a comfortable acceptance. You are ok with the journey now, ok with not knowing, ok with the practice. You start to feel semi capable but no longer feel the shame of what you didn't know -

This is where a second ego trap awaits you: the judgement and scorn for others set in their ways.

Here it's easy to feel like you are one of the "enlightened ones" doing the "right work," and to look down on in some way those stuck in less enlightened paths of travel than you.

A second awakening is coming here: everyone is on their own path and it has absolutley no comparison to you or the next person. No one is above or below you, and the reality is you may be stuck in your "new" ways now too - awaiting another reality check that you don't know what you don't know.

I love this Alan Watts quote on cats: "When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly make up its mind that it didn't want to fall, it would become tense and rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing."

I think the secret of all this is to relax into the squirming, and realize everybody else is worried about the same fall, too. You are not alone.

12/21/2025

“PHYSICAL SELF-CARRIAGE is the when the horse engages the hind leg to lift the forehand, maintaining their own posture and natural state of balance, in spite of the added weight of the rider or complexities of geometry... without relying on the rider's hands for support.”

I don't know who needs to hear this, and maybe it won't be well received by some - but having a horse going along on long, slack, or soft reins is NOT THE SAME as having a horse in self-carriage... and, SPOILER ALERT - holding the horse in a frame with shortened reins isn't self-carriage, either.

In fact, if you don't work on the physical side of self-carriage AND the emotional side, you won't be getting TRUE self-carriage.

Why?

It's a 2 part system to be TRUE self-carriage. Not one or the other. Too often, though, we see riders with loose reins calling it self-carriage on one side of the fence... and on the other side of the fence, we see riders pulling the reins and pushing the body and calling it self-carriage (or even collection) because they are holding everything together.

The true self-carriage rides that fence line between.... it takes both the physical side and the emotional side in order to be "complete." True self-carriage benefits the MIND and the BODY of the horse for long term emotional and physical soundness.

#1) PHYSICAL SELF-CARRIAGE is the when the horse engages the hind leg to lift the forehand, maintaining their own posture and natural state of balance, in spite of the added weight of the rider or complexities of geometry... without relying on the rider's hands for support.

#2) EMOTIONAL SELF-CARRIAGE is when the horse engages their thinking brain to regulate their flight instinct, maintaining their own mental calm without relying on the rider to micromanage their emotions.

If you don't have #2, you will never truly have #1.

And if you don't have #1, you won't be able to keep #2 because the horse won't be able to maintain the clear thinking that comes from a state of dynamic physical balance.

Dynamic physical balance requires an "athletically relaxed/focused" body that is developing in strength and endurance. A relaxed/focused body requires a relaxed and focused mind.

Start with the mind and then the body can follow.

But the body has to be encouraged to follow. It won't "just happen"... not any more than you being relaxed will "just happen" you into great physical shape and balance.

You are your horse's life coach and fitness coach. It's your responsibility to help them develop emotionally and physically.

As Charles de Kunffy would tell us over and over... "There is no neutrality in riding. You are either building them up, or you are breaking them down."

It might be easier said than done, but most things worth pursuing are. And I think your horse is worth it.

12/21/2025

12/19/2025

Lovely read!

Why contact?

Years ago, I was bought into the notion that anything worth doing should be done on a loose rein. I really struggled in my lessons to hear about contact because I had poor associations with it - people telling rider's to hold against the horse, like fighting a big fish on a line into a boat. It appeared to me a contest of wills, and I was completely uninterested in that feeling.

My teacher often talked about the connection being like dancing, but I had never felt anything like this. She talked about funneling the hind leg without ever trapping it, and keeping the full length of the neck intact in the contact. "Hold the horse's hand, but don't ever restrict the movement," she'd say.

It all sounded good, but every time I picked up the reins I just felt heaviness, resistance, or my horses hid from my hand. She would bring my awareness back to my seat every time and away from my hands.

"The fingers just capture what the seat creates" she would say -

But it was years of practicing with my seat before I would understand the contact.
A following seat, a directing seat, a seat that was soft but very stable: my teacher had this, and I spent years and years working toward it, understanding finally just what it meant to feel the hind leg through my seat but not always able to stay with it, and often blocking it.

But those times when the contact feels good is magical - unlike anything I've ever achieved on a loose rein. It was like being in close with someone you love very much - taking their hand and swinging in a dance. Feeling everything there is to know about them through your hand: their thoughts, their breathing, the way they feel about you and eveyrthing to do with you. There is no hiding from each other on the contact.

Exactly where the hind leg is in what phase of each stride - where it's going and how that connects to how they're feeling inside. Recieving the fullness of their trust from hind leg all the way into my hand.

You don't NEED contact for riding - you can walk trot and canter on a loose rein. But it's like any relationship - it can go as deep as you want it to go, as intricate, nuanced and beatiful as you'd imagine and more.

And like anything else, it can be poisoned. Like all tools, it can be flatted and cheapened, and downright misused. It can be weaponized against the horse or even against a student -

But it also bridges us into a flow, a beauty, a magic, available for anyone with the discipline to work toward this kind accurary - available to anyone who can be trusted with the power of having thr entirety of a horse's body in your hand and use it only to create art.e