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01/05/2026

01/05/2026

2026 is the year of the horse after all 🐴✨

12/31/2025

Micromanaging the head position of a horse is probably the most common riding mistake there is.

A horse is able to exist its entire life unridden, and it will do just fine putting its head wherever it wants to.

But now some rider climbs aboard with some agenda, and has hands holding reins which are attached to a bit which is in the horse’s mouth, and the rider is often possessed of an overwhelming urge to use those hands to “shape” the horse into some desired configuration.

The jaw of the horse is a hinge joint, and the poll of the horse is attached to the vertebrae of the neck, and either or both can be forced or manipulated into a position that matches what the rider wants, whether or not, usually not, that would be where the horse would carry its head if left alone.

This doesn’t mean that all horses should be ridden all the time on a loose rein with no contact, because the unridden horse is not the same as one being steered by a rider, but the training challenge has to do with HOW the rider creates a degree of control.

Gentle, feeling hands and arms or rough demanding hands and arms? Or, even worse, a reliance on sharper bits or leverage devices like draw reins?

The good trainers can, over time, create an “accepting” connection between hands and the general posture of the ridden horse, but it is both a slower and more meticulous process than most of us are educated enough to know how to do well.

That’s too hard a fact for many riders to accept. Hard hands, hard fact.

(photo---Klaus Balkenhol, knows the how.)

12/29/2025

Truth!!

Right. A gentle reality check for January brains.

Your horse has had two weeks off over Christmas.
You feel guilty.
You’re convinced they’ve lost all their muscle.
Your brain is telling you that you’re basically back to square one.

Pause.

They are horses. Not fitness influencers.

They do not care if they have missed schooling.
They are not spiralling about topline.
They are not lying in the field thinking, “Well that’s my season ruined.”

What they care about is this: Are they fed.
Are they warm enough.
Are they safe.
Are they allowed to be horses.

Two weeks off does not undo years of care.
Muscle memory exists. Bodies adapt. Horses are designed to cope with far more than a quiet December.

The pressure you feel right now is human pressure, not equine need.

You do not need to rush.
You do not need to punish yourself with a “restart from zero” mindset.
You do not need to prove anything in January.

Start where you are.
Do what you realistically have the time and energy for.
Let winter be winter.

Your horse is fine.
You’re allowed to be too.

12/29/2025

"As a trainer, I keep very few secrets from my clients. Where some may be more tight lipped or filtered, by nature I’m more of an open book. This is true for myself professionally and personally. It has served me well at times… and at other times caused me some issues. For the most part, my willingness to communicate and be transparent to the people who have entrusted me with their horses and their kids over the years has given me the ability to build a business based on honesty. That’s something I’m very proud of. However, there are a few hard truths that I don’t talk about so openly. I think some of these truths transcend past my personal experience, and are very relatable to most trainers. Also, they may be valuable for clients to take into consideration. So, I’ve decided I want to share them with you today.

1. When you have a bad lesson, I think about it probably more than you do.

When you struggle through a lesson, fail multiple times in an exercise, or fall off, you might think your trainer just lightheartedly rolls their eyes and after giving you a brief pep talk, moves right on with their day. We really want you to think we do this! Because it’s hard enough that you left your lesson feeling down on yourself and frustrated, it’s not our job to add our personal feelings to it. But… when I’m driving home that night, I’m thinking about your next lesson already. What can I do to fix it? Should I explain things differently? Did I raise that jump too quickly tonight? I don’t want you to have your confidence dashed. I’m doing mental gymnastics to get you and your horse back on track hours and sometimes even days after a bad ride. Maybe even long after you’ve moved on from it. We want you to succeed and we don’t want you to know that at times your struggles become our struggles too.

2. I pick my battles.

If you have a trainer who seems to nit pick or one who more readily lets things slide, I can guarantee you that both of those types of horse professionals are holding back. We want to call you out when you put your saddle away dirty. If you’re whispering to friends while auditing a clinic, we want to shoot you a look because you should be listening and learning respectfully instead of chatting. We pull out our phones to text you that you left your horse with a sweat mark after your ride, but often times put our phones back in our pockets without hitting send. Trainers are perfectionists. The good ones are, anyway. We have to be, in order to do what we do. Most of us were brought up with trainers who were pretty tough on us.

I remember once when I was about 15, I left my bridle out on the cleaning hook after a ride and forgot to put it away. It was an innocent mistake for a spacey teenager to make, and not one that I’d done before. But when I arrived to the barn the next day, my trainer had disassembled the whole bridle and hung each piece from the rafters of the hay loft. It took me most of the afternoon and some questionably unsafe ladder placement to retrieve them. I was tearful and quite embarrassed, but I never left that bridle out again. These days such “drastic” measures in teaching students to be more thoughtful and responsible aren’t as common. But one could argue that lax horsemanship is more rampant. So, I kind of understand where my trainer was coming from with that stunt. I did learn something, after all. I may not be hanging bridle parts from rafters… but there are days I think about it.

3. We blur the lines between work and our personal life, and we pay the price.

I try to answer texts from my clients in a timely fashion. That’s usually because my phone is glued to me at all times. iPhones have a feature, one we all know too well, that tells us our weekly screen time. I hate knowing this number. Most weeks it’s 8+ hours a day. I’m videoing horses during lessons, looking up horse ads online, calling and texting clients, farriers, chiropractors, various vets. Whether I’m physically at work or not, it makes no difference. I’m always working, to some capacity. This lifestyle has become the norm for me, but I often times realize I’m cheating myself and my family out of quality time together. A dinner at a restaurant where my phone stays in my pocket is something I owe to them, but don’t often do. When the texts message “ding” sounds, I instinctively reach for it. It could be the vet! I’m waiting to hear back from a seller about an offer that was made this morning. I have a client worried sick about an upcoming horse show and I’m trying to reassure them not to stress. It’ll just be a minute, I tell them, I swear. This makes me great at my job, but admittedly leaves me lacking in the mom and wife department.

I’ve realized at this point in my life and career that I have to get more comfortable leaving someone on read so that I can be present at home, and creating healthier boundaries. So when you call me at 9pm worried about your horses loose shoe or wondering what blanket he needs tomorrow… I don’t always want to answer. Some things can and should wait."

📎 Continue reading this article by Ariel Univer at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/01/24/things-your-trainer-may-or-may-not-want-you-to-know/
📸 © The Plaid Horse

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.