Seahorse Run

08/22/2024

Hay for Sale: orchard/timothy 45-55lb bales from PA, soft first cut, leafy but not shattering. $12.50/bale 757-792-6474 Seahorse Run, 2733 Whaleyville Blvd, Suffolk VA 23434.

07/15/2024

Applesauce popsicles going in the freezer tonight and in the water buckets tomorrow. It’s a heat advisory, people, check on your equine friends. And their staff 😭

07/06/2024

Get your entries in now for our next dressage show July 28.

11/06/2023

The US Postal Service will issue a set of horse stamps in 2024. The horses were photographed by Stephanie Moon Photography of Ohio and Karen Wegehenkel Horse Photography of Oregon.

10/31/2023

We are looking to contract with
a mental health specialist!
Contact Laura for more info
814-598-0298

10/20/2023

Come play in the arena! Tunnels, sensory bins, stick horse jump course and human barrel racing. Therapeutic Riding Open House. Sat Oct 21 10am-12pm. Free to the public.

10/10/2023

Senior QH mare 15.2 beginner friendly in search of a new person. Not for jumping, barrel racing, or anything too strenuous but great for someone learning to ride or just wanting a friend. Message Laura Gladden with interest.

08/04/2023

TACK SWAP
Sat Aug 5 9am-2pm
Sun Aug 6 8am-12pm

07/31/2023

Riding schools for children -

I used to teach children riding lessons a lot. It was really fun and rewarding to instill in young people care and respect for the horse, and good riding skills. I found chikdren far more receptive and empathetic than many adults, because they hadn’t been taught to ignore horses expressions to get something done.

The pressure from parents to accelerate the kids skills to more fun stuff, or to prevent the child’s boredom, was a steady presence in teaching- along with maintaining the school horses soundness and mental well-being from being ridden by beginners. Keeping lessons good for both horse and rider was a job of creativity and constant adjustment. I believe it can be done, but the culture at large doesn’t typically make it profitable, as many parents struggle to want to pay for lessons on sound husbandry and good riding basics. The kids want to canter, by God!

I have some firm beliefs about good riding stables, and I realize the expense and strain and adjustment is an ever pressing reality, I stand by these beliefs:

-children should learn good riding fundamentals first, and not progress to trotting, cantering, jumping until they have a good understanding of a balanced seat and can demonstrate it

-children should learn care of and respect for the horse comes before their entertainment. Grooming, tacking, warming up and cooling down, quitting an activity or adjusting if the horse is stressed, learning groundwork, etc, should be a non negotiable

-children should learn to feel a balanced horse to the extent possible. A beginner horse should not simply be a lame horse that tolerates them, but one to teach th em how to ride- children should not be set up for a future of kicking and pulling to get a horse to do something, but learn to feel how to direct a horse with their body, and to feel movement that is balanced, setting them up for a lifetime of being able to balance future horses.

- children should learn to read accurately equine expression and well-being. Children should not be taught to describe horses as lazy, stubborn, etc- these are taught by adults and children learn to adapt these views. The adults are responsible for setting the culture and views of horses and their handling.

Many riders struggle with normalizing tight, crooked, and unhappy horses because this is what they learn to ride on. The instructor is responsible for setting the culture of what their program entails, and I believe this means setting firm boundaries on what the purchasing client can expect, instead of catering to unreasonable demands to keep business. That is a whole can of worms in itself, but one worth opening.

07/30/2023

All ready for the SVDA dressage show tomorrow, July 30, free to watch, bring a chair. Massive thanks to my barn manager Denise, my groundskeeper Deborah, and my right hand woman Kate for keeping the place in top shape.

07/19/2023

We had a very handsome guest today, welcome to the area, Loukas, approved Holsteiner and Westphalian stallion.

Great school at Seahorse Run today!! Thanks again for having us! Can’t wait to come back!!

07/14/2023

Super deal for the right person, these are $8k+ new

06/24/2023

Oh I love this “each horse maintains its personality” and this applies to riding students also, their uniqueness is their strength!

06/23/2023

Reminder to the horse community: Minimize risk of contamination when you travel! Change your clothes, do not pet acquaintances' horses, do not share equipment, monitor your horse's temperature, etc. Now that EHV-1 was found at the Virginia Horse Park, let's not take anything for granted. Anyone trailering in to Seahorse, please groom/tack at your trailer and do not contact the boarded horses, no matter how cute they are!

04/29/2023

Here’s why we practice emergency dismount with hands on the shoulders and arms around the neck!

04/07/2023

You can best learn riding hands on from a knowledgeable horse and the person who trained the horse. There’s still value in hearing different explanations and seeing examples online, but it won’t get you to this level.

Most of you will have heard of the latest upheaval at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Chief Rider Andreas Hausberger who served for 40 years at the School was suspended from his job for criticising the leadership of the current director Alfred Hudler.

This is the latest event in a long series of conflicts between the chief riders of the school and the business leadership stretching back more than 15 years and at least three different directors. The core issue seems to be that the last three directors came from a corporate business background, not a dressage background, and tried to run the Spanish Riding School like a hotel (Elisabeth Gürtler) or a brewery (Alfred Hudler) with the bottom line as the top priority.

The inevitable consequence of a profit oriented leadership style is that corners are cut in the training, horses have to be pushed up the levels faster than they can handle, and they have to perform more often than is healthy in order to maximise profits. The well-being of the horses is compromised, lamenesses become a regular occurrence, and the quality of the training deteriorates.

Whenever chief riders stood up to the leadership and pointed out the harmful consequences of their management, they were fired, rather than trying to find solutions to the problems they brought to the attention of the director.

In a corporate environment, having a young dynamic team may be an advantage, but in a classical riding school decades’ worth of practical training experience with hundreds of horses can’t be replaced by anything, not even youthful enthusiasm. And while it may be relatively easy to replace a chef at a restaurant or a brew master in a brewery, replacing a chief rider of the Spanish Riding School takes 30 or 40 years because they have to be made from scratch - under the supervision of the previous generation of chief riders. Once this chain of transmission is interrupted, it cannot be repaired.

If you count Arthur Kottas as the first chief rider to leave the school after the privatisation, the school has lost a total of six (!) chief riders (Klaus Krzisch, Johann Riegler, Wolfgang Eder, Herwig Radnetter, and now Andreas Hausberger) in 25 years. Each one of them has 40+ years of practical experience in riding and training horses. That adds up to more than 240 years of combined experience. This is a loss that is impossible to replace.

The Spanish Riding School has existed for well over 400 years and used to uphold the highest standards of classical European equestrian art. The secret to its success was the unbroken succession of teachers who trained horses to the highest levels and then used these horses as four-legged teachers to pass their knowledge on to the next generation of two-legged students. This resulted in the accumulation of a vast body of practical knowledge. The instruction always took place in person, one teacher, one horse, one student at a time. Very little was written down, which makes the tradition vulnerable to disruption if only one generation doesn’t take care to preserve and transmit this knowledge to the next generation. All this incredible training knowledge can disappear very quickly if the chain of transmission from teacher to horse to student is interrupted. Thanks to the corporate leadership of the last 15-20 years, we may have reached this point today.

If the highest priority of a cultural institution like the Spanish Riding School is the well-being of the horses and the quality of the training, then ticket sales and merchandise will not be able to generate enough income to cover the expenses. Trying to increase sales by holding more performances and training horses faster destroys the health of the horses and the integrity of the training, as three consecutive corporate directors have amply demonstrated. So the gap in the budget needs to be filled in other ways. Either the Austrian state has to step in and subsidise its cultural heritage, or private sponsors can help to finance the school, similarly to the way opera houses in the United States are supported by countless small and large sponsors.

In the meantime, there is a petition you can sign that demands a change in the way the Spanish Riding School is managed.

https://www.change.org/p/stopp-der-zerst%C3%B6rung-des-weltkulturerbes-spanische-hofreitschule?recruiter=false&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=share_for_starters_page&recruited_by_id=c5a868c0-c17b-11ed-a16c-d75057b1d2eb&share_bandit_exp=initial-35668032-en-US&utm_content=fht-35668032-de-de%3A0

Or you can write a letter to the director of the school, Dr. Alfred Hudler:
Email: [email protected]

03/31/2023

APRIL 11: We still have about 100 bales of each!

Horse Hay For Sale: Two types of Pennsylvania orchard/timothy 40lb small square bales
1. 1st cutting $9/bale (right)
2. 2nd cutting $11/bale (left)
Please contact Laura 814 598 0298 for appointment

03/26/2023

Congratulations Kassidy and Penelope on their first canter in the dressage ring today. The show was in the outdoor arena which added to the excitement. Great job on the turnout and horsemanship, Kassidy!

03/25/2023

Come on out tomorrow Sunday March 26, 2023 for an SVDA dressage show. Free to watch. No dogs, stay on the driveway. Club juniors will be selling TACOS to fundraise. Show runs approximately 9am-2pm.

08/01/2022

06/24/2022

We are hiring barn staff to care for our approx 30 horses, please message me, Laura Gladden, with experience, availability, and references. We are a tidy and organized barn with well-mannered horses and friendly boarders; we would like a new team member who enjoys checklists and has a nurturing and genuine attitude. Potential to grow to full time for the right person. Seahorse Run, 2733 Whaleyville Blvd, Suffolk, VA 23434

06/23/2022

Go see Martha, she’s super! Very knowledgeable and attentive.

06/23/2022

Oh look what’s on the porch… a buttery soft Devoucoux Mendia. My rep Martha has had her eye out for some used inventory for me to use on training horses. 😎

06/20/2022

See y’all later…..I’ll be ponying Farrah on Penelope.

05/17/2022

Dream job….