Bold Equine Dressage

17/12/2024

Well said and applies to dressage too.

17/11/2024

I just got home from a very pleasant weekend judging for Peninsula Dressage. What a friendly community and lovely facility.

24/07/2024

When you find the itchy spot.

14/07/2024

Slowly getting back into the swing of things after having Bill in February. I had a lovely lesson this morning with Kathy Geyer Rowse on Natalie’s sweet young horse, Romy. Then Bill and I stuck around to watch the next lesson. He was captivated watching Dawn ride.

18/06/2024

An entire industry has been created selling you the idea that there is a method to fix every problem.

What is extremely popular is a video for every problem, and for every fix there are three more problems created, for which there’s a method to fix too.

I get asked nearly daily to create a video about specific problems (I saw your video on trailer loading, but what about loading a chestnut mare into an Adam trailer?). These can be helpful to see, but the mentality over time has shifted into specifics instead of looking at the big picture.

Good, all encompassing horsemanship creates a foundation wherein problems melt away holistically. If you understand how all things connect, you stop seeing things individually, but as a whole. You have to fix the whole and stop looking for quick solutions.

Teaching people to be actual horsemen, to stop looking for quick tips and tricks, to start seeing the whole and the connection of all things, means rewiring our minds from conditioning and marketing over the past decades.

So if you have a problem, it isn’t living in isolation. It’s part of a whole picture. And you have to look at, and feed the whole, for the symptoms to melt away.

11/05/2024

Natalie and I took her 4 year old QH on his first field trip today. He was absolutely super and we had a great time. I really love helping horses gain confidence by having positive experiences in new places.

19/04/2024

Very useful insight.

Most riders implement the “keep their minds busy” technique when their horse is spooky or distracted. I don’t totally disagree with this technique but what many instructors and riders miss is the energy that the rider brings when they try to keep the horse connected. Most riders start to bring intensity and tension into their body as they try to “make” the horse stay focused. The tension the rider brings doesn’t allow the horse to settle into the small questions we may be asking, instead the horse can become more tense because of HOW the rider is asking the questions.

Calm but directed energy is one thing, but frantic busy work is not helpful for you or the horse.

17/04/2024

Back to teaching with baby Bill in tow. Everyone looks great!

09/04/2024

This rings especially true as the maternity leave for my third baby is drawing to a close. I try to bring my best to all aspects of my life but it’s a balancing act.

I get asked a lot how I balance family and career.

The answer is, I don’t.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to do well, unless you have an enormous outreach of support.

Something is always going to be missed, some aspect is always going to be squeezed- either your clients lose out, your kids lose out, your marriage loses out, or the horses lose out. I’ve found it sort of rotates, you can only focus on so much, and there is only so much time in the day.

So my best advice, taken for whatever it’s worth from one very messy life, is to just relax into it. You’re not going to be able to do a perfect job at everything.

The best I’ve come up with in terms of making it manageable is the following:

1- decide on and establish boundaries with clients about what times you can be contacted and how, set work hours and stick to them, and get your business as organized as you can. This can eliminate 100,000,000 texts and a lot of mess later. If you’re in a mess of poor boundaries or poorly defined expectations, clean it up as best you can. It’s well worth it.

2- let some things slide- decide what isn’t priority and relax about that thing. Do dishes in the sink trump kids needing attention? Does the lawn really need to be *perfect*? Who really cares about the baseboards? Don’t waste precious energy or brain power on what you can’t control and what isn’t essential. If everyone is fed, clothed, and happy, how’s a little mess going to compare to the real priorities?

3- be honest about what you can handle and what you can deliver. If you’ve got kids, not everyone wants to be around them. That’s totally fine. People can decide where their money is spent, and if they don’t want noise and chaos as part of their purchasing experience, which is totally fair. But as a mom to an infant and a neuro-spicy toddler, that’s a promise I can’t make. So you get to decide if you can deal with the naked kid streaking in the background- no harm done if it’s not your cup of tea.

4- carve out at least one thing for you every week and guard it with your life like it’s the holy grail. I’m not kidding. Or 15 mins a day over the week. Whatever it is. Exercise in the garage or in the bathroom. Go to a yoga class. Take meditation. Just leave the screaming kids and close the door and don’t look back so you can come back ready to dive back into the endless triage. Don’t make excuses for why you can’t do it cause the dishes need to be washed or something- your brain needs something like this.

5- either your kids will be mad, your husband will be mad, or a client will be mad. Just relax. Having people love you all the time isn’t the cake walk you think it is anyway. People get mad all the time and they don’t die. Breathe. And repair.

Lastly, my least favorite-

6- outsource for help. If you can afford it, hire help. Whether that be barn help or nanny or house cleaner. If you can’t, find trades. Something has to give- don’t expect them to do everything just like you want all the time. Find out what’s important and make sure that’s in order, but maybe chill out a little on details that aren’t essential.

So in a nutshell, relax into the chaos. Communicate clearly, organize your time best as you can, repair relationships best as you can when you inevitably neglect someone, and don’t forget about you.

I’m told it’s a short ride. Doesn’t feel that way now, but I believe the gray hairs when they say it flies by and to enjoy it now. I don’t want to look back on this time and see me wasting it with resentment and stress. So I’m choosing to let go of what I can, take charge of what I can, and enjoy the life I’ve created for myself.

26/02/2024

I hopped on Charlie for a few minutes today. It was my final ride before giving birth to my third child in a few days and he was perfect, as always. Charlie was quite the handful as a younger horse and it makes me really appreciate what a solid citizen he is as an old man.

31/12/2023

At 7 months pregnant I am riding less and less these days but I was happy to have a lovely little ride on my good buddy Rolo today.