Bob Wood Horses For Life

10/31/2025

By their size, these riders in these pictures are not kindergarteners. Their ponies look to be well cared for and probably well trained. Look at the left image with all the ribbons. It's not the kid's first show. Still, that pony and the other one have check reins from the reins to the saddles.

Since these young riders obviously have not recently moved up from leadline, why do they have these extra devices?

I had a British Horse Society Pony Club at my farm for many years. We had 7, 8 and 9 year old riders and we never needed check reins to help a kid control their pony or horse. Sure, sometimes a horse or pony would take advantage of a kid when we rode outside the arena by pulling the reins out of the kid's hands in order to stop and eat grass. It is a common event, but we didn't use check reins to solve it.

Instead we taught students awareness and planning. If a kid rides a pony that ducks down, pulling the reins to eat grass, they need to be ready for that. Because horses and ponies have strong necks in terms of their up and down movement, but they are relatively weak in their side to side neck movement we taught that riders need to be aware of a potential pony head dive to the grass and to be ready with one rein to stop it before it starts. This is a variation on the one rein stop and it works.

But that still doesn't explain why a show pony would need check reins because there is no grass in a show arena. So why do these ponies have them? I sincerely do not understand why. I can speculate. Maybe the kids are too weak to use the reins properly? Kids today are less physical. Maybe the ponies are not correctly trained? Perhaps, these check reins are now a new "must have" trendy accessory? There are so many baseless trends today in the horse world. Or maybe this is helicopter parenting motivated by "You can be too safe" bubble wrapping moms and dads wanting to eliminate the inherent risks of riding? These are some of my questions because I have no idea what the answer might be.

I do know two things. Horses and riders today are not as well trained as they were only a decade or two ago. Secondly, the impulse today to purchase a solution to a problem, instead of training a horse or pony out of that problem, is the go-to way to solve everything in today's horse world.

10/29/2025

The rider on the left is from the1960s. He is jumping in a Puissance. On the right is US Hunter Jumper Hall of Fame rider John French. These two images reflect the changes in riding and jumping over the past 65 years. For me the change is night and day.

The question is, which rider position would you like to be in if your horse stumbled in the landing? French could be dead meat with his feet way back and his upper body lying on his horse's neck. I'm thinking potential broken neck as he would slide forward onto his head if his horse went down in front.

By contrast, the Puissance rider is in a position to "keep the horse between himself and the ground", advice I received from a hand when I worked on a ranch. This rider is riding defensively with his feet under him in complete balance and in unity with his horse, thus reducing the odds of a stumble on landing. I am thinking he fox hunts as a Staff rider with one hand on the reins and the other free to carry a hunt whip.

I learned to ride in the 1950s and I've observed every declining step between the left picture and the right since the 60s. It's been hard to watch. Why has horsemanship declined so much in less than a century after centuries of horsemanship improving? It makes no sense. Going from practical effective riding to totally stylized riding is dangerous.

10/28/2025

Horse training is messy. It's not for the faint of heart or for the perfectionist. Training horses is a process of showing a horse the task, getting them to do it however well they can at first and then refining how they accomplish the task one step at a time. And because a horse is a powerful being with will, sometimes it can get oppositional with a horse that doesn't understand or doesn't want to do the task. After all, they just want to eat.

The part about not being for the faint of heart is about how a horse trainer deals with misunderstanding or opposition in a horse. Both require patience. If a trainer lacks patience and tries to force an outcome, all that is accomplished is the horse learns to fight.

The part about how perfectionists do not make effective horse trainers is that the process is hardly ever perfect. Training horses is by its nature messy. If a rider has been trained, for example, to please judges with perfect positions they can have difficulty being effective in the process of introducing new tasks to a horse and still maintain their perfect show riding. Only later in the process, when the work moves to refining tasks, is when their equation becomes useful. Until then, it's about staying on the horse while moving the horse as best you can through a training task to completion. This also requires patience.

I see a lot of people today who call themselves horse trainers who are really horse sorters. They sort out the tough ones and work with the easy ones. Or there is a type that bribes a horse with treats to accommodate them, but a horse that is "trained" through accommodation is not really trained because their will has not been challenged. These horses tend to spend the rest of their lives being the boss and not a partner with a rider. And of course, there are the horse trainers who use calming "supplements" or other drugs to make a horse in training more manageable. But I don't think a drugged horse can completely learn from training or retain training.

There is no getting away from it. Horse training is not easy. You can get frustrated, injured, disappointed and exhausted doing it, and in the end the outcome is not ensured. You can fail and along the way to success or failure, it's messy. Therefore, if you lack patience or are a perfectionist and fear failure, horse training is probably not for you.

10/27/2025

The US Equestrian Federation has become a money making business much more than it is a governing body for equestrian sport and supporter of US equestrian pursuits. It offers no universal horsemanship standards for horse owners and riders to follow. Generally, the USEF has little or nothing to offer the average US horse owner or rider. In several ways the USEF is detrimental to horses due to several of its affiliates normalizing abuse and by not offering universal horsemanship standards needed by all US riders and horse owners.

For years now the USEF has looked the other way as some of their affiliate organizations continue equine abuse in their disciplines. The USEF's failures to address abuse have allowed groups like PETA to gain ground against legitimate equestrian pursuits, thus threatening access to horses in America for future generations.

The US economy is slowing with home and car sales declining, and jobs getting hard to find. These are not the best financial times for many Americans and what does the USEF do? They raise their fees and not by small margins.

Beginning December 1, 2025,
Administrative fee will increase 25% from $8 to $10. Show passes will increase 89% from $45 to $85.

Beginning April 1, 2026, the following fee changes will apply:

Competing Membership fee will increase 25% from $80 to $100
Subscriber Membership fee will increase 40% from $25 to $35
Annual Horse Recording will increase 21% from $95 to $115
Lifetime Horse Recording will increase 67% from $300 to $500 Individual Lifetime Foal Recording will increase 57% from $35 to $50

The USEF is a 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit tax exempt organization. To maintain an organization's IRS not-for-profit tax exempt status "an organization must operate primarily for its stated tax exempt purposes. If it begins to operate like a for-profit business, it risks revocation of its tax-exempt status. The IRS requires that organizations maintain their exempt status by adhering to IRS operational and organizational tests ..." One such test is whether a not for profit is operated for the benefit of individuals.

On the list after the CEO, who receives a half million dollars in salary, expense account and benefits, we see the next two highest paid top executives are the marketing director and the corporate lawyer. This says a lot about the USEF's actual mission. These are not positions related to horses but rather to making money. The fourth highest paid employee at a quarter million dollars a year is David O'Connor, the only real horse person listed. This begs the question, are the horses the USEF's fourth priority?

Compared to other national equestrian organizations like the German Equestrian Federation that licenses all riding instructors, sets educational standards and more, the USEF is a facade pretending to be a horse centered organization. It is difficult to deny that the USEF has become the poster child for "It's all about the money" in our current American horse world.

The USEF's incredibly high fee increases, especially in today's uncertain economy, are the last straw. We want our horse community back. We would like the horse industry leader after the USEF has crushed our horse community. The question now is should the USEF be reclassified to the commercial business that it is and quit its hoax that it is an organization looking after the equestrian public's future and wellbeing?

A similar situation developed with American football ten years ago. The National Football League, or NFL, eventually gave up its tax-exempt, nonprofit status in 2015 to avoid this same type of controversy of whether it was a business or an authentic public interest organization. The NFL voluntarily transitioned to a taxable organization after pressure from people who saw similarities to what we see now in the USEF.

The growing interest in the new and much improved United Dressage and Jumping Club, UDJClub, show series is further evidence that the USEF monopoly on rated shows and competitions has peaked. Is it now time to pressure the USEF to go the way of the NFL and give up their tax exempt status. The good old boys USEF has become meaningless to the vast majority of American riders and horse owners. If our national equestrian federation is not addressing the needs and wellbeing of all US horses, riders and horse owners, it needs to be replaced with an organization that will.

*Plaid Horse's article on the USEF Fee increases.

www.theplaidhorse.com/2025/09/24/dont-forget-to-read-the-fine-print-breaking-down-usef-and-ushja-fees/

10/25/2025

I can ride a horse. I am well trained and have experienced countless horses over many decades. At 78 I can still train a horse out of a buck. When I ride, I don't have to think about it. My ability to ride sometimes makes it difficult for me to teach students who struggle with their riding. But I have a way to relate to students who struggle.

Years ago, I decided I wanted to learn how to blow glass. I had a gifted teacher, Sherburne Slack. Look him up. I spent two years as his student, working in his studio two or three evenings a week. I was terrible at it. Sherb never gave up on me. After two years of trying to learn glass blowing I traveled to visit my father who was ailing, and I brought him one of my best pieces of glass as a present.

My dad was a realist's realist. He never softened his observations. When he saw my "art glass" piece, he advised me to give up blowing glass. I did. I sucked at it.

You might say I wasted a lot of time on my glass artist dream. However, over the years that time spent proved to be useful in my teaching students to ride. When I see a student struggling, I remember my time by the glass furnace. It was so hard for me to succeed. Thankfully, Sherb never got impatient with me. You see, in glass blowing when you make a mistake you simply knock the failed piece off your blow pipe into the bucket of broken glass that gets tossed back into the furnace where it is remelted. There is a lot of forgiveness in that.

Trainers who instruct riding students will do better if they try something difficult for them. Failure is a great teacher. It is easier to stay inside the safety of what you are good at, but that will slow or stop your growth. Be brave enough to suck at something new.

10/23/2025

I have been asked to help develop the United Dressage and Jumping Club education program. It is a unique opportunity to create a structured curriculum directly connected to a show series that provides feedback to all riders, not just dressage, after they compete. Altogether, this will be a complete ecosystem of horsemanship standards, education and competition, with certifications at all levels, based on universal fundamental principles.

It is not a small undertaking to say the least. Where to begin? Because education is where both good and bad riding begins, depending on the quality of instruction, we want to build a network of local lesson barns and trainers who have been trained in practical and effective principles of horsemanship. We will begin by identifying the most highly trained people.

These would be trainers who have come up through a system. They could be Bereiter/Pferdewirt FN or Pferdewirtschaftsmeister FN from the German State system or trainers from the upper level Stage British Horse Society program. Or they could be graduates from the French Institut Français du Cheval et de l'Équitation (IFCE) or the Fédération Française d'Équitation (FFE). Maybe there are graduates from the Spanish Riding School or those who were BHS Pony Club A or B riders back in the day who might want to be a part of this game changing UDJC process.

This is where we will start and as the UDJC grows more trainers at different levels will be integrated into the UDJC show, education and certification program. So, if you are a respected trainer and have not had the certifications listed above, we will be asking you to join the program later on. Now I am requesting that interested individuals and Lesson programs that have training in a fundamental system of riding described here, please contact me by email - bwinyork @ gmail.com - with the following information. The email address is broken up to prevent junk mail bots from capturing it.

Please respond at all listed items -

1 Name

2 State and nearest city where you teach or live if retired

3 Your phone number

4 our Facebook or other social media pages if horse related

5 Your website if teaching

6 Horsemanship system in which you were trained or individuals of note

7 Governing body of that system

8 Certifications you have obtained in that system if any

9 Years teaching or coaching riders

8 Certifications you have obtained in that system if any

9 Years teaching or coaching riders

This is a great opportunity to contribute and support the best new direction in the US horse world, the United Dressage and Jumping show series.

This new show series is cheaper, and it includes an educational component at the shows with judges giving riders real time feedback. The series is not at all breed specific but promotes all horses because it is judged not on so called "correct" movement based on one type of horse but rather on practical effective riding of different horses.

Please help the UDJC identify interested trainers by networking, sharing this post or other means. We are in the beginning of a process that can restore quality horsemanship in America.

UDJC links -

United Dressage & Jumping Club website -www.udjc.org

United Dressage & Jumping Club page- UDJClub

United Dressage & Jumping Club upcoming show schedule - www.udjc.org/upcoming-shows

United Dressage & Jumping Club membership sign up page -Join www.udjc.org/memberships

dressage, jumping

10/22/2025

This is a follow up to my recent hind leg side view conformation post (link below). The hind view illustration shows the basic range of how hind legs can be in horses. Keep in mind there are degrees of each of these conformation flaws. No horse is perfectly put together, but these examples in the extreme are real problems to avoid in leg conformation.

Beginning with the two far right images of Stands Narrow and Narrow, for me these are deal breakers because in athletic sports these leg conformations can easily interfere with one another because the hooves move very close together. Each hind hoof can ding the other hind leg, typically in the pasterns. Yes, you can put boots on these horses to limit the damage but I just avoid it.

The rest, not including the Correct leg conformation, have some kind of structural issue that can easily turn into a soundness problem. When a rider works to develop hind engagement with a Stands Wide, Bow Legged, Cow-hocked or Knock-Kneed horse the physical stresses through the hind legs can be too much for the structure of the legs to manage well.

For me the worst are the Cow-Hocked and the Knock-Kneed horses. You don't want to ride these horses in a wither fox hunt over frozen ground. When you need a quick stop, these legs can come out from under the horse as they slide on icy or slippery footing. The same is true in an August polo game when the polo fields can get hard and hind traction for fast stopping can become very limited at times.

I think that a measurable number of breeders are not culling out horses with poor leg conformation. Perhaps this is because any horse that can trot is worth a lot of money these days. Therefore, a buyer looking for a new horse has to be very careful not to buy a horse that will be a perpetual problem because of its poor leg conformation. And since people today are not studying conformation, there are a lot of 2nd and 3rd rate conformation horses out there for sale. Be careful and learn conformation.

*link to Side View hind leg conformation post -
www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid02oUC5zt7QReXfe39seNzjjRwQNcEZBxXL8TEDP48AnLQLyiRcLUkPKLkLvbFptzESl

10/21/2025

I met David O'Connor at a meeting where he was announced as the first president of the US Equestrian Federation. His speech touted the USEF's mission as supporting equestrian competition with greatly increased funds.

The plan that he said would accomplish this mission was to follow the NASCAR business model of separate "celebrity" teams that could draw big sponsorship money and more spectators to equestrian competitions. Just as both the NASCAR drivers and their cars were celebrities, riders and their horses would be celebrities. Get it?

I got a chance to speak with him after and I told him that NASCAR teams compete in the same competition, and in the horse world each of the many disciplines have their own different competitions. I explained how the following the NASCAR model would separate the disciplines and turn them into market shares competing for sponsorship money. This was lost on O'Connor. He failed to see that this business concept would potentially fracture American horsemanship into separate discipline pieces, which it has.

Judy Berkley, a very experienced reporter, has written a deeply researched book, Off Course, about the inner workings of the USEF as it unfolded into the financial behemoth it is today. I see her book as a valuable historical document that I hope will be useful in accomplishing the desperately needed changes in the American horse world. I found much in it shocking.

The USEF's goal with their NASCAR-ish competing discipline teams has worked well for them in terms of their mission to significantly raise sponsorship money. It has been a huge financial success that has made the USEF a wealthy organization with an annual budget over $37 million. The USEF gets richer as it siphons off a percentage from their affiliate disciplines' revenue.

The cost of the USEF's financial success to the American equestrian public has been that US horsemanship standards have been chopped up into separate discipline standards aimed at meeting the expectations of donors, sponsors, breeders and show facilities. The result has been that everyday horse owners and riders outside the USEF realm have been caught up in the mess that the USEF's pandering to money has created. But this is another book to be written.

The book Off Course: explains the internal USEF causes of America's declining standards of horsemanship. Some causes are political or social that some will agree with and others not. But I think all will see these as irrelevant distractions from what should have been the USEF's goal, helping all US riders and horse owners improve their skills and the care of their horses.

People today accept our contemporary American horse world as if this is how it's always been, but this mess is relatively new. Abuse of horses has been normalized in several disciplines during the USEF's governing tenure. The cost of owning a horse has significantly increased, and the cost of competing a horse is now through the roof. The seeds of these and other struggles can be traced back to the cash driven industrial mindset at the USEF and its affiliates. If you want to know the details, read this book.

link to book purchase on Amazon -

www.amazon.com/OFF-COURSE-Duplicity-Equestrian-Federation/dp/B0F4PD7FKW/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2MST3LYGE64SA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.YW-ESigN2eLzpZ6LsfRgbD3j5mhYXuk-YvJkMcn5aejOFb-ROHCLUMhEYnAp69-z4brwYSter7cKS7sjiMiFfTp3nzUKZA77Pn4Ngs_27698i4O56xN6XoLY6bPpaqCIyUbFzeCg_f-jIg0oVI4PjY0NOELK5anqbqrEHFTEkDVVd9ViBHopC7xJtPrF2speWutQgXVK4MZmppYRe9zdI_oIHiiRKebQU9nkyvwPx2Q.ZWsO8cmL66Ki2waGuFQM1SuzNv4NogucHAOPvLbzYRM&dib_tag=se&keywords=off+course+book&qid=1760983707&sprefix=off+course+book%2Caps%2C136&sr=8-3

10/20/2025

To be effective, horse trainers have to discover where the thresholds of every horse they train are, and every horse is different. A threshold is a boundary or point at which a new state, condition, or action begins.

When I get a new prospect my first goal is to understand where their thresholds of fight or flight and attention span are. To do this I provoke the horse and observe their reactions. One tool I use for this is a string of various pot lids from a thrift store.

To make this tool you need a three foot length of large baling twine and some old pot lids. You drill a hole in the lids in every pot lid for the twine and then sting the lids like beads with a knot tied on each side of every lid to keep them evenly spaced apart.

The pictures of horse trainers show them desensitizing horses. The trainer on the left is giving the horse plenty of space to go past the umbrella, therefore this is not very intense desentization. The trainer on the right is more aggressive or provocative, waving the tarp at the horse's face.

Note that both the trainers have control of their horses using long reins or lines and a long lead or lunge line. Both demonstrate very common desensitization techniques. Both are mostly visual desentizing methods, as is the common use of flags.

Because horses have 35% better hearing than humans, I like to use a lot of sound techniques when I train. I use voice at all the steps in training both for correction and for reward. I also use a wiffle ball bat, a very safe child's toy, instead of a whip for corrections because of the sound it makes. A wiffle ball bat doesn't hurt a horse but it makes a disturbing almost metallic like sound on impact. Beware, there are red or blue knockoff wiffle ball bats but they make ineffective thud sounds. Avoid them and stick with the authentic yellow bats.

The string of pot lids is a sound based training tool. I learned about it from Leroy Fisher, an Amish horse trainer I greatly respect. He lived near me in PA and moved years ago to the Mohawk Valley near Utica NY to farm. If you know him, tell him I said Hi.

With all horses, particularly young ones, I do not have the horse under my control with a lead, lunge line or long lines. I have them at liberty in a round pen. This is because I am more interested in building a relationship of trust with them and the desentizing is a secondary goal.

With the horse in the round pen, I enter quietly carrying the string of lids. Because the prospect is new, they usually keep their distance. I get about ten or fifteen feet away from the horse that is standing watching me and I gently toss the string of pot lids to the ground away from me and the horse to the side of both of us. The first lid toss always sends the horse into a leap away from the lids, not away from me. I remain standing still. The horse stops, looks at the lids and then looks at me most of the time.

The point I want the horse to get is something shocking just happened and they are OK, and I am still standing there. I then crouch down to the ground facing away from the horse and wait for the horse's curiosity to draw them to me. Most do. Some come up and smell me.

I get up slowly, and I quietly pick up the string of lids. I repeat the lid toss and all that follows as before. I stand closer to the horse when I repeat the lid toss, which is a little closer to the horse each time. While this is desentization, my main purpose is to send the message that "I am still here and everything is OK. No one is getting hurt. We are in this together."

Each toss of the lids desensitizes and lowers the horse's threshold of fear of the sound. Because this is done at liberty, the flight impulse is stronger than fight. I want flight and don't want to cross the horse's threshold into a fight response. However, some horses will respond to this drill with fight at some point, which is to be avoided. When a horse goes to fight, I have gone too far and crossed their fight-flight threshold.

During this process I constantly look for signs of diminished attention span because I do not want to push the prospect into their fight mode from the lids. To gauge where the horse is at in terms of potential fight, I will grab a handful or a pinch of the horse's skin to measure their stress level. Horses getting ready to fight tighten their skin to limit another horse's ability to bite them. They also begin to pin their ears back. A horse is more apt to go into fight mode when stressed, so, we take breaks when their stress is approaching their fight threshold to restore their attention.

I do not think of this lid tossing process as pressure release, but rather as sharing a stressful experience with a horse while I am the steady predictable leader. This is the "I'm still here" school of horse training. It's leadership combined with friendship.

Later on, after trust and friendship begins to be established, I will use the pot lids again but this time it is more focused on desensitization. By now the horse and I know and understand each other. I will then drop the lids on the ground while I stand next to them. I will toss the lids under the horse. I will lay the sting of lids across their back and eventually toss the lids on to their butt until they do not respond.

Measuring a horse's flight-fight and their attention span takes time and experience to learn and understand. If you try this technique and have little understanding of the fight-flight and attention span thresholds, you have to be very careful not to trigger the fight impulse while you escalate the process. Be a sensitive leader. Stay safe while you stand your ground as the leader. Remember it's the "I'm still here" method. Don't be a threat, be there present in the moment with the noise and they will want to be with you, the steady leader.

10/17/2025

I am so glad that someone is addressing this issue. The USEF, if it were more than a business, would have done it years ago. Thank you UDJClub.

Trainer certification is one of the most complicated—and most important—topics in our sport. At UDJC, we believe that trainers should be properly educated and certified. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘂𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘆 𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗲𝘀; 𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘂𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴-𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀.

We want to start by saying this: most trainers out there are doing a fantastic job. They are passionate horsemen and women who dedicate their lives to teaching, mentoring, and keeping riders safe. Without them, none of us would be here. We deeply appreciate the countless hours they put in—the long show days, the lessons in all weather, the responsibility of caring for both horse and rider. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗯𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗨𝗗𝗝𝗖 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸.

But here’s the truth: not everyone teaching lessons today should be doing it. Some lack the necessary depth of experience. Others may have gaps in their own education that show up in their students’ riding. And in a sport as dangerous and complex as ours, that’s not acceptable. When you’re putting kids on thousand-pound animals, there is no room for unqualified instruction. The consequences are too high.

That’s where certification comes in. For us, it’s not about punishing the good—it’s about identifying and helping those who need more education, while setting a clear standard that everyone can trust. The goal is simple: raise the floor without limiting the ceiling. Great trainers will continue to thrive, and those who need development will have a path to grow. But if someone refuses to learn or isn’t capable of providing safe, correct instruction, then we have to be honest—they don’t belong in the role of trainer.

Of course, in these first seasons of UDJC shows, there are no “UDJC-certified” trainers yet. It would make no sense to exclude dedicated horsemen just because the system is still being built. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗗𝗝𝗖 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗥𝗶𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺. This brings structure and accountability into lesson barns and ensures that kids learn in environments where standards matter.

From there, the path gets bigger. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝘁𝘄𝗼 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲, 𝘄𝗲’𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘀—𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿, 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆, 𝗨𝗗𝗝𝗖 𝗠𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗮 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲-𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗰𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗺𝘆. The model is clear: just like in Europe, where professional trainer education has raised the bar for generations, we want to create a system here that is respected, consistent, and accessible.

Certification will mean more than passing a test. It will mean being part of a living, breathing network of professionals. Trainers will be supported through clinics, mentorship, workshops, and continuing education. They will grow together and keep each other sharp. 𝗔 “𝗨𝗗𝗝𝗖 𝗖𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗿” 𝘄𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗮 𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗲—𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝗮 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆, 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀.

We know this won’t be built in a day. It’s a long-term project, and we’re committed to doing it the right way. But if we want our sport to thrive, if we want safer barns, better horse welfare, and more educated riders, then change is not optional—it’s necessary.

Most trainers are great. They deserve recognition and respect. But for the future of equestrian sport, we also need accountability. We need a system that makes sure every rider, no matter where they start, gets the kind of education that sets them up for success—not just for today, but for a lifetime with horses.

📸 Karinda K.