Haggerty Equine Experiences

12/03/2025

12/02/2025

I leave for Arizona tomorrow!

Although I love the snow we've been getting, I'm excited for it to be comfortable temps and SUNNY ☀️ while I'm taking part in the clinic 😅

11/30/2025

11/30/2025

I call it "safely struggling" and that experience is the awesome sauce of then recognizing the difference when things are going correctly!

I purposely put students on a 'difficult' horse one lesson, and then an 'easy' horse the next to let them FEEL and FIGURE OUT the difference. Every horse has something to teach us as riders if we allow ourselves to experience the good AND the 'bad'

Side note - this should not necessarily mean getting bucked off or put into dangerous situations or on an unsafe horse!! In my program this looks more like me keeping quiet when my horse turns around and stops at the gate ignoring the rider's cues to see what the student does to problem solve for the situation. It's letting a student trot fast or even accidentally canter a few strides because they won't stop clucking after the horse was already speeding up. It's letting them experience the horse turning 4 circles and won't go straight because they aren't releasing the rein or are holding them unevenly...

Keeping safe mistakes in the ZPD is key to keeping them safe for the student you are teaching at that moment. Letting safe mistakes slip beyond the ZPD then causes them to become "unsafe mistakes" because you are asking the student to do or work through something they can't yet do even with help.

11/29/2025

Let's just say I had a SpongeBob moment

Wore my new winter pants yesterday... Brand new, just took the tags off before I put them on...

I did the squat test before hopping onto Oswald. I just wanted to bumble around the pasture, I'm putting a lot of ba****ck rides on him lately.

Squat test failed 🤦🏼‍♀️🤣 but I did still ride!

11/29/2025

For next year's lessons I'm gonna be more challenging 😁

11/28/2025

I could sell all my horses and work solely for others at their prettier barns or even at the big time show circuits... but I think I would lose my love for what I do!
Something inside me thrives on the rugged natural farm life, the things that depend upon strength, consistency, and integrity. I just never was attracted to the fancy flashy things in life 🤷🏼‍♀️

11/28/2025

I don't remember who I saved this image from, but I'm questioning the accuracy 🤔

There's quite a bit of lore on reading horse whorls and what they supposedly mean about the horse depending on location and amount of whorls.
It's an interesting concept! The majority of my horses have a single center whorl, yet have very different personalities. Although my herd is pretty darn safe for kids and beginners to be around, so maybe I just don't have enough high-key horses to make a bigger comparison to...

Let's see your horses' whorls!