Barehoof Pet Care and Exercise, LLC

22/01/2025

22/01/2025

There are many different ways this hair rope is tied and mis-tied, pronounced and mis-pronounced — here are some hints from a man who knows.

Find the story here >> https://tinyurl.com/el-mecate

20/01/2025

20/01/2025

This is so satisfying…painted flanks sweet and simple tack markers at work!

As always painted to look exactly like your horse and made to order!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/PaintedFlanks

19/01/2025

Horses teach you to be honest. They don’t like pretenders.

19/01/2025

16/01/2025

Today was a great day of training with the original ranch horses at G&L Farms

14/01/2025

This is what it's all about, that red dot center of mass. The image shows where, when a horse is standing still, the mean of all the horse's bone, soft tissue and everything converges and where a horse feels their physical center. Horses feel this all the time, standing or moving. It's their center of physical comfort. As riders, it is our responsibility to keep that center more or less in the same centered place, so the horse always feels comfortable.

The percentages shown, front or back are expressed in plus or minus because every horse is a little different. This is due to conformation differences. If the horse's back is longer than average, the percent in the back gets a little larger. If a horse's neck is longer than is typical, the percentage in the front gets a little larger. Every horse is different.

The first thing I do when I get on a horse I have never ridden is feel where that red dot is for the particular horses I ride. This is so I can preserve it as best I can when I ride. And BTW for the nit pickers, some people call it the center of balance or gravity, but the name doesn't matter. What matters is the horse feels good when it's in that centered place.

And then we move off from standing still and the horse's center of mass begins to change. If we ride well, when the center changes along the line of impulsion (yellow lines), and if our horse is fit and we have the feel and the skill to keep that red in our horse's comfortable physically centered place, we have a great ride.

That's it folks. There isn't much more to riding well than this. It is all about the physics of energy and mass. We have to feel it. Some of us, who have watched riders and horses in lessons, training and competition almost every day for decades, can see it. When we teach, we don't teach forms like heels down or more hip angle. We teach, "let the horse move you" so you can feel it. When we train a horse, it's about keeping that red dot in the horse's comfortable center. When we judge, we evaluate how far from that center a rider mistakenly moves that center out from where the horse needs it.

If there was ever an "easier said than done" context, it is riding a horse well. This is why riders after a lifetime of riding, even with great instructors and horses, say they never learned enough. It's that challenging. But we do it anyway because nothing feels better than getting closer to this goal. This is the paradox of horsemanship, enjoying the impossibility of it all.

14/01/2025

About the body not the neck

Found this old graphic and thought it was worth sharing again…

14/01/2025

A new one

14/01/2025

Buy QuickBooks Online Now

10/01/2025

What’s the Right Heel Height_ - EasyCare Hoof Boot News