After All Farm

08/04/2024

It’s here! It turned out so nice. Thanks to
Calvin Porter for the design work and logo.
Dressage at Gingerwood Prizelist will be out this week 😉 see you there!

19/03/2024

Our new sign…
Copyright protected

18/03/2024

A beautiful day to nap in the sun…happy Spring!

01/09/2023

Rabbit Rabbit

07/04/2023

➡️ Practice doesn’t make perfect - perfect practice makes perfect. And that includes things like square halts, proper corners, and good transitions. Every step of your test is accruing (or losing!) points, so why not practice the little things until they’re organic and easy and you don’t have to think about them anymore, instead of only thinking about them in your test, making your life harder? Life is hard already!

07/04/2023

𝗙𝗘𝗜 𝗗𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗔𝗚𝗘 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗟𝗗 𝗖𝗨𝗣 𝗙𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗟 𝗨𝗣𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘:

Ingrid Klimke (GER) has withdrawn Franziskus FRH from the Freestyle at the FEI Dressage World Cup™ Final in Omaha. The stallion had a misstep.

"[Franziskus] had a tendon stretch yesterday," said German team veterinarian Marc Koene, DVM.

"I am sad that we cannot compete in the Freestyle tomorrow," shared Klimke.
"The welfare of Franziskus is a priority to me. Considering the coming outdoor season, we have withdrawn him from the Freestyle."

📸: Amy K. Dragoo

25/03/2023

Shhhhh mom! I’m hunting squirrels…

13/03/2023

Upheaval and it seems a wrong direction for the Spanish Riding school. Sadly whenever money and animals mix, the latter always lose.

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]

09/02/2023

An interesting innovation in seeing the balance

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02/01/2023

Kyra Kyrklund, six-time Olympian for Finland, multiple Nordic and Finnish champion in dressage, jumping and eventing, six-time World Cup finalist and winner of the 1991 World Cup Final winner with Matador, shared some interesting words of wisdom on Facebook.

30/11/2022

Several changes to the Dressage section of the USEF Rulebook will take place for the 2023 competition season, which begins on December 1, 2022. Additionally, several Presidential Modifications were issued that take effect December 1, 2022.

22/10/2022

Blogger Sara Bradley covered the New England Dressage Association’s Fall Symposium, featuring Carl Hester, on Oct. 15-16. What follows is her coverage of Day 2. If you missed it yesterday, you can read her Day 1 coverage here. The second day of th...

20/09/2022

On this week's Training Buzz, Grand Prix competitor AnnA Buffini explains riding a square in walk and canter on two different mounts.

08/08/2022

Our horses try and give us everything - and sometimes they aren’t ready, or get overwhelmed.
Focus on the donut, not the hole.

Ashley Holzer had a disapointing finish in today’s World Dressage Championships results, after her mare displayed uncharacteristic behaviour

04/08/2022

Love how patterns and geometry come in handy when loading up a pickup truck with bales of hay.