PS Ranch

Legacy made a friend today! This intro went so much better than I expected. We started with Thor on a lead across the fence and worked up to Legacy on a long lead with Thor loose. He was responsive and attentive to my cues while Thor galloped around his pen.

I'm very pleasantly surprised by Legacy's behaviour and suspect the herd intro will go smoothly in a few more weeks!

This cutie needed some more photos!

Silky is looking like a very exhausted mama combined with a feral range pony these days haha you'll have to excuse her fairy knots, I haven't had a single moment to detangle them all yet this year. I think this c**t keeps her on her toes!

He is available!! If I had the time, I'd keep him for myself 🫣

He is doing well and is now officially available! Please message me for more details on this chunk.

Turns out Phantom is more of a ladies man and the mares accepted him better than the geldings 😅 they aren't super thrilled by his presence either but don't bully him as badly so he'll stay with them for now! I don't think he minds 🤭

Waiting at the fence every day ❤️

Just waiting for my appointment like a champ

This guy is healing well and getting thick!! He'll be listed in the next couple of weeks once I'm sure he's completely healed ☺️ I do have a list going of interested buyers so feel free to message to add your name if you're looking!

Another update on this stunning buckskin Pepper baby! This handsome guy is 2 this year and his owner tells me he's super smart and learns fast.

Thank you for sharing!

The boys getting to know Phantom with a safety fence before he's turned out with the herd!

Phantom has been Legacy's pasture buddy most of his life. With Legacy being gelded, they'll both integrate back into the main herd, one at a time. This week is Phantom's turn. Next week will be Legacy's!

Of course my first real ride back "in the saddle" (ba****ck pad, same thing 😅) was chasing some cows!

Thor took me for a very short spin a couple of weeks ago in a saddle with no sttirups. But today, Spirit and I worked hard with that ba****ck pad!

Have you ever chased cows ba****ck?? What was your experience?

My sweet H***h left for his new home this evening. It's never easy letting them go but it's comforting knowing he made a young lady's wish come true.

Congratulations Maddy, you'll make a great team!!

Little kiddo is healing great!

Would you ride the horse in this picture?

I suppose your answer was no.

This is Maserati just a few days prior to his 3rd birthday.

Do you see how high his bum was? His bum was a whooping 5 cm higher than his withers! That´s 2 inches!

This is the age when most youngsters get started and many are even already started and ridden for a whole year!

I think there is so much wrong in the horse industry these days that it is so normal to ride 3 year olds and even 2 year old horses.

Just the idea of sitting on such an imbalanced, immature youngster, makes me cringe.

Makes me feel like violating a child. Why would anyone even consider riding such an immature horse?

I know this is a topic where the waves can go high. But I want to share my point of view anyway because I get asked about it a lot.

Even when Maserati turned 4, his bum was still 3 cm higher than his withers. He had 7 VERY short rides. On 2 of those rides we trotted just a little bit. And then I left him alone for almost a year before he had another few short rides.

Today, I am GLAD I waited and that I gave him time to finish growing and maturing.

Now approaching 7 years of age, he is finally balanced in growth. He has filled out, the shoulders widened and he finally has some withers.

He was often so clumsy, easily lost balance, dripped over logs in the forest and even over his own feet due to him being so bum high.

Now all of this has improved. He is moving beautifully now with a nice stretch over his top line and engaging his hindquarters.

He starts to look like a well balanced horse.

The more horses I start, the more I advocate to wait at least until the horse's 4th birthday.

Or, with some horses, even until almost 5 years old. Maserati was still very imbalanced at age 4. So I waited a bit more.

What all horses have in common is how the skeleton matures. No matter how mature the horse looks on the outside - the skeleton might not be mature at all.

Don’t get fooled by muscle development to think “the horse is ready”. Most of that muscle is probably only fat anyways.

Whether its an Arabian, Quarter Horse, Warmblood or Draft - the skeleton will mature at the same pace.

I am not saying to wait until the horse is 8 and all growth plates are fully closed. But a late start, towards the 4th/5th year and then slow and consistent work, will preserve the horse.

If you are interested to learn more about this, check our Becks Nairn here on FB. She does the most amazing work with full horse dissections to uncover the damages early training does to horses.

So, if you have a 2 or 3 year old and people start to say "You should start him, he will get too strong in his mind." don't worry.

Give your horse time to grow, time to mature.

You can do so much more than riding your youngster.

Take him on walks. Maserati has done soooo many walks over the past years. He looooves going in the forest. This is now paying off big time during our first few trail rides.

Do creative pole work. Sideways, backwards, trotting and walking puzzles. This will help your youngster to get coordinated and to develop better body awareness.

Pony your youngster if you can. This is fantastic to build confidence and physical fitness. Nothing better than taking a youngster out ponying on trail rides with a confident riding horse.

Play at liberty. Or teach him long reining. Or creative trail obstacles.

Build your youngster steady and slow. Build a partnership for life so you can enjoy many many happy years riding your horse later on.

Do you have a youngster? What's your take on this?

P.s.: starting youngsters late and preparing them well mentally/physically/emotionally for an easy start is one of the core values of Operation Dream Horse.

Member have all the resources necessary at their fingertips to educate their youngsters/horses into happy, sound and confident partners.

ODH is a community of responsible, caring and loving horse owners.

My black beauties ❤️

With temps like these the old lady and the kiddo get to come inside! I do not typically bring horses in, they all get free choice hay and access to windblock with weather like this, so they stay out without blankets and do just fine.

That being said, there is the odd situation or individual horse that sometimes needs a little extra. Little miss Molly has struggled to stay warm the last couple of years, even though she has free choice hay, extra mash and she grows a coat like a mammoth! It still takes multiple blankets to keep her toasty when temps hit 30 below.

H***h is not quite as fat as I'd like him to be, even with extra feed. He probably would've been fine with a blanket outside but since they are penned together, they're both happier in and he gets to skip blanket training, for now!

Thankful I have a barn to bring them in for the next few days!

The dragon was looking handsome this morning over breakfast 😍

As much as we want to be a perfect rider, sometimes we are off balance which can affect our horse both short and long term. Secondly, horses can be injured in the pasture. On a regular basis and before each ride, checking our horse for pain is an important part of keeping them sound and comfortable. Our Equine Health & Emergency First Aid course covers a systematic protocol for checking our horse for pain and giving them relief through massage and stretching known as SULIS. It’s one of the really popular components of our course! Contact us today to book a course or inquire about hosting. Your horse will love you for it!❤️🐴

This filly is growing really nice coming into her two year old year! Cherry is super intelligent and learns quickly! She's still available, please message for details.

Such truth written here!

I can’t believe I ever tolerated horses being hard to catch.

Not in the “they’re bad horses with an attitude and shouldn’t get away with that” way but because I can’t believe I was okay with my mere presence being so aversive and unpleasant that horses would run the other way when they saw me.

I can’t believe that I used to respond with frustration and irritation, angry at them for defying me and making my day harder, instead of being disappointed in myself for not having developed a more symbiotic relationship with them.

Hard to catch horses are relatively common and often viewed through the lens of being naughty when really it’s a sign that they associate humans with highly unpleasant tasks that they would really like to avoid.

A horse being hard to catch says everything we need to know about their association with training and calls for immediate reevaluation of the way we do things with them.

Horses being happy to see people, meeting them at the gate and being excited to be caught is a sign of pleasant association with training.

Horses who actively try to avoid their handlers, especially to the point of running and expending excess precious energy simply to evade what they view as a threat, should be a glaring red flag that exposes how the horse views human beings.

How our horses respond to us tells us a story we may or may not want to hear, but it’s an honest one nonetheless.