Epic Sun Farm

Love, love, love this❤️

Buying a horse is the easiest part of horse ownership

Keeping a horse happy in both body and mind is another thing completely. A horse is a living breathing thinking sentient being and we as their trainer are the guardians of their experience earthside. Any human personal trainer will tell you it’s very easy to build muscles incorrectly that will eventually affect your skeleton and it’s also possible to rebuild a bodies soft tissues to support the skeleton, it’s a symbiotic relationship….everything is connected. The relationship between mental and physical soundness is also symbiotic, some horses just don’t like the job they have been assigned by their human. I think that’s very fair.

Leo’s owners bought him for $5000 and I bought him only months later for $500. His owner is lovely, she really tried to help him be happy again and the top photo was taken by a friend of mine Sarah Blackburn who went to do body work with him. He had vets see him and x-rays taken of his back for suspected kissing spines(which was clean). But as a young green horse that was very quiet at the time of sale was assigned a job at a riding school. Nothing bad happened to him, he got plenty of love, care and attention but he was unbalanced and the riding was not helping him to build balance. Leo could do a basic walk, trot and canter but nothing was balanced in his work. Because he was willing eventually he became body sore and then braced along the whole top line leading to wastage(top line syndrome). He started to show agression as a plea to alert anyone to how he was feeling. Luckily his owners listened and sought help but this all unfolded in a matter on months. I was trying really hard to not take on a rehabilitation/retraining case because they are massive vacuums of time and money but Leo reminded me so much of a horse I’d recently lost Bourbon. He wasn’t full of worms, his feet were well trimmed, he had adlib hay, he was fed minerals and he had friends in his paddock. The basics were covered.

These situations happen all the time and they are no one’s fault and it doesn’t help to blame anyone, least of all the horse. We are all learning and on our own journey, I could help Leo and so I went about getting on with it. The photos are 6 months apart(before when I got him and after taken two days ago), he’s been a money pit but I adore him, he’s a great horse!

I didn’t throw the kitchen sink at him early on, good rehab in my opinion is slow and methodical, unpicking one stitch at a time. I have been tracking his programme on my patreon page. This week he’s gone to Equine - Sports Therapy Esme Whinwray for a week of Emmett therapy at her paradise for horses retreat. Esme has also supported us with her MAIN Equine Researched Nutrition product which has really rocket launched his condition. Esme is now trying to unpick a shoulder issue that has been lingering and he has been protecting the whole way through. Shoeing with pads and putty has been really great for optimal hoof placement and made a big difference. The phoenix vogue soft treed saddle has really helped him to find comfort under a rider. He also got a full sedated dental.

Love the journey, know when to seek help and find your village! It honestly takes a village approach!

Please no hate for the previous owner, she was able to put her ego aside and take a huge loss for Leo, s**t happens we learn and we move on. I’m sharing this story because it would be unfair to just share this before and after with out context.

Update: It looks like there are just 2 spots left. 1 morning and 1 afternoon.

We'll be having our first ever Virtual Clinic October 19-20. You'll get a one hour private lesson with me over Zoom both days. It will be recorded and sent to you after. I don't typically do these lessons on weekends, so take advantage.
Message or email me for more details or to register. There is only one spot left for the afternoon. The morning has more availability. If the response is strong enough, we'll consider doing more of these in the future. You get a break on the cost of a clinic as I don't have the expense of travel to pay for.

As an aside, anytime I'm doing a virtual lesson, I'll ask for your address and an emergency contact from you. I'm saying this in a public post so nobody thinks something creepy is going on. Several of my regular virtual coaching customers are in remote parts of the US and Canada. I have had one customer get bucked off and ribs broken during a session with her problem horse. She was ok and even got back on and finished the lesson. It got the wheels turning though. I don't want to be behind my computer, helplessly watching and listening to you bleed out in some remote place in Canada and have no clue who to contact or where to send the emergency services. So, I now ask for some info before we begin, just in case.

This is the way I think about matching horses and riding students. I have taught both types of riders pictured here and every combination in between. The top is a beginner with a green horse and a new rider. The graph indicates the low skill level of the horse (left side) and the level of the rider (right side). This combination is absolutely the worst possible that an instructor might face. The bottom is a highly trained rider with a top horse ready for high level competition. This is a challenging pair to teach, but in a very different way.

The balance of the skill and training levels between student riders and their horses should always be in the very front of a riding instructor's mind. Teachers should always be asking, is the horse helping or hurting the rider's progress, and is the rider diminishing the horse's training? Beginner riders must ride horses that are consistently above the level of the rider, but not too far above.

Yes, the necessary teaching combination of a horse better skilled than the rider will always result in some untraining of the horse. This means lesson horses must constantly be tuned up by a better rider or a horse trainer to keep them at the appropriate higher level for the student.

"For the student" is the key phrase here. I see lesson riders struggling with horses that are not helping them learn, but rather hurting their confidence and sometimes their bodies. I sometimes hear instructors say things about these situations like, "I can ride the horse, so she has to deal with the horse". That statement reveals an instructor ignoring the necessary skill balance contained in this graph method of analyzing the balance between lesson horses and students.

Teaching riding is always about the unique rider and horse in the lesson you are giving in the moment, not about some general idea of horses and student riders. Instructors must have a refined focus on each student and each horse, and how they relate in lessons. If you are an instructor struggling with this balance of skill and training levels and not a horse trainer, it's a good idea to team up with a horse trainer to accomplish the goal of maintaining consistently effective rider-horse matches in your lessons.

The green line second image is of the other extreme in teaching, a highly trained horse and a highly trained rider. To effectively teach these combinations an instructor must be very perceptive regarding both the horse's skill level and the rider skill level on a very detailed level.

When rider-horse combinations like this came to me for help, it was usually because the "meshing of the gears" between the horse and rider had begun to "grind" at certain points in competitions. Either the horse or the rider was interfering with the other. Determining which of the pair to address and change is a great and interesting challenge for an experienced teacher in these kinds of lessons.

Every horse and rider combination that an instructor encounters falls between the two pictured extremes. I hope every instructor thinks about how combinations of horses and riders relate, and how other types of horse-rider pairs might fall on the graph range. If instructors are not thinking seriously about how horse rider combinations work or don't work together, chances are they are falling into the entertainment business and not focusing on their riding instruction business.

Wow 🤯

Why do biomechanics matter?

No one uttered this term to me, in all my years of riding and lesson-taking, until I was well into my 20's. I heard lots of other words: contact, responsiveness, connection, rhythm, impulsion, suppleness. All of them felt like these ethereal concepts that had multiple meanings depending on who you talked to. They also had varying degrees of importance or ranking in terms of what you need first before the horse can offer the next thing, depending on who you talked to. I still see this all the time, and hear about how frustrating it is from other horsepeople trying to do the best they can.

Biomechanics are the physical relationships and structural laws that govern how living things move. Biomechanics are the HOW in all of those aforementioned ethereal terms. They are vital in understanding how to correctly develop a horse for riding. This is the first reason why biomechanics matter.

The second reason is because horses weren't designed to be ridden. I cannot overstate how important this is to understand if you want to ride horses and ride them well: horses were NEVER designed to be sat on. The horse is born with a specific set of biomechanical tools available to him, and they serve him very well...when they are needed.

The thing is, those tools were designed for maximum efficiency if the horse's life is in danger: used for brief moments, blips in between long stretches of calm. Those exact tools can cause injury, unsoundness, and degeneration if used every day, day in and day out, for years.
. . . . . . . .

I want you to look at these two photos.

The top horse is using what nature gave him (and what work with humans helped him turn into long-standing patterns in movement). The bottom horse has been given new tools and taught how to use them to move in ways that preserve soundness, not encourage degeneration.

The top horse is moving in a way that directly ties into the same sympathetic nervous system responses that kick in when a horse is in danger. The bottom horse is demonstrating all of the power potential the nervous system makes available when the horse is in danger, but accessing it through relaxation and completely different biomechanics.

The top horse is using the ground to support his weight in movement, putting a lot of pressure on his joints. The bottom horse is doing a lot of that supporting himself by virtue of his posture, putting significantly less strain on his joints.

You may have already figured out this is the same horse. These photos were taken approximately two years apart.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: the way to develop the bottom horse isn't to simply take the top horse and add contact, impulsion, responsiveness, ride circle after circle, do pole and hill work, etc. Whatever you apply to the ridden horse will only reinforce what is already in him.

You must teach him, literally from the ground up, a new way of moving, a different biomechanical perspective. Some horses will come by this easier than others, but not a one is born knowing how to put all of these things together on their own when the human asks it. Not a one.

We have to show them how.

PC: Mandy Helwege. Thank you for permitting me to share your lovely boy.

True story.

‘Thoroughbreds are 1,000 times easier than warmbloods!’: trainer Dan Skelton spoke to H&H's Jennifer Donald about the merits of rehoming ex-racehorses as we celebrate National Racehorse Week

Read more via link below

🤔You may have LOTS of issues.

💊Until you have a HEALTH issue…

Then you have ONE issue.

—

Join me for Your On-Ramp to Health: A 90 Minute Consult to Take the Reins On Your Health💪

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Just help and support in real time🙌

I’m not your doctor, I’m not your therapist, I’m not your partner or your BFF.

I’m a health coach who specializes in simple nutrition and fitness solutions that work.

👉Meet with me in person at our farm studio or virtually online from anywhere in the world.

Men and women ages 18+, all welcome.

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If you want professional guidance and support from someone who is on your side (and who is a vault 🤐), get in touch and let’s chat.

Stay curious,
Cait

Cait Lynch, B.A.

Nutrition & Fitness Coach
Author | Speaker | Entrepreneur 

Founder, Custom Fit Vitality 
Owner, Epic Sun Farm

Equestrian Canada Licensed Coach

Compliant versus comfortable.

The “problem horse” 🐴

There is such a recurring theme in the clients I’m seeing that I really feel the need to talk about this more. Time and time again I am seeing horses displaying significant signs of pain, who have been to the vet to have some diagnostics and been told there is nothing wrong, the horse definitely isn’t in pain and they need to send the horse to a trainer. It is incredibly frustrating and upsetting as an owner when you really feel something isn’t right but are being told by professionals that the issue is you and you’re overthinking it or being soft.

The idea that a problem is purely behavioural is a fallacy in and of itself. Behaviour is a manifestation of how the horse is experiencing life, whether that be pain/discomfort in the body, the environment, the people, the training, the diet, trauma, past experiences etc. It is unfortunately not packed into two neat little boxes of either pain or behaviour and, even if it was, the idea that we could easily rule out pain with the limited diagnostics available is unrealistic.

When we have a horse that is displaying concerning behaviour, beyond the usual joint, back x-rays and scoping for ulcers, we need to consider hind gut issues, liver issues, hormonal issues, muscle myopathies, congenital defects, old injuries, compensatory patterns, the list goes on. Often we do find pathology, medicate it and declare the horse pain-free and ready to crack on without considering the other factors at play.

I cannot emphasise enough the role of environmental factors. Sometimes we are chasing pathology, buying expensive supplements, paying every professional under the sun to fit our horse’s tack, train them, give them bodywork and hoof care while entirely missing the fact the horse’s basic needs are not being met. If your horse is stressed in his living environment you are setting yourselves up to fail. Horses that are living in a chronic state of stress and have very little ability to down-regulate their nervous system are unable to thrive and develop healthy bodies.

So many horses have poor posture which is causing tension and soreness in their bodies, it is so normalised that it seems to be rarely recognised as an issue as horses can still perform at high levels even when their bodies are compromised, we’re used to seeing horses with poor muscle development. Winning trophies does not necessarily mean the horse is comfortable, it means the horse is compliant. A lot of training views compliance as the main measure of success without really seeing how the horse is feeling both emotionally and physically, with the training itself often contributing to more tension, stress and strain on the body.

All of these things together create the “problem horse”.

I feel really strongly that we need to start looking at things differently if we want to train ethically and also increase longevity for our horses. What if instead of just medicating the horse then sending the horse to the trainer to be “fixed”, we took a step back and really looked at the whole horse and maybe why this happened in the first place.

I genuinely think we’d have much more long term success if we took the pressure off, made sure their living environment was the best we could get it, learned to help our horses down-regulate their nervous system and train at the horse’s pace in an environment they’re comfortable in. In doing so we can really help their bodies and support them as best we can with their issues.

Watching horses find relaxation in their bodies, find peace around people and start to find joy in movement through slow, low-pressure training doesn’t make very exciting videos but it does transform horse’s (and people’s) lives.

If you take anything away from this just know that you absolutely CAN train pain, people are doing it every day and getting 100k views on their reels, so don’t disregard your horse’s voice just because he is somewhat compliant or someone told you to. Behaviour is communication, not something to be fixed. There are people out here who will help you and your horse and not dismiss your concerns. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

This will tick some people off but, I have to say I agree.

I imagine that the ‘internally rotated tribe’ would prefer the big blocks to ‘push against’ for leverage to get them out of ‘perching on their crotch’ and ‘clothes-pinning’ their thighs, which can shut down horses.

If you are from the externally rotated tribe, this will potentially make less sense to you because you are likely more open in your hips and can create dynamic balance that follows and flows🤷‍♀️

Eg the saddle makers are covering for a lack of natural talent and/or anatomy for riding.

Plus, I’m finding that a lot of people are scared. It’s a common theme I am seeing out in the world and in the industry.

The two pictured dressage riders demonstrate the one of the most egregious" changes in dressage over the past several decades. The left rider is balanced in shared unity of motion with his horse. His saddle is minimal and does not aid or restrict his position. By contrast, the modern dressage rider is leaning back with the help of a saddle with a high cantle and huge thigh blocks or knee rolls that allow her to lean back and use her body weight to increase her ability to apply greater rein pressure.

The visual difference between the riders is inescapable. One rider is relaxed and balanced while the other is unbalanced, "water skiing" off their horse's mouth with the help of a saddle that contains her imbalance. One rider works with their horse's energy while the other opposes their horse's energy with significant force.

Centuries old horsemanship is the distillation of the experience of thousands of riders with countless horses over centuries. This leaning back to enable riders to use their body weight to apply greater force to control their horses is not new. Because it is wrong, as evidenced by blue tongues and blood from horses' mouths, and because it is counter to true unity with one's horse, there has been a long standing rule of horsemanship to stop it. That rule states that riders should not be allowed to lean back more than 5 degrees behind vertical.

In our new commercial era of modern riding, each discipline has more or less created their own separate "horsemanship" with their own set of rules and standards. Many of these separate "horsemanships" have subordinated the protection of the horse in favor of fulfilling the expectations and desires of the riders. In this case of excessive rein pressure, abandoning the 5 degree rule gave modern dressage riders permission to use more physical force to impose on horses at the horse's expense and to their detriment.

Furthermore, abandonment of the 5 degree rule has required external supports in saddle design to deal with the rider's intentional imbalance when leaning back 10, 15 or even 20 degrees. Without the high cantles and giant thigh blocks, a rider leaning back past 5 degrees would likely fall off their horse.

This is one more example of how today's flawed riding that undermines the wellbeing of horses can be fixed. There is no need to ban certain bits and equipment. The need is to improve riding to the level that it is no longer destructive to horses.

If the 5 degree rule were to be reintroduced, riders would once again be required to ride in unified balance with and motion with their horses. This single change would greatly reduce the current level of excessive force applied to horses by simply making it much more difficult to develop the greater force levels that now cause the blood, blue tongues and the destructive hyperflexion.

A big part of these kinds of problems is that the well meaning advocates for the protection of horses are not educated enough to address the causes. Instead they address the symptoms related to equipment. Improved horsemanship is always the answer, and we have largely forgotten this.

Love this. All of it.

STOP MATCHING STEPS

All this "matching steps" business is keeping you from making progress with your horse.

Well, to be fair, that's not completely true. By now, you've probably heard my friend Warwick Schiller talk about matching steps and how great that is for building connection with your horse. Particularly for the worried or anxious horse and for the handler that needs help being present. And the truth is, matching steps can be a BIG help for starting to build trust and connection, as well as the awareness and the "here and now-ness" of the handler.

But when we're working in hand with our horses, we are trying to be GUIDING rather than following. Your body guides, much like your seat guides when you are riding. In these instances, you'll want to stay true to your own steps, your own body, your intention of travel/geometry, within the framework you are creating for your horse's movement. And something you'll start to notice is that WHEN THE HORSE IS WITH YOU in the in-hand work, THEY will match YOUR steps because they are following your lead. (The prerequisite, of course, is your awareness, your attunement, and your intention).

Working in hand is beyond the foundation training stage, where you'd begin developing your initial mental/emotional connection. Think of it as the beginning steps of physical connection/collection under saddle... that's different than what you'd be doing if you are working on helping your horse to relax and accept your basic guidance in the earlier stages of training.

If you're trying to match the horse's steps in your in-hand work, or letting them physically guide you, your messages will be incongruent. They will struggle to understand if they are to follow your lead or if you are leading them into the work that you're asking for. When you are focusing on in-hand work, you are GUIDING, and the horse will eventually match you. And THIS is when you know that things are really making sense.

As one of my early mentors, Ray Hunt, told us time and time again, "First you go with them, then they go with you, then you go together."

__________
For more information on the matching steps idea and loads more connection ideas, check out Warwick Schiller's Attuned Horsemanship. Be sure to listen to his podcast, too. It's great stuff.

For more information on getting started with your work in hand, check out academyforclassicalhorsemanship.com/inhand-mini-course

Great read☀️

The “problem horse” 🐴

There is such a recurring theme in the clients I’m seeing that I really feel the need to talk about this more. Time and time again I am seeing horses displaying significant signs of pain, who have been to the vet to have some diagnostics and been told there is nothing wrong, the horse definitely isn’t in pain and they need to send the horse to a trainer. It is incredibly frustrating and upsetting as an owner when you really feel something isn’t right but are being told by professionals that the issue is you and you’re overthinking it or being soft.

The idea that a problem is purely behavioural is a fallacy in and of itself. Behaviour is a manifestation of how the horse is experiencing life, whether that be pain/discomfort in the body, the environment, the people, the training, the diet, trauma, past experiences etc. It is unfortunately not packed into two neat little boxes of either pain or behaviour and, even if it was, the idea that we could easily rule out pain with the limited diagnostics available is unrealistic.

When we have a horse that is displaying concerning behaviour, beyond the usual joint, back x-rays and scoping for ulcers, we need to consider hind gut issues, liver issues, hormonal issues, muscle myopathies, congenital defects, old injuries, compensatory patterns, the list goes on. Often we do find pathology, medicate it and declare the horse pain-free and ready to crack on without considering the other factors at play.

I cannot emphasise enough the role of environmental factors. Sometimes we are chasing pathology, buying expensive supplements, paying every professional under the sun to fit our horse’s tack, train them, give them bodywork and hoof care while entirely missing the fact the horse’s basic needs are not being met. If your horse is stressed in his living environment you are setting yourselves up to fail. Horses that are living in a chronic state of stress and have very little ability to down-regulate their nervous system are unable to thrive and develop healthy bodies.

So many horses have poor posture which is causing tension and soreness in their bodies, it is so normalised that it seems to be rarely recognised as an issue as horses can still perform at high levels even when their bodies are compromised, we’re used to seeing horses with poor muscle development. Winning trophies does not necessarily mean the horse is comfortable, it means the horse is compliant. A lot of training views compliance as the main measure of success without really seeing how the horse is feeling both emotionally and physically, with the training itself often contributing to more tension, stress and strain on the body.

All of these things together create the “problem horse”.

I feel really strongly that we need to start looking at things differently if we want to train ethically and also increase longevity for our horses. What if instead of just medicating the horse then sending the horse to the trainer to be “fixed”, we took a step back and really looked at the whole horse and maybe why this happened in the first place.

I genuinely think we’d have much more long term success if we took the pressure off, made sure their living environment was the best we could get it, learned to help our horses down-regulate their nervous system and train at the horse’s pace in an environment they’re comfortable in. In doing so we can really help their bodies and support them as best we can with their issues.

Watching horses find relaxation in their bodies, find peace around people and start to find joy in movement through slow, low-pressure training doesn’t make very exciting videos but it does transform horse’s (and people’s) lives.

If you take anything away from this just know that you absolutely CAN train pain, people are doing it every day and getting 100k views on their reels, so don’t disregard your horse’s voice just because he is somewhat compliant or someone told you to. Behaviour is communication, not something to be fixed. There are people out here who will help you and your horse and not dismiss your concerns. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

I always aim to quit before we fail.

It’s part of the secret sauce, in my opinion.

The result is usually that horses come along very slowly and then, seemingly all at once—they ‘get it’.

This style of training is a process of falling in love with the what might be considered boring for some.

No fighting, no rigging, no thrashing, no short cuts🤷‍♀️

It’s not fast and sexy; it’s steady and meaningful🤔

𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐭 ❌

The quickest way to take effort out of your horse is not knowing when to quit.

Think about this scenario:

A football coach tells his players to run up-and-backs down the field as fast as they can. The players respond, put out their best effort, and run the sprints to the best of their ability. Then, the coach says "Great job! As your reward, let's do that again."

Now, apply the same scenario to your horse:

You ask your horse for a specific response. The horse responds correctly and gives you the 'feel' you were looking for. You say, "Great job! As your reward, let's do that again."

In both scenarios, the players and the horses put forth maximum effort thinking that their reward would be to rest once they completed the task at hand. But instead, their reward was more work. That has to be frustrating, right?

I know that when you finally get the 'feel' you are looking for, it is tempting to keep repeating that feel over and over again to make sure that your horse has that skill mastered―but, you have to remember to 𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 their effort first, then 𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐞 the skill later. 𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤.

‘You’re in a Renaissance. Zoom out.’

Renaissance

You never recognize the good old days when you’re in them. Those of us with a few gray hairs know this to be true. Self-awareness and the ability to really see without the clouding of emotion is the rarest of gifts.

I’ve done a lot of talking about the ethics and morals of the horse industry lately, both in articles and on the podcast. There are a lot of things that are going on that make me fear for the future of horse ownership (and mankind and the U.S.A. but we’ll stick to horses). There are indeed things going on that we need to improve. There are real concerns for the consequences of public perception of poor animal welfare in our collective sports and communities.

With all that negativity going on, it’s easy to fail to recognize the truth. You’re living in a renaissance of the horse world. From hoof care to veterinary care, to prevention of unsoundness with better riding and biomechanics, to training methods and husbandry we’re learning and improving.

We’ve got a neuroscientist teaching us about horse brains. You can take your pick of attending any of dozens of equine dissections, on every continent, to learn more about the horse’s physiology from world-renowned experts. There are more clinicians running the roads than you can shake a stick at and most are excellent, knowledgeable, and have good hearts. Vets have tools on their trucks, genetic tests and modalities at their disposals that were unthinkable just 20 years ago.

I’ve been in this deal for 3 decades now. All of my adult life, I’ve been a horse professional. I have a degree in Animal Science. Let me just say that those of you complaining about things not being good and how uneducated we all are have lost the perspective of reality. You’re the equivalent of 12 year olds with untethered computers in their hands more powerful than what NASA used to send men to the moon complaining about being bored and having nothing to do. There are many things I don’t know. One thing I do know is that being a part of the negativity and treating singular acts of abuse as though they are completely common isn’t helping at all. Not all opinions should be weighed the same. Patrick King Horsemanship & Dressage recently said on a podcast that "Those who know the least always know it the loudest."

I was asked today what we pros are doing to make this situation better. I can’t speak for all of us, but for the most part, we’re trying to survive. We’re being attacked daily by the people who should be supporting us. We’re trying to educate through videos, podcasts, and written words. We’re working our tails off trying to make the consumer more understanding and knowledgeable. We’re not PR pros, thank God. We’re not media specialists. Neither are we sociopaths or greedy, heartless idiots.

As an industry, we know so much more about equine nutrition than we did 15 years ago it’s unrecognizable. Whether you’re into the barefoot hoof thing, or fine with more traditional farrier methods, both have more education available and tools at their disposal than a hoof pro could have dreamed of 30 years ago (not to mention the nutrition stuff’s benefits). Let me just say here that if you think just one of those camps is right and virtuous and the other camp is made up completely of idiots, you are part of the problem. Your zealotry causes suffering and stifles progress and education. Very few things are black and white. Even black and white don’t exist singularly, but on a spectrum.

I don’t care what you might see in a video clip here and there, or read on this hellish world of social media, the training world of horses is sooooooo much easier on them and considerate of them than it was 30 years ago we’re not in the same universe. If you don’t understand that statement to be a fact and just how far we’ve come, you don’t know enough to have an opinion anyone needs to hear about. You’re just making noise for attention. You’re hurting the cause of the horse.

Folks, one of my greatest strengths as a horseman is that I’m an excellent problem solver. That’s also, without a doubt, my biggest weakness. I’ve had a bunch of people come to watch me ride their horse and I spend 2 hours showing them all the pitfalls and things that still need to be worked on. I’m problem focused. Many a time they’ve left and I sit there wondering if I ever mentioned how much I liked their horse and thought he was going to be a really nice mount over the years.

When I’ve shown horses, I’m feeling the flaws. My mind is on fixing the problems toward perfection. You don’t have to be perfect to win. You just have to be better than the others in your class at that moment. You might not know it, but there are lots of successful showmen/women who are train wrecks as trainers. They’re great racecar drivers, but they have no idea how the car operates. They can ride through a flaw and their face never betrays it to the judge. They never knew the problem happened. This is a LOT more common than you think.

The recent Charlotte Dujardin video is an excellent example of this. She's one of the world's most decorated riders. There's no disputing that fact, but her timing in that "lesson" is what should have really stood out to all of you. It was amateurish at best and for a professional standard, abismal. She's missing huge pieces of the puzzle and the fact that so many haven't been seeing THAT is the real concern to me and ultimately a lot more harmful to horses than a few lashes.

When the media and highly funded/highly motivated animal rights orgs keep cramming down your throat how terrible everything is out there, just keep in mind that perspective matters. Yes, bad things still happen. There’s still a lot more to learn, thank God, BUT there’s more good information at your fingertips than at any point in human history, by a huge margin.

The rising tide of knowledge raises all ships. The average is a lot better than it used to be. A lot better. The best are better than they used to be. That’s not to say that some disciplines aren’t guilty of things we do know better than. That exists and needs to be fixed. Still, what we now call abuse isn’t nearly as bad as what it used to take to be called abuse. Why is that? Obviously it’s because the rising tide has made the errors that get made not nearly as bad as the errors of the past. It. Is. Getting. Better. By. A. Lot.

Things aren’t getting worse. Things aren’t even kind of getting worse. Just keep in mind that the negative side of human nature and some well-intentioned fools who have no clue what a horse really is are skewing your perspective. You’re in a Renaissance. Zoom out. I think you’ll have to admit the truth of it. Things have never been better and they’re only getting better faster.