Beacon Hill Equine

11/10/2026

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11/10/2026

2 year old ‘Hilltop Omega’ (Nico) strutting his stuff at his very first show yesterday 🤩

🥈A second in a busy New Forest class

🥉Third in the rare breeds

Some wonderful, encouraging feedback from the judges in both classes and countless compliments from other competitors and spectators- we couldn’t have hoped for a better first outing!

Despite lots of pretty ladies to call to both in and out of his classes, Nico kept his composure (most of the time!😅) and we are extremely pleased with how he behaved.

For those interested in his breeding, Nico is by Carterstone Cufflink and his dam is Oakwood Flight ✨

**t

29/09/2026

Our beautiful Maya meeting hounds for the first time 🐶

Purchased from the sales in 2024 as a half-handled, 18-month-old, Maya has come a long way since leaving the sale ring.

She has been an absolute pleasure to produce and has already proven herself wonderfully versatile, turning her hoof to every job we have asked of her — from riding and driving to, most recently, hunting.

Thank you to Robs Robyn Berry - Veterinary Physiotherapist for accompanying us 🙏🐴

20/09/2026

OPEN STRIDES TRANSPORT | AVAILABILITY THIS WEEK

Based in Dorset and covering the UK, we’re available for collections and transport journeys nationwide this week.

Whether your horse is heading to a competition, race meet, stud, veterinary appointment or a new yard, you can rely on Open Strides Transport for professional, reliable and welfare-focused care from collection to arrival.

✨ Our Services Include:
🐴 Competition & Event Transport
🐴 Race Meets & Stud Runs
🐴 Yard Moves & Relocations
🐴 Veterinary Appointments
🐴 Emergency Callouts
🐴 Long-Distance & Private Transport

🌸Why Choose Open Strides?

✔️ DEFRA Authorised & APHA Certified
✔️ Fully Insured
✔️ Experienced, Calm & Patient Handling
✔️ Modern, Spacious Horsebox
✔️ Live CCTV Monitoring
✔️ Hay & Fresh Water Provided
✔️ Stallion Partitions Available
✔️ Thorough Cleaning & Disinfection After Every Journey

Your horse’s safety, comfort and welfare are always our priority. 🐎

📍 Dorset based | Covering England, Scotland & Wales

📞 Call or WhatsApp 07388 087610 to discuss your transport requirements or secure your booking.

🌸Open Strides Transport
Professional • Reliable • Welfare First

20/09/2026

18/09/2026

Fantastic post, written by Dusty Harvey

One of the biggest marketing victories in the horse industry was convincing people that natural horsemanship and horsemanship are the same thing.

They’re not.

Horsemanship existed long before somebody put a logo on a halter, wrote a clinic manual, and started selling DVDs.

Real horsemen built the cattle industry, the cavalry, ranches, and rodeos. They depended on horses to make a living. Their horses didn’t get participation ribbons for yielding a hindquarter in a round pen. The horse either did its job or it didn’t.

Today’s natural horsemanship world has produced an entire generation of people who can explain horse psychology for six hours straight but can’t lope a correct circle, fix a lead departure, ride a stop, or get a horse confidently through pressure when things get western.

They’ve become experts at talking about horses instead of doing things with them.The obsession with groundwork is perhaps the greatest example. Some horses spend years learning how to disengage, yield, back up, move around cones, follow a flag, and perform endless exercises designed primarily to make the owner feel educated. Then someone climbs on and discovers the horse still isn’t broke. The horse has become a professional student and an amateur employee.

The dirty little secret nobody wants to talk about is that many natural horsemanship exercises are designed to compensate for poor riding. It’s easier to spend six months waving a stick than six months learning timing, balance, hands, seat, feel, and responsibility from horseback.

One requires improving the horse.
The other requires improving yourself. Guess which one is harder.
The horse industry has become full of people who can quote clinicians word for word but couldn’t train their way out of a wet paper bag without a step by step program telling them what to do next.

That’s not horsemanship.

Real horsemanship is uncomfortable because it requires judgment.
There isn’t a script. There isn’t a magical sequence. Every horse is different. Every problem is different.
Every correction is different.

The best horsemen in the world break rules daily because they understand the principles behind them. Meanwhile, the worst horsemen cling to rules because they don’t. Natural horsemanship often promises simplicity. Real horsemanship accepts complexity.

Natural horsemanship often teaches people to avoid pressure. Real horsemanship teaches people to use pressure correctly. Natural horsemanship often creates followers. Real horsemanship creates thinkers. And that’s why so many people get offended when these ideas are challenged. Because if your entire identity is built around a system, questioning the system feels like questioning you.

A real horseman doesn’t care. Show him something that works and he’ll steal it. Show him something that doesn’t and he’ll throw it in the garbage.

No politics.
No religion.
No cults.
No slogans.
Just horses.
The horse doesn’t care what brand is on your hat. The horse only cares whether you know what you’re doing.
Written by Dusty Harvey

16/09/2026

Brilliant post 👏

This before and after shows perfectly what my problem with the modern horse education is.
Today I watched some sample lessons by a young, successful dressage coach. The pair he coached was a young woman and her four years old horse.
The horse had already won (!) dressage tests this year and was supposed to start in a higher class coming spring. I leave that without comment for the moment.

At the start of the lesson, the horse moved as a four year old horse should move under the rider: open poll, nose forward. You could tell that the horse wasn’t balanced yet, but it was extremely well behaved and really tried its best. I thought, what a gem of a horse.
The coach worked on forward with the pair. The task was to give a driving aid with both legs and thus drive the horse to the hand. The first few times, this looked successful. But as the lesson went on, and the coach asked for the same thing again, and again, the horse got more and more tired and behind the vertical. The rider was instructed to have more contact on the outside rein and drive the horse with the inside leg to the outside rein.

As the horse got more and more tight in the neck, I really wanted to tell the coach about the anatomy of the cervical spine, the intervertebral foramen, that building the sling takes time and more than just sending a horse into a fast trot, that a four year old needs plenty of breaks and that it starts to get heavy on the hand because it’s tired. Then you shouldn’t drive more, but let it rest, and maybe call it a day. There was no work in walk, by the way, only trot and canter. Walk was only used three times for less than a minute to let the horse rest.

As the horse’s neck got shorter and shorter during the lesson, it became stiffer in the shoulder, and the front legs pushed further under the body. I had the impression the rider had to use more and more leg aid, although the coach talked about “impulse riding”. That’s not what I saw. I saw a horse pushing itself more and more on the forehand instead of getting lighter.

I don’t agree with the idea that it’s normal that the young horse is behind the vertical. To me, this means that the horse is not strong enough to carry the rider, in which case we need to go back to groundwork and longing, or keep riding sessions short on a long rein. Yes, of course horses come behind the vertical. But it shouldn’t be for long and it shouldn’t be accepted as a feature of a young horse. And you probably need to make your reins a lot longer.

I noticed the horse’s crookedness and lack of balance. It tight roped behind and went wide in front. There was no correct power transmission from behind to front (twisting hocks and fetlocks), and this is the reason why, in my opinion, it doesn’t make sense to send a crooked young horse forward in the hope it will straighten itself out.

Why not do side movements with the young horse in walk and build coordination, strength and balance that way?

Or even better, do most of the work on the ground at that age still, and have only an occasional short ride?

We know so much nowadays about equine anatomy. Why not finally take that into account and change the modern education system?
I really don’t get it.

Nobody wants to start buying arthritis supplements when the horse is 8. So why do we train in a way that almost makes sure of that?
To me, the horse looked very narrow in the rib cage still, as if it hadn’t stopped growing (which it quite certainly hadn’t). Otherwise it was a fantastic horse with good gaits, and probably wasn’t cheap!

Why not wait a little and spend some time doing groundwork, longe work, work in hand, liberty, and focus on riding sessions like these a bit later? And then work on building self-carriage, instead of rushing the horse into your rein?

Because, with all due respect, if this is your before and after, something is not ok!

P.S.: These are AI drawings from screenshots I took. I didn’t look for the best and the worst moment, I just stopped the video randomly in the beginning and in the towards the end. I used AI because I wanted to anonymize the human and horse, but keep the exact posture. I can't draw that well.

P.P.S.: I just wanted to mention that the rider seemed like a very nice, talented young woman who probably only wants the best for her horse. I feel like I would love to send her some classical dressage books so she can make informed choices!