Rohirrim Horsemanship

05/05/2023

Haven't updated about Rosie in a while... Starting out with the good news - Rosie had outgrown her western headstall so we got a stunning new one with matching reins and breast collar from Royal Legacy custom leather. It is absolutely perfect! Not so good news is that we had a little bit of a setback in training/showing. Rosie has been on rest for a few months as she sprained a tendon on the medial side of her left-hind fetlock. I have probably been overly cautious, but we have now added in hand walking and we will start walking under saddle next week and very slowly start conditioning from there. A bright side of this is the past couple months I have been able to carve out more time to spend focusing on writing and mental health and Rosie seems to have enjoyed her break 😊🌻

01/12/2023

Interesting read!

01/11/2023

01/11/2023

Working on the accuracy of our pivots. After the accuracy, we can add a little more promptness to the ex*****on. Rosie says its hard to move fast when you're a big girl 😘🍑

01/09/2023

Yesterday I went to Malcolm Edmund's memorial service. Before going to the service it felt fitting to ride and, of course, grab some tacos. When I was managing the farm, whenever Malcom would come to trim & shoe the horses, we would eat tacos for lunch and talk about life. I will miss our talks and his positive and humble attitude, but I hope I can cary on even an ounce of his work ethic and kindness towards both humans and horses.

01/03/2023

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Meet one of the rarest Draft Horse breeds and join me for a ride at an award winning Equestrian Riding Center in England! In this episode I travel to Cumbria...

01/02/2023

Just wanted to share photos of Rosie from my wedding day. She took everything in stride, with all that was going on... lots of people, weird decorations, the people moving tractor, my long billowing dress...nothing phased her!

Also wanted to thank Royal Legacy custom leather for the beautiful bridle that I ordered for Rosie. The leather was such great quality and it looked so beautiful on her 🤍

12/30/2022

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Every year this joke makes the rounds and it sends the wrong type of message, so here’s a new version.

The answer to fixing the type of excitability that “necessitates” lunging for safety purposes is addressing the training and management factors that contribute to your horse having that much pent up energy and choosing to engage in explosive behaviours to relieve said energy.

Lunging is just a bandaid for the unwanted behaviour, it is using physical exhaustion or at minimum, relief of explosive energy as a means of addressing the BEHAVIOUR but fails to address the cause.

The problem with this is that routine lunging for the sole purpose of energy release before rides results in an incredibly fit horse who will have more and more energy to expend if the cause of their excess energy isn’t addressed and their energy will fail to tap out in the same duration of lunging as their fitness builds.

All that aside — don’t we all want the horse we can just get on and go?

Using this joke as a metaphor, aren’t we tired of always having to “lunge” the year to avoid misbehaviour?

Wouldn’t we rather address the factors that cause us grief rather than perpetually just slapping a bandaid on it and dealing with the very behaviour we admittedly do not want to deal with on a very repeated basis?

As someone who used to have the explosive horse who needed to be lunged to hopefully avoid him rocket launching me, I much prefer being able to get on that same horse with no prep and having it be safe than I did my lunging days.

12/30/2022

Yesterday and today we rode in our rope halter. I love to ride in a rope halter sometimes because it makes me focus more on my leg aids. Overall It is a really great way to tune-in with your horse and focus on lightness.

12/26/2022

We've had a very busy year with a lot of big changes, but hopefully I can be more active with Rosie's training updates. Rosie has had some time off the past few weeks bc of my wedding and honeymoon, but now we are back to work! The first few days back we focused on groundwork, but today we saddled up. We need to do some reconditioning so we mostly walked with some trot intervals, but she behaved perfectly and was so light when picking up contact (and also ground tied like a champ)😊

04/25/2022

Long read, but this is exactly why I am so insistent about proper mounting techniques with my students!

The way you mount up from ground to saddle at the start of a ride has important implications for your horse's body and mind. Riders rarely examine the technique they use to get from ground to saddle and their horses' responses to having to stand for it. But is the way we make the journey up onto our...

04/09/2022

So proud of the SO athletes I had the opportunity to coach at the Florida State SO Games! All of their hard work paid off. My 3 students brought home 2 golds and 2 silvers and a bronze in their classes! And Rosie did amazing as well😊🐴🏆