Peck Farm

06/20/2026

06/10/2026

For sale: Two toned blue show trunk in good condition for show tack or at home. Has all original grooming boxes and drawers(not shown). Handles in good shape. Asking $550. 805-368-9388 Moorpark.

06/10/2026

For Sale: Phoenix West two toned blue tack trunk for show or just to keep your tack at the barn. Complete as when new. Has all drawers and handles. Good condition. $800 new. Asking $550.00. 805-368-9388 or DM me. Moorpark Ca.

06/08/2026

26 yo Just A Little Luck aka, Jack, teaching 13 yo Parker the extended trot. Used to gallop him as a three year old at Hollywood Park for Jack Van Berg.

06/05/2026

🐴 PH Motivational Monday!🐴 Top show jumper Katie Dinan talks about how she keeps her cool during high-pressure competitions.

This past April, U.S. show jumper Katie Dinan rode Belgian Warmblood mare Out of the Blue SCF to a third-place finish at the 2026 Longines FEI Jumping World Cup™ Final in Fort Worth, Texas—a personal best out of her seven World Cup Final appearances.

Click on the link in the Comments below for 10 questions with Katie to learn more about her keen insights!

06/05/2026

Many riders struggle with the sitting trot than almost any other skill in the saddle. These riders are struggling to sit the trot because they are trying to sit still on a moving horse instead of moving with it. The moment you try to be still at the sitting trot, you bounce. The moment you try to grip, you bounce harder and your horse hollows underneath you. The sitting trot is not about absorbing movement by staying rigid, it is about following movement so completely that there is nothing left to absorb. Here is what helps...

1. Start with the pelvis
A common mechanical problem in a struggling sitting trot is an anterior pelvic tilt where the pelvis tipped forward, the lower back arched, and the hip joints locked. In this position, the hips physically cannot follow the horse's movement because the joint is not free to swing. Before you ask for sitting trot, check the pelvis. Ask your student to think about sitting on their back pockets and tucking the pelvis slightly under to find a neutral spine with no arch in the lower back. Then ask them to draw their belly button gently in and up. This is core engagement not gripping and it is what makes everything else possible.

Here is a useful off horse test: ask your student to lie flat on the floor and press their lower back down to touch the ground. The muscles they use to do that are exactly the muscles they need to engage to sit the trot correctly. Once they can find those muscles on the floor ask them to find the same sensation in the saddle.

2. Do not sit, move
The mental image of sitting still at the trot is the enemy of a correct sitting trot. As the horse's diagonal pairs move beneath you, let your hips follow that movement which will look like a subtle, almost invisible shimmy and swing that travels with the horse rather than bracing against it. Think of your hips moving up with the bounce and back with the return without having your butt leave the saddle. Be draped over the horse like a wet towel rather than perched on top of it like a statue. The rider who follows the movement softly will always sit better than the rider who tries to hold themselves in place through core tension alone.

3. Think about posting without posting
One of the most useful mental cues for unlocking a stiff sitting trot is to ask the student to think about the rhythm of the posting trot while staying in the saddle. Lift slightly through the chest and hips in rhythm with the trot - not a full post, just the intention of one. This keeps the pelvis mobile and the hips following rather than bracing and gives the rider a rhythm to ride to instead of a stillness to maintain. Combined with lifting through the chest it opens the hip angle and frees the lower back in a way that pure sitting rarely achieves on its own.

4. Build it in short intervals, not long grinding sessions
This is one of the most important things to get right as an instructor. The sitting trot is genuinely physically demanding and a fatigued rider at the sitting trot does not learn correct movement, they learn tension patterns that take weeks to undo. Start with a few strides of sitting trot on the rail or on a circle then return to posting. Try again with a few strides of sit trot then back to rising. Build gradually over weeks and months, not within a single lesson. "Post before you lose it" is the mantra you need to keep in your head. Short quality intervals of correct sitting trot develop the skill while long exhausting sessions develop the brace.

5. Check the saddle before you blame the rider
If your student sits the trot comfortably ba****ck but struggles in the saddle, the saddle is part of the conversation. A seat that is too small tips the rider forward into exactly the anterior pelvic tilt that makes sitting trot impossible. Thigh blocks that are too large for a rider without sufficient core strength force the leg into a position that restricts hip movement rather than freeing it. Check the fit before you spend ten lessons trying to fix a position problem that the equipment is creating.

6. Use the lunge line
Put your student on the lunge on a quiet school horse and take away the reins. Remove the steering, remove the contact management, remove every distraction and ask them to focus entirely on what their hips are doing. A rider on the lunge who is not responsible for anything except following the movement will almost always find a better sitting trot than one managing the full complexity of riding independently. Use it regularly, not just once. The feel developed on the lunge transfers back to independent riding consistently when the work is done correctly.

7. For younger riders, make it playful
Ask them to relax their belly like a bowl of Jello. It makes them laugh, it makes them breathe, and it releases the abdominal tension that may have been blocking the movement in the first place. As they develop, change the language to hips and belly button, follow the swing, invisible shimmy, but keep the lightness in the instruction. A tense child trying hard to sit the trot will always bounce more than a relaxed child who is playing with the movement.

8. Address the whole body
Tight hips are one of the most significant contributors to a poor sitting trot and they have nothing to do with what happens in the saddle. Hip flexor tightness from sitting at a desk all day, limited hip mobility from lack of stretching, weak core muscles that have never been asked to do this specific job and all of these show up at the sitting trot because the sitting trot demands more from the body than almost any other riding skill. Yoga hip openers such as the frog pose in particular is excellent for releasing the hip joints that sitting trot demands so much from. Core strengthening work off the horse makes core engagement on it significantly more accessible. The riding improves faster when the body is being prepared for it away from the barn.

The sitting trot is not a skill that clicks in one lesson. It is built over weeks and months through correct movement practiced in short quality intervals on a suitable horse with a pelvis that is free to follow. Rush it and you build tension so take the time and you build feel.

What is your go to cue or exercise for helping a student unlock their sitting trot?

06/05/2026

A lost stirrup is rarely just about the stirrup. It is almost always a symptom of something happening further up the leg such as a gripping knee, an unstable lower leg, a foot that has crept too far into the iron, or an ankle that is bracing rather than absorbing. Losing a stirrup is a symptom. The position fault that causes it is what needs to be addressed and it is almost never just about the heel. Here is what is actually going on and how to fix it...

1. The gripping knee pushes the lower leg back and up.
This is the most common cause of a lost stirrup and the most consistently misidentified one. When a rider pinches with the knee, the knee essentially acts as a fulcrum and thus the lower leg (the calf) tends to fly backward away from the horse's side. This is the mistake that some instructions make by telling the rider "heels down" when the real instruction should be release the knee. A gripping knee cannot produce a stable lower leg regardless of how much the rider tries to push their heel down. Fix the grip and the heel position almost always improves without another word about it.

2. The lower leg has no independent stability.
A lower leg that swings with every stride has not yet developed the muscle memory and strength to stay in one place independently. The leg likely moves because the rider does not yet have the neuromuscular control to hold it still while the rest of the body moves with the horse. This takes time and specific exercises to develop and heels down as a correction does not build it. You have to train the stability directly.

3. The stirrup is on the wrong part of the foot.
Stirrups belong on the ball of the foot which is the widest part just behind the toes. A rider who has pushed the foot too far into the stirrup is a position where the foot cannot maintain a correct heel down position because the ankle joint is blocked. Check foot position before you correct anything else. Sometimes the fix is that simple.

4. The tread angle does not match the rider's natural foot position.
Some riders naturally turn their toes out slightly. Some turn them in. A stirrup iron that forces the foot into an unnatural rotation creates tension in the ankle and lower leg that contributes directly to stirrup loss. Adjusting the expected foot angle slightly can make a significant difference for riders who consistently lose stirrups despite correct lower leg work. For western, I love using stirrup turners because they keep the stirrups in the correct riding position as opposed to you fighting the fenders. I am not sure of the name for the english stirrup ones, but MDC makes them where the stirrups are on a swivel and can be changed to three different positions. I personally love to use these for myself and my students because it beats "fighting" your tack.

Here are some exercises that actually build the stability to keep the stirrups...

- No stirrup work at the walk:
Start with regular walk work without stirrups and doing exercises such as transitions, direction changes, halt to walk, all help to develop the independent leg position. A rider who can walk without stirrups in a correct stable position is developing the muscle memory that transfers directly into stirrup work at faster gaits.

- Single stirrup work:
Drop just one stirrup. This isolates each side independently and reveals asymmetries in lower leg stability that riding with both stirrups masks. The side that loses the stirrup most often is almost always the weaker or tighter side. Work it specifically rather than drilling both sides equally and hoping the weaker one catches up.

- Two point at the walk and trot:
Two point position requires the rider to balance entirely through the lower leg with weight sinking into the heel and the stirrup bearing the rider's weight directly. A rider who cannot hold two point has not yet developed the lower leg stability to keep a stirrup reliably at any faster gait. Build two point progressively through halt, walk, trot, until it is solid before expecting stirrup security at the canter.

- Transitions without stirrups:
Walk to halt, halt to walk, walk to trot and back, all done without stirrups. Every transition tests the lower leg's ability to stay in place while the body manages a change in energy. A leg that stays stable through a transition without stirrups will stay stable through the same transition with them. Use transitions specifically to develop the stability rather than just drilling gaits in straight lines.

Losing a stirrup consistently is a position problem that no amount of heels down correction will permanently solve. Find the root cause such as a gripping knee, unstable lower leg, incorrect foot position and address it directly with exercises that build the stability rather than just reminding the rider it is missing. If you fix the leg, the stirrup takes care of itself.

What is your go to exercise for building lower leg stability in your students?