Mounted Ministries

06/02/2026

We go over this all the time!

06/02/2026

I don't think horses are nearly as interested in being impressive as humans are.

They don't wake up wondering if they're successful enough.

They don't compare themselves to the horse in the next pasture.

They don't worry whether they've accomplished enough this year.

A horse can spend an entire afternoon standing in the sun, grazing with friends, feeling the wind move across their skin, and never once wonder if they should be doing something more productive.

And somehow we look at that and think they are the ones who need teaching.

The older I get, the more I wonder if some of our greatest lessons were never meant to flow from humans to horses.

Maybe they were meant to flow the other way.

Because horses seem to understand something many of us spend our whole lives trying to remember:

That worth is not something you earn.

It is something you already are.

A foal does not have to prove its value before its mother loves it.

An old horse does not become less worthy because they can no longer carry a rider.

A horse is not valuable because of what they do.

They are valuable because they exist.

Imagine if we truly believed that about horses.

Then imagine if we believed it about ourselves.

Perhaps that is one reason horses touch people so deeply.

In a world constantly asking us to prove our worth, they stand quietly beside us as if to say:

"You were never required to earn your place here."

06/02/2026

Back for 2026, the FENCE Tuesday evening Schools!

We’ll set up the jumps: a fully decorated course in one ring, and in the other, various sets of gymnastic exercises, cavaletti and cross-rails. We have skinnies, walls, a roll-top and a little Liverpool to school. Jump height: as you request. We set the course at 2 feet, gymnastics smaller.

Dressage arena available by request (give us a couple of days, please) and for the June Schools, a Sport-Horse In-Hand Triangle to practice with.

In the Covered Arena we’ll have a trail course, some toys to play with (beware the Big Balls!) and someone to help your horse have fun.

Come and play with us - it’s $20/horse for the evening.
Bring a good Coggins test, please, and WEAR your helmet.

4:00 - 8:00 pm. Check-in at announcer’s stand between rings.

Jumping not required! Bring your young or inexperienced horse and just hang out with us. Come dressed English, Western or ba****ck; it’s all good.

June 9 and 23
August 4 and 18
September 8 - and probably a weekend day somewhere in there.

Information:
FENCE at (828) 859-9021, and watch the FENCE page

06/02/2026

Yes! 🙌

Life CAN be glitter, ponies, and ice cream if you want it to… Life’s too short to NOT do the little things that bring you joy! 🙌🐴🥰

06/02/2026

❤️❤️❤️

If you want to understand people better, spend more time with horses.

That sounds like something you would read on a barn sign and roll your eyes at. The longer I have been in this industry, the more time I have spent watching horses and humans figure each other out and the more I believe it is genuinely true. Not as a platitude but as a practical observation about how horses see the world and what they quietly teach us about ourselves if we are paying attention. Here is what horses have taught me about people...

1. Horses do not respond to who you are trying to be. They respond to who you actually are

You can walk into a barn with every intention of being calm and confident and the horse in the cross ties will tell you within thirty seconds whether that is real or performed. Horses read your nervous system, not the narrative. They feel the held breath, the tight shoulder, the energy that says one thing while the body says another. Working with horses teaches you that the gap between who you present yourself as and who you actually are is not invisible. Closing that gap is some of the most important personal work a person can do.

2. Pressure applied correctly creates movement but pressure applied incorrectly creates resistance

This is true of horses and it is true of every human relationship and professional dynamic I have ever been in. The person who escalates without first checking whether their communication was clear. The manager who pushes harder when what the situation needed was a different approach. The instructor who repeats the same correction louder when the student still is not getting it.

3. You cannot fake relaxation

A tense rider who tells themselves to relax usually still stays tense. A tense rider who exhales slowly, unclenches their jaw, and lets their shoulders drop finds real relaxation. Horses taught me that relaxation is not just a mental decision, it is also a physical practice.

4. Consistency builds trust faster than intensity

The horse that gets handled beautifully one day and roughly the next never fully relaxes around people. The horse that gets handled consistently with calm but fair predictably develops a trust that holds up even on hard days. The same is true of students and any relationship worth having. Consistency is not glamorous. It does not make for a dramatic story but it is what trust is actually built on and horses will show you that truth whether you are ready for it or not.

5. What you focus on expands

A rider who focuses on the spooky corner will produce a horse that is spooky at the corner. A rider who rides forward with intention and clear direction gives the horse something better to focus on than whatever was lurking at the gate. Horses taught me that energy and attention are not neutral and they shape the reality they are directed at. What you bring into the arena with you comes with you and what you focus on gets bigger. That is as true in the rest of life as it is at the sitting trot.

6. Timing matters more than force

The perfectly timed release teaches a horse faster and more clearly than any amount of escalating pressure ever will. The perfectly timed word of acknowledgment in a difficult conversation lands differently than the same words said five minutes later. The correction given in the right moment builds understanding. The same correction given out of frustration just adds noise. Horses have an extraordinary ability to reward correct timing and expose poor timing and the riders who develop a feel for it develop something that transfers far beyond the arena.

7. Some things cannot be rushed

Trust cannot be rushed. Confidence cannot be rushed. The sitting trot cannot be rushed. A horse that has been through something difficult cannot be rushed back to ease. A student who is genuinely afraid cannot be rushed through the fear. A relationship that was damaged cannot be rushed back to whole. Horses are relentless teachers of patience, not because they are slow but because they respond so clearly to being pushed past their readiness and so generously to being met exactly where they are.

I did not get into horses to learn about people. I got into horses because I loved them and I wanted to spend my life around them. Everything else came as part of the package - the patience, the communication, the self awareness, the timing, and the trust. It came from years of standing at the rail watching horses tell the truth about the humans riding them. If you want to understand people better, just spend more time with horses.

06/02/2026

Great article!

The canter depart, aka the transition into canter, is one of the most diagnostic moments in riding. It tells you immediately what the rider actually has and what they do not yet have in terms of balance, timing, feel, and preparation. A clean balanced canter depart on the correct lead does not happen by accident. It happens because the rider prepared the horse correctly, applied the aids clearly, and had the balance and core stability to stay with the transition rather than getting left behind it. Here is what goes wrong and how to fix each one...

1. The horse picks up the wrong lead.
This is almost always a preparation problem rather than an aid problem. The horse picks up the wrong lead when it is not balanced and bent correctly before the aid is given. Before the canter depart, ask for correct bend through the last corner or circle, confirm the horse is soft on the inside rein and connected to the outside one, and then ask. A correctly prepared horse picks up the correct lead far more consistently than one that was surprised by the transition from a straight or incorrectly bent position.

2. The horse runs into the canter.
A horse that accelerates at the trot before breaking into canter is a horse that was pushed into the transition rather than lifted into it. The aids came from the leg alone without a half halt first to rebalance and engage the hindquarters. A half halt two to three strides before the canter aid rebalances the horse, lightens the forehand, and creates the engagement that makes a clean upward transition possible. Without it, the horse falls forward into canter rather than stepping under and up into it. Teach your students to half halt first, every single time, before the canter aid is applied.

3. The rider gets left behind.
A rider who tips forward or gets launched out of the saddle at the canter depart lost their position in the transition. This almost always comes from one of two places, either bracing against the transition instead of following it or not having enough core stability to absorb the moment the canter stride begins. The fix for bracing is feel work such as lunge line transitions where the student focuses entirely on softening into the upward transition rather than stiffening against it. The fix for core instability is progressive no stirrup work and two point at the canter before asking for the depart itself. A rider who can hold two point through a canter transition has the balance and stability to stay with a depart without getting thrown.

4. The horse ignores the aid entirely.
A horse that does not respond to the canter aid is a horse that has learned it does not have to. This is almost always a rider problem that has become a horse problem over time. Repeated unclear or uncommitted aids train a horse to wait for a bigger signal and eventually the escalation becomes the normal aid. The fix starts with making sure the aid is clear deliberate and applied once before escalating, not a series of squeezes that the horse has learned to ignore. If the horse does not respond to a clear aid reinforce it immediately and consistently every time. Inconsistency in the response to the aid is what teaches a horse to test it.

5. The depart is correct but falls apart immediately.
A clean depart that breaks down within a few strides tells you the horse was not genuinely in front of the leg or balanced before the transition and that the rider got lucky on the depart itself but there was nothing underneath it to sustain the canter. The fix is the quality of the trot work before the depart. A horse that is forward off the leg, genuinely connected, and balanced through the corners will maintain the canter after the depart because the energy that created the transition is still there. A horse scraped into canter from a flat disengaged trot has nowhere to go but back to trot.

Here are some exercises that actually fix canter departs...

- Transitions on a circle. Ask for the depart at a specific point on the circle such as at the top, at the side, etc and ask for a downward transition back to trot after four to six strides. Return to the same point on the circle and ask again. Repeated short canter transitions on a circle develop the horse's balance in the depart and the rider's feel for preparation and timing without the pressure of sustaining a full canter around the arena.

- Trot to canter over a ground pole. Place a single ground pole on the track and ask your student to trot over it and pick up the canter on the landing side. The pole encourages the horse to step under and lift through the transition and gives the rider a clear preparation point to work toward. A horse that rushes to the pole is a horse that needs more half halt work before the exercise. A horse that steps over calmly and picks up the canter cleanly has found the right balance for the transition.

- Canter from walk. For more advanced riders a walk to canter transition bypasses the rushing trot entirely and requires genuine engagement of the hindquarters and clear preparation from the rider. It is harder than a trot to canter depart and fixing it fixes the trot to canter at the same time because the aids and preparation are identical but just more obvious in their absence at the walk.

A clean canter depart is not luck and it is not natural talent. It is preparation timing and balance built through correct progressive work. Fix the preparation and most canter depart problems fix themselves.

What is the most common canter depart problem you see in your students and what fixed it?

06/01/2026

Come join us this Saturday! https://form.jotform.com/223164675789168

05/31/2026

Gorgeous!