Doc's Haven Farm, LLC

10/08/2026

It’s spooky season. Happy spooking 🤪

One flying leaf away from a full paranormal event 👻🐴🍂

09/14/2026

Love this observation, so many good points!

What Really Falls Apart in a Dressage Test🔥

Today I spent several hours pencilling tests at one of my favourite dressage clubs, watching horse after horse make its way around the arena.

Beside me, the judge was assessing the performance in front of her and I was busily writing down comments about needing more bend, counter-flexion, relaxing into the contact, being more forward, rushing, needing more engagement behind and losing balance.

All perfectly reasonable observations. But sitting beside her, I was watching something else as well.

I was watching varying degrees of what I think of as "pressure-cooker coping".

I was watching horses managing different levels of tension, soundness and physical capacity. I could see natural asymmetries becoming more pronounced as tension increased. I was watching riders managing their own tension, balance and decision-making while their horses tried to process an unfamiliar environment and simultaneously respond to the person on their back.

Sometimes the pressure would build until the horse hovered near that tipping point, caught between the rider trying to contain them and every cell in their body screaming to get out of there. 🫣

And yet this is exactly why I think a dressage test can be such a brilliant stress test of your training.

At home, your horse might maintain rhythm, bend correctly, transition smoothly and work into a lovely contact. Then you put the horse on a float and take it somewhere else, where there are unfamiliar horses, warm-up traffic, announcements, spectators and, in today's case, people casually walking their dogs while somebody's horse attempts to remember the finer points of a 20-metre circle.😎

The horse's attention becomes divided, arousal rises and the body changes.

Tension then does what tension is very good at - it makes a caricature of the horse that is already there.😎

The slightly stiff side becomes stiffer. The weaker hindleg becomes more obvious. The slightly fragile transition becomes rushed. A small balance problem becomes considerably larger. The horse doesn't necessarily develop a collection of exciting new problems at the competition. The pressure simply magnifies the vulnerabilities that were already there.

That means competition shows us which parts of our training and the horse's gymnastic development remain available when the pressure goes up. That is incredibly valuable information.🙏

The problem is that we can accidentally turn up the heat ourselves. 🔥

The rider feels the horse deteriorating and understandably tries to fix what is happening. The horse counter-flexes, so there is more rein. The horse loses bend, so there is more leg. The horse rushes, so there is more holding. The horse comes above the contact, so the rider works harder to put everything back where it belongs.😕

Meanwhile, the horse is essentially thinking, "I was already finding this difficult and you appear to have chosen this exact moment to become considerably more complicated".😱

Tension changes movement, the movement deteriorates, the rider applies more correction, the horse becomes more tense and the movement deteriorates further.

Welcome to the pressure cooker.🫠

Interestingly, the riders who handled these moments best didn't try to renovate the entire horse between K and A. They looked up, rode their line, kept quietly guiding and made sensible decisions. Most importantly, they gave the horse something familiar to come back to.

And this is the training underneath the performance.

You cannot prepare a horse for competition by trying to prevent tension. You prepare them by teaching them to stay connected and responsive as the pressure rises, and, just as importantly, how to find their way back to you when tension momentarily pulls them away.💚

This is something I spend an enormous amount of time developing in horses and riders. We need anchors: familiar, well-practised responses and grounding exercises that reconnect the horse to the rider, help loosen the body and allow the horse to reorganise and become available to the aids again.

Those anchors need to be trained before you need them. Competition day is not the ideal moment to introduce your horse to your brilliant new grounding exercise while they are already struggling.😕

The horse needs to know the exercises and the responses need to be reliable. Just as importantly, the rider needs to recognise tension early, understand how it changes their particular horse and know which decisions are likely to diffuse the situation rather than simply correcting whatever symptom has appeared.

That is know-how, and it is absolutely learnable. It is at the heart of my work because when you understand how to recognise tension, make good decisions and bring your horse back to you, so much of everything else starts to flow. The performance becomes the result of the training underneath it, rather than something you are desperately trying to manufacture in the moment.

So when your judge writes "needs more bend', don't automatically go home determined to manufacture more bend. Ask yourself why the bend disappeared. What happened as tension increased? Which asymmetry became exaggerated? What happened to rhythm, balance and contact? When did your horse become less available to you?🤓

Then ask the most useful question of all:

Do I know how to diffuse tension and anchor my horse back to me?🤔

Your dressage test isn't merely a report card on what happened between A and C. It is showing you how robust the training underneath your performance really is.

And that gives you something incredibly useful to train.

Don't just practice the test. You practice the travel, the arrival, the warm-up, the exposure, the ability to anchor them back to you.

Collectable Advice 291/365. SHARE this with anyone who has ever experienced the "pressure cooker coping".😆

P.S Project Reboot is all about this know-how❤

09/11/2026

DRESSAGE SOLUTIONS: Avoid Falling in Through Corners

To prevent your horse from falling in through corners …

Think of your inside leg as a pillar that your horse has to bend around and that you can use to help prop him up around the corners.

— Ashley Donadt

🎨 Illustration by Sandy Rabinowitz

Click the link in the Comments below to read more! ⬇️

09/10/2026

Great explanation

09/10/2026

I’ve dealt with this over and over again. Sometimes it gets resolved, sometimes they move on because the answers aren’t what they want to hear. Sigh.

When “I Just Want to Ride” Becomes the Problem🔥

A trainer friend of mine recently lost it with a client. This bothered her enormously because she is normally incredibly patient. She is also kind, experienced and genuinely goes out of her way to help people.

The client was lovely too, and that matters. This isn't a story about a horrible person mistreating a horse. It's about a perfectly nice person who loved her horse, wanted to ride her horse and was struggling to see that some of the things standing between her and that goal weren't going to disappear simply because she really wanted to ride.

For a couple of months, my friend had been helping her with an anxious, spooky mare. Quite quickly, she noticed several things. The mare appeared mildly footsore. Boots were purchased, but my friend suspected more investigation was needed, including looking at diet and hoof care. The saddle had also never been properly fitted.

Then there was the riding. When the mare became anxious and rushed, the rider would shortened the reins and pulled harder on her mouth. On the ground, her handling of the lead rope was inadvertently creating confusion. Nothing malicious was happening. She simply didn't yet have the capability or insight to recognise how these interactions might feel from the horse's end of the rope.

So my friend went back to groundwork. Not because groundwork is some sacred spiritual practice, but because the woman needed to learn how to communicate with her horse. The mare was already showing some anxiety on the ground, and my friend wanted to help the owner develop the skills to guide and support her there before adding the complexity of riding. The groundwork wasn't really about groundwork. It was about helping the human become clearer, more reliable and more capable of guiding the horse when things became difficult.

Each lesson, my friend explained what they were doing and why. She demonstrated, coached and gave the woman things to practise. Unfortunately, very little was practised, so they kept returning to much the same place. This wasn't a case of a trainer endlessly insisting on groundwork while refusing to let someone progress. The things preventing that progression weren't changing. The mare was still showing some anxiety on the ground, the owner's handling wasn't improving because she wasn't practising, the feet remained questionable and the saddle remained unchecked. They couldn't progress simply because time had passed when the problems they were trying to resolve were still sitting there waiting for someone to resolve them.

Then one day the client announced that she was sick of groundwork. She wanted to ride.🤨

Somewhere inside my friend's normally well-regulated nervous system, a small fuse finally reached the explosives.💥

Because the groundwork wasn't preventing her from riding. A collection of unresolved problems affecting the horse was.

The horse's feet were uncomfortable. The saddle hadn't been assessed. The owner still struggled to guide the mare clearly, and when the mare became worried under saddle, the response was to restrict her further. Getting on and riding wasn't going to magically make any of that disappear.😑

In fact, it potentially bundled all the problems together and added a human.

This is the part of the story worth committing to your memory banks.

When we describe a horse as anxious, spooky, reluctant, resistant or lacking confidence, we are describing what the situation looks like from our side. We still need to ask what the situation might look and feel like from theirs.

Perhaps the horse isn't simply anxious about the world. Perhaps she is anxious about experiencing the world while her feet hurt. Perhaps she is reluctant because the saddle is uncomfortable. Perhaps every time she becomes worried, the human shortens the reins and increases the pressure. Perhaps she doesn't feel particularly secure with the person handling her because that person is still learning how to communicate clearly.

Then we climb aboard and wonder why the horse isn't confident.😑

Determination is a wonderful human quality, but it has limitations. You cannot out-determination sore feet. You cannot positive-think a poorly fitting saddle into fitting. You cannot repeatedly confuse a horse and overcome the consequences by deciding that today you are definitely going for a ride.😑

My friend eventually lost her temper. She wishes she hadn't, but I understand why she did. Perhaps a boundary could have been established earlier, but hindsight is wonderfully articulate. She had spent weeks trying to help someone understand what she believed the horse was experiencing, and eventually her frustration got the better of her.😕

There is a useful warning here for all of us. Horses don't experience our good intentions. They experience what actually happens to them.

You can adore your horse and still accidentally make their life difficult. That doesn't make you a bad horse owner. It gives you something to investigate, learn or change.

The problem begins when the horse keeps providing information and we decide we don't want to hear it because it interferes with what WE want to do.

So perhaps the uncomfortable question is this: do I want to solve the problem my horse is experiencing, or do I just want my horse to stop having a problem with what I want to do⁉️

Because there comes a point where saddling up and getting on is no longer perseverance. If the horse is uncomfortable, the equipment is questionable, the communication is unclear and the horse keeps struggling, but we choose to ride anyway because riding is what WE want to do, perhaps we need to stop calling that determination.

At some point, refusing to listen to the horse in front of us becomes disregard for their experience.

And surely, if WE genuinely care about horses, that should matter more than whether we get to ride today.❤

Collectable Advice 289/365

Please SHARE this one, especially with the coaches and equine professionals who have found themselves in this exact situation. I suspect many of you will read this story and think, “Yep. I’ve lived this moment too.” Sometimes the hardest part of helping the horse is helping the human see what the horse has been trying to tell them.🥹

PS. I am looking forward to Project Reboot ❤

09/08/2026

Truth

There are horses who make you look good, and horses who make you get good.

I have certainly ridden horses who, from the word go, just felt like MY horse.

My type of ride. My strengths suited their weaknesses. Their strengths covered for some of my weaknesses. The communication came easily, and it felt like we spoke the same language immediately.

These are amazing horses to ride.

BUT.

Let me tell you about the opposite horse.

The horse who needs support in places that are YOUR weaknesses.

The horse who doesn’t naturally understand the aids you tend to give. The horse who needs you to be quieter when you tend to do too much, quicker when you tend to wait too long, softer where you tend to brace, or more confident exactly where you are inclined to doubt yourself.

Those horses can be unsettling.

Because suddenly, the things that have always worked for you don’t work particularly well anymore.

You can’t rely on your favorite tools. You can’t hide quite as easily inside the things you’re already good at. The horse keeps shining a giant, often irritating spotlight on the parts of your riding that still need work.

And if you’re willing to listen, they make you better.

They force you to develop tools you never needed before. They make you more adaptable, more creative, more precise, and ultimately more capable of helping a wider variety of horses.

I will always appreciate the horses who make me feel like I know exactly what I’m doing.

But some of the horses who have taught me the most are the ones who made it abundantly clear that I didn’t. 😂

Some horses make you look good…

Be grateful for the ones who make you get good, too.

09/05/2026

Just talking about this this morning

08/20/2026

Yes

Unpopular opinion: Know when to back off.

Horses are not machines. Make sure you find a trainer that knows when to push, and when to back off.

Get you a trainer that pays attention to your horse and their needs.

Some horses are such people pleasers, such hard workers, so trusting and willing, that they'd follow people into their own breaking point; and the wrong people will push them past it.

Make sure you find a trainer that recognizes the limits in your horse and doesn't try to experiment with their mental or physical soundness for faster results.

Like it or not, sometimes days off teach your horse more than constant daily pushing will.

They cannot speak, but the right trainers can still hear them. Make sure they listen.

- Good Secret Horsemanship

📸 Max & Maxwell: Equestrian Photography