Ever have a horse in so much pain that they quit working for you? Ever have a horse that just wasn’t giving you the runs they used to? Ever have an older horse that suffers from arthritis or is just starting to show their age after workouts or events?
Rollbacks are a very important and useful training tool. One of my students was struggling with one of her gymkhana events, the keyhole.
One of the biggest debates in the horse world is whether or not performance horses should be able to have more turn out time than they do at most top training barns. My experience is mostly in the Western sector at training barns that don’t offer a lot of good quality turn out time i.e. longer than an hour, out on grass…
One of the hardest things for me being a trainer that works a “regular” day job with training and teaching lessons on the side, is staying motivated to ride whether is be before, after or on my days off from work. I have 3 of my own horses I need to ride or work regularly and find it sometimes hard. My horses are all at different levels and being ridden or worked in a different way.I have come up with a couple of ways that are helping me to keep myself motivated.
Today was the first day Dori has been back to work in over a month for various reasons, but mostly my procrastination. The last time I worked and rode her, we hit a (metaphorical) brick wall and she fell with me. So I have spent the last month or so focusing on my good horse, finishing out the race season and trying to dig deep into my training toolbox to figure out how to fix and get over our brick wall.
I have worked for a few horse trainers and followed some of the most famous ones while trying to figure out which direction I wanted to go with my training career. In the process of developing my own style and techniques, I have incorporated several tricks, tips, styles, techniques and methods into my own. One thing I have learned over the years is that wet saddle blankets is what makes a solid, broke horse that is a pleasure to ride.
I purchased Dori as a two year old in 2012 with the intentions of riding, training and hauling her in 2013. Due to unforeseen circumstances including injury, she sat most of 2013 with a little riding and not much hauling. At the start of 2014, I was going to buckle down and start riding her again so that I could haul her through the summer and then futurity her this winter, but again she has ended up on the back burner.
After ACBRA finals, Rocket was pretty sore from running 2 days back-to-back (which we don’t do very often) and just feeling off. He is 22 and we have been running hard for the last 3 years without really showing me that he was hurting that bad. I made an appointment with the vet for a lameness exam to see if we could figure out what was going on. The doctor figured out that Rocket was really sore in his back and his hind end.
About a year and half ago I got a call to move a horse to a new barn. The call came from Dolly, who I had met while working for a local horse trainer. She was looking to move her horse closer to home and was also looking for lessons. I agreed to move her horse and help her get back to riding. And that is when the lesson program of SL Barrel Horses was born.
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