Horse preachers

i wrote this in response to my frustrations with the trainers who seem to have mislead and taken advantage of many folks who wanted to learn about horses-

Horse Preachers

You bought an incorrigible horse?
She rears when you bridle her,
He won’t stand when you mount,
She turns and runs to the gate when you ride,
And he kicks out when you tell him to go?

Well, buy my halter, pay double for my rope,
I have a new CD set that will cover any problem you have,
The cost is almost that of your saddle,
But, hey, it will fix all your problems!

And, I do clinics and symposiums,
You can use them as vacations,
After you see my magical techniques,
You can even train a wild mustang!

But don’t call me if you get hurt,
Or if you just can’t make it all work,
Just buy another book, or schedule to be at a clinic,
If you pay double, you can even bring your own horse.

I’ll spend a little time, make it all look quite simple,
Your steed and I will be loping around in no time.
You will be convinced of the magic I possess,
You will feel the thrill as you ride him when I’m done.

Once home, however, the magic soon comes undone.
In frustration you keep at it just a little longer,
Then your horse is listed in the classified ads,
And the halter, rope and CD collection,
Go to the highest bidder on E-bay.


I am combining todays and yesterdays work-All the horses are coming along-I am very pleased with Victory who is cantering quite well under saddle after a history of ducking his head and unseating his young riders! I am using a very soft feel on the reins and just a bit of a quick lift to remind him to keep his head up and keeping my leg urging him forward. I also don't canter him long at a time and am more concerned with him cantering nicely than with his leads.

Angel does not want to relax softly at the halt-she is wanting to move, back, sideways etc. if i drop the reins she will just stand but if asked to soften she gets very antsy-lots of patient work will be needed here-no long collected stands and very little backing, lateral etc.

Spirit is doing great-better, softer every day.

Silver is coming along-relaxing and needing less hold on the draw reins, and hermes is awesome!

a show a lesson and ...

I got a bit of an education today at a little schooling show-the 'hunter perch' is expected in an equitaion class--anyway, it was fun to watch and see some of my students do well and learn and have fun.

my student was terrific in her lesson except that she needs to put into words what she is doing-she is such a nice little rider but when i ask her questions she shrugs and says, "I don't know". such a typical tween response!

Hermes was great but rather full of himself on the lunge line-he does love his treats!

Victory was far more settled today and i was able to release the contact and get a much better response at the canter. We are both learning!

Spirit was rather lazy but progressing along really well-nothing too exciting

Inside rein, inside leg!

Angel was lovely and a bit more energetic today. her downward transitions were much better as I had more leg on.

This morning i went to teach several students who have a schooling show locally. Progress seems to be slow for one gal but some real ah ha moments happened for a coupl of others, the lessons were good and productive especially as my daughter got on one of the horses and demostrated how to get him to soften to the bridle and step up with his hindquarters. She did a good job and the student was able to recreate and get the feel of having the horses soft in her hands.

Silver was again, worried about the canter so i let go of the outside aides and just used the inside-it didn't take long for him to settle down even though the reins were not holding him together. His energy is a lot of fun. I enjoy him.

busy, busy!

I will first back up to yesterday as I didn't get time -Angel showed what a truly amiable horse she is! She went through her paces with me then My granddaughter rode by herself even trotting-she was soft and gentle and LAZY!!! Elyssa was very excited!

Silver had a tough time at the canter but i think i have come to the realization that the dressage barn where he had been about a year or so ago was working to make him a bigger money horse and worked on pushing him to do flying lead changes-he is ver stressed about the canter, and stressed about contact in general-i feel bad for him and have my work cut out getting him to settle down and relax.

Today, Elyssa had fun working with Hermes-he lunged the walked with her-she practiced posting motions at the walk to get him used to it! :)

Victory was awesome-cantered quietlt both directions-pretty darn good since he couldn't even canter one full circle when he came here!

Sirit was a bit frisky but very good-even beginning to soften to the bridle at the canter.

Exra help!

My seven year old granddaughter was with me today-Hermes was the first to be worked, she lunged him herself-and did very well then she rode practicing walking, turning and stopping-went great! She is a horsewoman in the making!

Dark Victory was next. he lunged well with the sidereins after having a bit of a fit-had a nice quiet ride then a bit of a trail ride with me leading, granddaughter riding-he was very good-she was happy!

Spirit was full of energy after her day off but remained soft on the lunge line. She was also lovely under saddle with still some work to be done at the canter--more leg, hold---the best was that she walked around with my grandaughter like a very careful old school horse.

off to teach Pony Club in the evening! One child showed up so she had a private cross country school!

long day

I will revisit and describe a bit more of each of the five horses. I worked Angel this morning, a routine warm-up which i feel is essential then work at the walk, trot and canter with contact. My expectation is that she go round, soft and forward. I then did some halts and turns on the haunches. She was lovely and soft with the exception of the transition to the halt where she wants to lean into the bit, i will need to have more leg driving her forward into the downward transitions.

I then taught a local youth group in a dressage clinic for eight hours then worked Silver. He was looking for things to shy at but with draw reins, he remained soft, and obedient.

My first Day!!

I intend to post as I work with each of five horses that I am working with right now. In order to tell you a bit about myself, my life with horses, and a bit of my philosophy, i will follow an introduction of my projects, with an excerpt from my book as well as a poem. Thank you and welcome!

My Horse students:

Angel: A seven year old thoroughbred mare who I have raised from birth.

Spirit, A seven year old mare who ran her last race in Aug of 08:

Silver, a 14 year old grey arab gelding who needs to be a safe and fun horse fro my 74 year-old mom who is a life-long horsewoman.

Dark Victory, (the black one)an eleven-yer old arab who needs to be safe for my mother's husband who is a beginner at 74

And Hermes, a two-year old half welsh half thoroughbred who is my granddaughters pony:

And about me-a lifelong student:

It is impossible for me to describe me without horses - except for the few incidental things that I acquired from my birth order or inherited from my parents. I was born in between a precocious sister and a dare-devil brother, who was followed by the angel. I looked most like my dad. Not pretty, for sure, but athletic. I had his Dutch nose and muscular body. It was from my mom that I acquired my determination, stubbornness, and intensity.
I could swim halfway across Hall’s Pond and sprint fast enough for my mother to nickname me, “Runs Like A Deer.” It was not just to be head of the Dare-Devil Club that I touched all those weird creatures. I actually loved them. Frogs, snakes, June bugs - nothing gave me the creeps. But outside the club I was painfully shy, easily embarrassed, and worked too hard to please everyone.
My hair was a mess. I had a most unfortunate habit of rolling my head back and forth on my pillow to rock myself to sleep. By morning the hair on the back of my head resembled a rat’s nest. To make me presentable for school, Mom had to tear through the tangled mass with her brush. She hated it, I hated it, my hair hated it. Compared to my older sister, with her neat and tidy tresses, I looked pretty sorry even after the clean up.

Fortunately for me horses never cared how I styled my hair. They seemed to know instinctively that my heart was theirs. They understood how I loved their feel and their smell, how I saw beauty in their movement, how I found peace in their presence.
They also provided my closest connection to my mother. She had been raised by people who knew nothing of horses but who could afford to indulge her passion for them. When she reached adolescence her parents bought her two horses and her father built a barn for them.
Even as she grew up in the East, her heart had soared westward. As a child she read all the novels by Will James, subscribed to Western Horseman magazine, and memorized the training techniques of legendary western bronc busters. She described herself as a self-made cowgirl and took pride in the degree of horsemanship she achieved.
Luckily for us, our mother wanted to share her passion for riding with her offspring. There were always horses in our lives. The first one I remember was Flicka, a retired camp horse from upstate. Flicka was a big-boned, big-headed old mare, the likes of which never appear in anyone’s daydreams of equine beauty. She was, however, a solid citizen who understood her job as our caretaker perfectly.
If Mom tacked her up, I could ride Flicka alone by the time I was five. To mount I had to climb high enough on a fence so that the saddle was below eye level. Then I launched myself onto Flicka’s swayed back, landing atop the saddle like a sack of potatoes. After a bit of a scramble to adjust myself into an upright position, I flailed my legs furiously to get us started. We then plodded to the far reaches of the farm and beyond.
One afternoon I plopped off Flicka onto the dirt road leading to our house. I doubt that she had done anything to precipitate my fall. Most likely I was nodding off or fiddling around and lost my balance. Then I dropped off like an apple falling from a tree. Flicka stood quietly over me, blocking traffic while I dusted myself off and reconnoitered. I had no clue how to get back on without a fence. After several aborted attempts of the running and leaping variety, I managed to scramble aboard by climbing hand over hand up Flicka’s mane then getting a toe into the dangling saddle straps. Finally one knee reached the stirrup and I shimmied on up from there. These efforts to resolve my mounting dilemma must have stupefied the drivers of the vehicles that stopped on the road because none of them got out of their cars to rescue me.
Within a couple of years of this inauspicious beginning, my older sister and I could really ride. We had a small herd of ponies that we galloped around bareback or tacked up in Civil War saddles that Mom had collected. These McClellan saddles were barebones affairs consisting of a leather-covered wooden tree, wide wooden stirrups, and a couple of straps for attaching the cinch. This Spartan but sturdy design indicated to me that General McClellan lacked any concern for his cavalry’s comfort and even less for mine. In his defense, I doubt that the general anticipated his saddles remaining in circulation a hundred years after the war ended, but, on our longer treks, I would have appreciated a bit more thought about padding.
McClellan’s tack never confined our imaginations to The War Between the States. Once aboard our saddled ponies, we became Arabian princesses, Knights of the Round Table, pioneers, Indians, outlaws, bandits or other recently conceived heroic figures.
Through our expeditions we came to know our fields and trails as intimately as the backs of our hands. On each wooded path and game trail, we built jumps out of branches, logs or brush. We often ended our escapades in the yard of the neighbors who saved cookies for us, and sugar lumps for our ponies. No matter how far we rode, we could still hear the clanging of the heavy old farm bell that Mom rang to summon us home for dinner.
Horses even accompanied me to the West Newbury School, in my imagination at least. I insisted that every book I read featured horses. Because our library’s collection was quite limited, I had to read Marguerite Henry’s and Walter Farley’s novels over and over. In the end, I knew The Black and The Godolphin Arabian so intimately that I could draw these fabulous creatures with every detail Marguerite or Walter had described.
As I sat at my desk a horse galloped through my mind every time I was bored. Since I was bored often, I doodled my notebooks full, recording the essence of each steed that stole my attention from the blackboard. I saved enough drawings to wallpaper my entire room with my equine sketches.
In the spring of the year that each of us would turn nine, Mom gave the birthday child a foal to raise. Each foal was the offspring of my mother’s Arab stallion crossed with Smoky, our mixed-breed, blue roan pony. The foal born in 1965 would be mine.
I was still eight during the first week in May when our pony mare was ready to deliver. Her bag had filled and was leaking the first drops of milk, signaling an imminent birth. We four kids had been granted permission to sleep in the barn so that we could experience the foal’s arrival. Early that evening we headed up the hill carrying piles of blankets. Even three-year-old Teresa tagged along, dragging her pillow with her. We mounded up thick beds of hay and piled all the bedding on top, then wiggled down between the blankets and snuggled together, talking, giggling, and arguing. Linda, though only ten, was well on the road to becoming the serious one. She kept us in line, and at her insistence, we finally settled down.
When we quieted, we could hear the night symphony of the barn: gentle cows chewing their cuds, horses stomping in their bedding and softly blowing through their nostrils, automatic waterers occasionally refilling, and hay rustling as cows and horses munched. I breathed in the pungent odor of the animals along with the sweet smell of hay and oats as I blissfully drifted off to sleep.
I awoke to find my colt already up, nursing, and dry. Any disappointment I harbored about missing his birth dissipated immediately with the sight of him. He was the most glorious creature I had ever seen.
The family made fun of him, calling him “Pink” because of his coloring. His coat was strawberry roan, light, reddish-brown flecked with white. He had a wide blaze running down his face, tall white stockings on three of his legs, and a patch of white around the other knee. Perfect. I named him Milky Way Moon Dust in honor of our farm. Dusty for short.
I was completely responsible for my foal. I brushed every inch of his body over and over, intending to make his coat outshine that of the Black Stallion. His baby fuzz would take months to develop any luster, but I did manage to make it stick down in a rather unnatural but tidy manner. I also taught Dusty to lead and to let me pick up his miniature feet. I didn’t know it then, but all of that effort constituted imprinting, teaching Dusty to accept all the things humans would expect of him.
I learned from Dusty as well. When I asked too much, he spread out his spindly legs, lowered his head, dropped his ears out to the side, and flatly refused. Shut down. Through this passive resistance, Dusty was imprinting me with the patience, kindness, and forgiveness that horses had a right to expect of me.
The arrival of Dusty marked a new chapter in my family relationships. My little sister, already my shadow, adored Dusty, too. In no time, Teresa, Dusty, and I became inseparable. As a result, I lost interest in the Dare-Devil Club and demoted my brother, who had no desire to keep pace with Dusty worship. Ted didn’t want to spend his free time attending to a colt or singing songs about him. My little sister did. Of course, since she was not yet four, the songs had to be simple. Really, really simple:
“Dusty boy, Dusty boy, Dusty boy, Dusty boy,
Dusty boy, Dusty boy, Dusty boy, Dusty boy!”

This favorite tune went on through several verses, the lyrics always the same. We sang as a duet.
Dusty had barely turned five months old when my patience ran out - I could no longer wait to teach him about a rider. I lifted Teresa onto his back. He didn’t seem to mind, so I led him around his stall. This arrangement made perfect sense to me. Although he was still quite young, Teresa weighed almost nothing. And neither Teresa nor Dusty ever complained. My parents, however, saw my training quite differently. They reprimanded me severely for endangering my sister. Dusty had to wait more than a year before he would again enjoy the privilege of carrying a rider. Poor Dusty, poor me.
One winter day before Dusty turned two, Teresa and I were out in the corral to observe him. Dusty was milling around the barnyard with the other horses, who were anxiously waiting to be brought in for dinner. Something spooked the herd into running. My little sister tripped right in Dusty’s path. Instead of crushing her, Dusty jumped, clearing her little body as she instinctively covered her head. Because her face was pressed on the frozen ground, I couldn’t determine her status. Frantically, I ran to her, expecting the worst. It was apparent, however, as I helped her up, that Teresa had escaped unscathed. Our eyes met, my fear melted away, and simultaneously we burst into smiles. We declared Dusty a hero. The next day, during show-and-tell we described Dusty’s miraculous leap. We proclaimed that he had saved her life, and I confess we may even have sung his song. Heaven forbid. But love knows no bounds.
Many were the accolades I received as Dusty and I grew up together. People whose names I didn’t even know approached me at Dusty’s first County Fair to congratulate me on the skill that it took to stay on that naughty boy as he reared and pranced around.
After our first eighth-place ribbon in the bare-back class, we went on to become consistent winners at fairs and shows. The little stinker never gave me a free ride, but he did make me believe I was someone special. I would come to feel that sitting on his back was the most natural place to be. Imagine how I felt when I overheard my mother tell Dad, with pride in her voice, “Karen can stay on anything with hair.” Eventually I even rode better than my older sister. That was a big deal, at least to me.

The next summer when I would turn eleven, a woman named Ann arrived at Milky Way Farm and brought a mare to be bred to Mom’s stallion. She had selected him after watching him at a show. I am not sure if Ann had been impressed by his performance in one particular class, or if she was just overwhelmed by his versatility and his endurance. Mom cared so much about all-around championships that she routinely entered her stallion in every division from western barrel racing to English pleasure, from costume to carriage classes. But, if Mom was the consummate competitor, her stallion was the quintessential show horse. Together they relished every challenge, and usually accumulated enough points to end up either champion or reserve champion of the show.
The arrival of Ann opened new worlds for me. She had been places and had done things about which I knew nothing - hardly amazing considering that my horizons were limited to our farm. What she knew about horses, however, was exceptional.
Ann stayed in the house with us for the summer while she looked after her own two horses. She cared for her animals so differently, with expertise and thoroughness I had never before witnessed. She used four or five different kinds of brushes, each with its own name and purpose. Grooming was a top to bottom effort, one brush at a time. In the end, her efforts unveiled a sleek and shiny equine figure that would have met even Walter Farley’s standards.
Ann blanketed her horses for cold nights. She wrapped their legs and tails to protect them when they traveled in the horse trailer. She rode in English saddles, and her fancy Thoroughbred mare had come to America from England on an airplane. I watched her exercise those big, beautiful horses from dawn to dusk and wanted more. I never tired of hearing about her jumping competitions or riding with her.
During her free time, Ann gave me riding lessons. She also taught me about taking responsibility. She suggested that I pick up glass, wire, and metal scraps around the farm because such litter could hurt the horses. I felt myself growing up a bit as I looked for ways to make things better, for my parents, as well as for the horses. I began to help out without being asked. I amazed myself.

I TRAINED HIM MYSELF

I held you as you took your first breath
And dried your newborn wetness
As you lay on the golden straw
Now you carry me with strength and grace
– Obedient and strong

I think as I swell with pride
“I raised and trained you myself.”
My second thought –“No”
“I did not in any way train you myself.”

A host of others are here – a package deal
Equine teachers: Flicka, Dusty, Banjo
Books read and re-read

Instructors and teachers, too many to name.