Horse Training Tips & Exercises

There are many different kinds of riders; In the walk I often see two extremes - people being completely passive and being moved around by the horse or people driving and moving there seat so much that they are actually making it difficult for the horse to move. In the trot, most of the riders I meet, are more to the passive end of the spectre. And very often they are quite unbalanced by the horse's movements as they don't manage to follow it right - most often lacking a little behind the moveme…

The other day I was told how perfect my little Icelandic mare was for trail riding/hacking out and how lucky I was to have such a good horse. No and no! She is far from the perfect horse for trail riding/hacking out and it is not luck that she does so quite well now with me. I have put in so many, many hours of training to get her there. She is actually quite afraid of a lot of the sounds, smells and sights that we meet outside the home grounds so she prefers to stay at home. However, through al…

This is going to be one of those long answers that ends up concluding that the whip can be both and that there are a lot of factors to consider. So, we will just get started right away and try the best we may.

Many describe the whip as being an elongated arm, making it possible for us to touch the horse from further away or in places, that we wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise. Thus making it easier to help and guide the horse. And this can certainly be true, that we can use the whip in this f…

Many choose to ride their horses without a bit and, if you are considering this option, I would like to give you a few pointers on how to get the best result. There can be many reasons for choosing a bitless bridle and there are many different types of bridles. All these things, I will get into more detail with in one or more later posts, but for today we will cover how to get started.

Sometimes I hear people say that they just put on a halter or their new fancy bitless bridle and jumped on the…

I meet a lot of riders. And I see even more. And something most of them have in common is that they are convinced that they are riding primarily with their seat. And some of those are definitely not riding primarily with their seat - maybe not at all.

You can see it in the posture and movements of the rider. Hunched shoulders, rounded back. Stiff arms. Head down looking at the hands. The body of the rider seeming a little unbalanced, bouncy, out of rhythm. Since the rider’s focus is often on ke…

Some of the most frequent posts in Facebook horse groups go something like this "My horse .... not listening ... tried this bit ... pulling the reins ... bla bla bla ... runs off with me ... bla ... which bit should I try out now?"

I think we have all seen these posts, if we engage on social media. And there are so many people coming with advice on which bit they have had success with for their horses. Often the most common factor is that it is a bit, that is able to exert more pressure or pain…