Blue Gate Farm

01/16/2026

Horse ridden correctly
Rounded on top line. Not the bottom.
Top of neck, not bottom of neck
Top of back not the stomach

Needs a rider who rides without wanting the nose vertical. Horse will naturally give to bit.

Hindleg is first to move. First to stop

Horse is forward eg squeeze and horse moves

Horse doesn't lose this muscle

Saddle must fit

Rider must move with the horse and sit balanced

01/16/2026

01/16/2026

For a long time, I believed that if I listened closely, worked slowly and respected the horse’s body, my work would naturally hold. I thought that careful hands, good timing, and honest attention would be enough to create change that lasted.

I wasn’t rushing or forcing outcomes, and I definitely wasn’t ignoring what the horse was telling me. I trusted the process I had spent years learning and still, I found my hands returning to the same areas on the horses’ bodies every six to eight weeks.

It felt as though the horse’s body was faithfully documenting a story I hadn’t yet learned to read fully.

But I reminded myself that progress isn’t linear and perhaps it just takes more time.

That thought carried me for a long time, and sometimes it was true, but sometimes it was also a way of not asking the harder question that whispered itself into my awareness when I noticed how often these patterns returned in horses that were otherwise trained thoughtfully, ridden kindly, and cared for deeply.

I could release tension, invite the ribs and spine back into motion, and for a while, the horse would move differently, breathe with a sense of relief that made the work feel meaningful and deeply satisfying.

But then I would go home, the horse would be ridden again, and slowly, predictably their bodies would return to the same place.

I suspected saddle fit, of course, most bodyworkers do, but I didn’t want to send every client on a frustrating search for a saddle fitter who might not even exist in their area.

I also didn’t want to guess, or overstep, or undermine trust by naming a problem I couldn’t clearly explain, especially when so many owners were already doing their best, investing time, money, and care into horses they genuinely loved.

So I stayed where I was, helping, relieving and resetting and watching the same patterns return.

Over time, it became harder to ignore how closely the physical findings matched what I saw in movement under saddle, a shortened stride, resistance to bending or lateral work, hollowing during transitions, difficulty lifting through the back, or behavioural changes.

But suspicion without structure leaves you in a narrow space without a clear framework. Without understanding how saddle, rider, and horse interact in movement, all you really have is a feeling, and feelings are not always enough when you want to be precise and genuinely helpful.

Eventually, it became clear that staying where I was, was a choice in itself, and one that would keep me circling the same questions without ever quite answering them.

So I opened myself to saddle fit education, not because I wanted to become a “saddle fitter,” but because I wanted a way to look at the saddle with the same care, structure, and respect that I brought to the body, so that when the question inevitably came up, I could respond with clarity rather than hesitation.

For me, learning to evaluate saddle fit didn’t replace bodywork or pull me in a new direction, it simply gave my work context. It allowed my professional intuition to be supported by a clear, repeatable framework, and it gave me a way to talk about saddle-related issues with clients that felt genuinely helpful, rather than speculative.

If you’re curious to explore what that might look like, book a discovery call with us.

It’s a space to talk about your current work, your goals, and how professional saddle fit evaluation or saddle fitting could be integrated into your existing business, whether as a supportive assessment tool or as a new professional path altogether.

Schedule your Discovery Call today:

https://book.saddlefit4lifeacademy.com/widget/bookings/book-your-discoverycall

01/16/2026

CNC Community & Continuing Education believes that opportunity can come knocking at any time. That's why we're committed to bringing you the latest professional development in multiple disciplines.

01/16/2026

She calculated Earth's shape by hand in a segregated Navy lab. Her math lives in every GPS device on Earth. They forgot her name. The year was 1930. Dinwiddie County, Virginia. A girl was born into a world that told her she would spend her life in to***co fields. Gladys Mae Brown's parents worked a small farm in a community where sharecropping trapped Black families in cycles they couldn't escape. The path was predetermined: school until the fields needed you, then a lifetime of crops and poverty. But Gladys saw something else. She saw numbers as doorways. While her hands picked to***co, her mind solved equations. Her parents noticed. Despite crushing hardship, they kept her in school. That decision changed the world. She became valedictorian at her segregated high school—the one with hand-me-down books and leaking ceilings. She earned a full scholarship to Virginia State College, where she studied mathematics in the 1940s South, where being Black, female, and brilliant meant fighting three battles at once. She won all three. In 1956, Gladys walked into the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia. She was the second Black woman ever hired. One of four Black employees total. Surrounded by white men who didn't expect her to last a week. They underestimated her. She started calculating weapons trajectories by hand—complex differential equations that took hours. Her precision was legendary. Then computers arrived, and while others resisted, Gladys learned programming. She mastered punch cards and Fortran, turning calculations that took weeks into work completed in hours. In the 1970s, she was assigned to something called Seasat—the first satellite designed to study Earth's oceans from space. She became project manager, analyzing radar data that bounced off ocean surfaces. But her real work was invisible. Essential. Revolutionary. For GPS to work, you need to know Earth's exact shape. Not approximately. Exactly. Because Earth isn't a sphere—it's an irregular, gravity-warped, mountain-covered, ocean-troughed oblate spheroid. Gladys spent years building mathematical models of Earth's precise shape. She analyzed satellite altimetry data, tracked gravitational variations, created geoid models that described every curve and irregularity of our planet's surface. This wasn't glamorous. It was tedious, precise, mathematical work that most people would never see or understand. It was also the foundation of GPS. When GPS satellites transmit signals to calculate your location, they rely on mathematical models of Earth's shape. Gladys West built those models. Her equations live in every GPS-enabled device on Earth. Every time you navigate to a restaurant. Every time emergency services locate someone in danger. Every time a farmer uses precision agriculture. Every time a plane lands safely. Her math makes it possible. She worked at Dahlgren for 42 years. She retired in 1998. The GPS system was fully operational. Billions would use it. Almost no one knew her name. She didn't seek recognition. She raised three children with her husband Ira, also a mathematician at Dahlgren. She earned a PhD at age 70 after recovering from a stroke. She lived quietly. Then in 2018, a member of her sorority read her biography at an alumni event. Someone said, "Wait—you helped invent GPS? "The story spread. In December 2018, at age 88, Gladys West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. Media outlets finally told her story. Schools added her name to curricula. Children learned that a Black woman from a Virginia farm had mapped the world. She remains characteristically modest. She credits her team. She emphasizes collaboration. But she's also clear: she faced discrimination every day. She was overlooked because of her race and gender. She had to be twice as good to receive half the recognition. Today, when you open your phone and follow GPS directions, you're using technology built on mathematics developed by a woman who grew up in to***co fields during the Great Depression, who wasn't supposed to amount to anything, who was systematically erased from the story she helped write. Gladys West mapped the world. Then the world forgot her. Until it didn't. Her life proves something profound: Your beginning doesn't determine your ending. The path may be hidden, but every step forward creates a trail others will follow. And sometimes, just sometimes, the world remembers to look back and see who showed them the way.

01/16/2026

"The rider's state of mind, emotions, and character are all more important to horsemanship than are the specific skills." - Charles de Kunffy

Granted, the skills are still very important - but skills without mindset makes one "a menace to the horse, not a partner."

01/16/2026

01/16/2026

Click here to read on equusmagazine.com

01/16/2026

Definitely would try 💯 if I needed hay… where there’s a will there’s a way!! 🙌😜😂

01/16/2026

If your horse isn't improving. Why?