Riverstown Farm Stables

Riverstown Farm Stables Riverstown Farm Stables is a welfare first platform promoting ethical horsemanship, education, and honest discussion within the equine industry. Opening 2026.

Qualified HorseScotland UK CC Level 2 Coach
๐—ช๐—ฒ๐—น๐—ณ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ โ€ข ๐—˜๐˜๐—ต๐—ถ๐—ฐ๐˜€ โ€ข ๐—˜๐—ฑ๐˜‚๐—ฐ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป

Ireland๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ช Livery Yard

01/06/2026

Beyond The Bull

This video has been rattling around my head all day. A follower that that lives in Spain sent to me and we had a discussion about training involved for this..

The horse is practically dancing around the bull. One second it is turning away from danger, the next it is back in front of it again. The speed, balance and reactions are remarkable. There is no denying the horse is exceptionally trained and exceptionally athletic.

But the more I watch it, the less impressed I become by the performance and the more questions I have about the system behind it.
Because this did not happen by accident.

Nobody woke up one morning and discovered their horse was happy to work within inches of a charging bull. This horse has been produced for this moment. Trained for this moment. Conditioned for this moment. And that is where my mind goes.

How do you create a horse like this? What does the training look like? What level of pressure is involved? How many horses decide this job is not for them? What happens to those horses?

The irony is that if a video surfaced tomorrow showing a horse being prepared for another discipline using questionable methods, the horse world would be demanding answers before the dust had settled. Yet because this is wrapped in tradition and culture, the questions often seem to stop before they begin.

What also fascinates me is that this is happening within the European Union. We are constantly told equestrian sport must modernise. Welfare standards must improve.
Yet here we have a horse being asked to work within touching distance of a bull for the entertainment of a crowd, and somehow that conversation feels strangely absent.

Supporters will call it heritage. Critics will call it outdated. Both sides will argue passionately.

I just keep looking at the horse. Not because it lacks training. Quite the opposite. Because whenever I see an animal doing something extraordinary, I find myself wondering what it took to get there.

For all the debates we have about welfare in racing, eventing, dressage and showing, perhaps the biggest blind spot in the horse world is that we rarely question traditions we didnโ€™t grow up with.

The horse doesnโ€™t care whether something is tradition. The horse only experiences what we ask it to do.

FYI bullfighting is a cruel practice that should been banned long time ago

Credit video: Plaza1

๐‘พ๐’‰๐’†๐’ ๐‘ซ๐’Š๐’… ๐‘พ๐’† ๐‘บ๐’•๐’๐’‘ ๐‘จ๐’„๐’„๐’†๐’‘๐’•๐’Š๐’๐’ˆ ๐‘น๐’Š๐’”๐’Œ?Long one so grab a cuppa or wine glass๐Ÿ˜‹A rider falls from a horse and, understandably, o...
31/05/2026

๐‘พ๐’‰๐’†๐’ ๐‘ซ๐’Š๐’… ๐‘พ๐’† ๐‘บ๐’•๐’๐’‘ ๐‘จ๐’„๐’„๐’†๐’‘๐’•๐’Š๐’๐’ˆ ๐‘น๐’Š๐’”๐’Œ?

Long one so grab a cuppa or wine glass๐Ÿ˜‹

A rider falls from a horse and, understandably, our first concern is for the rider. Are they injured? Do they need medical attention? How serious is it? Nobody involved in horses wants to see a rider hurt, whether they are a child having their first lesson or an experienced rider who has spent a lifetime in the saddle. Rider welfare matters, and it should matter.

What interests me, however, is how the conversation has changed. A fall was once viewed as an unfortunate but accepted part of learning to ride. Nobody welcomed it, but there was an understanding that horses are animals rather than machines and that participating in an equestrian sport carried a degree of risk. Increasingly, though, there seems to be an expectation that a fall must have a cause beyond the obvious reality that a person was sitting on a horse. More often than not, the search begins for someone who can be held responsible.

That shift should concern all of us because horses occupy a rather awkward position in modern society. We continue to promote horse riding as an activity that develops confidence, resilience, independence and responsibility, yet we seem less willing than ever to accept the risks that inevitably accompany those lessons. We encourage children to challenge themselves, but increasingly expect every challenge to come with a guarantee of safety. The difficulty is that horses have never offered such guarantees.

A good riding school can reduce risk enormously. Suitable horses, qualified instructors, sensible procedures and appropriate supervision all play an important role. What a riding school cannot do is remove risk entirely. The quietest schoolmaster can spook. The most experienced rider can lose their balance. A horse can trip, stumble or react in a split second. None of those things automatically indicate negligence. Often they simply indicate that a horse has behaved like a horse.

The consequences of forgetting this are already becoming apparent. Riding schools face rising insurance costs, increasing regulation and mounting pressure from a culture that often struggles to distinguish between risk and wrongdoing. Many are operating on tight margins, and some have already closed their gates. Those losses are often discussed in terms of economics, but they also represent the loss of places where people learn to understand horses in the first place.

This is where I believe the discussion overlaps with social licence. We often talk about social licence through the lens of horse welfare, and rightly so, but perhaps we spend less time considering whether society still understands horses themselves. Public support for any activity depends upon understanding it. If the wider public no longer accepts that horses are living animals capable of unpredictable behaviour, then every accident risks being viewed as evidence of failure rather than an unfortunate reality of working with animals.

I sometimes wonder whether the greatest threat to the future of riding schools is not horses themselves, but societyโ€™s changing relationship with risk. We seem increasingly uncomfortable with activities that cannot be wrapped in guarantees and disclaimers. Yet the very qualities that make horses such valuable teachers are the same qualities that prevent them from being completely predictable. They teach responsibility because they are not machines. They teach patience because they do not always do what we ask. They teach humility because, no matter how experienced we become, there is always an element beyond our control.

If we continue down a path where every fall must have somebody to blame, we may eventually find ourselves protecting people from horses by removing their opportunities to experience them altogether. It sounds far-fetched, but riding simulators are already becoming increasingly sophisticated. One cannot help wondering whether a future society that becomes unwilling to tolerate risk around real horses may decide that a machine is preferable to the real thing.

That would be a tremendous loss. Riding schools are often where people first learn responsibility, resilience and respect for another living creature. The irony is that those lessons only exist because there is an element of uncertainty. Remove that uncertainty entirely and, in many ways, you remove the horse as well. More importantly, you weaken the public understanding upon which our social licence depends. Once society stops understanding horses, it becomes far harder to justify keeping them at the centre of our communities, our sports and our lives.

29/05/2026

Everyone wants to know when youโ€™ll get on. Very few ask how the horse is coping, how theyโ€™re moving, or whether theyโ€™re actually ready.

Everyone notices the ridden horse. Few notice the preparation that made it possible.

Maybe weโ€™ve become so focused on the end result that weโ€™ve forgotten the value of the bits in between.

Just a thought.

Black Beauty was written in 1877. Thatโ€™s 149 years ago.Nearly a century and a half has passed since Anna Sewell gave a v...
27/05/2026

Black Beauty was written in 1877. Thatโ€™s 149 years ago.

Nearly a century and a half has passed since Anna Sewell gave a voice to the voiceless, showing the world that behind every horseโ€™s eyes is a soul that feels pain, love, and fear. Her message was clear, cruelty doesnโ€™t stop being cruel just because itโ€™s always been done.

Today, we still hear the same word echo through excusesโ€ฆ..๐’•๐’“๐’‚๐’…๐’Š๐’•๐’Š๐’๐’.

But not all tradition is harmful. Some bind us to compassion, to community. The danger lies in how we ๐™ž๐™ฃ๐™ฉ๐™š๐™ง๐™ฅ๐™ง๐™š๐™ฉ tradition. When practices that cause suffering are justified because itโ€™s always been done this way, we fail the very beings we claim to respect.

I live by Black Beautyโ€™s ethics because Iโ€™ve seen what happens when we donโ€™t. Iโ€™ve seen beauty break under the weight of ignorance, under the reins pulled too tight, or the silence of people who knew better, but didnโ€™t speak.

Every child should read Black Beauty. Or the new stories like The Galway Connemara that carry the same message of empathy and courage in the face of normalized cruelty. These arenโ€™t just stories. Theyโ€™re seeds. Seeds of awareness, kindness, and change.

Weโ€™ve had 149 years to do better. Some of us have. But not enough.

๐๐ž๐œ๐š๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ž ๐ž๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐ญ๐ก๐ฒ ๐ฌ๐ก๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ ๐›๐ž ๐š ๐ญ๐ซ๐š๐๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐ญ๐จ๐จ ๐š๐ง๐ ๐จ๐ง๐ž ๐ฐ๐จ๐ซ๐ญ๐ก ๐ฉ๐š๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐จ๐ง.

I think one thing the horse world gets wrong sometimes is confusing a horse being in work with a horse actually being st...
27/05/2026

I think one thing the horse world gets wrong sometimes is confusing a horse being in work with a horse actually being strong.

Dory has technically been in work for the last eight months, but she was also stabled a lot during that time. Now she is back living out 24/7, moving properly again, walking the fields, stretching, turning, rolling and simply being a horse. You can already see the difference in her mentally and physically in a week since she came home from collage.

Before I even think about asking more from her ridden work, I want to rebuild the foundations properly first.

Tonightโ€™s session was only 15 minutes in total, including warm up and cool down. We waited until around 9pm when it was cooler, then did a few walk trot transitions on the lunge, followed by a little pole work on each rein. Afterwards, we finished with five minutes walking in hand over raised poles to let her stretch, loosen through her back and cool down properly.

That was enough for today.

No gadgets forcing a shape. No chasing her around in circles until she was exhausted. Just quiet, steady work encouraging her to use herself properly again and slowly rebuild strength through her topline and hindquarters.

Honestly, I think turnout is half the rehabilitation for many horses. Constant movement does things no stable ever can. Horses were designed to move, not stand waiting for exercise once or twice a day.

The boring work matters. The slow work matters. ๐Ÿ™Œ๐Ÿป

Be interesting to see what she like in a months time!

27/05/2026

Recommendations for Best fly mask brand that actually stays in place and donโ€™t slip, currently has have bug relief Lemieux
Baring in mind in Ireland

STOP RIDING HORSES IN THIS HEAT!Iโ€™m genuinely baffled scrolling Facebook tonight seeing people out riding in the middle ...
25/05/2026

STOP RIDING HORSES IN THIS HEAT!

Iโ€™m genuinely baffled scrolling Facebook tonight seeing people out riding in the middle of this heat today. Horses here are not acclimatised to these temperatures in Ireland or Uk. We are not in Spain. We are not in the middle of a dry summer season where horses have gradually adapted over weeks and months.

For the love of God, give them a couple of days. Missing a ride will not ruin your progress.
If you absolutely must ride, do it very early in the morning or late in the evening when the temperature drops. Not half one in the afternoon with the sun beating down and the air not moving.

And please, water. Endless access to clean water. Shade if possible. Hose them down properly after work and stop obsessively scraping every drop off. The water sitting on the skin helps cool the body. Standing there scraping them bone dry in this weather can actually work against what you are trying to achieve. Watch for the small signs too. Horses standing flat, dull, not interested in food, increased breathing rate, sweating heavily or sometimes not sweating properly at all. Heat stress does not always look dramatic straight away.

I know some people will say, ah sure theyโ€™re grand. But horses are unbelievably honest animals. Many will keep going long after they are uncomfortable because that is what we have trained them to do. That does not mean they should have to.

The weather will break. Your horse does not need to prove anything this week.

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Birr

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Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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