http://www.sundanceranchportugal.com/

Candid Equitation & Trail Riding, Odemira (2026)

13/05/2026

Jamie💫

Jamie continues to be a loveable criminal mastermind. He is mostly straight forward and easy going but his "no!"... his "no!" always makes sense but is SO dramatic!

Learning to sidepass was one such adventure- he went left straight away no questions asked, but when I asked from the right, he immediately threw himself down on his knees and just stayed like that. Didn't even lie down, just stayed on his knees like a camel🤷‍♀️ I tried again and he started going down before i even got in position, so i abandoned that little experiment and got Valentina Biacchi to give him an adjustment. Apparently something was causing discomfort because he was fine after that, but I just feel like there are mutliple levels a horse can go through in order to deny a request before throwing itself on the ground!🙈

Even today just hanging in the arena on the lunge while I was taking a sip of water, he launched into the air from stand still, all four feet off the ground, just because he didn't like the flies! Not even bucking, literally throwing himself vertical with his head and tail raised. I just stood there with my water watching him muttering "what the actual f**k is wrong with you ?" while Vesna, unflappable as ever, hands half way to chin to fasten her helmet preparing to get on him, equipped "that looks fun🤨". He then stood there meek as a lamb, head lowered, licking and chewing, all smiles like "alright I'm good now, carry on☺️". He then went on to put in a beautiful ride for Vesna, focused and professional as you like, completely unaffected by the strong winds and horses racing up and down next to the arena.

Don't get me wrong, his mercurial ways drive me up the f**king wall sometimes. He'd make The Pope swear, but when he's on my side (which 95% of the time he is) he's my favorite ranch horse hands down! Being that I've got better at thin slicing everything just the way Jamie likes it, we have very few disagreements these days; I just hope that when it happens, he disagrees with less pizazz as he matures 😅

11/05/2026

🇫🇷 A cob who bucks out of nowhere - Foxie

Foxie is actually the entire reason I first got to know her owner Nicola! When I met them on the Isle of Man back in 2018, I was greeted by a very nervous Nicola who'd been hurled into the ground like a javelin resulting in a catalogue of injuries and a horse prone to blowing up out of the blue. I was able to show Nic that Foxies explosions were not random but actually entirely predictable and even came with ample warning- she just needed to read the signs.

8 years down the road, Foxie is such a changed citizen that she taught Nics partner Orry how to ride from scratch! She even gave him the confidence to eventually step up to Dicson the Thoroughbred. All these years she's just generally been Miss Reliable, with the very occasional dropping her novice rider when he's not sitting properly🤷‍♀️ That was until recently, where she began to randomly bronc out on the trail. She hasn't done this in years and when she was broncing before, there was a very clear trigger or an element of resistance rather than going forward then exploding- so for me it was pretty clear this was a physical issue. This physical issue actually turned out to be an old 'friend'!

While she was still on the Isle of Man in 2019, Foxie came in with a mystery injury- a huge tear right on the front of her right hock. There was a huge amount of proud flesh and so the healing was slow and developed heavy scarring. Scar tissue can't stretch, so any amount of it restricts movement. If this isn't addressed, it effectively squashes the surrounding fascia and the area loses all mobility. The bigger the scar, the more restriction in movement, the more it affects everything around it.

Back to the present day, Foxies movement was overall good asides from some restriction in the lumbar area but Valentina quickly identified an irregularity in Foxies gait, tracing it back to the right hind and the old scar. She got to work releasing the fascia surrounding the scar and this basically set off a chain reaction where any other restrictions Foxie had were improved by proxy. Foxie took the longest of all the horses we worked with to 'reset' as she'd been compensating for the right hind in other areas, so she actually needed 2 full days after treatment until I could give Orry a lesson on her! She was exhausted and her proprioception was out of whack. However, we took her on the trail on the last day and Orry said it was the most forward and relaxed he'd ever felt her! We cantered a fair bit and there were no signs of any bucking or general piggery jokery. Without her right leg holding her back, she could get her hind end underneath her and motor forward without needing air time. Sure, there were things I got Orry to improve with his riding, but this was almost solely an osteopathy fix.

This concludes our osteopathy-hooves-training experiment in France with Valentina Biacchi (though she did a few others, you'll have to follow her to see those). We're open to doing this again with anyone who's interested, and will continue doing case studies here at Sundance Ranch Portugal in the meantime.

05/05/2026

🇫🇷Cob dropping/running through her left shoulder

Remember Cherry?
She was sent to the ranch for 6 months back in spring 2025 after she moved to France and apparently left her brakes in the UK!🤦‍♀️ Happily, on returning to France in October, her manners remained intact and she continued to be a nice old bus ride. Nic wanted lessons with her mainly to insure she didn't lose what she learned in her time in Portugal.

A problem I never got to the bottom of with Cherry was during tighter moves such as a 10m circle or turn on the forehand, she had a tendency to twist her body to the left and either pivot on her her left shoulder or run straight through it. This problem was still there, so I handed her over to Valentina Biacchi to do her thing. She was generally tight throughout her front end and due to her long and rather weak back, she wasn't engaging her abs properly. She was also either getting the wrong leg or disuniting cantering on the left. Valentina applied kinesthetic tapes to help with this and then we got to work with her feet...

Cherry's schematic was my favorite of the bunch- it demonstrated beautifully how hoof schematics are receipts for what is going on elsewhere in the horses body. The right hind foot showed she was walking on her toe while the left hind was well worn on the lateral side but high on the medial; you could see how all her weight was tipped left and the right hind taking almost no weight at all. No wonder the left canter departure was so bad! That sticky left front hoof had resistance all the way around the wall, essentially acting like road studs preventing the foot from landing smoothly in any direction and a very strangely overlayed bar. Knocking away some false sole revealed an enormous lump of old overlayed bar almost at the point of the frog on the lateral side. It must have been like walking with a massive stone in your shoe! Apparently she'd been avoiding turning on the outside of that left front foot and basically nothing was wearing away. So began a vicious cycle where her tight shoulders prevented her using her foot efficiently, the lack of stimulation caused the foot to stop wearing adequately, making the surface act like velcro and so it continued. We balanced everything up, taking away the uncomfortable lump of bar and she walked off like a racehorse! Walking and trotting her up afterwards, when asked to turn, she turned normally with no pivot to be found. Now it was time for riding.

Nic is a decent rider, but having spent years on a long rein or bitless, she was afraid to take the rein contact for fear of restricting or hurting the horse. Cherry was fairly established in her lateral work when she left the ranch and this was my original plan for her and Nics lessons. However, it became apparent that Nic would need to learn about rein contact in order to do these exercises. So my new objective became for Nic to develop 'athletic' hands- hands that can not just resist and release at a moments notice, but resist and release the correct amount at a moments notice. We all know that there's a LOT of range between throwing the reins away and hauling on the horses mouth, but what exactly happens in between and how to get there is a topic seldom explored or even spoken about. People love to claim they have "light hands" but that usually just means they don't pull the reins unless they have to. Truly light hands are so much more nuanced and this was our area of focus for Nic and Cherry.

Last case study to come soon, apologies I'm slow with posting. It was a lot to process and I have a lot to catch up with now I'm home!

01/05/2026

🇫🇷Thoroughbred sticking his head up with novice rider

The first victims of Valentina Biacchi and I's combined osteopathy and training experiment were Orry and his Thoroughbred Dicson.

Orry said that Dicson always has his head up particularly in trot, so we watched him on the lunge without a rider. He did indeed run around like a beautiful ostrich and was noticeably unstable behind (not lame), with a sticky hip. This was where I had the glorious experience of being able to say "Not my problem🙋‍♀️", stepped out and let Valentina do her thing.

There was a fair amount of restriction along the back, especially the lumbar region, due to previous poor saddle fit which was preventing Dicson from stretching out in freedom, never mind undersaddle. He was also bent like a banana to the right and very unstable in his hind end, causing him to twist his hind legs inwards from the hock down, particularly on the right. He generally lacks muscle due to working and moving incorrectly for a long time. After freeing up Dicsons back, Valentina then used kinesthetic tapes both to aid existing muscle support and get him aware of the muscles he should be using.

After the treatment, he was ducking his head down sporadically but still quite distrustful of his 'new' body. The next day however, he was stretching down and forwards beautifully, so it was my turn to step in- not for training yet, but to make an assessment of his hoof wear patterns and teach Orry to be able to do the same. We made a map of his hooves and found that even if we hadn't seen him in person, the schematic accurately showed that he'd been twisting his right hind and generally not wearing the feet on the right side as much as the left, hence the banana bend through his body. We balanced the feet accordingly via the teachings of Nick Hill and assessed his movement with Valentina once again. The twisting was vastly reduced and he traveled straight. With Dicsons body and hoof balance issues sorted, we could finally get on with riding!

The final component: fixing Orrys seat so that he could ride Dicson without getting in his way and reversing all the good work. Orry is one of those confident novices- on paper, he's a had a couple of years riding on and off on his missus' horses with no formal lessons. In practice, he's ridden more miles at faster speed than most life long riders I know and stays on board due to a combination of natural talent and a hard working guardian angel! This is actually my ideal student because there's a plethora of simple stuff to improve, yet no fear of going faster. We spent 2 lessons on the lunge in walk and trot fixing the main seat issues and then on the last lesson, we were off the lunge and working on just tidying up all of Orrys existing skills a bit. They are looking much more harmonious and are at a new starting point that wouldn't have been possible had we just done riding lessons without the osteopathy and hooves being addressed.

Next horse and rider body and training blitz coming up soon!

29/04/2026

Bonjour from France!🇫🇷

Quite an exciting update!

I've lost count of the amount of times I've worked with a horse and said "this horse doesn't need me, it needs an osteopath". Time and again I see behaviors and movement patterns that I know are not correct but are very clearly routed in discomfort rather than a training issue. In these situations, all I can do is recommend a body worker and hope the owner follows up (many do not🤷‍♀️). What would really help solve this problem is if I could work alongside an osteopath, but that's unrealistic... isn't it?

Enter Valentina Biacchi who has been doing osteopathy on the ranch horses since October. My training ethos and both her expertise in osteopathy and groundwork mesh incredibly well, so when I was asked to go work with some horses in France this week, I decided to bring her with me! We're trying out a system where she puts the horses body into balance so that the horses are able to carry their riders and respond to their requests, while I teach the riders to be as easy as possible for those newly balanced horses to carry and understand.

It's turning out to be something of a revelation and I think we're doing really good things here by combining our skills. More about that later this week😊

24/04/2026

We like to keep our horses barefoot

Not because it's cheaper, not because we have a ranch full of pasture puffs who do nothing besides mooch around the fields all day, and definitely not because we're harem pants wearing vegan hippies who sit around the fields with the horses singing kumbaya. Our horses clock up respectable miles, transverse rocky terrain, climb up and down steep inclines and canter in open space regularly enough that it isn't exciting for them. They know what work is and as for me, I like to gallop around the countryside and eat a steak afterwards🤷‍♀️

All 19 of our working horses are barefoot because we've found that without shoes disguising stride and loading irregularities, lower limb injuries are at a minimum. All of them are different breeds and from different backgrounds (mostly rescues) and given the time and conditions, all of them have achieved functional feet that hold up under a reasonable work load.

Of course it isn't just a case of ripping the shoes off, slapping them on the arse and saying yeeha as you gallop down your gravel driveway into the sunset- then complaining that it's been 2 weeks and you 'still' can't ride your horse without it crawling up onto grass verges. It takes lifestyle adjustment and education, and part of that education is learning to read hoof wear patterns. I'm not a trimmer or farrier, but I CAN read and respond to hoof wear patterns! This is due to the teachings of Nick Hill. I'm able to balance our horses hooves between farrier visits and immediately adjust our horses feet during an osteopath visit, so that the assymetries in the body and hooves can be aligned straight away. Am I a professional hoof care provider? No. Do I know enough to effectively support our own horses hoof care regime alongside pur regular professional hoof care providers? Absolutely.

Nick just released a book about hoof wear patterns and it's essential reading for every horse person with an interest in barefoot care. Nick is straight to the point, uncomplicated in his explanations and the use of schematics make hoof wear patterns understandable even for someone whose knowledge about hooves doesn't extend beyond what they taught you in pony club ("never ever touch the frog with a hoof pick when picking out the feet, it's super sensitive! The farrier can hack them into perfect little triangles with a knife every 6 weeks though☝️" 🤷‍♀️). Link in the comments!

22/04/2026

Guess who's back?
Back again
Benny's back!

So I'm telling my friends! Benny the Bavarian Coldblood is a big favorite with all of us at Sundance Ranch Portugal, particularly me! He's one of those boomerang horses who we first met in 2022 and he has come back to the ranch multiple times since for various reasons: sales, training, weight loss, stepping in if one of ours is on a sick note... this time it's just for some baby sitting while his human is away😊 He's always a lot of fun to have around and I'm excited to have another round of adventures with him before the summer heat kicks in. Thanks for trusting us with him once again Juliet Middleton ❤️

16/04/2026

Milhão and Camelot on a grass break on the 20km route with one of our osteopaths Valentina Biacchi yesterday🌞

It was the first opportunity I've had to get out on that particular route this year! Between the bad weather and the horses just not being fit enough, I just hadn't been able to get there so I didn't know how much of it was going to be accessible after the area took such a battering from the storms.

It's so remote that I'm pretty much the only person transversing the area, so there's no vehicles or walkers keeping the paths clear. There was plenty of downed trees, land slides and exposed river beds rendering some of the trot and canter spots barely good enough for walking on, but other than that, the route is still usable. Just takes a bit (ok, maybe an hour and a half😅) longer now! One unexpected boon from all the rain was that previously barren areas are now covered in rock roses and lavender- so we lost some adrenaline, but were rewarded with some beautiful scenery in exchange. Rest assured though, that famous long canter at the end where you have to jump or gallop through 8 ditches full of water is completely intact so it's still as fun (and muddy!) as before👌

14/04/2026

Fixing an experienced riders sitting trot

Like many horse trainers, teaching people didn't come naturally to me; but something I feel like I excel in is fixing seat issues, particularly in already established riders!

Vesna needs no introduction- she does all the first rides for me and can ride anything anywhere. However, riding green horses in open country for years came at a price: she'd developed a typical 'green horse' riders seat. Very relaxed and out of the horses way, but with rounded shoulders, concave chest and she'd spent so much time staying off the horses backs in canter, that sitting was uncomfortable!

This wasn't a problem when all we had were green horses, but now those green horses are becoming established school masters; they round up, elevate the front end, flick their toes and sit into their hocks. Basically, they've become expressive movers! Poor Vesna was finding herself getting flung around like a rag doll in sitting trot and couldn't regulate the canter speed without horses going back to trot.

I fixed a few minor things about how she was sitting (not telling you what or how, that's why you take lessons with me in person and contribute to putting food on my table🙃) and it felt odd to her initially so she didn't fully trust it. This is normal, if you'd spent your life walking backwards and someone told you walking forwards was better, it would feel weird at first! So my weapon of choice in these cases is to first get the rider to adopt the position I've put them in for half a circle, then tell them to go back to how they were sitting before. I get them to alternate back and forth until the old way starts feeling more uncomfortable and they actually WANT to sit the 'new' way. The difference here is pretty subtle but clear and Vesna can now sit comfortably on the horses she trained so well!

04/04/2026

Weekends are for fitness runs!

Every Saturday, the girls and I are taking some of the horses on a longer ride. This year we have mainly beginner courses, so I don't need them to be as fit as they usually are. Still, rather like fit humans, fit horses are healthier and less injury prone. So we still do either a bit of steep hill climbing or gallop work once a week to supplement their schooling, lunging and shorter trail ride.
This is Vesna on Titus, me on Milhão, Alice on Khalif and Tay on Danny. Some of you will recognize this as the crowd pleasing 'Black Lake Ride'!

Oriole is still not 100%, so will likely be out of action at least for the first half of the season. I was a bit worried because Oriole has always been my favorite colleague of the 'fast group' or the 'sports cars' as i call them. Camelot, Milhão, Titus and Danny are all fantastic horses and completely safe, but all 4 of them don't need encouragement to go for a landspeed record and can be intimidating for folks who are not used to riding fit, fast horses in open country. They really know what they're doing and prefer that you shut up, leave their face alone and enjoy the ride as we're doing in this video; Oriole is my trump card because he's just as fast as the others, yet won't join in with any competitive shenanigans unless explicitly told to, so he gives confidence to people who want to go fast, but not quite warp speed. Khalif is showing himself to be more than ready to step up and keeo Orioles seat warm- he keeps up easily and deals with the terrain like a pro, yet stays off the pace and doesn't give the feeling that he's so athletic he could jump out from under you. At only 7yo and under 20 rides under his belt, he's already the ultimate professional and he couldn't have arrived at a better time 🥲

Candid Equitation & Trail Riding

13/05/2026

11/05/2026

05/05/2026

01/05/2026

29/04/2026

24/04/2026

22/04/2026

16/04/2026

14/04/2026

04/04/2026

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