Schott In The Dark Farms

08/15/2025

Training Tip Tuesday - Riding the square with a twist... literally. This a great lateral work exercise for improving suppleness, engagement and carrying capacity of the hindquarter, lateral mobility and sensitivity to the aids.

This exercise can be placed anywhere in the arena. Here is it shown around "X." It may be easiest to being the exercise at E or B, although it is possible to being at the centerline as well. Let's start at E, begin riding a shoulder in on a short diagonal line toward the centerline. Upon reaching the centerline perform a 1/4 pirouette or turn on the haunches and proceed in travers. Continue switching between haunches in and shoulder in at every 1/4 point of the diamond/square.

This exercise can be ridden in all 3 gaits - although the turn on the haunches or pirouette would be replaced with a corner or turn when ridden in trot. In walk and canter, the turns could be ridden as 1/4 pirouettes.

If your horse is not ready for shoulder in and haunches in, you would try alternating between leg yields to the left and right. That does not have quite the same effect, but would encourage the horse to step under the body and carry more weight behind. It will also improve suppleness.

Enjoy the ride.

08/15/2025

08/09/2025

HANDS DO NOT PULL BACK - HAVE "FEELING FINGERS"

Remember, you are holding a piece of metal that's inside your horse's mouth. If you pull back on the reins or jiggle your hands around, your horse will likely shorten his neck, stiffen through his back, hollow away from your seat, lift his head above the bit, and/or come against/behind the contact.

Pulling back on the reins can also encourage your horse to get stronger in the contact, as he, too, will pull against the pressure. This often leads to a tug-of-war scenario that sends many riders down the rabbit hole of using stronger rein aids and bits.

The rein length should be held by your thumb pressing on top of your index finger. The rest of your fingers should be light and supple so you can give subtle communication aids down the reins. If your fingers are gripping the reins tightly, then any light communication down the rein will be blocked. Therefore, if you want to give your horse an aid, you will need to grip even tighter or pull backward on the reins, which is not good.

Keep your elbows, wrists, hands, and fingers supple, and allow them to "breathe" with your horse's movement, rather than remaining fixed and rigid. The aim is to have "feeling fingers" which open and close to give your horse the required aids. It may only be a slight movement, but trust us, your horse can feel it.

08/08/2025

Because visual learning just hits different 👀
Finding the right feel in your reins starts with your fingers. Too loose, and you lose connection. Too tight, and you risk tension in the whole body,
yours and your horse’s.

👉 Let’s break it down:
a. ✅ Correct – Fingers softly closed, fingertips touching the palm. You maintain light, consistent contact without gripping.
b. ❌ Incorrect – Fingers open. This weakens the connection and creates an unstable line to the bit.
c. ❌ Incorrect – Fist clenched. Tension travels up the arm, restricting softness in the hand and communication with your horse.

It’s all about that sweet spot: closed enough to hold, soft enough to feel. 🖐️

( Image found off Pinterest )

08/07/2025

This is something I find many riders (myself included) struggle with and it’s completely natural!

Most of us are taught from the start to steer with the reins. It becomes instinct to pull right, go right. But horses are incredibly attuned to our body. They feel a subtle shift in our seat, the tension in our legs, even the energy behind our breath.

And yet, when something goes wrong, our first reaction is often to grab at the reins. More pressure. More pulling. More confusion…

But reins should be a whisper, not a command. A final piece of communication, not the first.

When we start riding from our seat, core, and intention, things begin to change. Transitions become smoother. Bends feel natural. The horse begins to listen rather than just react.

💡 Next time you ride, ask yourself:

— Can I prepare this movement with my seat and posture before even using my reins?
— Are my hips following and guiding, or am I trying to steer from the front?

Your horse is listening not just to your hands, but to your whole body 💃🏼

06/28/2025

🐴DRESSAGE SOLUTIONS!🐴 How To Know If Your Inside Leg Is Effective?

To help you determine if your inside leg is effective in sending energy to the outside rein …

Imagine that, as a result of using the inside leg, the outside of your horse’s neck seems like a balloon filling with air and the outside rein feels like a bungee cord with positive tension and an elastic connection.
— Martin Kuhn

🎨 Sandy Rabinowitz

06/27/2025

Who Needs To Train A Better Walk….

18 Poles!! (You can use less and mark the squares out with witches hats or similar)

In my experience no-one trains the walk nearly enough. Walk movements in dressage tests are often where riders score poorly, purely because I think everyone just wants to train something more interesting than walk. IF you know how to train the walk it’s not boring at all.. it can be very technical and require a lot of feel.

So here’s a walk exercise to inspire you to train your walk more.

Halt in the bottom square far enough away from the first pole out of the square, so your horse can have one footstep of walk in the square.

Walk over the first line keeping the pace active enough not to get extra steps between poles.

The right turn onto the next line is a square turn so you need to use your outside aids and keep your horse’s shoulders almost straight… all while maintaining enough impulsion to push forward onto the next straight line, repeat the turn but to the left and halt in the last square.

Try a turn on the quarters or on the forehand in the square and ride the lines from top to bottom.

This exercise is HARD.. walk poles are hard.. this exercise will not only teach you to train a cracking quality of walk, it will refine your feel, train your horse to be a lot straighter and give you a better idea of what “through” feels like… in a low intensity exercise.

This is psychologically testing for the horse, they have to really focus on where their feet go… if they get annoyed, let them have a trot and canter away from the exercise and come back to it when they feel happier.

06/26/2025

Dear Hunter/jumper industry, I would like to give you my letter of resignation

Today,I found out that some twisted disgusting barbaric so called trainers inject horse with Euthanasia meds to win a 50 cent ribbons in the hunters.
WTF? For real who can be sick enough to even come up with the idea to try it in the first place.

With the PPEs becoming more and more ludicrous, the prices going up, and the direction the industry is taking, I made the decision to downsize my business and starting a new non horsey venture on the side.
No EquiSale is not closing, no I’m not getting out of horses, but yes I am taking a little break where I will just have a handful of sale horses in my backyard and try to keep my sanity intact.
So this week there has been a big uproar about the new rules USEF published in the light of recent events where horses have been collapsing at horse shows.
The rule (which is very poorly worded) was created in an effort to exclude horses who have collapsed, 7 days from the horse shows.
Why are horses collapsing you will ask me? Because apparently some as****es started to inject pentobarbital, a barbiturate used for sedating during euthanasia. No no this is not a typo.
You read this correctly. In order to make horses quiet for the hunters some sociopaths are using a small dose of euthanasia meds.
WTF is wrong with people?
So the substance is not traceable in the blood and the urine so the USEF is going to start testing hair (mane). Yup that’s correct, there enough as****es doing it that it justifies adding one layer of testing.
I’m sick to my stomach to even think that somebody who chooses a career with horses would think that placing at a show would justify this. Also this substance just got put on the list of medications you are not allowed to have with you at a show. Hmm hmm, scuse me, but who has a euthanasia meds vial in their show trunk on hand at all time? Also how is it possible to even get your hands on this stuff, this is not dex or SMZs.

So I knew about the medicine that induce a massive Adrenaline reaction where the horses sweat and shake for hours in their stall while it runs through their body and end up exhausted the next morning.
And now this…
So here are a few thoughts I had about this whole thing.
First, stop protecting those as****es. I don’t care how famous and great they ride. If a horse collapses and tests for any of those substances in their system, banned for life no appeal. You don’t deserve to ever be near a horse.
If you are the owners of said horse, banned for at least 1 year. (I’m going to get a lot of backlash for that) but as the owners of those horses, you need to be more than just an ATM. When you buy a horse he/she becomes your responsibility. Meaning that no trainers should be offended to be asked questions about any of the care of the horses. You should educate yourself on your own (there is magical thing called the internet where you can find an answer about pretty much any topic… listen I have diagnosed myself 10 times with orphan syndromes through web Md). jokes aside, chatGPT can answer so many questions about diet, supplements, diseases, medications. Ask a detailed list of what your horse is getting. Don’t just pay $100 meds every other week (hey chatGPT is it normal for my horse to get Banamine 22 days/month, hey ChatGPT, why am I being charged for 3 vials of dorm each month when I don’t own an elephant. Be hands on, hang out around the barn, show up without announcing yourself. Be there. Talk to other owners, other professionals … do your homework, don’t just look at ribbons, and send a check.
Require transparency, if you feel that every time you ask a question it’s a struggle to get a real answer, move on.

Other controversial take, start allowing herbal calming supplements. Would you rather compete against horses who eat a handful of pellets containing chamomile or against one that got stabbed with death juice. For real, if you let all the herbal stuff become legal, and people give their horses chamomille, valerian roots and some crushed special bush from Namibia, it’s not going to offend me. And if it’s legal then the playing field will be leveled again. You see if everybody takes a gummy, then gummies are not an advantage anymore.
So instead of trying to ban everything ban stuff that actually hurt the horses and let homeopathic stuff alone.
You really think that threatening to ban synchill and make them reformulate their products without l-Theanine was a helping hotses’ welfare? You really think that if I take my hot spooky horse in the hunters he will win because I gave him a dose of synchill AF that still contains the now banned substance will turn my hot fire breathing spooky horse into a tame compliant robotic hunter? Come on!
I would even go one step further, I would feel better with a low dose of ace being legal than the s**t we are giving those poor horses nowadays l.
Again I NEVER drug and I don’t prep and don’t use perfect prep. I’m too cheap and too lazy and so if they are not quiet naturally I don’t even entertain the hunters.
But at this point if I had to choose an evil, I would think it’s safer to give them a low dose of sedative than the stuff that make horses collapse left and right at the horse shows. I hate drugging, I’m not promoting drugging. But it’s like choosing between canabis and fentanyl, I don’t do either but canabis would have my vote as far as being safer if you are going to go the drug route.
Last but not least, I live under a rock and don’t show very much. But to all of you, who show a lot, please see something, say something. Do not be a hypocrite and turn a blind eye to things happening behind closed doors. Those horses have no voice, they need advocates and so I don’t care how famous a trainer is, if you see something bad happening, be the horses’ voices.

Now to finish on a positive note, my horse played a little bit in a change on one of his trip and still earned a 2nd place. So kudos to the judges who are starting to reward horses who are not dead to the World. I think if horses can somewhat look lively and still get top placings, maybe the incentive to drug will be less urgent. Maybe…

Let’s not get PETA a good reason to ban all equestrian sports for a few bad apples.

06/19/2025

05/11/2025

True partnership in the saddle means active listening, thoughtful guidance, and shared effort. It’s not just about sitting pretty — it’s about being present, responsive, and responsible for every stride.

A passenger follows the movement.
A partner shapes it with clarity, softness, and intention.

Whether you’re schooling at home or competing in the arena, strive to ride with your horse, not on them. That’s where real harmony begins.