Keystone Equestrian Services

05/14/2023

Dang. Is it me, or does this ABSOLUTELY apply to working with our horses??
https://www.facebook.com/reel/623724409315525?s=yWDuG2&fs=e&mibextid=Nif5oz

03/08/2023

Always less. https://www.facebook.com/100063869026946/posts/643005901171705/?sfnsn=mo&mibextid=6aamW6

Oh, the very difficult challenge of doing less. A. Lot. Less. It seems we humans need constant reminders that our technique will not be improved by doing more, making bigger/stronger/harder attempts. The horses remind me every day: if my technique is correct, it should be like a whisper. If I'm not getting it right, doing a BIGGER/STRONGER version of not-quite-right doesn't create results. Do less. And then do even less.

02/05/2023

This is why taking time to observe, to listen fully before we judge what a thing is, is so important.
https://www.facebook.com/100063856669752/posts/605184131620137/?sfnsn=mo&mibextid=6aamW6

Think of every undesirable display of behavior as a skill set missing or need not met. It could be as simple as a little more awareness or preparation on the humans part- or it can sometimes be a scavenger hunt for clues toward a bigger picture or overall disharmony in the body and mind.

I think of these behaviors like a meditation bell. Pawing, chewing, pushing, nipping, and so on- they are a call to your attention. Something is off. Your presence here is needed, either to educate further, to provide support, or to look deeper.

01/20/2023

In this movement of seeking mindfulness and presence with horses, I've noticed what seems to be most important - and most overlooked - is that it's not so much about the exercises we're working or how well we're following "the flowchart;" but rather it's really about fostering the feeling of connectedness. Tapping into what we notice within our horses and ourselves PRIMARY (not with judgement or interpretation but only with the intent to listen), and performing the "task" secondary. This post shares that experience in such a lovely way.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=638112274980919&id=100063464566295&mibextid=Nif5oz

A week ago today I swung my saddle onto the back of a five-year-old quarter horse under the watchful eye of Tom Curtin.

The horse took a few concerned steps as my stirrup swung over his back. I looked up to see Tom’s grin under the brim of his hat and he said,

“You were thinking about saddling that horse, weren’t you?
You need to think about that horse while you saddle him.“

Last week I spent the week with Tom and his wife, Trina. I noticed a reoccurring lesson throughout the week.

The everyday activities I have done my whole life with horses took on a new meaning. “You were thinking about brushing that c**t, you need to think about that c**t while you brush him.” And, “you were thinking about bridling that mare, you need to think about that mare while you bridle her.”

Tom said, “No matter what you do, never forget that horse”.

So there I was, playing cowboy for a week, learning about c**t starting, riding young horses, checking cattle, but deep inside it all, learning how to be with a horse in a very intentional way.

It’s a sort of contract, you see. You’re not demanding that your horse give you their attention without an even exchange. Asking a horse to bring their attention to me now feels more like saying, “Remember I’m right here, thinking about you… In exchange can you think about me?”

The gift of Tom’s c**ts was that they already knew the feeling of being kept in mind, and they were good at telling me when I’d lost track of them. The calm that came over these horses when I thought of them as I went about my daily routines was just wonderful.

All it took was being mindful of their existence and attentive to their needs. We typically have some sort of goal with our horses that can provide a wonderful sense of purpose, but the goal is meaningless if we lose track of our partner in the process.

I hope in reading this you can be as inspired as I am. When you go out this week and do whatever you do with your horses, whether it be jumping fences, working cows, dancing in a dressage arena, chasing hounds, etc, see if you can go about your business with purpose, but never forget your horse.

~ Justin

📸 Erin Gilmore // Erin Gilmore Photography

10/04/2022

Well doesn't this just tie in beautifully to what I just posted....

There is an enormous connection between a person’s emotional state, how they feel about life and themselves, and how they ride.

When we get into the nitty gritty stuff- when I say I want you to open your chest, to breathe, to take up space, to be fully present, we get into the mud of the mind-

Why does the person shrink? Why do they avoid being in their own mind? Why do they tense, clench and grab?

There is far more behind these so called riding faults than just riding-
There is the perception of self and of life.

And this is where when I ask you to take up space in your own body and to be present in your own mind, you must find the courage to look inside and be who you were meant to be, not just to ride well, but to live a good life.

10/04/2022

It's all too often I'm encouraging students to observe, and trust their bodies and their intuition. Trust the learning and experiences you've had up to this point and allow the inner you to act on what feels right. That doesn't guarantee success, but owning what you know leads to acting with confidence in so many situations, and along with an open, curious mind can blow the door wide open for further growth.

10/03/2022

THIS! This is so often where I'm starting with my students - mobility, harmony, movement, rhythm. If you have these things in you, it will be much easier to develop them in the horse.

Form follows function

As a riding instructor, one of the worst and most damaging things a student can encounter is position specific teaching. I rarely give instruction like “put your leg back,” “put your shoulders back,” etc. Students who have been taught to hold a leg here, a hand there, shoulders back, etc, often become rigid, unconfident and struggle to feel their horse.

This is because teaching a position over a feeling leads to an obsession with a look instead of a function. It does the same kind of damage to a human body, I believe, as teaching a horse a headset before teaching ease of movement and allowing the headset to follow the body.

I prefer to teach people where their body is in space, and how it relates to the horse’s body. I prefer to teach people to feel the horse and learn to guide them.

I prefer to see a student get a little messier in their position first, to leave the confines of “shoulders back heels down” thinking, to learn to absorb the motion of the horse without concern for their appearance initially. Once they can learn to get loose, just as in postural work with a horse, they can become more structured in a dynamic way. Nothing is forced, but instead the student finds their own unique posture on their own.

There are certainly aspects to a classical seat’s look that are rooted in function, but, the look is achieved by mastering functionality- each element of the position is the result of mastery of movement, not locking a body into a rigid form. A body needs the freedom to explore its abilities and limitations within the context of movement, unencumbered by fear of looking bad.

Only in fluidity and ease of movement can a functional, structured and classical seat be gained - not in a week, or a year, but as a lifetime pursuit. This means the seat will likely find itself in odd phases as it grows, adapts, and learns to understand following and guiding the horse better, and that is all just part of the journey.

Photo by Melinda Yelvington

09/30/2022

THERE IS ONLY ONE JOB…

Horse people have only one job. And horses have only one job. It’s the most important job and it's the job that supersedes all other jobs. Nothing is more important when it comes to training. The job is to be focused and connected. That’s it. That’s the job. Even when doing other jobs, staying focused and connected to our horse and our horse to us overrides all other jobs in importance.

The one condition to the “one job” principle is that focus and connection are only important if you want a good relationship and a partnership. If you only care about a horse being an employee and doing a learned job, then focus and connection are less important provided the job gets done.

A question you may be asking is how can you tell if a horse is focused and connected? The answer is pretty simple. Most people believe you can tell by the way a horse is performing or moving or how light it is to respond to pressure. But that’s not always true or reliable. You can’t be sure of a horse’s connection with you by what it is doing. A more trustworthy indicator of focus and connection is how a horse feels and responds when you interrupt what they are doing. When a horse is performing one job and you ask it to think about doing a different job, how braced is the transition? How expressive is their body language? How troubled are the emotions?

When moving from one idea to another causes a horse zero trouble, it is a good sign that a horse is attentive and in a conversation with you. But when interrupting a horse in the middle of a task creates any level of ill feeling and resistance, the probability is high that the horse had either mentally left or was blocking out any conversation with you.

Perhaps the best example of this is trailer loading. Some people have horses that load into a trailer trouble-free. They just walk in when they see the back of the trailer open. However, in my experience, the majority of those horses will melt down if you asked them to walk into the trailer halfway and stop, back one step and stop, forward two steps and stop. Their minds were in the back of the trailer and if that were interrupted, many horses will re-model the inside of the trailer - for free!

Another example was my old showjumping horse. Most jumpers see a fence approaching and get more committed to jumping with each stride. But Luke did a pretty good job of staying focused and connected. I could stop him in front of a jump with minimum resistance. I could stop him two strides after a jump, walk him to turn, and jump over the fence from a walk that he just cleared. He was not very fast around the jump course and could not compete on speed with most of the TB horses. But he was so much “with me” that we could cut corners and approach fences at impossible angles that most other horses couldn’t.

In dressage, the half-halt is taught to riders as a substitute for having a constant connection with a horse. It’s because a significant proportion of dressage training is NOT about the “one job” being focus and connection, but the movement. Focus and connection are down the list of most important jobs, despite the rhetoric and good intentions. When focus and connection are strong and the conversation between horse and rider is flowing, the half-halt is redundant and perhaps even a nuisance.

I want to add that focus and connection are not just about better performance. They should be the priority in everything we do such as picking up feet and saddling, trail riding, dressing a wound, fitting a blanket, catching and leading, hosing - even brushing! Being vigilant about always asking for focus and connection is what makes the relationship work. It can't work if we only require it when we need it.

I never expect a horse to focus 100% on me at the cost of blocking out the rest of the world. That would be silly and dangerous. But with all the things I have to teach my horse, nothing is more important than focus and connection. Nothing supersedes it. When I lose it, I stop what I’m doing and do whatever it takes to get it back before going on with the task at hand. The number one job I have is to encourage my horse that in everything we do, we do together. Everything else follows.

Photo: At this clinic I was working my hardest to do my number one job of building a focus and connection between myself and this sweet horse.

09/27/2022

I don't know who needs to hear this today, but if any nugget feels like she's speaking to you, read it all again.
Well said, Kendra!

09/20/2022

THE IMPORTANCE OF DISCOMFORT IN TRAINING

A horse’s brain works best when the emotions are calm. A horse is better able to engage its problem-solving skills when it does not feel the need to save its life. The emotions that accompany “survival mode” definitely hinder a horse’s ability to think through a challenge AND learn from it. If you know this simple fact, it is easy to see why we all want our horses to feel calm and relaxed.

For this essay, I want to focus on the premise of a horse facing a challenge and learning from it.

By its very nature, anything a horse perceives as a challenge creates the opposite effect of calmness and relaxation. It’s because something evokes anxiety and stress that the horse perceives it as a challenge. That’s the very definition of a challenge.

But challenges are not all bad. I would argue that challenges are both desirable and necessary for a horse to be okay in life. I think it is true whether it is living in the wild or living a domesticated life among humans. Challenges or pressures or trouble or whatever you choose to call them are important because they motivate a horse to learn. They force a horse to change habitual and reactive behaviours that are counterproductive to safety and comfort. Instead, they learn to replace those behaviours with new coping skills. This is how a horse evolves from the day it is born to the day it dies. A horse that does not face challenges and learn from them has a miserable life repeating the same mistakes over and over. We can’t protect our horses from pressures and challenges, but we can help them learn coping strategies that make life easier.

Now I come to the reason I am writing this article.

I have noticed in recent times more and more trainers on YouTube, Facebook, and magazines (print and online) talking about how to calm and relax horses by removing pressures and challenges. I’m not talking about just lowering the pressure when it gets too much for a horse. I am referring to removing any pressure that would cause a nanogram of anxiety for a horse.

One example that comes to mind was a video of a rider with a seasoned older horse demonstrating that when they applied an inside rein to ask a horse to turn, the horse braced against the rein and hollowed its back. The rider then showed that by letting the horse travel anywhere it chose without the rider applying the inside rein the horse travelled much more relaxed. The difference was clear. But the problem is that allowing a horse to go anywhere it chose is not training. It is simply being a spectator. There was no benefit to the horse because it was learning nothing about how to feel okay when a rider did start using the reins to direct its thought. There was no help or clarity for the horse with how to feel okay about the inside rein.

The rider intended to not upset or challenge their horse when they should have been teaching the horse how to find comfort and security in the face of their worry about the inside rein. In the bigger picture, what happens to that horse when it refuses to go into a trailer if the human if the training is designed to avoid crossing comfort zones? What happens to that horse when it refuses to let a person inject a life-saving drug? What happens to that horse when it thinks running over a person is a better option than running around a person? Considering horses have to live in a world, where they have to learn to get along with humans what favour does a trainer offer a horse when they avoid teaching that life is best when the horse learns to problem solve their way out of discomfort?

If I had been the rider on that horse, I would begin by using my inside rein to direct the horse at a walk. I would carry the feel in the rein until my horse offered something closer to a softening than it was giving. I would not care if it took several laps of the turn or circle before the horse stopped resisting and softened its back before I released the inside rein. I would wait for the softer thoughts that would result in a softer back. What the feet were doing would be far less important to me than the softer thoughts and emotions. I would be adjusting the feel of the reins constantly to help guide the horse to quieter emotions AND the thought to follow the feel of the inside rein AND finally a softer way of moving. I would not remove the feel in the rein until something changed for the better. In this way, the horse can learn to feel okay about pressure from the inside rein and change its thought to go with it rather than fight it.

I am seeing more and more examples of people teaching students that the way to get along with their horse is to avoid exposing them to trouble or challenges or pressures or anything that might result in raising a horse’s blood pressure. I don’t believe this is the purpose of training. It is not possible to direct a horse to an idea it doesn’t have or doesn’t want or doesn’t like without creating some degree of anxiety.

To avoid anxiety is to avoid training. We should never push a horse beyond what it can handle or can recover from because that turns pressure into punishment and damages a horse’s trust and confidence. But at the same time, without pushing a horse from comfort to discomfort and back to comfort there can be no learning. The purpose of training is to help a horse get along with us in whatever we do together with the minimum amount of trouble. We can’t help a horse by riding it in a padded cocoon. We must keep pushing the boundaries of its comfort zone so that one day a horse’s limits for what causes its anxiety is beyond the horizon and out of sight.

Photo: A new challenge for this horse.

09/05/2022

Feeling stuck? Unsure how to help your horse? Read this twice.

The journey is in the practice - you're going to fumble, make mistakes. Your horse can see when you're working hard to get it right.

Something that we as humans need to keep in mind is this:

It is not our job to dictate when is okay for the learner (horse) to feel certain emotions or whether or not they’re justified in feeling them.

If we feel that their expression of said emotion isn’t safe, then it’s our job to help teach them how to find a safer way to express it or how to self regulate better and avoid getting so over threshold that they behave dangerously.

We cannot dictate how others can feel. This includes horses, this includes all other animals in addition to humans.

If we are supposed to be a support system, partner and teacher; we need to listen. We need to be understanding and patient, even when we may not fully “get” why they’re behaving a certain way.

The learner decides what is and isn’t too much for them, not us.

As humans, it’s easy to get in our heads and ignore the feelings of others, especially with horses being as silent and stoic as they are.

This is why it’s key that we remind ourselves to take a step back and put ourselves in others’ shoes.

How would YOU feel if you were scared and confused and the one person you trusted just yelled and punished you, instead of helping you understand?

How would YOU feel if you expressed your fear, discomfort, pain or anxiety to a loved one and they told you that you’re lying? Or simply ignored your struggle and forced you to keep doing what they wanted?

We lack emotional intelligence as a species but we also massively lack the ability to be compassionate towards animals based off of normalized industry practices removing that compassion.

It’s not about being right or wrong, it’s about being kind. It’s about being mindful of the feelings of people and animals around us and not being so self absorbed that we are more worried about being righteous or winning or our own personal desires than we are about the well-being of people and animals we love.

You don’t have to fully understand why your horse, your friend or your pet feels a certain way to be there for them and help them navigate in the way they need to.

You just need to care enough to put yourself in their shoes and figure out the best step forward for BOTH of you.

I think this is one of the hardest parts of working with animals and existing in the world in general: showing up for those around you even when you don’t fully get why they need what they do or why they’re struggling with things that may seem simple or may come easily to others.

It’s not our job to dictate what should and shouldn’t be easy for a learner. It’s our job to be mindful of the fact that EVERYONE learns differently and feels differently. Us having a different understanding or viewing something as unnecessary doesn’t mean we are correct. It just means we see it differently.

Relationships with the animals you train and the humans around will only improve if you pause and practice more empathy before responding with frustration or anger. Frustration or anger, in virtually any situation, is likely to make it worse. Pausing and being there as moral support for your learner will only improve things by lowering anxiety, having you be present and helping the learner feel like they’re being listened to.

We, as humans, need to practice putting our egos aside and just showing up emotionally for the people and animals around us.

Sometimes it is less about fixing a specific issue and more about being there to offer moral support during times of stress and knowing when to ask less.

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09/02/2022

You are the steward of your horse.
You are responsible for their health, happiness, and wellbeing.
And, you are responsible for their behavior.

People everywhere complain about their horses behavior- or smirk at their troubles.

“That dummy’s gonna be tired if he keeps pacing the fence line like that!”
“He’s being ornery!”
“He’s lazy and doesn’t want to work!”
“This mare is such a witch!”

Descriptions of the horse’s behavior in this light paint a picture of a rider who perceives themselves as the victim of the horse, instead of the steward. There is nothing that takes your power away faster than being a victim-

The horse did not choose to come into our world. It’s us who put ourselves into theirs- and so it is our responsibly to learn about them, and to become better humans for them. It is up to us to become better riders, better handlers, better caretakers. It is up to us to learn about their behavior, physical needs, anatomy, and care.

Being a steward is so much more than making a horse do what we want- it is about guiding, preparing, and caring for the horse’s needs.