02/25/2025
I couldn’t agree more with this post. It speaks to what I feel in my heart every single day. Our horse world is moving in the wrong direction—rushing students through the ranks, skipping over the foundational basics, and, worst of all, normalizing harsh and thoughtless riding.
I’m 56 years old, and I grew up in a world that wasn’t always perfect for horses in terms of their care or our understanding of their behavior. But back then, being a rider still meant something. It meant working hard to learn the fundamentals correctly before moving forward. Riding instructors took the time to teach, not just collect a paycheck. It wasn’t parents dictating the pace of a lesson because they wanted to see their child “progress” faster. Students understood that their own fitness and mobility mattered in riding—that how we move and control our own bodies directly impacts the horse.
Now, too many instructors are willing to bypass those fundamentals just to keep students happy and paying. But the basics matter. They are everything. They protect the horse, they protect the rider, and they create true horsemanship—not just the illusion of it. Teaching that it’s okay to rip a horse around by the reins, to kick them, to hang on them like a limp sack or a stiff board—it’s not just bad riding. It’s abuse.
As instructors, we are the advocates for the horse. If we don’t protect them, who will? Making money should never justify teaching students that this kind of treatment is okay. It breaks my heart to see the direction things are heading, but I refuse to be part of a system that prioritizes convenience and ego over the well-being of the horse.
Let’s bring real horsemanship back. Let’s bring back the respect for the basics, the time it takes to build a true partnership, and the hard work that comes with it. Because if we lose that, we lose so much more than just good riding—we lose the very thing that makes horses so transformative in our lives.
