Lucky Star Stable

10/13/2024

Team Lucky Star rocked it at our first AEL show of 24-25 season sweeping the adult class and bringing home the championship. So proud of each one of these riders who really put in their best rides with many overcoming fears or meeting goals. Looking forward to the year. Many many thanks to Floyd Woods Farm and All The Class Equestrian for hosting and their wonderful horses that made the day great.

05/24/2024

Beat the heat and a busy day with a morning ride! This office is so beautiful almost makes up for 8 months of crap weather 😂

05/24/2024

It’s that wonderful time of year when everyone is chasing the sun down with lots of trail rides and pony snuggles

05/14/2024

Welcome to Trainer Tuesday! Each week we ask trainers a question and gather their answers for you. These trainers have a range of experience, backgrounds, and focus points of their programs, so the answers have as much variation as you would expect and also probably much more similarity. This week....

05/12/2024

05/12/2024

05/12/2024

Day #1 of athletic equestrian league nationals at Dana Hall in MA. So proud of these girls for their hard work and dedication but especially their love for all the ponies ❤️

03/20/2023

Things your riding instructor wants you to know:
1. This sport is hard. You don't get to bypass the hard…..every good rider has gone through it. You make progress, then you don't, and then you make progress again. Your riding instructor can coach you through it, but they cannot make it easy.

2. You're going to ride horses you don't want to ride. If you're teachable, you will learn from every horse you ride. Each horse in the barn can teach you if you let them. IF YOU LET THEM. Which leads me to…

3. You MUST be teachable to succeed in this sport. You must be teachable to succeed at anything, but that is another conversation. Being teachable often means going back to basics time and time and time again. If you find basics boring, then your not looking at them as an opportunity to learn. Which brings me to…..

4. This sport is a COMMITMENT. Read that, then read it again. Every sport is a commitment, but in this sport your teammate weighs 1200 lbs and speaks a different language. Good riders don't get good by riding every once in awhile….they improve because they make riding a priority and give themsevles opportunity to practice.

5. EVERY RIDE IS AN OPPORTUNITY. Even the walk ones. Even the hard ones. Every. Single. Ride. Remember when you just wished someone would lead you around on a horse? Find the happiness in just being able to RIDE. If you make every ride about what your AREN'T doing, you take the fun out of the experience for yourself, your horse, and your instructor. Just enjoy the process. Which brings me to...

6. Riding should be fun. It is work. and work isn't always fun.....but if you (or your rider) are consistently choosing other activities or find yourself not looking forward to lessons, it's time to take a break. The horses already know you don't want to be here, and you set yourself up for failure if you are already dreading the lesson before you get here.

7. You'll learn more about horses from the ground than you ever will while riding. That's why ground lessons are important, too. If you're skipping ground lessons (or the part of your lesson that takes place on the ground), you're missing out on the most important parts of the lesson. You spend far more time on the ground with horses than you do in the saddle.

8. Ask questions and communicate. If you're wondering why your coach is having you ride a particular horse or do an exercise, ask them. Then listen to their answer and refer to #3 above.

9. We are human beings. We make decisions (some of them life and death ones) every day. We balance learning for students with workloads for horses and carry the bulk of this business on our shoulders. A little courtesy goes a long way.

Of all the sports your child will try through their school years, riding is one of 3 that they may continue regularly as adults (golf and skiing are the others). People who coach riding spend the better part of their free time and much of their disposable income trying to improve their own riding and caring for the horses who help teach your child. They love this sport and teaching others…..but they all have their limits. Not all good riders are good coaches, but all good coaches will tell you that the process to get good is not an easy one.

*thank you to whoever wrote this! Not my words, but certainly a shared sentiment!

02/02/2023

‘I want to just ride’ - Say this to any seasoned professional in the game and they will look at you like ‘Oh honey’ 😂

You have to learn to be a rider, groom, horseman/women, business owner, lead a team, handle clients and alongside all this you’ve still got to muck out and pick a broom up until you can earn enough money to have someone help you do this whilst you are doing something else to earn this said money.

‘I want to just ride’ doesn’t exist and if you see someone doing that you have no idea how hard they worked to get in that position. So get sweeping my friend ♥️

12/26/2022

😂😂😂.

😎🎄🏇

11/07/2022

So proud of team lucky star these girls all knocked it out of the park today! Time for more move ups. Ended the day with a 3rd place team finish!

05/16/2022

Clare and Iris’s first event! This giant buck happened after the bell… she stuck like a PBR pro sat the gallop up the trail with no stirrups and returned to finish the day! Eventing is not for the weak of heart! Excited to see these two grow this season!

05/16/2022

I am very bad at taking pictures while I am coaching it was a LONG weekend. Saturday and Sunday 10 kids at AEL nationals at Mount Holyoke and Sunday 3 kids at Hitching Post Farm! Beyond proud of these kiddos had some personal bests at Nationals and came away with 5th place team finish! So many thanks to Sarah Harrison who continued coaching Sunday so I could take kiddos to hitching post where all of the kids did so well! First event for several and they conquered their nerves and finished the day off strong! So excited for the futures of these young riders and what a fun weekend watching them grow!!

03/23/2022

Congrats to our Lucky Star AEL team! Lots of great individual rides and coming away with the team win! Even better was the sportsmanship and support every rider showed for their teammates! Great job everyone!

03/16/2022

https://heelsdownmag.com/riding-the-rollercoaster-stages-of-an-equestrian-life/

Each and every horse we get on has something unique to teach us, and it’s through these experiences that we realize just how much we have left to learn.

01/11/2022

Realfeel -18 this morning! Thankful for an awesome team who powered through!! all the horses were toasty and warm!

01/01/2022

Happy New Year! This year was marked by a lot of unexpected change, horse switches, new friends found, new friends lost, and a sense of ever growing horse community! Lots of goals both individual and team for the upcoming year!! Let’s do it 2022!

12/17/2021

“I’ve been doing it this way for years!”

When folks justify their skills by saying they’ve been doing it for years, decades, their whole life, etc., I grieve the lost years of potential progress.

I don’t train horses the same way I did 10 years ago. I don’t even train the same way I did 2 years ago. My path is littered with abandoned methods, tools, and paradigms. And though I have a rather successful track record helping horses rehabilitate and develop, I am constantly searching for ways to do it better.

I also find that the horses I encounter today as a whole seem softer, smarter, and more balanced than the horses of my past. For that I thank my own dedication to growth as a horsewoman… not some mystical force that has graced me with better horses.

It excites me to imagine the level of horsemanship we may all find 10 years from now if we commit ourselves to a path forward instead of a stagnant satisfaction with current methods that have been “working fine for years”.