Fresh Perspective Farm LLC

08/16/2025

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗕𝗘𝗗𝗢𝗨𝗜𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗗𝗘: 𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗧𝗘𝗠𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗪𝗔𝗦 𝗦𝗔𝗖𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗜𝗡 𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗕𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚. Long before modern shows and sport, Arabian horses lived with the Bedouin tribes of the desert — not in barns, but in tents, sharing life with people.

To the Bedouin, temperament wasn’t just important — it was sacred.

Why?
Because their horses were more than animals — they were family, war partners, and protectors. Arabians needed to be:
✅ Gentle enough to live among children in the tent
✅ Brave enough to charge into battle
✅ Loyal enough to return when called
✅ Smart enough to survive the harsh desert
✅ Calm, trusting, and obedient — even with no bridle or saddle!

Only the best were bred
If a horse was mean, disloyal, or panicky — it was never bred. Simple as that. Over generations, this created the Arabian we know today: intelligent, loyal, gentle, and courageous.

The Bedouins believed,
👉 “A horse’s spirit is more important than its speed.”
👉 “Viciousness in an Arabian is unknown.”

🐪 True stories from the desert...
➤ Horses slept in tents with babies and women.
➤ Foals played with children, even using people as scratching posts.
➤ Stallions walked among strangers without fear.
➤ War mares would lie still in silence to keep the camp safe.

The Bedouin Code taught that:
✨ Blood is important — but character is everything.
✨ A true Arabian gives its heart to its human.
✨ Temperament must be pure, like the bloodline.

This sacred code still shapes Arabian breeding today. From show ring to trail ride, their noble spirit lives on.

07/09/2025

05/14/2025

This is perfectly put. Also remember, we don’t know all that our horses do. A simple slip the horse doesn’t even remember may cause lasting compensation. It’s why even pasture pets can benefit from bodywork.
Lastly, remember there is very little in life we can KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, know. We can guess. We can theorize, empathize, conjecture, etc but very, very rarely can we KNOW. So give your horse, your vet, your farrier, and yourself some grace and just keep working to make the world a better place.

Galloping, Bucking, Not Broken: The Greatest Lie Horses Ever Told 🐎💥

You step into the paddock, coffee in hand, expecting a peaceful morning and a whiff of horse breath that says “all is well.” ☕✨

Instead, your horse is on the wrong side of the fence, looking smug and oddly unscathed—or worse, still tangled in wire. You cut them free, patch up a scratch or two (or marvel at the miraculous absence of any), and thank the gods of lucky escapes.

Crisis averted.

Or is it? 😬

Here’s the problem: the real damage doesn’t always bleed.

Over the years, I’ve met a string of horses who’ve all survived this advanced-level self-sabotage. They’ve jumped a gate (well… tried), crashed through a fence, slipped on a slope, flipped, twisted, crushed or compressed themselves in ways that would make a chiropractor cry and a vet sigh while reaching for the X-ray machine (which, by the way, won’t show the damage either). 🏅💀

The horse recovers. No visible limp. They run. They buck. They play.

You think:
“They’re fine! Look at them go!”
But they’re not fine. Not even a little bit.

Enter: The Invisible Injury 🕵️‍♀️

What you can’t see—and what many professionals miss—is the slow-burn catastrophe hidden deep in the horse's body.

Ribcage. Pelvis. Sternum. Neck. Stifle.
The kind of stuff that doesn’t light up on X-rays or respond to your carrot-stick-wiggly-wand of trust. 🥕🌀

It’s the kind of discomfort that turns “walk, trot, canter” into “grimace, flinch, explode.”

And here’s the kicker: the horse doesn’t limp. It compensates.

Because horses, unlike people, don’t throw dramatic tantrums and demand cortisone shots. They quietly adjust. They twist, tighten, avoid, or overuse other parts of their body to keep going.

They are the masters of stoicism.....until you put a halter on.
You ask for a transition, a bend, a float trip, or—God forbid—a trot circle. And suddenly—

You get emotion.
You get resistance.
You get confusion, agitation, blow-ups, shut-downs—
Every spicy ingredient in a full-blown training meltdown stew. 🍲🔥
The Spiral Begins 🌀

The owner thinks: “I’m doing something wrong.”
The trainer thinks: “We need more groundwork.”
The horse thinks: “Kill me.” ☠️
Eventually, the owner moves on—new trainer, new method, new online course promising the horse will “choose joy and connection.”

But the problems persist.
Cue spiralling shame, rejection of all prior knowledge, and a desperate descent into rabbit holes of essential oils, a connection-based enlightenment facilitator, and equine shadow work. 🧘‍♀️🌿🔮

When in fact, what they really needed was a bloody good vet and bodyworker, and someone to say:

“Hey, maybe your horse’s inability to pick up the left lead can’t be fixed with trust exercises and lavender oil.”

The Warning Signs We Miss 🚩

Here are the red flags waving harder than a liberty trainer at sunset:

The horse becomes emotional, reactive, or weirdly robotic.
What should be simple feels charged, unpredictable, and unnervingly fragile.
Training progress flatlines, no matter how much effort you throw at it.
The horse starts avoiding halters, floats, mounting blocks—or life in general.
The problem isn’t always psychological.

Sometimes, it’s a bloody rib.
Or a pelvis rotated like a cheap IKEA table leg. 🪑

But we don’t look there—because the horse looks fine.
It bucks in the paddock! It gallops!
It must be okay!

Nope. That’s not health.
That’s compensation.
It’s adaptation with the odd short step.

Or worse—when they can’t limp because everything’s uncomfortable.
That’s when it gets really insidious.

What Happens Next is Predictable… and Sad 😢

These horses often get labelled as:

Difficult
Shut down
Disrespectful
“Needing more wet saddle blankets”
Or… “Needing a softer approach”
Or… “Not aligned with your energy” 🙃
No one considers the simple truth:

It hurts to do what we’re asking.
Not in a “don’t feel like it” way.
In a “my sternum’s fused to my shoulder blade and I can’t rotate left without seeing stars” way. 🌟

They suffer in silence while we rotate through training ideologies like a midlife crisis through motorcycles—all because we never asked the most obvious question:

“Has this horse ever had an accident?”

Because if they have—if they’ve failed to clear a gate, slipped, fallen, crushed, or tangled in wire—it may have changed everything. Not just the body, but the brain.

Pain messes with movement.
It makes easy things hard.
It turns willing horses into wary ones.
And it ruins good humans who start to believe they’re not good enough.

What You Can Do Instead of Losing Your Mind 🧠➡️🧘‍♂️

Take my good friend Tami Elkayam’s advice:
If something happens, write it down in a diary. ✍️

Even if they seem fine.

Then, if things start getting weird months or years later, don’t reach for your third liberty course or $800 worth of chamomile pellets. 💸🌼

Consider that maybe—just maybe—your horse isn’t emotionally broken, disrespectful, or traumatised by a training method.

Maybe those fractured ribs are hurting when you do up the girth.

Before You Burn It All Down… 🔥🚫

Before you give up, throw out your halters, block your last five coaches on Instagram, or trade your saddle for an oracle deck… pause.

Reflect.

Is it possible your horse is trying—but simply can’t?
Could it be that what they’re resisting isn’t you—but a physical reality no amount of groundwork or paddock bonding can fix?
Is it time to stop blaming yourself, your horse, and everyone you’ve ever learned from—and instead… dig deeper?
Because sometimes, the source of your training failures, your emotional spirals, and your eroded confidence…
..was a bloody gate.
That your horse didn’t clear.
That day. 🐴💔

If this switched on a lightbulb 💡, hit share. Pass it on.

Disclaimer: This is satire. Humour helps people read long posts they’d usually scroll past—so they don’t miss something that might actually help them or their horse.

Feel like tone-policing? Fabulous. Write your own post. That’s where your opinion belongs.

📸 IMAGE: My Aureo—the horse who taught me this lesson...even the bit about lavender oil 😆

04/20/2025

𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐖𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫?

Once upon a time, horses were bred for versatility. They were the kind of animal that could go hunting on Saturday, take a novice around a riding club show on Sunday, and be hacked safely down the lane on Monday. They weren’t flashy, they weren’t “elite” but they were gold dust.

Now? That type is vanishing.

It’s getting harder and harder to find a genuine all-rounder. The schoolmasters we all learned on kind, sensible, educated types who could give their rider a safe, enjoyable experience are few and far between. Prices are soaring, availability is shrinking, and for the average rider? It’s becoming a real problem.

In recent years, breeding trends have taken a dramatic turn. The focus is now on producing horses with big movement, sharp minds, and scope to jump 1.60m. Warmbloods and continental lines dominate the sales lists. Irish Draught crosses, once the staple of the amateur rider, are less commonly bred. Instead, the market is saturated with sporthorses designed for a future at the top.

But here’s the reality, only around 3% of riders are professionals.

So why are 90% of horses being bred as if they're going to the Olympics?

Horses bred for elite competition don’t all make it. In fact, most of them don’t. And when they don’t? They don’t just disappear, they’re sold on, often to the amateur market. Dealer yards are packed with sharp, sensitive young horses bred for 1.60m but marketed to someone who just wants to pop round 80cm and hack out twice a week.

It’s a mismatch. And it’s a dangerous one.

These horses are often too much for the average rider, not because they’re badly trained or nasty, but because they were never bred to be easy. They were bred to be brilliant. And brilliance comes with fire.

Everyone is asking the same question: where are the safe, do-it-all horses?

They still exist, but they’re rare, and when you “do” find one, expect a five-figure price tag. Even riding schools are struggling to source reliable horses for their lesson programs. Young riders are being mounted on horses far too sharp for their stage. And in many cases, novice riders are being pushed toward ex-racehorses simply because they can’t afford anything else.

Which, ironically, often works out better than expected because thoroughbreds, for all their reputation, are frequently more rideable than a modern-day warmblood bred for explosive power. So which is something I’m glad about to see the rise of the TB again but issue is a novice buying a off track TB because it’s “cheap”

And maybe here’s the real question, is the problem with the horses being bred? Or is it with the riders trying to ride them? Or, more likely… is it both?

We’re in a strange place where horses are getting sharper, more sensitive, and bred for athletic brilliance. while riders are getting less educated, less experienced, and more reliant on shortcuts. Time in the saddle is down. Lessons are seen as optional. And when things go wrong, instead of going back to basics, people go bit shopping. That combination is a recipe for trouble.

Let’s talk about labels, too. The term “spicy” is now being thrown at everything. Even Connemaras, one of the most reliable native breeds in the world, are being called “too sharp” by riders who perhaps need better foundations, not quieter horses.

We’ve reached a point where anything forward-thinking, opinionated, or clever is seen as dangerous. But horses haven’t changed our ability to ride and educate them has.

If you don’t think this is happening, scroll through your social media. Go through the endless “ISO” posts begging for a safe, sane all-rounder for under €10k. Read the DMs sitting in my inbox, desperate messages from riders who can’t find anything suitable that doesn’t come with a hefty price tag or fire-breathing temperament. Watch the young, genuinely committed riders trying to school ( which is rare) their warmbloods quietly, often being overwhelmed by sensitivity, tension, and reactivity that wasn’t designed for the everyday rider in the first place.

This isn’t a niche problem. It’s a tidal wave.

The demand is there. Riding schools, pony clubs, riding clubs, grassroots eventers, leisure riders, older riders, novice riders, they all want the same thing: a horse that’s safe, fun, and rideable. Not a Grand Prix prospect. Just something sane.

And this isn’t a short-term trend. It’s not going to change in four years when the current foals are backed. The need for reliable, rideable horses will still be there. So why aren’t more breeders producing for that market?

If we keep going this way, breeding narrowly for top-end competition, ignoring the needs of the vast majority, we’re setting ourselves up for a future where horse ownership becomes unsustainable for everyday riders.

Fewer people will ride. Confidence will be lost. Horses will be sold on and on through unsuitable homes. And the pool of horses that can safely introduce new riders to the sport will continue to shrink until it’s almost gone.

It’s simple. We need to start valuing the ordinary horse again.

We need breeders to realise that not every foal has to be destined for five-star. That a kind temperament, good brain, and willingness to learn are “just” as valuable, sometimes more so than a massive jump or floaty trot.

We need to breed for riders who ride after work. Riders who want to enjoy their horses, not survive them. Riders who are in this for love not medals.

Because if we don’t? We’ll lose the joy, the accessibility, and the future of the horse world altogether.

03/25/2025

Hear! Hear!

02/01/2025

Breeding is a labor of love. It’s the only way it makes sense!

08/30/2024

So much, THIS!

Working with young horses is tough.

And not just in the "hold on and hope you stay in the saddle" kind of way.

No one warns you how challenging it truly is. How often you'll doubt yourself, wondering: Am I doing this right? Am I moving too fast? Too slow? Is this too much? Not enough? You'll constantly be questioning your approach, trying to figure out the best way forward while tuning out the opinions of the trainer down the road or the livery next door, who throws judgmental glances every time you do groundwork.

No one tells you how, on some days, you'll feel like you're failing. You'll question if this horse would be better off with someone else, convincing yourself you're either wasting their potential or outright ruining them. After all, there are four-year-olds excelling in young horse classes while yours is still struggling to trot in a straight line.

No one tells you how attached you'll become. This horse is your baby, maybe one you helped bring into the world. Every setback feels personal, like a wound to your heart. You care so deeply about their well-being that it physically hurts when things go wrong. You’ll also become fiercely protective—God help anyone who dares to criticize your horse.

No one tells you how humbling, even brutal, these horses can be. They'll expose every weakness you have and practically shout it from the rooftops. While they are forgiving, they have a way of knocking you down a peg, reminding you there's always more work to be done.

No one tells you how these horses will change you. They'll force you to look inwards, to question everything you thought you knew. If you thought you had everything figured out, this horse will quickly show you that you don't. But they'll also ignite in you a fierce determination to prove everyone wrong and show them what you saw in this horse from the very beginning.

No one quite tells you how difficult young horses can be, but anyone who's been through it knows...

As tough as they are, they’re absolutely worth it.

04/20/2024

There's a famous story of Pablo Picasso.

He was enjoying a meal at a restaurant when a man interrupted him, handed him a napkin and asked:

“Could you sketch something for me? I’ll pay. Name your price.”

Picasso took the napkin, pulled a charcoal pencil from his pocket and started sketching. Using only a few strokes, he drew a goat that was unmistakably a Picasso. He held it up for the man to see.

The man smiled and reached to take the sketch. But Picasso withheld it.

“That will be $100,000.” Picasso said.

The man was astonished. “$100,000?! You drew that in 30 seconds!”

Picasso crumpled up the napkin and stuffed it in his pocket.

“You're wrong.” he said.

“It's taken me 40 years to do that.”

Know your worth.

04/07/2024

Eeenie Meanie Miney Mo. Which test strip is accurate though?

03/09/2024

03/03/2024

Excellent info! Midwest Region Pony Club

02/29/2024