Hooves and Hands Equine Education (with Kristel Holveck)

08/02/2023

Love this!

“You look like you’re knitting a sweater!”

Pretty sure in riding (especially dressage) that is one harsh insult, intended to invoke the image of someone who is overly busy - hands pulling left, right, left, right. 😣 Certainly not something we want.

But as a rider, you do need to be *creative* with the contact, to communicate something to your horse. When I was learning to ride, I thought “good hands” meant hands that were perfectly still, doing absolutely nothing.

And then when I was a working student for Lilo Fore, one day she yelled at me out of exasperation, “ELIZA!!!! Good hands doesn’t mean you do NOTHING!! You must USE your hands!!!” (In her thick German accent at a very high volume 😳)

I gradually realized that if your hands are perfectly still, they are not moving WITH the horse, and they are not helping him in any way. And the horses need our help! Over time I got braver about learning to try things with my hands. And yep, I did it wrong a lot at the beginning - too strong, too wimpy, holding too much, giving for too long. But as my seat became more and more independent, I could actually “make” something with my contact.

How do you use your hands effectively without looking like you are knitting? Remember, it's all about fostering a harmonious connection with our horses, one stitch at a time.🧶🐴 😜🧣


Image by Susan DiFelice Design

05/23/2023

Yay for nice weather!

04/27/2023

Melissa and her first ride on Persey! 🥳🥳🥳

04/27/2023

Having some fun in the sun! Jill and Mighty

04/12/2023

New blog post just finished. If you want to know more, feel free to reach out to me. Let me help you find the relaxtion for you and your horse.

Tension is the sum total of missed opportunities for relaxation Our number one job as a rider is to help our horse to maintain a soft, relaxed body and frame of mind. Tension is a vicious cycle: tension in the mind creates tension throughout the body, tension anywhere in the body creates tension in....

03/13/2023

Motivational Monday
Horses change lives. They give our young people confidence and self-esteem; they provide peace and tranquility to troubled souls; they give us hope! ~Toni Robinson

www.HorseTeacher.com

03/11/2023

Miss Persey showing her good (and not so good) side to her mom.

03/03/2023

Couldn't have said it better!

“Why don’t you show videos of yourself working with green horses, ir a horse with actual problems?”

This is feedback I get often and it makes my thinker think. It’s quite rare for me to come across horses who aren’t green or who don’t have problems. Even my own horses are an onion of issues, some made by others, many by me. When I select a horse for a video, it’s because I know there is something I can show that the public will likely be dealing with as well. It doesn’t look like a catastrophe because I am trying to show how to avoid that catastrophe and keep it smooth.

I think we’ve gotten so used to watching huge explosions, reformed by magician like work and having a horse drop to the ground to sleep immediately. That might be exciting to watch, and look cool, but so often those are extremely stressful events for the horse, and are more about the horseman showing off than about the horse. Good change can sometimes be dramatic, but most of the time the good horsemen I know are making smooth changes- and the horses don’t need to lie down and sleep it off because it was so overwhelming.

We’re disappointed with basics, we want our money back when we feel the work wasn’t “amazing” because all it offered was refining your basic skill.

Decades of selling packed up clinics and programs has left people feeling they should be getting MORE, I want more exciting videos, I want more exciting content, why is that horse not flying around? Consumers are filled with suspicion that they are being duped at every turn, and to some degree that is fair- they have been for decades and often are.

I believe strongly that as a teacher part of my job is to retrain the public eye in what’s fair to see and expect. I’m not going to spin the horse out of control for demos sake when the solution could be just to not p**s it off in the first place. Most of the time the explosions happen because big signs were missed, and my job is to read those signs and prevent the explosions from happening in the first place.

I’m not going to compromise teaching very basic work, because the public doesn’t need to learn to spin around and tap dance and do fantastical mystery tour stuff , they need to learn to breathe and walk well and hold their lead rope with feel and sit well- even my own lessons I get include this. You never stop refining the basics, and a true horseman knows this.

So if you truly learn to refine the basics, your work with horses can look boring, and as if the horse doesn’t have any trouble, because you didn’t put him in trouble in the first place. That is the whole point of learning to handle horses well- not to show off, but to have something real to offer horses.

02/24/2023

😊🥰❤️

02/19/2023

02/16/2023

Don’t over complicate it....

There was a time when you were just happy to ride, happy to be in the company of horses. It didn’t matter if you could execute a perfect lead change or jump double clear rounds. You were just happy to have two feet in the stirrups and ears leading the way.

You didn’t care about having the best tack, the coolest boots, or the newest hi-tech breeches. An old ex-racehorse, your favourite, and wearing a worn out pair of jeans with a colourful t-shirt did the job just fine.

You didn’t spend the days between Christmas and New Year planning a heavy schedule of training sessions, clinics and competitions. You threw tinsel round your pony’s neck and went hacking with friends. The new year was just another 365 days to go riding.

Don’t forget that you started this sport because you loved the animal. You loved the rush of galloping across open fields and the serenity of watching horses quietly graze in the sun. You do this because there is nothing on this earth that makes you feel more alive than being on the back of a horse, so don’t overcomplicate it.

Enjoy the little things, because one day you will look back and realise... they weren’t little at all.

02/09/2023

Meeting of the minds.🤣

02/09/2023

I am back at it and going to try to begin making regular blog posts. Bear with me as I balance barn life with my life outside of the barn.

"The knowledge of the nature of a horse is one of the first foundations of the art of riding it, and every horseman must make it his principal study." ~Francois Robichon de La Gueriniere So, what is the nature of a horse? Horses cannot learn the same way we do, we must teach to their natural instinc...

02/07/2023

These two have been working so hard on their partnership and it is paying off! They had a very successful first show!

02/05/2023

I've been asked by several people now to do some clinics this summer. If I do, what topic(s) would you like to see?

02/04/2023

Little miss sassy pants, AKA Persey, loving the mud this time of year! She cleans up pretty nicely though! Melissa Beebe

02/02/2023

A huge thank you to Sami Leffler and Cindy Proctor for allowing me to work with this gorgeous girl! 4 year old BLM mustang (with Hanovarian DNA 😆) She is so fun!