Heritage Stables

12/19/2025

Why contact?

Years ago, I was bought into the notion that anything worth doing should be done on a loose rein. I really struggled in my lessons to hear about contact because I had poor associations with it - people telling rider's to hold against the horse, like fighting a big fish on a line into a boat. It appeared to me a contest of wills, and I was completely uninterested in that feeling.

My teacher often talked about the connection being like dancing, but I had never felt anything like this. She talked about funneling the hind leg without ever trapping it, and keeping the full length of the neck intact in the contact. "Hold the horse's hand, but don't ever restrict the movement," she'd say.

It all sounded good, but every time I picked up the reins I just felt heaviness, resistance, or my horses hid from my hand. She would bring my awareness back to my seat every time and away from my hands.

"The fingers just capture what the seat creates" she would say -

But it was years of practicing with my seat before I would understand the contact.
A following seat, a directing seat, a seat that was soft but very stable: my teacher had this, and I spent years and years working toward it, understanding finally just what it meant to feel the hind leg through my seat but not always able to stay with it, and often blocking it.

But those times when the contact feels good is magical - unlike anything I've ever achieved on a loose rein. It was like being in close with someone you love very much - taking their hand and swinging in a dance. Feeling everything there is to know about them through your hand: their thoughts, their breathing, the way they feel about you and eveyrthing to do with you. There is no hiding from each other on the contact.

Exactly where the hind leg is in what phase of each stride - where it's going and how that connects to how they're feeling inside. Recieving the fullness of their trust from hind leg all the way into my hand.

You don't NEED contact for riding - you can walk trot and canter on a loose rein. But it's like any relationship - it can go as deep as you want it to go, as intricate, nuanced and beatiful as you'd imagine and more.

And like anything else, it can be poisoned. Like all tools, it can be flatted and cheapened, and downright misused. It can be weaponized against the horse or even against a student -

But it also bridges us into a flow, a beauty, a magic, available for anyone with the discipline to work toward this kind accurary - available to anyone who can be trusted with the power of having thr entirety of a horse's body in your hand and use it only to create art.e

12/13/2025

12/13/2025

9 year old Warlander gelding preview! Still getting to know him! He will be available to see and try soon !🦄 Contact Julie 262-527-7311

12/12/2025

Charles had a brilliant way of reminding us that obedience isn’t something we take from a horse, it’s something the horse offers when the communication is fair and the leadership is kind.

His words matter because they shift the responsibility back to us.

If we want harmony, we have to create the conditions where the horse feels safe enough, confident enough, and understood enough to want to try for us.

That’s what compassionate leadership looks like in classical training: Clear, appropriate expectations, adjusting the questions when necessary, always with a genuine respect for the horse.

When we meet the horse this way, obedience stops being a forced expectation and becomes something the horse offers, not something we take.

11/20/2025

We ❤️you Jenny

11/14/2025

11/12/2025

Humility, perspective, and a sense of humor.

All these things are free, and very valuable: though I feel it's safe to say they often come at great cost.

A life well lived can give us these.

Humility comes from experience, and spending ample time around those far beyond our capabilities. Humility comes from accurately assessing our own skills due to hours upon hours in pens sorting colts, loading tough horses in trailers, putting first rides on babies, and developing horses into a refined way of going. Hundreds upon hundreds of these will teach us all we don't know - what we thought works for most won't work for some outliers, and so humility is born.

Perspective, again, comes from that same well - teaching enough people to realize they don't all think like you (and shouldn't). Seeing enough horses to realize the staunch views you held just don't hold up, and developing some new views as a result. It's gaining flexibility to the moment, and yet greater adherence to the principle that drives you. Perspective is born over time, through a humble outlook on the work, and on life.

And finally, a sense of humor can be born. It's just not that serious. You are not that serious. And though everything is important, nothing is. There is nothing to prove - it is all exactly what it is. And that leads to a lot of things being pretty dang funny. A sense of humor gives you a whole lot of freedom to move through life, to enjoy people you didn't think you could enjoy, to work and develop horses you didn't think you could work with, and to live a great life: a quality life where you are open enough to give back.

These are free - anyone can have them. They don't belong to some mystical guru on top of a mountain, they belong to you. But they come at the loss of much: rigidity, self importance, and the desire to prove oneself.

As they say in the movie Fight Club, my favorite line - "It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything."

It's not so serious as we think, this life - in fact, once you let go of "being" anything, it's pretty damn amazing.

11/05/2025

Student: Master, what is suppleness?

Guru: Suppleness is the horse’s way of saying, “I trust you.”

It is not merely bend or looseness, it is permission.
A supple poll is a whispered yes.
A soft ribcage is the horse opening a door and inviting you in.

When the horse releases tension, he is telling you he believes you will not misuse what he gives.

Suppleness is not flexibility of the body; it is faith made visible.

Student: But how do I create suppleness?

Guru: You cannot bend that which is braced against you.
Instead, offer the horse a reason to release.
Soften your jaw; his poll will echo you.
Unclench your thoughts; his back will uncoil.
Suppleness begins in the rider, and the horse only answers.

10/29/2025

Happy Halloween from our barn to yours🎃

10/28/2025

Every day there are clinics and riding lessons and round pen demos all over the world. There are lectures and videos and books about riding, how to ride, how to train.

But I think what any rider needs most can be encapsulated in just two words, "seat" and "attitude."

One is a physical skill. The other is an emotional quality.

When a rider has what is called "a good seat," or "an independent seat, " that rider's seat meshes with the motion of the swinging back of the moving horse in a harmonious fashion.

When a rider has achieved an independent seat, that rider can have soft, independent arms and hands. The rider with an independent seat and arms and hands will be able to be virtually a part of the moving, breathing horse in ways that do not interfere with or hinder or unbalance the movements of the horse.

The other word, "attitude," refers to whether or not the rider is in control of his or her emotions and thoughts. A "good" attitude describes the rider who is patient, and empathetic, and stays calm, who does not get frustrated or have issues with temper, and who tries not to use force or coercion, and tries to become educated in better ways.

If a rider has a good seat and a good attitude, the horses that rider rides have little to fear. If a rider lacks either of those, it doesn't matter how many clinics they attend or lessons they take or books they read or videos they watch, because in so many cases they already know what they need, and are simply trying to avoid the reality of having to achieve them.

(Photo--Klaus Balkenhol and Goldstern)