Nahshon Cook Horsemanship

18/08/2025

Here's the second re-post about Xodo that some people asked me to share again.

18/08/2025

Here's the first post about Xodo that some people asked me to post again.

16/08/2025

Inca: Inca is a twelve year old, Grand Prix, Lusitano gelding. In this clip we're working on out three-tempi canter changes on the diagonal.

16/08/2025

Pal: A 12 year old Iberian Sport Horse gelding who has just begun his training at the Grand Prix Level (with me) schooling piaffe in-hand on the wall.

He used to be terrified of in-hand work on the wall because of previous traning from his past situationship.

This is our first shot of extended work in-hand on the wall in about a year. Pal did an absolutely brilliant job.

16/08/2025

Jay: A 12 year old Lusitano gelding in trot work. In this clip we school half-steps, a little piaffe, trot-walk-trot transitions in half-pass and some extended trot.

In the piaffe work, there are moments that he dips behind the verticle for a moment. This is because he was originally taught to piaffe on the forehand by holding his face in while being touched on the croup with the stick.

We've gotten the triangulation pretty much fixed, and his head position is staying more consistent.

16/08/2025

Tobold: 25 year old Grand Prix Lusitano stallion doing canter work today in a snaffle bit with no noseband. He's 14.3h.

In this video go from do a transition from. Two to one-time lead changes on the diagonal. The missed changes in the one's were my fault.

16/08/2025

Tobold: A 25 year old, 14.3h, Grand Prix, Lustiano stallion in a canter volte in-hand to the left.

Note: If you listen, you will hear him gring his teeth, it's lessening as he becomes more proficient in Baucher's flexions.

He's been a teeth-grinder, since he was imported as a six year old.

16/08/2025

An update on Xodo: Xodo is the 23 year old Lusitano with DSLD and PSSM2 that I wrote about on here a few months back. As of right now, his pasterns have stayed lifted for over a year, after having been dropped for, I think, two years. He and I have been working together for a year-and-a-half.

This time last year, he couldn't walk around the area, in-hand, more thank ten steps without taking a break.

It's documented by ultrasound images that scar tissue has substituted the space where his suspensory ligaments once were.

In an effort to share more of my work, I'm sharing some video of our work session this morning. We're working on a big trot half-pass on the zig-zag from left to right.

A few steps in to the right half-pass he has a bit of a slip-step: that's his right quadricep waking up. This is what rehab sometimes looks like in real life!

Progress!

10/08/2025

I was trying to explain this to a young trainer a few weeks ago. These words do a much more beautiful job than I did.

The Art of Producing the High-Level Horse

In today’s world, where goals are king, results are worshipped, and egos often take the reins, we’ve lost touch with something essential: the art of the journey. The quiet, thoughtful process of developing a horse, not just for performance, but for partnership.

Too often, the pursuit of high-level training becomes a checklist of movements, an external badge of status. Grand Prix as the pinnacle. Piaffe, passage, pirouette all proof of success. But we rarely stop to ask: Success by whose measure? And at what cost?

Because if a horse’s well-being were truly at the centre of our goals and not just a footnote in our mission statements our training would look radically different. It would move slower. It would feel softer. It would sound quieter. And it would be far more beautiful.

Producing a high-level horse is not about simply teaching them the movements required on a score sheet. It’s about cultivating a horse who is sound in body, stable in mind, and joyful in spirit. It’s about shaping one who offers those movements willingly, expressively, even playfully. Not as a result of pressure, punishment, or the clever placement of aids that corner them into compliance but from a place of physical readiness and emotional trust.

And this……….this is where the art comes in!

Imagine dressage as a painting. Each training session is a brushstroke, delicate, deliberate, layered. The impatient artist might throw out the canvas at the first mistake. But the true artist? They work with the paint, blend it, adjust it, stay curious. They know that beauty often lives in the imperfection, in the subtle corrections, in the layers of time and care.

The same is to be said in riding: the art lies not in domination, but in dialogue. Every stride, every transition, every still moment is part of an evolving composition. The rider’s aids are not commands but questions; the horse’s responses are not obedience but answers. Together, you create something greater than the sum of its parts.

The highest levels of dressage are not the goal. They are the byproduct of a thousand conversations, a thousand small moments where the rider listens, adjusts, supports, and receives. When done well, Grand Prix is not a performance. It is the horse’s voice, amplified through movement.

To produce a horse to that level is to understand that their body is not a tool, but a home. Their mind, not a machine, but a mirror. Their spirit, not a resource, but a companion.

This is not just training a horse
It is stewardship.
It is art
And it begins not with ambition,
but with reverence.

09/08/2025

Howdy. So, I just wanted to say that I am learning to be more comfortable about having some of the pieces of my work with horses being recorded that my practice is availabe to people who are interested in watching. Hence, the short video of me and Inca playing with the two-time changes the other day.

That said, I'm also learning to be comfortable allowing my training and rehab work be watched be more people in person. To help me in that vein, next year we're inviting small groups of folk to the dressage and being with horses sanctuary that I work out of in Wisconsin.

Each group is going to be made up a max of twenty people. I posted this a few months ago. More than half of the slots were sold. It's not ny goal to sell it out. But, I do want to offer something for those interested since I'm not doing public clincs again next year.

So, If you'd like information about it, and haven't reached out, please send an email to [email protected], and I will get back to you.

I think it should be noted that this is a sharing of my training and rehab process and practice with some of the horse that I work with, and not a show. Everything that I do with them revolves around them. They are an extraordinary herd.

I will be having two of the weekends recorded and made availabe, also.

Thank you.

07/08/2025

I use Baucher's methods (as I understand them and in the appropriate dosage amount, and time) a lot in my work with the horses under my personal care. I have found that in Baucher's way, very few horses are impossible. And since real work matters, you also have to know what you're doing.

That said, I also let them stretch long and low, but usually not in the beginning, and only in as much as each horse's individual dispositions allow.

I mostly practice long and low as an excerice for my medium and advanced level horses, because of the calmness of heart, the clairty of mind, and physical strength that the balance requires (as you can see in my previous post with Inca-binka.)

Paul Belasik has a new book on how long and low negatively effects High School work. When incorrectly applied, I've found this point of view to be true.That said, I'm super excited to read his is new work once it arrives. I'm also super excited to be reciveing this new translation of Baucher the in mail soon.

"The reader, whose sensitivity resonates with the New Method, will appreciate the alternative to other methods of riding on the market and which have in common the fundamental flaw of relying on rein tension.

By adopting the Method of Riding based on new principles, the rider will obtain a horse that is easy and pleasant to ride, with regular gaits.

The Method allows us to understand to what extent Baucher was a pioneer in regulation. His method overturns all existing methods by giving the means of riding a light horse, a horse as brilliant as its conformation allows, one that carries itself without the help of aids, which is the very expression of perfect ergonomics of which lightness is the criterion. These qualities have inspired much debate, yet only a tiny fraction of horses truly benefit from them horses such as we practically never have the opportunity to see.

At a time when ethology and animal welfare have become a challenge facing civilisation, Baucher's Method is more relevant than ever.
- Dominique OLLIVIER (from the introduction to "Method of Riding", translated by Róisín Magee. Links in comments 👇)

06/08/2025

Aside from doing rehab for our equine friends, I'm also a Grand Prix Level dressage rider and trainer (I'm not sure how many of you know that about me.) Anyway here's a short video of me and Inca-binka playing with the two-time canter changes this evening.