KnP Training and Lessons

08/30/2025

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Roughly five thousand years ago on the Eurasian steppe, people began selecting horses not only for their strength but also for traits hidden in their DNA. A new genomic study points to two key regions of the horse genome that may have determined which animals could be saddled and steered. One gene, ZFPM1, influences anxiety and stress in other species. Its rise suggests early breeders favored calmer, more manageable animals.

The second, GSDMC, appears tied to the shape and stability of the spine. When this variant spread between 4,700 and 4,200 years ago, horses likely developed stronger backs and sturdier forelimbs. Such changes would have made them better able to carry a rider, a development that transformed human mobility and warfare. Ludovic Orlando, who led the research team, explained that the rapid spread of these traits shows how quickly people recognized and reinforced them through breeding.

Archaeological traces of early saddling and wear on horse teeth line up with the genetic timeline. The match between the physical record and the DNA record provides a compelling case that humans were deliberately shaping the rideability of horses at the dawn of the Bronze Age. While other genes and cultural innovations surely played a part, this discovery helps explain why wild herds became the trusted partners that carried humans across continents and into history.

07/31/2025

The Texas Animal Health Commission recommends this site for information on screwworms.

New World Screwworm Resources – A Website for Texans Identify Screwworm Quickly:Photos, symptoms and behavior signs Report Suspicions:Learn how to report suspected infestations of NWS Learn about the Pest:Learn how NWS spreads and how it was previously eradicated in the U.S. New World screwworm (N...

07/17/2025

Love this! https://www.facebook.com/share/1BeVLj3pDw/

Why I Don’t Disengage the Hindquarters

This might ruffle a few feathers—or it might just be your lightbulb moment.

Throughout our riding careers, regardless of discipline, we spend countless hours teaching horses to shift their weight onto their hindquarters and engage their back end. It's a foundational principle of balance, athleticism, and proper movement.

So why, then, do so many riders routinely ask their horse to disengage the hind—essentially shifting weight onto the forehand to move the hindquarters away? If that already sounds counterproductive, you’d be right.
Disengaging the hind isn’t a natural movement for horses. Watch them in the paddock—they use their hind end for power and stability, and their shoulders to turn. Yet, in the early 2000s, disengaging became all the rage. It was easy to teach, quick to achieve, and gave riders a false sense of accomplishment. But over time, it created horses that were hollow, heavy on the forehand, and disconnected through the body.

Some horses are particularly sensitive to this pattern. A client once brought me a horse who had attended a clinic where disengaging was drilled extensively. In just that short time, the horse became unbalanced, tense, and responsive in all the wrong ways—hollow through the back, reactive to the leg, and constantly dumping weight on the forehand. It took weeks of retraining just to undo the confusion.
Only once the horse began to shift weight back onto the hindquarters did we see real change: balance returned, steering improved, and the horse softened and began to re-engage through the core.

Do I teach disengaging? Occasionally, yes—but sparingly, and never as a repeated drill. I believe in having control over all four feet, especially in certain situations where it's necessary. But I don’t make a habit of it.
When we steer a horse correctly, we use their shoulders for direction. Think of the shoulders as your steering wheel, and the bit as the headlights. Overusing disengagement shifts the horse’s weight forward, locking up the shoulders and making steering more difficult. Riders then find themselves relying on the bit for control—something we work so hard to avoid.

And to those who say they use disengagement for “safety”: ask yourself this—if you're heading toward a potential accident, would you rather yank the handbrake and skid, or have the steering and balance to navigate around it? I know which one I’d choose.

So Where Do We Go From Here?
As riders, the question becomes—what’s the alternative to disengaging the hind?
The answer lies in the turn on the haunches. This natural, balanced movement keeps the horse’s weight where it belongs—on the hindquarters—while engaging the core, encouraging soft transitions, and promoting true body alignment. As your horse becomes more balanced and engaged, you’ll notice a lightness in both your hand and seat. Riding starts to feel effortless again—connected, responsive, and enjoyable.

Not sure where to begin? I’d love to help. Book a lesson with me and start building that balanced, responsive partnership from the ground up.

07/14/2025

It's been awhile but my schedule has opened up and I'm able to take on a few more regular lessons. I'm also hoping to get a few fall clinics scheduled soon.

05/01/2025

Taken a few weeks ago, we've been busy behind the scenes gearing up for new clinics, haul in lessons, and then some.

05/01/2025

😂 Thankfully it's been a few years.

03/26/2025

This! The difference in signal versus steering

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1EjM849x5d/

03/13/2025

True Story!

02/15/2025

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02/06/2025

❤️ The journey of horsemanship is never ending.

Before banging out another post today, I need to stop and do something, first.

I need to thank all of you who read Credo and Flint’s stories this week, who felt compassion for me—rather than ridicule, for I have been shoveling so much money into these two, on the quest to find that elusive thing called The Answer—and then, you sent your well-wishes and also, your money. I'm rendered speechless.

Social media isn’t supposed to work this way! It’s flaky and judgmental, with creeps and stalkers and words meant to hurt! Isn’t it? Isn’t that what we’re told to believe? Anyway, you folks have made me see that we’re all real people, no matter where we live and what our profile pictures look like, that we DO care and we do good works in the world around us.

Credo and Flint and I can only THANK YOU and vow to do our best to make things better.

***

Yesterday, in the dark, the wind, the fog and -30C/-22F temperatures, it was Cinnabar’s turn. There had been a last-minute cancellation at the vet/osteo clinic and they’d phoned to ask, would I want to brave the roads with ‘that other horse who might have geld scars’? Hell, yeah!

I mean, yes, please.

The truck was plugged-in the absolute minimum of time, to allow life to pulse through her veins. The trailer was hooked-up—and why, oh, why, is everything so much harder at -30, than it is on an ordinary day? Cinny was caught, the ice chiseled from out of his feet, he was quickly rugged up and loaded. And we were off.

What I saw yesterday during his appointment, was an unreal combination of science and mystery. The eighteen-year-old, high-mileage gelding was given a lameness evaluation, a quick round of osteo to pinpoint problem areas and then, he was sedated to go into the stocks for a pelvic examination.

Only with an internal look and feel, would the vet be able to see whether the geld scars had shrunken and thickened, if they had adhered to the abdominal wall. If so, were there other organs compromised? In Cinnabar’s case, it was yes and yes and yes.

At one point, the vet stopped with her arm deep inside my horse's body, turned to her assistant and quietly said, “We’re working on a career horse today.”

It took me a moment to realize that the extent of this gelding's internal scarring was such that she would long remember and refer back to his case, in the years ahead. A dubious honour, if ever there was, for our game little working man.

It was explained to me that while the term ‘geld (or gelding) scar’ is still a new one in much of the world of equine health, it has long been an issue for the males who are surgically castrated, no matter the age of the horse.

Due to how the horse was gelded in the first place and any subsequent complications—such as undue swelling or bleeding and whether or not the cords running to the testicles were able to ‘snap’ back into position, without healing in a ‘stuck’ or pulled way—meant the horse stood a good chance of healing poorly. Healing that would cause the horse to endure a life of chronic pain.

What I'm sharing with you is not a scientific document on the issue of geld scars. It is what I saw and retained in the words of a layman and if it intrigues you, if it makes you wonder about your own horse(s), please take the initiative to find and speak with equine specialist vets who will listen to you and then, who are willing to guide you.

I learned that when scarring occurs, in any part of the body, the tissues shorten and thicken. We’ll see this in the proud flesh that often occurs in a bad wire cut on a pastern. The same thing can happen internally when a horse is gelded. Breed, size or age of the horse aside, all geldings are at some risk of this happening.

New teaching methods that take into account the amount of bleeding and the position of the cords are reducing the number of geld scar cases, moving forward. This is very good news.

For the horses who were gelded in the past, however, many of them were not so lucky. When I asked the percentage of geldings who have scarring issues and chronic internal pain, my vet was unsure of an exact figure. Seeing mainly horses who need manual releasing of this internal scar tissue in her practice, she admits her own estimate may well be skewed.

“Maybe 75-80% of all aged and working geldings?” she surmised. That’s rather a lot, in a longstanding problem that many of us are only hearing about now!

The degree of discomfort a horse might feel varies, of course. From a mild pulling between the hind legs, to scarring that has the bladder adhered to the side of the body cavity, lesions running right up underneath the topline, the spleen pulled backwards and to the left, hind limbs that have been unable to move freely which results in career-threatening arthritic changes… these are just some of the symptoms we’ve seen in Cinnabar and very likely, in Credo, too.

Cinny was fortunate in that the health care team was prepared to work on him straightaway. He would be spared the months' long wait list. The sorrel stood in the stock, totally relaxed and chill with sedation, while the vet palpated him rectally, along with a hand-held probe for the guidance of internal ultrasound.

On the monitor, his scarring was extreme. Suddenly, I was able to see why he was always ‘quirky’, with reactions to saddling and cinching, always ‘cow-kicking’ at his tummy as though colic was brewing. Why he stepped quite short behind, oh-so-pleasant to sit at a jog trot over long hours on the ranch, mind. And why he was beginning to show chronic lameness in the shoulders. This, because the horse wasn’t ‘moving through’, or truly pushing off, from behind.

I was getting a scientific window into those age-old terms of ‘throughness’ and 'straightness', words that don't just mean 'lovely to watch and ride'. A horse must go well, in a ‘biomechanically correct’ fashion, to use another trending term, if he is to enjoy a long life of wellness and pain-free riding. Period.

After the adhesions around his bladder and spleen were pulled apart—the vet said that it was like removing sticky price tags, or separating strips of Velcro—she then changed gloves and examined Cinny from inside his waterworks, below. After all was deemed clear from that angle, he awoke to have a second round of osteopathy.

Regarding the horse's devolving posture, we have our work cut out for us. Due to the constant tightening and shortening of his tissues within, Cinnabar is actually flattening through the croup and starting to show a swayed back. This isn’t a new thing but will have been happening over time and it is painful for a horse, especially when carrying a load.

Cinny will have five days' rest and with any luck, Mother Nature will take pity on me and we’ll have a run of warmer weather for the prescribed in-hand exercises to help rebuild his posture. Tucking his loin, cat stretches, trot poles and lateral stretching are just some of what's on the menu, along with further rebuilding his working movement, later on. All these are doable and well within my wheelhouse.

I’m actually looking forward to working with this beloved family horse, doing my best to make sure his final chapters are good ones, free of any regrets. When we know better, we can do better, right? Cinnabar will also be on daily 4-CYTE, the joint supplement that in 84% of recorded cases, has been proven to reduce the symptoms of osteo-arthritic changes in horses and in dogs. (Only Australia, so far, allows it for human use.)

Looks like I’ll be busy out at the corrals, working with these teen geldings who will need supplementing and exercise therapy for the remainder of their working lives.

This, too, is horsemanship, I have decided. It ain’t all ribbons, pretty pictures and bragging rights.

When it comes to health and wellness, we have to see it to soothe it. The sheer relief that comes from knowing where you stand, what you are dealing with, that you’re not going crazy or imagining things, is immense. Whether it's physical or emotional in origin, we have to name it to tame it!

This was the beautiful view on our drive home.