For the best experience possible in raising and caring for horses, it is important to match the rider and the horse. Searching options in horse ownership is exciting, but it is necessary to foresee the immediate and long-term expenses involved.

It would make no sense to purchase a spunky race horse, and expect the animal to be docile for a child rider. By the same token, an old, docile mare would not be much of a challenge for a person with some riding ability. It is important to know what you want your horse to do before you buy one, because certain breeds have differing abilities.

After choosing the breed and the seller, you should ride the horse to get a feel for its responsiveness and temperament. If there is any reason for discomfort on your part, you may have to renew your search for the right animal.

A veterinary examination of the horse should be performed before buying it. If the value and the purpose of the horse are significant, there may be a need for a more in-depth medical screening.

If all goes well with the medical screening, and the purchase is a go, then you are a proud horse owner. Other decisions will now have to be made regarding shelter and feeding. You may have the space to stable a horse. If not, consideration must be given to where you will keep your new pet.

If it is necessary to board your horse elsewhere, it is important to remember that animals living in barns are totally dependent on people for their sustenance. Some things to notice when considering boarding stable are: quality of the hay and grain, condition and cleanliness of stalls, and general condition of other animals housed there.

Wherever your horse is housed, it will require feed, water, and forage. A trusted veterinarian can develop a feeding plan that will promote the well-being of your horse. The type and amount of feed you give your horse will depend upon its health, its nutritional needs, and its activity level.

Horses need a great deal of water, so their buckets will have to be filled regularly. Cleaning the buckets often will be necessary to keep the water clean. While refilling the water buckets, you may want to take that time to clean the stall. Mucking the stall is the daily process of picking out the urine and manure, while letting the dry, clean bedding sift through. Some types of bedding are wood shavings, sawdust, and straw.

Your horse is dependent on you to care for its body. Initially, the horse may be fearful of being touched or handled. However, if you speak in a soft tone, the animal will be calmed and ready to be groomed. The disposition of a horse can be improved by daily contact with a caregiver. Brushing its coat and combing the mane and tail can be good for the horse and the handler.

Horses are like humans in that they need comfort when they stand and walk. Horse's hooves should be trimmed about every six to eight weeks. A horse pick should be used daily to remove any stones or other foreign objects that can be lodged in their soft tissue. It is wise to protect the hooves by applying horseshoes.

Raising and caring for horses can be a very rewarding way to pass time. Horse ownership is a big responsibility, and helpful information is available online at various websites on equine matters.

If you want to be successful in caring for and owning horses, tap into all the help you can get on the Web. Articles that tell you everything you need to know are readily available when you know where to look.

Posted under Horses

Developing an independent seat is absolutely essential if a rider aspires to the upper levels of any equestrian sport. An independent seat is wonderful to have, beautiful to see, but difficult to describe in words. A rider with an independent seat can move each body part independently. Each part of his or body is flexible enough and strong enough to do its job without any compensation in another part.

Horses can jump sideways in the blink of an eye, rear, buck, or reach speeds over 25 miles per hour in a matter of seconds. They are also capable of using that physical power to perform incredible athletic feats like jumping, dressage, cutting, or reining. Our desire to become partners with our horses in those athletic endeavors makes us willing to take the risk of being thrown off or finding ourselves on a panicked runaway.

A bad experience, usually something that could not have been avoided no matter what the rider did, can turn healthy respect to fear. Once a rider has been physically hurt in an accidentor even just really frightened it can take a while to rebuild confidence. The old rough-and-ready, cavalry-style philosophy promised that if you just got right back on again, everything would be fine. However, suppressing fear seldom works. Neither does it help to tell someone to "just get over it."

Mounted riders can work without stirrups or reins on a longe line or in a jumping lane to achieve balance without gripping. The more control a rider develops over his or her own body movements, the more precisely he or she will be able to use body language to communicate with a horse whether on the ground or from the saddle.

Applying an aid with the correct timing is just the first step. You also need to remove the aid as soon as the horse responds correctly. A constant pressure goes away. The horse simply learns to ignore it as having no meaning. So, while the pressure of the girth around his chest may communicate to the horse that you intend to ride, it does not give him any information about shape, pace, or direction at any point during your ride. Similarly, if a rider maintains her balance by hanging on the bit and reins, the horse starts to ignore the bit. If the rider stays on by gripping with her thighs or lower leg, the horse learns to ignore the leg.

As we train horses, we first show them what we want. Then we ask them. When they understand what we are asking, then we can tell them to do it using the correct timing of our aids. If a trained horse that we are sure understands what we are telling them to do chooses to ignore us, we can reinforce our aids with whip or spur. Timing is critical for correct reinforcement. Smacking a horse with a crop after he has refused a jump, for example, is totally useless. The reinforcement must come at the exact moment you feel the refusal starting as you are approaching the jump. When you reinforce your aids using correct timing, you do not interrupt the horse's rhythm or forward movement.

The rider who is gripping with her thighs and knees and whose heels angle downward from a locked ankle may look like she has good form. She may even win ribbons. However, her stiff form blocks full communication with her horse. Her aids will be like cell phone static. They may be garbled. Worse still, the batteries may go dead and communication may stop altogether because the horse starts to ignore her constant aid pressures.

Training methods aimed at making the trainer "dominant" work only as long as nothing scarier or more dominant than the trainer is in the horse's immediate environment. Handling techniques that depend on chain shanks or war bridles do not result in permanent changes in the horse's attitude or true confidence on the part of his handler. We use a groundwork system we call "heeding" because it teaches the students to pay attention to their horses at all times and teaches the horse to pay attention to its handler at all times. Through consistent handling with rhythm and relaxation from the moment they enter a horse's stall until they put him away, they learn how to develop a rapport with their horses. The goal is to make the horse feel like the trainer or rider is always the safest place to be whenever exciting or unusual things happen.

Posted under Horses

Our goal as we move up the riding tree is to develop an independent seat so that we can influence the horse. An independent seat means that you are not relying on anything but balance to hold you on the horse. You use an athletic muscle tension to help you stay in balance but you are relaxed, not gripping with your muscles to hold you on the horse. Once you are in control of your own body, you can begin to influence the horse and control its body.

The first step in developing an independent seat is learning to relax while sitting on the horse. The second is learning to balance your own weight over the horse's center of gravity. The third is learning to feel and follow the horse's motion at the walk, trot, and canter.

"Following" does not mean just sitting and passively letting the horse's motion swing you along. It is an active muscular activity that aligns your rhythm with the horse's rhythm and puts the two of you in harmony. The rider needs to be aware of various body parts. She needs to be riding in balance, using elastic, athletic muscle tension to help her stay in balance rather than tight, gripping, nervous muscle tension.

A lot of riders carry tension somewhere in their bodies and it commonly shows up as tension in the lower leg, a stiffening of the seat so that you can't follow the horse's motion. So the first thing an instructor should work on is relaxation. If you have stiffness problems, your instructor might have you bounce around without stirrups until your muscles and joints let go of their tension and you can be as loose as a rag doll. Remember, your joints are shock absorbers, especially your hips. Any joint that is braced or tense makes it harder for your body to absorb the shock of the motion of the horse.

A good instructor will choose school horses that can help a rider in whatever phase she is in at the moment. A good schoolmaster can help a rider become more relaxed and balanced so she can learn to follow the motion. Many instructors use longeing to help riders develop a feel for the horse's motion.

This understanding of it is fairly simple. But mentally understanding it and applying it physically takes a lot of hard work and mental concentration. It takes a lot of hours in the saddle on a lot of different horses to achieve a truly independent seat and there are going to be a lot of times when your progress seems very uneven. You get it on one horse but not another. You jump ahead on one horse but fall back on another. The key is to accept the feedback you get from each horse you ride to help you pinpoint weak areas.

Eventually, you need to be relaxed at all gaits on all kinds of horses. As you evaluate your own progress, however, you may find that you can be relaxed at the walk on any horse but you cannot yet be relaxed at the trot on some horses or at the canter on others. What you want is to feel relaxed all the time but in the beginning you are only going to experience it on some horses at some gaits.

Our typical student riding at least twice a day spends about a year developing the necessary skills and muscles to be able to ride at all three gaits first, with relaxation; second, in balance; and third, while following the horse's motion. During that year, there will be times when the rider might easily achieve all three of those goals at the walk but find that it is really difficult to stay steady over the horse's center of gravity at the trot. Or she has no problems with following the horse's motion at the walk and the trot but find she's unable to achieve the right degree of physical relaxation at the canter to follow the horse's motion on both leads.

Posted under Horses