KB Sport Horses LLC

08/19/2026

08/04/2026

We had an awesome crew this past weekend at Stableview and a great time! Love this barn family and these good horses! Some highlights:

🥇Makaylee Robinson and Quaisar were champion of the Low Adult Hunters Sunday
🥇Molly Manring and Wyatt’s Me were champion of the Low Adults Hunters Saturday
🥈Molly and Wyatt’s me were Reserve Champion of the Equitation on Saturday
🥈Lauren Gregg and Nothing But Flowers were reserve champion of the Limit Hunters
🥈Lauren Gregg and Nothing But Flowers were reserve champion of the Limit Eq
🥈 Autumn Mccullogh and Felix were second in the 1.0m stakes class
🥉Cyndi Carter and Wyatt’s Me were 3rd in the Limit Equitation and had other great ribbons
🥇 Tail Her Swift had a winning Crossrail trip piloted by Giselle Kennedy and got great miles and is on her way to being the cutest medium in the southeast 😊
👻Casper the Friendly Ghost was piloted by Emma Kettle and had a FANTASTIC first horse show debut. He just turned 5 on Monday and this pair is so fun to watch.

Great job team!

07/15/2026

Although my riders’ accomplishments in the show ring are important, I never underestimate the value of solid flatwork as the foundation that makes all the pieces come together in competition, Max Amaya writes. At home, we don’t spend much time jumping big courses; we save that for the show ring. Instead, we find ways to practice rideability and adjustability without raising fence height and putting extra pressure on the horses’ bodies. These are a few exercises I rely on at home in order to keep the horses in shape mentally and physically. Poles and cavaletti are not too demanding, so we can use them daily to maintain rideability.

1. Figure eight. I have one flatwork exercise I always turn to because it has the potential to be dynamic yet also simple. I set up two cavaletti on each long side of the arena, forming “lines” of five to seven strides, then I place one cavaletti at the midpoint of each short side and one right in the center of the ring. From an overhead perspective, it looks somewhat like a figure eight of cavaletti, though that’s not the way we typically ride it.

I begin by sending the horse down each long side and adjusting its stride accordingly. I ride a comfortable number, then add one stride, maybe add two strides, then take one stride away, and let the horse really practice its adjustability in this line.

Once the rideability on the straight line has been achieved, I begin to add in the bends and play with lengthening and shortening on a curve. This is where the exercise can be dynamic, and it prevents the horses from anticipating what’s coming. You can start on one long side, bend to the middle, ride to the opposite corner, bend to the end, and really take these cavaletti in a variety of directions, practicing lengthening and shortening the whole way around. You can get creative with it and practice your track and your horse’s ability to lengthen and cover the ground, then shorten its stride and come back to you.

📎 Continue reading more flatwork exercises at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2021/01/12/four-flatwork-exercises-to-increase-rideability-from-max-amaya/
📸 Max Amaya and Stella Wasserman © RandolphPR

07/11/2026

Awesome day at Big Cheese Eventing!! Addison and Hashbrown had their horse show debut and finished with a blue! Rebecca Abney knocked off the horse show dust and won her division with a 69%, and Corinne and Cirie did a fantastic job going up centerline for their first ever dressage test and I think might go back for more 😉 !

Thank you Kieran Alpin for your help today, And thank you BCE for another fun and great day.

07/07/2026

Our instincts are powerful, even when they are wrong.

In riding there are lots of them. Interfering by using too much hand ---Looking down---Jumping ahead of the motion--- Rounding our shoulders---Automatically thinking when the horse is sluggish from fatigue that he is “resisting”---Many more---.

And the best way to transform incorrect instincts into better conditioned responses is through training.

Maj. General Sid Shachnow was formerly the commanding general of all US Special Forces, and one time I was telling him that I was having a hard time getting a mutual friend of ours not to jump ahead of the motion. “It’s so instinctive, Sid,” I said.

Sid replied, “Denny, the most instinctive thing for a soldier when he is suddenly ambushed is to turn and run. And it’s the most likely to get him killed. At Bragg we train our soldiers to instantly run directly at the attackers firing their weapons, Now, Denny, if I can train my guys to run into live rifle fire, you can train someone to not jump up the neck”

He followed that with these five words. Write them down. Post them where you will see them often. They are the essence of teaching---

“TRAINING HAS TO OVERCOME INSTINCT.”

(Photo---Sid and Denny)

06/30/2026

Walk into any barn and within a few lessons you can feel the difference between an instructor who is just delivering content and one who is genuinely teaching. The horses go better and the students improve faster. The barn has an energy that is hard to name but impossible to miss. That difference does not come from a better arena or a fancier horse or a longer credential list. It comes from a set of habits and a way of thinking that the best instructors have developed often without ever being able to fully articulate what it is. Here is what separates an average instructor from a good one...

1. They teach the rider in front of them and not the rider they planned for
The best instructors walk to the arena with a plan and hold it loosely. They read the horse and rider within the first five minutes and adjust everything accordingly. The student who arrives tense and distracted after a hard week does not need the collected canter work you had planned. They need something that rebuilds their confidence and settles their nervous system first. The instructor who teaches their plan regardless of what the horse and rider are telling them is not teaching. They are just delivering content.

2. They know the difference between a skill problem and a confidence problem
A student who cannot execute a skill and a student who can execute the skill but does not trust themselves to do it require completely different responses. The first needs more progressive, technical work. The second needs space, success experiences, and an instructor who steps back instead of stepping in. Confusing these two problems and applying the wrong solution is one of the most common reasons students plateau and most instructors never stop to identify which problem they are actually dealing with.

3. They are genuinely curious about why
When something goes wrong in a lesson the average instructor corrects what they see. The best instructor asks why it happened. Why is that horse falling out through the shoulder on every right circle? Why does this rider always brace at the canter transition and not the trot? Why has this skill not stuck after six weeks of working on it? The habit of looking for the root cause rather than just addressing the symptom is what produces students who genuinely improve rather than students who temporarily fix one thing while the underlying problem keeps showing up somewhere else.

4. They make their students feel capable and not just corrected
There is an art to correction that the best instructors have developed and most never think about deliberately. It is not about being soft or avoiding hard feedback. It is about framing correction in a way that leaves the student feeling like improvement is possible and within their reach rather than feeling like they are fundamentally doing everything wrong. A student who leaves every lesson feeling capable and motivated comes back and tries harder next week. A student who leaves feeling criticized and overwhelmed quietly starts finding reasons not to rebook.

5. They never stop being students themselves
The instructors whose teaching stays sharp over a long career are the ones who never decided they already knew enough. They take lessons, audit clinics, read, and ask questions of people who know things they do not. They stay genuinely curious about horses and riding and the science of how people learn.

6. They protect their program like a professional
Clear policies. Consistent standards. Rates that reflect their actual value. Boundaries that hold regardless of who is pushing on them. The best instructors run their programs with the confidence of someone who knows what they offer is worth paying for and worth protecting. That professionalism is not separate from their teaching quality but it is part of it. Students trust an instructor who runs a tight professional program in a way they simply cannot trust one who bends every rule and apologizes for every rate.

7. They take the long view on every student
The best instructors are not optimizing for a good lesson this week. They are optimizing for a good rider in two years. That means sometimes slowing down when a student wants to go faster. It means rebuilding a foundation that was rushed the first time. It means making a decision that is right for the rider's long term development even when it is not what the rider or their parent wants to hear right now. Students who are taught by instructors who think this way become riders who last. And riders who last are the foundation of every great lesson program.

The gap between a good instructor and a great one is not usually found in the arena. It is found in how they think about teaching and about their students, about their program, and about what they are actually trying to build. The technical skills matter too but the mindset is what makes them stick.

What is the one thing that has made the biggest difference in your teaching over the years?

06/25/2026

06/01/2026

Wow! What an incredible weekend at Stable View!

A great reminder of what teamwork, kindness, and horsemanship can build. We have so many highlights from the weekend, and the horses were just absolute stars. Many of these horses we developed ourselves, and a few really awesome ones that we have lucked into having in the barn. (Sara Falcone, Kristi Roberson, Jessica Thaxton, Grace Johnson)

A few big weekend highlights:

🥇Macie and Tripp were champions of the limit equitation
🥇Holly and Cha-Cha were champion of the open hunters
🥈Emily and Clove were reserve champion of the open hunters
🥈Kate and Ozzie were reserve champions of the Low Child Equitation
🥇🥇🥇Jeff and Stewart, Kim and Busy, and Mischa and G all had clean, accurate and fast rounds in the jumper rings all taking turns being the class leaders ✅
👑Samuel and his new horse Wyatt were just incredible to watch in their first derby together finishing 9th over all❤️
🤠Claire and Ace had a fantastic show weekend together and finished with 4ths and 5ths in a class full of trainers and adults 💪

I cannot thank Yosmany and Kieran enough for diving right into the chaos and making sure all our horses were taken care of the way they deserve. What a smooth and wonderful weekend for all.

As always, thank you Stableview for the incredible venue, hospitality, and well run horse show. (Caroline Carlson you are such a champ!)

Team

05/23/2026

I just arrived in Sanford for a day of teaching. Here is a Martin Black quote to start the day.

“The old myth of “not letting the horse get away with something—staying there to finish what you started,” has probably wrecked more horses and frustrated more horse people than anything. You don’t win by fighting. You may win a battle, but in doing so, you lose the war. Many times, pride and ego get in a person’s way here, and, when emotions take over good sense, you have already lost. When that happens, the best thing to do is to identify the situation as soon as possible, cut your losses and get out."

(Also a photo of a local bumper sticker. )