Helicon Farm

Wonderful article on the aids for turning, bending and engaging your horse. Aka what “inside leg to outside rein” really entails.

“Inside Leg To Outside Rein” – The Cheat Sheet How often have you heard that term? Sure, it sounds like a pretty simple concept until you try it, Here’s a detailed breakdown and a “cheat” exercise (that’s not really a ch…

Motivation Monday….. just a reminder!

There are so many aspects of a rider having educated hands...
1.) The rider's hand must be independent from the movements of their seat. The hand must be able to be still in space so that as the rider posts up and down the hand does not move with the body.
2.) The hand must be stable so that when the horse pulls the hand is strong and does not give, but when the horse gives even a millimeter the hand does not recoil, but stays in it's original position.
3.) The hand must also follow so that there is a steady but soft connection that follows the head nods of the horse in walk and canter.
4.) The hand must follow so that if the horse asks to stretch that the rider can follow the stretch to the ground without losing the connection.
5.) The rider must have the feel to know when wiggling a finger or increasing the contact will break lose any tension from the jaw, or redirect the horse's attention. Or when raising or opening the hand will help the balance.
6.) But the rider must also refrain from being busy.
7.) The ideal contact is light, but during the learning curve a light rein often means there is static in the line and that the horse feels a slight jerk as the uneducated hands go from float to contact.
8.) A rein aid may ask the horse to change the movement of his feet, to change the balance of his weight distribution, or the position of his head and neck and the rider must be tactful enough to communicate clearly through actions of all of her aids which of these she wants.
9.) The rider must be able to use her seat, weight, and leg aids to ride her horse to her hand to ask the horse to stretch forwards or down, to fill out the outside rein, or to bring his haunches towards and under his forehand
10.) The educated rider needs to be able to use her hands equally as the inside or outside rein so that both direction are even and so she can use her inside rein in concert with the outside rein, or rein of opposition.

Want clean changes? Get canter supple like a pretzel !

Fantastic Flying Changes Produce your horse’s best flying changes with this Pan American gold medalist’s four-part suppling exercise.

"Stretch your arm out to the side, holding something like a pencil vertically in your hand. Look straight ahead. You won’t see the pencil in this position. You can’t even see your arm. Now move your arm slowly in a wide outstretched semi-circle toward the front, keeping your eyes focused on a distant point in front of you. The pencil remains invisible until it reaches almost a 45-degree angle. Human vision is limited to roughly 45 degrees on either side of our noses, for a total of about 90 degrees. By contrast, if we held a pencil straight out from the side of a horse’s head, it would be almost in the center of his vision. With eyes on the sides of his head, he catches a 340-degree view, almost four times greater than the range we see. Imagine what would happen if we humans had four times more vision to process every second of the day. We’d be edgy, too!" Janet Jones in Horse Brain, Human Brain, published by TSB. ❤️ 🐴 📕

Janet Jones, PhD, will be speaking at in West Springfield, MA! Don't miss her talks on Saturday and Sunday on the Seminar Stage in the Better Living Center--we promise it will change the way you think about horses and their behavior! See you in West Springfield. 😄

How you talk about your horse matters, because it reflects how you think about your horse.

How you think about your horse matters because it is the starting place from how you see your horse's behaviors, responses and needs...

.. and this will influence how you engage and work with your horse.

"He's just spooking to get out of work."

"She's just a snarky mare."

"He's just lazy and doesn't want to respond to my aids."

"She hates the whip."

"He just doesn't want to do it."

How do you relate to a horse if you're coming from that perspective?

Those are all negative words that come from a negative bias, and they make it seem as if the horse is plotting against us or unwilling to work towards a productive relationship.

Their brain simply isn't capable of working that way because of its construction and function.

It's in the horse's very nature to synchrinize and work together as a unit/group/herd/partnership for safety.

How about throwing away those limiting thoughts and replacing them with thoughts that reflect awareness, and offer actual insight to show our understanding of the situation and needs of our partner, the horse.

Replacing those thoughts above with more appropriate thoughts might look like this:

"He's tense or worried about something and it's distracting him from the work."

"She's sensitive and I offer my aids or requests in ways she thinks are offensive."

"He doesn't understand my aids clearly, or is maybe weak and unable to properly respond."

"She was never properly introduced to the whip, so I need to help her to reduce her anxiety."

"He just doesn't understand yet."

How do you relate to a horse if you're coming from that perspective?

The whole idea I'm trying to get at is that we need to drop our defensive negativity bias. Even in our basic thoughts towards and about our horses, because they have a tremendous influence on how we relate to them. This influences the success or failure of our partnership.

It up to you... and your thoughts.

THIS IS A MUST READ 🐎🐎🐎🐎

It’s absolutely mind boggling if you think about it.

Your horse gets absolutely nothing out of being competitive for you. Not a darn thing. Of course horses are bred for specific jobs, or they’re bred to be athletic to a certain degree. However, horses don’t wake up thinking about chasing cans, or cows, or flying over jumps.

They have no idea how much money is added to the pot. They have no idea that this is a qualifier. They have no idea that this is the short go.

And DESPITE us... DESPITE our nerves, our flaws, our incorrect ques, our huge emotions, they get the job done to their very best ability. Even when we fail them by letting our emotions get in the way, they come back and they try again. For US. Whoa. Let that sink in. If only we could all be so understanding.

To think of an animal that is forgiving and flexible enough to put up with the repetition of practice, the intense nerves of the rider, the stress of hauling and still meet you at the gate for scratches is MIND. BLOWING.

If you haven’t done so lately. Thank your horse.

If you’re successful, thank the horses that put you there and made you. Thank the horses that gave everything they had for you simply because you ASKED them to.

If you’re still on the journey to success, thank the horses that made you fall in love with your sport and who have helped give you the confidence to want to learn more and be better.

We can never stop learning as horsemen and horsewomen, and by continuing our education every horse in our future will be better off.

Next time you head to the arena leave your ego at the door and thank your horse!”
~Samantha Roffer

Stages of growth:
1.) SUBCONSCIOUS INCOMPETENCE- you suck so bad you don’t even know how bad you suck.
2.) CONSCIOUS INCOMPETENCE - at least you are aware of what particular thing you are sucking at. We usually hate this stage, because who wants to be bad at something?!?! But if you can, get excited about the stage! Hey, at least you now know what to work on. Imagine how awesome you’ll be once you get this stuff figured out. 😁
3.) CONSCIOUS COMPETENCE - you can do the thing now! Yay! But you have to think about it. Too often, this is where things stagnate and fall apart. We think we’ve arrived. But the truth is we can only do the thing and be competent when we are consciously thinking about it. That’s OK, but the truth is as long as we have to concentrate on what we are doing in this stage, we are never going to be able to move on or learn more. If you just learned how to fix your body while going left on a circle, chances are you’re not going to remember to do it on a leg yield- that’s just too much to think about. Or maybe you can! Yay! But it may be too much to layer on the next position fix.
4.) SUBCONSCIOUS COMPETENCE - you are so good, you do the thing without even thinking about it. Sometimes, very talented people jump right to subconscious competence, and therefore make terrible instructors because they never had to learn how to do the thing. They might not even know they are doing it. They may swear up and down they do not use seat aids, because the truth is they do it subconsciously and always have, and were never actually taught how to do it – they just have a natural feel. But if you took the long way here, through the first three stages of learning, then this means that you’ve been so consistent in applying what you have learned that it is totally automatic to you now.

These four stages a very scientific terms and it might feel a little cold and not so applicable.

So think of it this way- you learn of something you were previously unaware of. That is you moving from stage 1 to 2. This move is often accompanied by confusion, or maybe an epiphanous moment. This is exciting stuff. Learn to appreciate this stage.

You work on it, you work on it, you work on it. This is the drudgery of stage 3! It can last a very long time. Often we work on the thing for a while, and then completely forgot about it! Oh no!! All that learning gone to waste. This is the stage that separates those who really want it, and those who just talk about it. If you know you have a chronic equitation flaw, do the work to fix it. That’s it. Do the work. You know HOW.
Often times, we work on something for a while, but quite frankly we get bored with it. We may still be collapsing left, but we want to work on our horse, and we want to work on the fun things. Soon we forget about fixing our seat and pick on the horse instead. I’m guilty too!!! (Soooooo guilty!!!!) The stage is simple, but it is not easy!

Then we get to the glorious part where it becomes automatic. Having things in our automatics is the only way that we have the headspace to learn more things. But beware! Often times we are only in the middle of stage three, we declare the new thing to now be in our automatics, and we move on. Opps!! Within a few weeks, we are back to old habits and it’s like we revert right back to stage one. We think we fix the thing, so we ignore it. We are hoping we are subconsciously competent, but we are actually subconsciously incompetent.
I have spent so many years riding on my own without regular instruction, so I know how deep this pitfall can go. Lately, I feel like I don’t even want to ride if I don’t have someone who can watch me and remind me of all the things that I think I know, but that I’m not actually doing! I want to get those things into my automatics and that can’t happen without consistency- Boring, rote, yell-at-me-if-my-right-leg-even-thinks-of-doing-that-weird-thing consistency.

😃💕

Check with your local saddle fitter to set up an appointment to see our sale saddles!

Dressage Arena Geometry

Tuesday Tip
With show season getting into full swing, a reminder: geometry and accuracy are so important! Don't lose points because you don't know where a circle should be - or that it should be round!
PC: