Wander the aisles of any tack store or browse the pages of a horse care catalog and you’ll be overwhelmed with the multitude of leg wraps and boots offered for sale. There must be a reason why there’s such...
The Green Horse
The green horse is inexperienced, suspicious, lacks confidence, is gawky and spooks at everything. He needs some fairly conventional grid work to help him realize that jumping can be fun. He also needs a rider with the...
When you’re focusing on your horse, it’s easy to forget about your position in the saddle. Adjust your stirrups to a length that hits your ankle bone or slightly above when your foot is...
Do you desperately wish for an elaborate jump course to practice on at home or at your boarding barn? After all, how can your horse be ready for the tricky turns and combinations at a show if he hasn’t...
Denice Klinger and Lido competing in a hunter breeding class. Photo courtesy picsofyou.com.It seems like western breeds get all the breaks when it comes to logging show miles at an early age. Endless halter, showmanship and longe line classes...
Young equine athletes seem full of such promise, offering you a chance to finally own your dream horse. Yet somewhere between Intro to Saddle 101 and Advanced Show-Ring Skills the learning curve of a young performance horse can take...
Think you need an extreme dressage makeover to improve your test scores? While there are no shortcuts to correct training, there are some very simple things any rider, with any horse, can do to ride a test to full...
Perhaps you want to try cross-country jumping or would like to enter an eventing show. Many areas of the country are far from schooling courses, making it difficult to test your horse's jumping skills in the great wide open....
The inaugural Express Eventing competition in Cardiff, England, was designed to attract new fans to the sport of eventing. However, the crowd of 13,000 spectators inside Millennium Stadium on Nov. 30, 2008, was struck silent as British Olympian Mary...
Three basic types of cross-country obstacles—ditches, banks and water—must be carefully and systematically introduced to even the boldest cross-country horse. If you give your horse a good start over these jumps, there’s no reason to ever have a problem....
