-
Using Music to Increase Forward Energy in Your Horse
Who hasn’t struggled to get a horse in front of the leg? None of us want to resort to kicking like a kindergartener in a Thelwell cartoon, but sometimes, when the piggy pony comes out… Dressage trainer and exhibition performer Sandra Beaulieu suggests that music can be used to increase forward energy in the sleepiest,…
-
Collection: Feel What Your Horse Feels
Renowned educator, clinician, and Western Dressage World Champion Lynn Palm says that one of the quickest ways to understand true collection is to try it yourself. Here’s an easy exercise from her book THE RIDER’S GUIDE TO REAL COLLECTION to help you feel what your horse feels when you ask him to collect. TRY THIS…
-
Crowdsurfing Rams, Drug Deals, and Very Annoyed Little Holstein Cows: 24 Hours with Dr. Jenni Grimmett
One of the great pleasures we have at Trafalgar Square Books is working with equine experts from fields far different than our own desk-centric sort. This is not only a source of continuing education that we wholeheartedly welcome but a reminder of the amazingly different kinds of roles people play in the lives of horses…
-
The Truth About Transitions
In Jessica Black’s book COWBOY DRESSAGE, she explains Eitan Beth-Halachmy’s riding and training philosophy. One point they do an excellent job clarifying involves transitions: what they are, how to prepare for them, and how to make them good. Anytime the horse changes his gait or frame, he performs a transition. Going from the walk to…
-
The Runaround: An Exercise for Achieving Collection (Really!)
Sandy Collier has enjoyed great success in her career as an NRCHA, NRHA, and AQHA champion horse trainer. Named one of the “Top 50 Riders of All Time in All Disciplines” by Horse & Rider Magazine, she was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 2011, and the NRCHA’s Hall of Fame in 2012. Collier…
-
Get Engaged! How Any Horse Can Develop Beautiful, Balanced Forward Motion
The United States Dressage Federation (USDF) defines engagement as “increased flexion of the lumbosacral joint and the joints of the hind leg during the weight-bearing (stance) phase of the movement, thus lowering the croup relative to the forehand (‘lightening the forehand’).” Engagement is a prerequisite to impulsion (thrust): the “releasing of the energy stored by…
-
Half-Halts Everyone Can Understand (No, Really)
No one can give us the skinny on how to do an honest-to-goodness half-halt like motivational speaker and dressage rider Jane Savoie. She gets that this integral part of, well, basically EVERY riding activity, can be difficult to understand and tough to put into practice in a way that it actually (really and truly) works.…
-
5 Tips to Train Your Horse Turn-on-the-Haunches
In the book COWBOY DRESSAGE, readers not only discover the story of how and why this new discipline has secured such an avid and expanding fanbase, they also learn the movements recommended by Cowboy Dressage founder Eitan Beth-Halachmy as beneficial to the development of horse-and-rider partnership. Here are his tips for adding the turn-on-the-haunches to…
TSB BLOG 