Posts
When I first started riding Archie, I assumed that a good position would eventually become automatic. I could feel when something was uncomfortable, but I…
A water complex with a sunken log can look small on a course walk and still demand some of the sharpest riding of the day. The water itself may be shallow, but…
Keeping Archie attentive in a busy arena has become one of the most important parts of our eventing preparation. A horse can produce a lovely trot at home,…
A low mark for free walk can be surprisingly hard to accept. The movement looks simple compared with a lengthened trot or a line of show jumps, yet it asks for…
At a horse trial, I walk the course looking for obvious questions: the angle of a spread, the distance between combinations, the ground line under a coloured…
The entry confirmation arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, and I read it several times before telling Archie. Technically, he could not understand the significance…
Riding without stirrups has become one of the most useful parts of my training with Archie. It looks simple from the ground: take your feet out of the irons…
When Archie’s hind end starts to lose energy cross-country, I treat it as useful information rather than something to push through. The hindquarters are doing…
When I started riding Archie at small dressage days, I treated my helmet as another piece of tack that could be left in the float. That habit changed after one…
The start box is a small space, but it can hold an extraordinary amount of pressure. Archie knows that we are about to begin, I know that the cross-country…