Training & Instruction for the Sport of Carriage Driving
A student of mine was at an equine expo watching the various demonstrations and clinics. Afterward, she sent me a note; “Not one clinician told their students to look up and away from the horse. Is that [looking ahead of your horse] just an Andy-ism?” My reply; “Not an Andy-ism, just a global world truth […]
The secret to training horses successfully is building one success upon the next. While big moments do happen, sustainable change requires consistent skill building. Learning the technique of building skills “Strides at a Time” can improve your success leading to greater gains.
You can get a lot out of one lesson, but when you combine that with followup lessons the rewards are exponential. Read how quickly the benefits add up.
Many carriage drivers struggle with their horse taking a step backward after completing a halt. Understanding why the horse is taking the backward step is the first step toward solving the problem.
Driving horses takes a tremendous amount of focus and attention. Well, going for a carriage ride doesn’t take much. Almost anyone can get into a carriage with a half-way trained horse and master left, right, stop and go. But really driving horses well, beyond just getting around takes focus, attention, thought, foresight, and coordination. If […]
What constitutes “excessive use of the whip?” As carriage drivers, one of our most valuable communication aids is the whip. In fact, it’s so important that we are required to have the whip in hand anytime we are driving in a competition. Like any tool, it can be misused. The American Driving Society lists “excessive […]
Every spring horse owners around the world wonder and worry about what they should be doing with, and expecting from their horses when they return them to regular work. For some, the worry comes from fresh horses, that are full of a season’s worth of pent-up energy. Others are more concern about getting the horse […]
Having a horse that doesn’t stand can be one of the most frustrating and confounding problems. It limits the activities you can comfortably participate in, it puts you and other people at risk, and can just generally take the fun out of being around your horse. There are reasons that your horse won’t stand that […]
Here’s a fun little video from yesterday that I did. It’s shaky, but it gets the point across. We all need a little distraction, and our horses are the best form of that! Of course, it’s just basically an ad for tonight’s class “Body Mechanics of the Horse”. This is a class that I’ve actually been […]
From time to time I get notes of thanks and other feedback in response to Online Classes or Lesson Plans here on the site. It’s really gratifying to read about how useful these classes are for people in such real terms. As you can imagine, I put a huge amount of work into the classes. […]
Sometimes something is so obvious, you can overlook it until it hits you square between the eyes. This month for me, that kind of thing happened as I’ve been preparing for this week’s class on transitions. Sure, we all know transitions are important. But in working with horses and students to build exercises that can […]
