It's a Lifestyle, equestriantraining.com the website.

I am often not asked by clients what do I do, what do I train, how do i train. Usually people have found me over the years from my website. Some people come feeling as though they already know me from my "about" posting over the past 12 or so years.
With the recent business move to TMF equestrian center, in San Martin. and Brian and mine's recent volunteerism with the Coe State park, people are asking me. What do you train, how do you train, etc. At first I was at a loss for words, it felt strange to be out of my zone where people already found me instead of me venturing out into the world.
I always thought the website title "equestriantraining" said it all, because I do it all. I start young horses giving them a good foundation in their first rides, I work with riders of all disciplines -- Dressage, Jumping, Western - on balance, position and how it affects the horses movement. Training horses is like physical therapy, feeling and or seeing the parts of the horse that are crooked. How when asked to go straight, it bends like a pretzel and does the crab crawl where it wants to go. Horses with old injuries, not in active pain, but crooked or loopsided from the time compensating for an injury.  Problem solving, looking at the horses behavior and analyzing why it behaves as it does, bites, bucks, refuses to trailer load, paws while standing, walks inceasantly in its stall or corral. All of these things are equestrian training -- all things equestrian.

We all begin somewhere and can end up somewhere else.

Where Have All the Horses Gone.....

I am officially training at TMF Equestrian Center in San Martin on Church Ave.  I have moved all  client horses to TMF and am adjusting to the quiet here at home. Very strange and empty in a way. I miss the activity of having people and horses here, but scorching summer heat and the prospect of one more winter in the wet, helped me make this decision.
I love the management, and everything I need is there. It will be a great place to train.  I can trailer in my guys when i need them and that will be good for them.
Soon I will have to have an open house for folks to drop in and see my special area by the main gate. But first, there are little plants to buy..... Special horse oranaments and a sign to hang....some chairs to keep handy, maybe a pony bench of some sort.

Beside the covered arena, there is a lovely shady grass area with picnic tables; doggies are welcome on a lease; the premises are under video security; they have a maintenance crew that drags the arena, does all the feeding, .... i will not let this be a reason to not shop for special pony things, I will not!!!! This is a fun opportunity!  Thanks TMF, for having me!!!

Monday, Monday after the horse expo..

ok, got careless and go kicked on Friday. Got busy on Sat. morning doing lessons. Sat. afternoon shared graduation into a forward going future with my Son and his Girlfriend. Sat. nite, went to Werner Herzogj's Cave of Forgotten Dreams and saw ancient, no-- paleolithic cave drawings of horses from 35 million years ago in France...... Oh My Gooodnes.... I do have a herstory.. a culture.. a lineage, omg, wow. 

ok, today, i got lost there for a moment.....

What could I say, what could have more meaning, what could be more powerful than images like this........oh yeah, i remember the Horse Expo.

I went shopping and spent tons of pennies on stuff i wanted but didn't really need. How silly i feel in comparison to looking at this  image from eons ago.  How silly i feel.  How small and insignificant my life is in comparison.  I am going to go paint some images right now, right now, on my barn walls.
One day, after all the soft ashes have  been wisked away, someday. long, long, long, to come, the message of how these magnificiant beasts can affect our lives and give us meaning will be found, here in Gilroy, California, ( what used to be called the golden state) here, right here, about 75feet away from where i am sitting, some little images of  Peeekle, Peeeekle and BooootZ..BootZZZ, will be found on my barn wall.

When the discoverer sees them, flicking away each grain of  dust to discover this historic treasure.  The round wired archiac, obsolete device will be found.  They will touch it and it will still play, it will continue to spew my silly little mommy voice..... Peeekle, Peeeeekle and Bootzzzzzeeee Booootzzzzze into the opaque, grey, dustcovered silence.  What does it all mean.  Oh yes, and then they will find an expo ticket for 2011, from The Western States Cal Expo

Free lessons and the bible....

Isn't there a commandment about coveting thy neighbors property or something like that? Well, today and yesterday my neighbor is having a name brand trainer doing a clinic.

Darren Chiachia & Don Sachey from USEA ICP clinc I attended

I hear the PA across my property. This morning I peeked through my gate and watched the riders working in two-point at trot and canter, round and round and round. I hear the basics, "close your leg", "close your leg", "Do I want you to use your leg when you halt?" "yes" .....

"Why do I want you to close your leg?  Because we want the horse to stop with his hind end under him. Stretch up tall. I f i used a ruler I would want your elbow in line with your shoulder, yes, yes, that's better. Stop balancing in your hand. pull his head up. pull his head up. give, give, pull, give, pull, give. kick him, kick him, K I C K him, shame on you, we are all thinking shame on you. you can't just go around letting him take you for a ride, sit up. get him infront of your leg, K I C K  him....about stirrup length, unless you are jumping really big fences, you need to get into a half seat but still be able to get your heel down and not have the pommel hit you.

All day long.  Unfortunately, yesterday, i rode my horse at noon. They were taking lunch. So I got a free lunch.

un natural horsemanship

The term natural horsemanship has several connotation to horse owners. Natural hoofcare is another term. I am not opposed to the benefits of either, but I like to think in a truly natural way. When i was parenting, sometimes i would ask my self, what would a mamma dog do to her pup if the pup nipped her disrespectfully. My son likes to remind me that i abused him by spanking him with the dog brush. Well, it was the flat side. He was 12 or 13 and was just being a brat, mouthing off and i picked up the first thing i saw, and it was a dog brush. i just wacked on his butt some. Story over, he got the message, I went back to what i was doing. If i was a mamma bitch, i would have nipped him and made him yelp.  yep.

Just want to say yesterday, I was successful at taping Nita's first session.  good mare, good disposition, probably handled alot as a baby, no fear of people, but just doesn't know anything. Natural, why should she know forward, yield the hind quarters, move away from me....no wait. That isn't natural. i'm a predator and she has no fear. Thant' ain't right. But it is necessary when we domesticate an animal for our uses.

I think the best explanation of what a horse is, naturally, is from Dr. Richard Miller, in his work Understanding Horses. He talks about their natural, instinctive nature and how we use it to[ exploit the horse and] train it.  Is ithat natural? That one animal uses another animal  and makes it a service creature or an object of affection or an object of show. Is that natural?

Ants do it with aphids; farm them for food. 

I love Mondays

I love my husband, my life and lifestyle would be impoverished without him.  Even if he has to sleep in foil  to keep the demons away, it's all ok with me. Mondays are good becuase, the weekend has been busy, lots of people and stimulation, pony business, so Monday is sort of my day off or my day on.  I get to do what I want without interruption, unless i find something when i go down to feed.  Brian is at work, I have not appointments, and I'm happily alone.
I take my time feeding, i look around, i plan my tasks for the week, (like fixing the damn electric fence). I allow my self to get distracted and fix a feeder for fat horses.  I notice if the fly's are congregating on the walls and if i need to use surface spray to keeeeeel them. I look at the pasture. i think i might need to bring in the tractor and work on drainage for  next winter. I plan a new barn, where mares and geldings have paddocks that separate sexed pastures.  I think about putting a planter by the faucets. I wonder what kind of weed or grass will grow between the pastures in the grass strip and stay low enough to not ground out my electric fence. i  wonder who sprayed the grass strip this year... you aren't supposed to keeeeel it.   i think about what horses i want to ride, then what horses i have to ride. This week, it is starting NITA, Robin's horse. Today will be her first day in the round pen. i think about a tri pod and video taping. That could be good business. Then i get distracted   oh look, right here in from of me while i type, the charging video camera. Can I do it? can I join the masses on U tube showing the world how great i am?  I don't know, it seems like so much work, screwing the little thing on the stand, finding a good location, remembering to turn it on.  Oh, shoot, I don't know.  My Dad was sooooo right.... "It's complicated"

What we find each day when we feed....

If we are lucky, it is just another day in paradise.  If it is normal, there is something amazing. Bent pipe rail paddock with no horses telling the story, a three-legged lame horse with a stifle the size of a football, electric tape maze, a horse with hives so bad that he looks like an elephant, a broken tooth sticking out of a horses mouth, a flap of skin hanging off of the horses neck exposing the muscle, a horse with a broken leg, a horse bit by a rattlesnake with a huge nose,  a baby foal, .... these are just some of the things i remember over the years......that is equestriantraining.com it is a lifestyle with never ending surprises.

The Natural Equestrian Theme of the day is.....Happy Horses

Happy. I am happy that some folks already saw and commented on my blog.  Now, I just have to figure out a way to not say too much or be boring. 

I really believe my Pickle boy is happy. I find him at random times all arched neck and up-headed, trotting around the field or  the property. After a long ride, he will roll, get up, squeal, jump up off all fours and paw the air.  Let me remember this picture, he paws with his left leg.


If I yell out his name in loud screechy Mommy speak, "Peeekel, Peeeekel Peeeekel". He looks up, and raises his neck and trots around. He makes me laugh. He makes me happy. It is such a simple form of happiness. Difficult to describe; it needs no words.

What is a bad housewife?

First, shouldn't we know what a house wife is? Does it have kids, pets, a condo or a ranch? Does a housewife have a part-time job or is it already a full-time job?  If we consult the ever modern dictionary, Webster or Wikipedia on line, we can find a definition.  ....This means there is a pause here in my blogging, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housewife, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/housewife?show=0&t=1305517675

Although I really like the 2nd def on Webster, I think the wiki might be most popular. OK, so a housewife has household responsibilities and does not work outside the home. What if she works at  home? Is she still a housewife.   What if her home is several acres, are her household  responsibilities only in the house?  What about weeding and growing vegetables, would they qualify as household duties if you ate the weeds and the vegetables? Perhaps a bad housewife is one who has a bad year in the garden. Locust, no veggies, no weeds, just dust. 
If she could keep the dust out of the house, would she be ok?  Would she be a good housewife?
The natural equestrian could be a housewife, she could spend a lot of time trying to let horses be horses in a natural way. She could teach these things to other people, but  it couldn't be a job. Or, could it, the teaching could be inside the household, but how could one make it a household duty.

We all like to succeed. We want to be able to feel good about what we do. Really, why would anyone try to be a bad housewife.  They would think about all sorts of creative ways to make the job successful, even it it meant being a natural-equestrian.