🌟 Dressage Training & Lessons – Aiken & Long Island 🌟

I’ll be in Aiken this Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, and on Long Island next weekend, and have a few openings available for:
🐴 Lessons and training rides – from young horses through Grand Prix ...Dressage
🐴 Groundwork and long lining – to build confidence, strength, and better connection
🐴 Problem-solving sessions – customized for each horse and rider

Whether you’re bringing along a young horse, looking to fine-tune your upper-level work, or just want some eyes on the ground, I’m happy to help you and your horse feel more confident and connected!

📅 Send me a message if you’d like to grab a spot — I’d love to see some familiar faces and meet new ones too!

Just the other day I said ‘see you later’ to one of the most rewarding training projects I’ve had in a while. This big pretty red gelding arrived to me at the beginning of summer with a story, and a plea from his owners to help him. I’m never really interested in hearing other people’s ...opinions on what another trainer did wrong, but knowing he had been through a few trainers already in his young life told me I need to approach his issues with empathy. My heart broke for this troubled horse. He was clearly afraid and confused, and because of this he was unpredictable, explosive, and at times, dangerous. He even lacked basic self preservation and awareness of his own body when his panic kicked in, and it was clear that he needed a total reset both mentally and physically.

My work with him began in his stall. Spending time with him, teaching him to welcome my presence instead of shying away from it, gentle questions of movement, yielding to pressure, submitting his feet, and allowing him to build a small, fragile foundation of trust and understanding between us before we moved on to more challenging questions.

From those first weeks spending time with him in the stall investing in our connection and relationship, we were able to make slow steady progress through the summer. He was so confused and fearful that his brain and nervous system was stuck in ‘fight or flight’ mode, and it was clear right away that he didn’t know how to slow down and think through situations or process them. He also didn’t trust people at all.

This poor guy learned early on that he didn’t have a voice. He needed someone who would listen to him, help him, and explain things to him with patience and empathy. He also needed someone to firmly set boundaries, fill-in the gaps in his understanding with clarity, and help rewire his brain to think before reacting. This is a fine line to walk with a horse like this, and was no small task.

Initially, he was hyper-reactive to touch- often flinching or sharply moving away when touched anywhere. He was extremely reactive to pressure around his barrel, weary about changing eyes, and always chose to react (or often overreact) without thinking or finding balance in his feet. He was reactive and fearful to any new stimulus, as well as suspicious and defensive each time he was brought out for a work session in the early days. It took him a long time to stop responding with level ten energy for a level one stimulus and begin to ‘hook on’ to my energy and follow or match my intensity. At the beginning and for a long while, it felt like ‘groundhog day’- where each day we would repeat the previous day’s routine and each day he acted as if he was seeing and hearing everything for the very first time. He ability to learn was so blocked by his fear, it made retaining the previous day’s information really difficult for him. So we just stayed right there and didn’t introduce anything new until he began to feel comfortable enough with the routine that he wasn’t worried and could retain things. Then I would add something new and go through the whole process again. Things that another horse would learn in a day or have no issues with, were mountains for him to climb. And that’s ok- it doesn’t mean he is a bad horse, or won’t be able to be successful having a job or career. He just lost his way and got a bit off track during his formative experiences as a riding horse, and needed someone to give him the time and direction to find his way back to being ok.

He continued to steadily progress, albeit slowly, over the course of the summer. The focus of my work with him was to get him comfortable in his skin, confident in his role as a riding horse, and safe to work around. He spent a lot of time working in the rope halter learning how to slow down his feet, find balance in his body, and softness in his muscles as well as in his mind. We spent a long time getting him comfortable with seeing and accepting pressure, touch, and stimulus on his right side. He had done work on the ground before- but rushed through everything with tension. He didn’t really listen to any specific input, and just tried to get to the answer he thought was correct as quickly as possible. After some progress was made in the ground work, we transitioned to lunging.

Lunging for me is not just letting them run around in circles- but rather to instill and/or reinforce the same principles as I want them to remember under saddle. When I began working with him, he lacked muscle and condition, and needed time to build the muscle and fitness he would need to balance himself first- before even thinking about being able to balance himself AND a rider. Through the initial longing work he built topline muscle that would give him the strength to stay balanced with me on him once we got to riding. He learned to make quiet and balanced transitions from simple voice commands, and became emotionally elastic by learning to regulate his energy while being exposed to a variety of different external situations and sounds.

I spent countless hours both bareback and with tack getting him comfortable just standing with his saddle area near the mounting block, and then learning to “park” himself at the mounting block both from the left side, and the right. He wanted to run past the mounting block and keep his face toward me initially, never wanting to “give me” the vulnerable part of his back to park in the right spot for mounting.

I spent many days getting him comfortable with the long lines, and then many more days long lining him. Through long lining he learned to go forward to the contact, accept pressure on both reins, bend each way, and yield both in his neck and body to change directions smoothly without losing balance or impulsion. Taking direct pressure on two reins at the same time was really triggering for him at first, and over time he began to trust that even when pressure is applied, he is not trapped and can still move and yield in his body before ‘choosing violence’. I wanted to throw a party the first day he did a few steps of a soft and relaxed rein back in the long lines… that was HUGE for him. I was really proud of him and happy for him that he had finally found the place where he could think about where the pressure was coming from and how to move his feet to respond so he didn’t feel trapped. For something that wouldn’t be a big deal to another horse, it was a major victory for him mentally.

When it was time to begin riding, I spent a lot of time again at the mounting block getting on and off, taking a few quiet steps, giving lots of praise for staying relaxed since mounting had been one of his core troubling issues. Historically, he would want to explode when or immediately after mounting, and it was a real trigger for him to see the rider from his right eye once they were in the saddle. The moment a rider is mounting is one of the most vulnerable moments for the rider, and reactions during mounting can be one of the most dangerous behaviors in a horse because of this. I spent a lot of time at the mounting block getting him relaxed and comfortable during mounting and not feeling like he needed to explode.

We progressed from a few small steps to riding in the round pen, to walking outside to the arena, and then going around the arena happily and quietly. I never worried about asking him to be in any kind of a frame, never asked him to go around like a 'dressage horse’, or even got to the point that we were doing any ‘dressage things’. But you know what? He wasn’t afraid any longer. He wasn’t constantly worried about someone being on him, he didn’t feel like any moment he was looking to explode or escape out of fear. He began to breathe, he began to listen, and began to try to understand what I was asking instead of being worried that I existed on his back or was asking something in the first place.

He blossomed in his weight and condition as his confidence in the work grew and he was able to begin to relax more in the work and allow the energy to flow through his topline. He began to seek the stability of the bit and connection instead of panic when he felt pressure on the reins. He began to believe that maybe the person on his back could be a partner and a friend instead of the enemy.

Is he going home 100% bomb proof? Definitely not. Every day I kept his routine from leaving the stall to riding exactly the same- so he could count on and not feel worried about what might be coming next and could begin to depend on the monotony of that routine. He still had moments of worry, but they were no longer explosions and “checking out” to save himself. He has learned tools to intercept his panic response and think, process, and feel confidence in direction from his rider.

Sometimes in training, its best to rip off the bandaid. Sometimes it’s best to try to push through the issue head on and get to the other side as quickly as possible. And sometimes, as with this horse, they just need a little softer, slower approach. Especially when they have had some traumatic experiences to work through. Every single horse is an individual, and it is always up to us to listen to what they need, and find the common ground with our goals for them. That does not mean we don’t challenge them, or save them from ever experiencing uncomfortable situations. It is up to us to challenge them in ways that keep them progressing with clarity, and without breaking their confidence or will to try. Once that has happened, bringing one back from that place is never an easy task. He is a very sweet horse and will likely always have his core tendencies to react first and think later, however, we can teach a horse like him to have better thought patters, emotional elasticity, self regulation, and to trust and find support and confidence in his rider.

Sometimes it just takes the time it takes- I’d argue that this horse was in ‘therapy’ this summer as much as he was in training. This work is sometimes painstakingly slow, but in the end it is extremely rewarding to feel like you have genuinely helped a troubled horse have the chance at a happy life as a riding partner. I hope that all of the work and tools I have given him will help him continue to take slow, steady steps forward.

I wanted to share about my journey with him because it was a journey of a thousand tiny steps and small victories. Here’s the message I’d like everyone to hear: it’s ok if your horse needs more time. It’s ok if your horse needs a different path. It’s ok if things get a bit derailed and you need help getting back to a positive place. It’s ok if the progress is insanely slow. It’s better to keep taking tiny steps forward than risk having huge setbacks when you have an individual who has already been through some stuff. It’s all ok. The most important thing is to identify when things aren’t going as well as you’d like, and try something different or get help. The further down the wrong road you go, the longer it takes to get back. And with a horse that’s gone down the wrong road, you can plan on it taking at least twice as much time to get them back. There isn’t a quick fix as far as I know to bring them back from a bad spot like this horse had gotten into. Don’t beat yourself up if you end up in a place like this with your horse- there are people who can help you get back on track, and most of the time it can end up ok 🙂

Good luck my big red friend. You have challenged me and humbled me and taught me to be a better trainer through training you.