Do you ever feel like your dressage horse's shoulders are so stiff and stuck that not only is it hard to turn him, but his hindquarters are disconnected from his front end?

If your horse’s shoulders are stuck, it’s like having a kink in a water hose. The energy can’t flow from behind, over the back, into your…

I've dealt with a lot of spooky dressage horses, and I find that often shying gets worse because riders do one or all of the following things.



1. Hit or kick him to make him obedient.

2. Make him walk straight up to scary object and face it straight on.

3. Forget to go around your ring in both directions.

4. Force him to go close to the scary object.

5. Patting and soothing him while he’s shying.



Let's understand the nature of…

Hi Guys,



People often tell me that their horses leg yield very well as far as going sideways is concerned, but they tend to toss their heads and show resistance to the reins. In desperation, some riders even use a tie down to put pressure on the nose to discourage their horses from yanking at the reins.



If your horse finds it fairly easy to cross his legs and move sideways with his body, yet he's tossing his head during leg yields, it sounds like he's objecting to your…

Last week, I started this series to help you decide how and when to introduce new work. That blog focused on Training and First Levels. What follows is Part 2 of that series.



Let's say your horse is solid at first level. Look ahead to the Second Level movements. Check out the dressage tests. You'll see that you need to work on shoulder-in, haunches-in, renvers, simple changes of lead, reinback and turns on the haunches.



You'll also notice that the big…

Riders often ask me, "How do I know it's the right time to start training something a bit harder?"



This is a big topic so I'm going to cover it over two blogs. In this blog, I'll give you a way to come up with a logical plan for introducing new work at Training Level. Next week, I'll show you to plan to move up to Second and Third Level. I'll also show you how you can use feedback from competition to help you decide whether or not you're ready to move up.



First, I…