Sooner or later, it happens.  Maybe you are at the barn and others are about to mount up and ride, or you have been invited by your horse friends to go ride at a clinic or on a trail ride.  You give excuse after excuse so that you don’t have to ride never admitting the real reason.  But you know the truth:  You are afraid to ride.  Perhaps you had a bad fall from your horse or you saw a bad horse accident.  Maybe the fear seems to have come out of nowhere.  All you know is that…

Does your horse just trot faster and faster when you ask it to canter from a trot? Find out why in this interview excerpt with Dawn Hill Adams, Ph.D. about the biomechanics of the trot to canter gait transition.

Most riders echo the sentiment expressed by this high-level professional dressage trainer, who said, “As a riding teacher, trainer and student of ‘the horse’ I’ve searched high and low to understand how to make the horses job easier for them and applicable for my students. Various training methods suggest ‘putting the horses’ head low’, while other say to bring it up. Some…

What if the some of fear and anxiety you have when riding comes from fear and anxiety suffered by your grandparents?  Many of the riders I work with state that they don’t know why they are fearful, just that they are.  Recent research suggests that some forms of fear and anxiety may result from experiences our ancestors had that cause them to be anxious or suffer from…