Do you find yourself a tad confused as to what exactly to do with your legs while you ride?  Do you find that even if you know what to do, degree of pressure to use or how often to apply the aid is confusing you?

You are hearing terms such as 'Keep your leg on', 'use your leg', 'more leg', 'leg', 'soften your leg', 'support with your leg', 'back up your leg'... leg, leg, leg!!!

You can listen to the audio version of this blog post…

Do you find yourself huffing and puffing after a few strides of canter?  Have you been riding less recently and find that now your back in the saddle, your less effective than before?  Are you spending hours schooling your horse but seeing little to no difference in his way of going...

It often amazes me how much time, effort, planning and work riders put into conditioning and increasing the fitness levels of their horses and yet completely fail to invest even a little of that towards…

Good Morning,

Today I am asking you to take a good look at how you see yourself?  What's your take on you and where you are at, in your life, relationships, career, and horse life and work.

How do you rate your potential right now - a 5* Ten or a knock down 3.5?   Well today I am going to show you how to start thinking…

I have a confession to make.....

I was feeding my horses, checking on the water, and generally mooching around the field, hanging out with them,  when suddenly my phone rang.   It was my long standing close friend and 'adopted' big brother Paul, one of the best Music Perrformance Coaches in the business.  I was delighted as it seemed such a long time since we had chatted.  Whilst we were chatting I found myself confessing something and it kind of came from…

Today is my Tip number 3 in boosting your self belief in you, with a view to aiding your horsemanship with your horse.

Are you aware of the relationship between your thoughts and how you behave, and what your body language and energy are really saying about you?

Now this is something that I see in a lot of horse owners that I meet, and I have a confession, from time to time, I am guilty of the same thing too.

We unintentionally make life much…

Good morning, now then I promised that I would share some more tips about self belief, so here is tip number two for you.

Self belief is feeling good enough; its the feeling that you can handle whatever life, or your horse throws at you? Its about having a healthy appreciation and acknowledgement (we often forget this bit), of your abilities and talents. Its not about anything superficial.

Its about being OK with you, and OK with where you are at with your…

When things go wrong in our horse work, our horsemanship, our riding.....we begin to blame ourselves; but we also take it further.  Sometimes we can blame ourselves so much when things go wrong that we stop trying, we stop searching for an answer, we stop attempting to move forward and begin to move backwards.

This does not just affect our relationship with our horses, it starts to creep into other areas of our lives, how we see ourselves, our social interactions, our careers…

Is there a more frustrating and exhausting experience when riding to match that of being on a horse who is not paying you a blind bit of notice?!

You are on board kicking and pumping away, while you horse is just meandering along...  Ignoring you completely and acting as though he is on a relaxing Sunday outing.

This week on Daily Strides we are focusing on helping you overcome the inertia and begin getting some movement happening underneath you, by…

Leg yielding is generally most riders first introduction to lateral movement; lateral meaning sideways.   This weeks audio horse riding lessons aim to not only explain leg yielding to you in easy to understand terms, but also to give you some nice exercises you can use while riding your horse to begin working his muscles and joints in a different, and beneficial way.

At the beginning of the podcast this week I mention that leg yielding and, quite frankly, riding…

One of the things that a lot of Daily Strides listeners have in common is the fact that the time they have to devote to riding and improving their riding skills, is generally in short supply… And rides can become something that are squeezed in between the million other things we have going on in our lives.

In times like this, when we are riding, we are set out looking to achieve an active, working trot… But due to lots of different factors, this can end up just…

This weeks lesson is a little bit different... I hope you enjoy!

One of the biggest disadvantages to riding alone is the fact that while you may think and feel like you are doing everything correctly, there is a big chance that in actual fact you are not.

Many riding centre's and equestrian facilities install mirrors in the arena for this exact reason; however that can be a pricey solution...

Today, I present you with a much easier, cheaper solution that you can use…

Olympia, Washington, May 4, 2012 -- Everyone knows that confidence and success come hand-in-hand. So whether you need a little boost or a lot of building, nationally known equestrian confidence coach Cathy Rivers, as part of her Big Horse Dreams, The Confident Equestrian Program, has designed a new e-Workbook that provides a proven learning progression for mastering confidence skills in order to improve your training, riding, competing, communication and overall enjoyment…

I'm sure a lot of folks who self board their animals have had this happen once or twice.. 'Oh look, the feed bill came, how much is it this month?'... -insert jaw drop, eye pop, and then possibly a thwack after hitting the ceiling + string of expletives- Mine got to 700 dollars for TWO HORSES a few months ago FOR ONE MONTH. 'WTF!'

My first…

“The greatest gift God gave mankind ------------- Was the Horse”

Horses are much more than a means of transport or beast ofburden they are integral to man discovering his purpose in life.

As a Christian woman I have always strived to live life withpurpose but discovering my purpose has been a life long…

I wanted to share this little glimpse into my life as Official show photographer because many people who have attended my Equine Photography Workshops have aspirations of one day  following my career path. And becoming a full time Equine Photographer.

A way of life I can wholeheartedly recommend if you love to work outdoors with horses and their…

I read a little story the other day that really resonated with me and made me take a long hard look at how I live my life.

I want to share it with you

“There was once a busy shepherd girl, she spent her days rounding up stray sheep – her farther had taught her that if she focused on the strays the sheep would be safe.

One day her sister went out to the pasture to help her with the endless task, The sister asked - do all the sheep stray?

No answered the shepherd…