The Riding Instructor

While I'm still recovering (much more slowly than I'd like)  from my broken/sprained wrist which has kept me away from my keyboard for much longer than I expected, I'd like to go off topic and introduce you to The Riding Instructor

In her most recent blog post Don’t Trust Your Beginner Riders with a Beginner Instructor, Barbara Fox writes about one of her favorite subjects - the importance of mastering the basics.

Good riding requires a knowledge of good basics. Good basics come from good instruction. It requires attention to detail and a desire to improve. Good riding requires patience and endurance and goal setting. Competition and fancy horses are not a requirement for developing an excellent set of basic skills. Competition should always be a test of our progress and should never be our end goal. If it becomes our end goal and winning become our only desire, then we resort to short cuts, gimmicks and tricks and we lose much of the real value of a life with horses. In the end we are riding only for a prize and not for the love of the sport.

The Riding Instructor  is one of the few blogs I unhesitantly suggest everyone subscribe to. Especially in the West, a lot of new riders seem to skip the basics and go right to "kick = forward and pull = stop" without a lot of understanding about what might motivate a horse. Whether you ride at a NFR Finals or Grand Prix level, or if you, your kids or your grandchildren are new to the world of horses, you will definitely learn something new each time you read one of Barbara's posts.

With best regards,
Patti in cloudy Vail AZ
where the first rain of summer is trying to happen.

Links:
The Riding Instructor  http://theridinginstructor.net
Don’t Trust Your Beginner Riders with a Beginner Instructor
Horsemen’s Ground School – What’s Not To Love?