Classical Dressage Art in Motion

  While travel for clinics is always on the table, the Fall season is a particular favorite of mine for getting out and about and helping out. And we include ourselves in that equation of clinc time, often continuing work on our own education here and abroad at this time of year. Before winter training season begins at our Willowview Hill Farm.   Despite the hurricane season being upon us, the Fall weather (particularly in New England) and Europe is beautiful for working horses outside. The pesky flies and bugs have 99% disappeared with the first frosts, and the air is crisp and clean and hopefully remains clear of wild fire smoke.  But aside from the wonders of the falling leaf season and orange- colored cratered valleys, this time of year makes great sense horse wise to get the training progressed and establish new protocols for winter work.      One of the best things about giving clinics at any time of year is the variety of students and horses that arr...

  I think by now most of us have heard of Round-Up, and its detrimental nature to human and animal health. It's proper name, often disguised in other producsts, is Glyphosate. It is applied in a variety of forms including isopropylamine salt, ammonium salt, diammonium salt, dimethylammonium salt, and potassium salt. Guidelines for use are often not followed, either in time frame or quantity, due to the resistance in plants/weeds that has increased since its over-abundance of use, and the desire that is quite understandable in farmers to get their hay dried off as fast as possible. It's extremely worrying that states such as North Dakota and Georgia are amending laws to provide a shield for pharmaceutical manufacturers who produce this stuff and all their other concoctions, that protects them from lawsuits by those harmed by the herbicides and pesticides they manufacture. Find more on that topic on Facebook reel here.  This means ever more products will hit our food cha...

The marketplace for horse boarding services has changed in the post-Covid era. A lot. The rising costs that are hitting the farming community in general are no joke. Willowview Hill Farm, Stamford NY   The other day I had a call from a lady who sounded very 'sound', with good horse knowledge that was looking for a straight boarding option for a couple of pleasure-riding horses. Nothing wrong with that. Or with the fact she wanted a boarding space with good standards of horse care and a well-run facility. Trouble is, can she afford it. Are the prices for horse board that people may be used to paying even last year or the year before, realistic in today's marketplace? At our dressage yard at Willowview Hill Farm, pictured above, we have a small barn and an indoor arena, access to 26 miles of trails, and plenty of turn-out, and organic home-produced hay for feeding our performance horses. We offer dressage training services, with boarding only being available for horses in tra...

Over the course of my professional equestrian and writing careers I've had my fair share of exposure to the ubiquitous equine feed supplement market. I've learned much along the way and I figured it might be information worth sharing with you, my dear reader. Willowview Hill Farm's Home Bred Gambol's Georgy Girl   There are so many myths that surround the 'magic' of adding one or another or a cocktail of supplement to the horses' feed rations so let's bust a few of them out and make sure money spent is not being poured down the drain and that our beloved equine partners are truly getting what they need to optimize their mental and physical health. Something we all care much about. Myth 1 Horses need grain.  DO they though? Check out this conversation on point. Learn what might be causing EGUS (ulcers) and hind 'leaky gut' syndrome. Think about how horses lived when they could freely access what they needed grazing thousands of acres. Sure we ne...

Hosting a clinic is a three-sided triangle, and each corner has to be in concert with the other two in order for the event to be the best it can be. It is expensive and time-consuming to host a clinic, but it can also be extremely worthwhile. It can drive business to your barn, increase the talent level of your resident horses, riders and on site trainers, and provide valuable insights into what the world of competition is currently favoring from the judge's box, if that is what make your horse world tick. It can also net you some good income. Paul Alvin-Smith teaching advanced showjumping student   The three corners are the host, the clinician and the rider. Each party has to be tuned in to the other for the event to work. As an experienced clinician as part of the Grand Prix duo that is my hubbie and me, I find the travels (sometimes extensive to other countries), hours of almost non-stop training and the effort that we put in very rewarding. For the most part anyway. We work wit...

If there is a sense of Olympic fever in your horse barn then you are not alone. At a recent dressage clinic Paul and I found plenty of excitement about the forthcoming stellar equestrian competition. It seemed as if everyone was trying just that bit harder to master their equestrian prowess.  Paul Alvin-Smith schooling an ANCCE stallion   Last year while in the United Kingdom enjoying various trips through the autumn and winter months, I had the opportunity to personally engage with some national contenders for the team. To say it was awe-inspiring is an understatement.  I may be a wee bit spoiled!   The advent of live-streaming TV means everyone can gain access to watch the particular discipline they favor in real time, and that has everyone that is a serious competitor and a lot of all-important grass roots amateur riders too, are on the edge of their seats enjoying the spectacle. If you operate a horse training facility then this year in particular is a great time...

Once you take the leap of faith and move your horses from full-time livery service to keeping them in your own backyard it truly is, hard to go back. Not because the boarding barn owner wouldn't be happy to see you, but because once you've taken your horse care matters into your own hands you quickly learn the nuances of all aspects of horse care matters, and learn they are more important than you ever imagined.   Early Days At WVH North Blessed with my husband being as avid a dressage personage as I am, the notion of keeping horses at home was never far from our minds when we moved from the U.K. to the U.S.A. way back when. With his vast experience training horses and my lesser experience with formal riding education but lots of 'hands-on' experience spent riding and working in foxhunting, elite showjumping and horse breeding yards in England, our combination of experience worked well. Gambol's Georgy Girl - one of our WVH DWB homebreds   As you age toward mileston...

It is sad to see folks like British rider Lottie Frye with her Everdale competing at Amsterdam CDI receiving some significantly bad press and attack over her training style, and Cesar Parra, another Olympian this time representing Columbia who works in the U.S.A, subject to the same. Lottie Frye went from hero to zero in short order, the horse showcasing some telling signs that the training methods employed on the equine, who I'm sure is nonetheless much loved by Frye, are perhaps not the kindest. And from a classical dressage exhibit standpoint, certainly not correct and true. But the judges certainly rewarded it, placing her 1st. We all love our horses, but our actions speak louder than words   The reality is that whether the alleged activities of applying screws to horse's mouths such as mentioned in the FEI suspension of Parra, or the inevitable topic of rollkür training techniques are back, it seems that elite riders are still being rewarded for the results of those meth...

Figuring out how to help our horses heal from bouts of disease is all part of the horse owner's experience. Fighting issues with tick borne diseases such as Lyme and Anaplasmosis, flare-ups of metabolic issues caused by the amazing amount of green grass we've had available all summer in the North-East, and figuring our how to help our older horses with hind gut issues and post-ulcer treatment support, is a constant battle. To the rescue comes a ground-breaking new product, Grand Meadows Postbiotic, that rather wonderfully also currently has a free trial offer available to our fellow professional trainers. Here at Willowview Hill Farm, we don't often endorse products, but this feed supplement product does seem to be a game-changer.    Launched in March 2023, the triumphs of this product that are being hailed by many pro trainers that have already been using it, is that not only does it resolve equine digestive upsets caused by antibiotic administration, and lower ulcer scor...