If you are like many riders, there are times when you wish you could relax on command. Of course, it’s very difficult to will yourself into a pleasant lull when you most need to. Fortunately, you can learn how to truly relax your body so you can “push the relax button” in times of stress. It just takes a little work.

As riders, younger children are best introduced to as wide a variety of equestrian disciplines as possible. There is plenty of time for them to specify as they mature and start to show clear strengths and tendencies. In the meantime, fostering a healthy sportsmanship and leadership attitude, and other qualities such as patience and self-discipline early on, will provide them with psychological tools to excel under pressure later in life.

The Percheron demonstrates its quality of performance as a sport and pleasure horse in addition to its better-known role in transportation and agricultural work. The breed is distinguished by an elegance, style, and alertness typical of a light horse, but with the calm temperament of a large draft.

In this series we’ve observed how my program has broadened the foundation of Halo, who had a seemingly unpredictable tendency to buck, and has developed his trust in me. After groundwork sessions, we saddled Halo and took him through his first ride with me, followed by several rides in the arena and around my ranch in Abbotsford, BC.

Halo is a sleeper. When I first met him, I was told that he was a really calm, cool guy. Only one problem: every once in a while, out of what seemed like nowhere, he’d buck and he’d buck hard. As I got started with Halo, it became very apparent to me that while he had been ridden for some time now, he would need to be essentially restarted under saddle.

Remember that all horse activities, particularly trail riding and packing horses, are safest if the horse is friendly and completely desensitized. This means that the horse stands calmly when noisy objects like tarps are rubbed along his back, and ropes are placed around his feet, between his back legs, and under his tail. Desensitizing must be done slowly, with caution, and be successfully completed.

With the green horse there is also a safety factor that is not always present with a schooled horse. If we do too much the potential for the green horse to react violently is very real, yet to continue learning there must be a challenge to improve every day. The amount of improvement will be different each day, but there must be some.

Researchers at the New York Institute of Technology, College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM) are suggesting that, in fact, the four side toes did not completely disappear but remain even today as remnants still present within the horse’s modern lower leg and hoof. Scientists widely accept that the essentially redundant splint bones – the small bones found along the outer sides of the metacarpal or cannon bone - are remnants of the second and fourth toes.

Equine Guelph researchers are continuing to put Canada on the map in the world of horse welfare research – this time focusing on the use of training equipment in horses. The researchers, led by Dr. Katrina Merkies, were interested in how often riders and trainers use training equipment, such as whips, spurs, and head-control equipment (martingales, draw reins, etc.), and how often horse enthusiasts not actively involved with horses think that the equipment is used.