Good morning this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and today we are giving you an update on Zoolander. Zoolander is our rescue horse that had been given to us because his owner was convinced that he was dangerous. What we discovered was that the horse was basically running away from pain: his saddle was killing him, his back was killing him and his feet were in terrible shape. That is the biggest thing that we have had to deal with for the last three months that we have had him is just getting his feet to the point where he is sound enough and comfortable enough on his feet to be able to be worked. You can find a video about our horseshoer Kenny Lyon and getting Zoolander straightened out in our videos.

Today we are going to show you where …

Good morning this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I am here with my wife Karen and the horse Contigo.

Contigo is a Holsteiner stallion who unfortunately developed a foot infection when he was very young, so he was never really able to train more than a couple months before his feet would blow apart. We have been rehabbing him for about three years now with many thanks to our Master farrier Kenny Lyon (who I will do another video on next time he is here explaining the process he has gone through with him).  This horse is now going to be twenty years old this year! After three years of rehabbing, he is back to looking like a four year old. He is going absolutely beautifully, stretching into the contact as you can see there, and look how his back end is moving.

When we started …

Good afternoon this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and today I am here with Dave Murphy and his horse Zoey. You have all seen Zoey on previous videos, and today she is about 5 or so months into training with Art2Ride. I come about once a week to help Dave out.

One of the things that we are talking about with this horse that I want you to see and understand is until you ride a horse much, the horse has to be accepting contact with the bridle. If you were to read the old Spanish riding school manual for instance, they would lunge a horse for a year before they rode it. As you can see in the video Zoey’s mouth now has a nice foam forming around the edge of her lips, which tells you that the horse is …

Will Faerber from Art 2 Ride continues his discussion on how to recognize back development with Dr Adrianna Moore DVM from an equine chiropractor’s point of view.

Good morning, this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I am here with Jodi Anderson and her horse Casanova. We had a question come in a couple days ago from someone who is working their horse and developing and they wanted to know how to recognize if the horse is developing it’s topline.

It is quite simple because you will see the topline change. By topline I mean the point in the middle of the horse’s ears all the way back to it’s tail. If you look at the horse in the video, you can see how the top of his neck muscles are lit up and the bottom of his neck muscles look very soft, but he’s reaching out from the shoulder. Look how evenly his diagonal pairs are moving (the outside hind leg with the inside foreleg), that is …

We are going to use Montana and Montana’s owners to demonstrate how to do a hip tuck, which is a really good exercise for two reasons.

One is to assess if the patient has a sore back: we are going to trigger a reflex point on her topline and if she resists, swings away, moves into us or acts like it’s uncomfortable that helps us determine that maybe she still has a sore back or croup. What we are actually looking for is a contraction of the abdominal muscles or her core muscles. If she is able to do the tuck, that tells me as she lifts up that she is engaging her core and is able to lift and round and come beneath with her hind end which we can do statically from the ground. This is also of course the …

This is Dr. Joanna Robson demonstrating correct saddle fit on a western saddle. Montana will be our model for a brief discussion on evaluating the angle of the saddle tree.

Montana’s owners had some concerns about her saddle fit and when we placed the saddle on top of her back, setting it back behind her shoulder, what we noticed (which you can see in the video) the little pressure over the horn (the top part of the saddle up here) and the front part of the tree pinches down on top of her shoulder blades. If I bring my hand in at the top, I can’t even get it between the top of the tree and the side of her shoulder blade. This has a potential to do a number of things: It can shorten her stride by literally blocking her …

Good afternoon this is Will Faeber from Art2Ride and I am going to give you an update on Mr. Murphy after a few requests have come to us to see more from them.

He has had about seven or eight lessons under saddle after working her on the lunge for a few months, getting her to stretch into the contact, going quite nicely, calming down and not being so over reactive about everything. We just finished lunging her getting her into a nice place even after having a few days off! She was a little excitable but she settled right down in a reasonable amount of time, maybe a little longer than we would ultimately like. It took about thirty minutes today when we would like to see her calming down ultimately in ten or so, but that’s alright.

Dave is working on …

Bobbie Hanson started working with Will Faerber once a week only a few months back. When she started, her horse was for the most part unmanageable, not the best situation for a 74 year old beginner rider.
Bobbie was very good about following the program that Will set up for her with the horse, now after only a few short months we see the result, happy rider and a happy horse!

Good morning, this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and we are watching Ginny Walker and her mare Toasty!

Toasty is a horse that Ginny started riding with us about 2 years ago. The first time that we saw this horse it was a basket case , the kind of horse that would start shaking and lose it’s mind when you got on him. She has brought him along beautifully working on her own at home and coming for lessons and is now able to stretch it quite nicely! He is starting to relax and turn into a very nice mount for her.

Ginny has also done a lot herself to get in shape and she is really looking great and so much more flexible than she used to be and is able to stay with this horse. Very nice! She demonstrates a beautiful deep …

This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and we are looking at Sheila Montera on Gabilon. Gabilon is another one that started a few years back. He is a quarter horse/thoroughbred mix that has had a lot of health problems and stiffness problems, but Sheila has been working him over his back and now he is starting to swing and have a big active stride. We are showing you videos like these to show you what we are doing.

Sheila is another student who only rides with me every few months when she can or when I can get to her, and she has done a very good job of doing this all on her own in between lessons getting the horse to stretch and develop beautifully. Sheila demonstrates a working trot for us, bringing him up without losing the back only …

Hi this is Will Faeber from Art2Ride with my lovely wife Karen Loshbaugh and we are going to tell you about one of the secrets of dressage. In an earlier video we talked about how the legs are used and how the leg can be used to make the horse move sideways, straight forward or when we come underneath to engage the horse’s back. One of the things that most people have wrong when I see their position is the outside leg. The outside leg is one of the keys to getting a horse to bend correctly.

Usually when I tell people to put the outside leg back, they usually swing the leg back from the knee and they think that means to put the leg back. What that does as you will feel when you try this at home is …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and today I wanted to take a moment to talk about the 2012 Olympic games. At this point in the competition we have seen the 3 day events and the first two days of the dressage, and it’s been a very interesting Olympic games for everybody who is concerned about the welfare of the animals and I think we are finally seeing a little change in everything this year.

First I want to congratulate the British team, and Carl Hester especially, for showing us the way back to some kind of sanity in the horse business. Here we see a man that is training his own horses from the beginning, developing them classically and now winning on the Olympic stage. It is so wonderful to see someone who is doing it right, showing that these practices such …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and today we are talking about long reining. We are on phase four now. Step one is getting the horse to lunge correctly getting the horse to stretch into the contact with the side reins. Step two is having the line over the top of the neck. Step three is having the line around the back of the hind quarters and now we are ready for step four.

The final phase is where we are going to take contact with both reins (Please see video for correct setup). Now we have the horse in a truly ground driving position with direct contact going back to the rings on both sides. Notice there are many rings to choose from, but when we are working with a young horse we want them down on the side …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and we are continuing our discussion of long reining.

We have already gone through steps one and two, step one was just lunging the horse and getting the horse to take consistent contact and stretching into the contact with the side reins before we even begin to think about long reining. Remember, we want the horse to be quiet in the mouth before we start taking any pressure against their mouth, that is why we never overly shorten the side reins. Correctly fitted side reins are adjusted so that the horse can still get it’s head up but not get it all the way up. This encourages the horse to stretch into the contact rather than when we see people over tighten the side reins and over tighten the inside side rein thinking they are bending the horse. …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and we are continuing with our discussion of long reining.

So the first thing is we have already lunged the horse so she is nice and quiet. We are going to leave the side reins on at first, we leave them on when we are working with a horse when it is their first time in long reins. It gives them a little stabilization and makes it a little less difficult to keep them in the reins and it keeps them from moving their head too much up and down. When you are putting on the long reins you are going to put it on over to the outside, then you are going to walk around to the other side and hook it through the outside lower ring for starters and then hook it …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and today we are going to have a lesson on long reining. We have had quite a few comments on our website asking me to do some videos on long reining, so that’s what we are going to do today!

This horse that we are watching in the video is named Claire and she was a horse that had been in pasture for 5 years, basically a green horse that we started training about 3 weeks ago. We started with lunging her. As a prerequisite to long reining you certainly need to have the horse lunging correctly before you even think about starting to long rein. Another consideration here is notice we are in a pen that is completely surrounded. The thing I want to talk about with long reining is it is a very …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I am here with Dave Murphy and he is lunging his horse Zoe. We have had quite a few questions come in on the internet asking about lunging and how to start their horses, so I thought this would be a good opportunity. You can watch Dave who is still learning himself and we can talk about what he is doing right and what he is doing wrong.

As I have stated before in some of my answers to some of you, the most important thing you have to establish when you are lunging a horse is the horse staying out at the end of the line. Don’t worry about if the horse is trotting or walking and especially whoa. Most people worry about whoa, when in fact you need to worry about …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride once again and thank you for joining me for my book club! Today we want to talk about a book that I’m very excited about called “Thirty Years with Master Nuno Oliveira” by Michel Henriquet.

This is so exciting for me because it was Michel Henriquet who helped me understand what it was that Nuno was trying to do. When I was 23 in 1976, I was studying with Nuno for the first time. When I went there he had just come out of retirement after about 10 years and had nothing but young horses that he was working and all his old horses and exhibition horses were all school horses. While they were good and you could learn a lot from them, they weren’t mature horses in their prime able to do everything that they were capable …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and we had a request for some information for work in hand so I am going to try and give you a few points about that today!

This is our new horse Zoolander and if you come and take a close look here, both of my hands are going to be up (as shown in video) as I take the rein contact a little bit from the bit here and the other hand going up here (as shown in video) with the whip in my hand at the same time on this side. The most important thing to remember when you are doing work in hand is you’re wanting the horse to move ahead of you. Just like when you lunge you don’t stand around backwards, you stand to the front so when you …

This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I am here with my lovely wife Karen Loshbaugh riding our new project horse who we have named Zoolander! Thanks again to all of you who sent in names for him! We wanted to give you another update. This is 30 days in and we have corrected his shoeing and saddle fit and he has had 30 days of working over his back.

We think you will see a big difference! As Karen takes him down the long side, look how nicely this horse is beginning to swing through his back. He has a lovely big stride! Now that he is beginning to engage, we see how beautiful this horse is capable of moving. Remember folks, this was basically a rescue horse! Look how beautiful he is capable of moving!

Warmbloods are almost becoming like …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride with Karen Loshbaugh and our horse Zoolander. We have just given you a little dissertation on the rising trot and we have shown you what it looks like when its correct and you have a horse that is working through the back. The main point being is the horse working through the back is the main thing that lets you sit to the trot or rise to the trot correctly.

So what we are going to show you now is what happens when things aren’t going correctly. Karen is going to slow the horse down to where he is not really in a working trot anymore and the horse loses that rhythm. Watch what that does to her rising trot,  she has to labor and push her shoulders up and lift herself out of …

Hi and thank you for joining us. This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride with my lovely wife Karen Loshbaugh riding our new project horse Zoolander. We had a request for a video about the rising trot, so I thought we would talk about that for a little bit.

The main point I want to make is that the rising trot is never going to feel right until you get the horse working through the back, because that is really what the rising trot depends upon. Now if you watch Karen riding here, if you watch how when the horse’s back is springing how she sits in the saddle for just one second and the spring of the horse’s back pushes her right back up. When she comes out of the saddle that hind leg is pushing forward and pushing up underneath …

This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I am here once again with Dave Murphy. On Wednesday we showed you him working in the walk and now we are working in the trot for one of the first times under saddle.

Notice the horse’s mouth is still a little busy there, so we are working on getting her to quiet that down. Dave is letting her into a real working trot and if she has a little problem, he is just going to stretch up and then let her stretch and get longer. Just as someone might wonder what is a solarium — a space designed to let in light and provide a serene environment—Dave is creating a similar atmosphere of tranquility and openness for Zoey, allowing her to find her balance and harmony.

Dave is doing a great job there with …

This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I am here today with Dave Murphy and his horse Zoey. Dave started with me a few months back because both of his horses had become very very nervous (they are Arabs) and a little uncontrollable. We have an earlier video where we were in the first stages of lunging his horses and he has done that process very nicely and is now beginning to ride them.

When we started training Zoey the first time I saw Dave, every car that went by and every bird that flew out of a bush would send her into a fit of histeria, so she has come a long long way and is starting to work very nicely! As you can see in the video she has a nice working walk and he shows us a stretch …

What I would like to start off with is a little thing I call, what are we trying to do? Which is something I ask people all the time who are riding horses. What are you trying to do? and what are you trying to accomplish? I am amazed at how many people can’t answer that question. Another one I get in dressage is, what is collection? I am amazed at how many people can’t answer that question as well, especially when they are supposed to be a dressage rider.

What we are going to start out with today is trying to learn what working gaits are. Working gaits mean the point at which you are working through the back and the horse is working it’s topline. The point at which you are working the topline is where you are in …

Good morning, this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and we are looking at Karen Loshbaugh riding our new project horse, who is still unnamed! We are still looking at names for him!

We are about two weeks into this project and as you can see when you compare this to our first frames that we did of the horse, he now looks like he is moving pretty much consistently on both sides. There is no dropping of his hips anymore or losing the back end and he is starting to work through his back! We can still see from having been draw reined in his life that he still wants to crimp over the neck just a little bit, but the neck is starting to get out longer and longer all the time.

We can see he has got more swing in his back …

Will Faerber discusses with Master Ferrier Kenny lyon our new project’s feet and what should be done about them.

This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I’m here today with our student Kristen Balch who is lungeing the horse Contigo. We had a question come in on the internet yesterday, a person trying to learn how to stretch their horse and when she stretches her horse, the horse curls back behind the vertical. How can this be remedied?

Now usually that tells me that the horse has been broken at the third vertebrae in the neck or at least has been loosened there by use of draw reins or something like that during the course of his life. That is something that we find very often when we first go to stretch the horses, they curl back behind the vertical because their neck has a bend in it already. In other words, it’s already crinked over in the middle, so …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride, and riding today is Karen Loshbaugh on our new horse that we are introducing to you today!

Our latest project comes to us because he had become difficult for his owner and trainer to work with, they felt that he had become dangerous. We recognized immediately  the problem was that this horse who is 17’1 has huge strides and like so many of these big striding horses, they get into the hands of beginning riders and simply have too much movement for them to deal with and they start shortening their strides down in order to make them physically capable of riding, which makes the horses become very frustrated. That is what happened in this case.

He is been absolutely lovely, and this is only his third day! He has never been stretched before, and …

Good morning, this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and thanks for joining us again! I want to take a moment this morning to tell you about a book that I discovered a little while ago, that I think should be in every equestrian’s library. It’s called “Dressage Formula” by Erik Herbermann.

Erik Herbermann was a long time student of the great classical German rider Egon Von Neindorff. He grew up riding with him for many many years and has basically put his method down into a book. For those of you who don’t know who Egon Von Neindorff was, he was the top German rider for many years. He is the German equivalent to Nuno Oliveira, so to speak.

People ask me all the time why we go into these stretches and things and I just try to tell people that this …

Good morning, this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and today we are looking at Karen Loshbaugh riding a young Arab that we started from basically barely halter broke. He is just beginning to come into the phase of just beginning to take contact with the bridle. So the question that we are going to try and answer today is: What do you do with your hands in the stretch?

Lets talk about a few concepts of that. The main thing with the hands as Mr. Olivera used to say is, “The best hands in the world simply work like a pair of side reins” (They limit the length of the rein). They simply don’t give every time the horse pulls.  But better than a pair of side reins, they can actually maintain contact with the horse, and of course adjust to …

This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride, and we are in Irvine Park today giving a clinic.

My wife is riding a horse named Kyro, who started working with us in a clinic only a few short weeks ago. He is a draft cross, who I think when he started with us in the first clinic, had never been stretched and looked like a very shortened draft horse. This is a perfect example of when we sometimes find horses in interesting places and they surprise us!

Most people are often surprised by how well their horses can move. These horses that they thought would never be capable of doing dressage, and yet once they see them begin to light up their toplines and move correctly through the back, they see how differently they can look.

This horse looked very hollow-backed, as you can see …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and this is Kristen Balch with her horse Contigo demonstrating in our video here this morning. We had a question come in yesterday about the correct position or the correct length of the side reins.

The correct length of the side reins is so long that the horse simply can’t put it’s head all the way up (In the video, you can see how Kristen raises his head a little bit to show how free his head is), he has plenty of room to bring his head reasonably in front of the vertical but he can’t put his head up so far that he can turn completely upside down. So that is the correct length of side reins.

The side reins should never be so tight that they draw the horse’s head back (Kristen pulls …

This is Dave Murphy and his young Arab filly Zena.

Zena, only a few short weeks ago was a pretty energetic(lets say) young lady who was a little bit out of control. Just by learning some of the basic principles of classical dressage, Dave has learned to apply them to this young horse. As you can see with only 10 or less sessions since we started, this horse has gone from being an uncontrollable young thing to now where she is safe in her pen, letting Dave catch her and coming out and going to work, just by applying a few simple principles.

You can also see why I wanted to film this horse. Here is a horse that has never had a saddle or bridle on and just by teaching it to lunge correctly, you can see how this horse is …

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride again, and today we are going to talk about the three uses of the leg. Now there is one very important thing that is missing from most people’s riding and that is the third thing that the leg must ask the horse to do.

Now everyone knows that the legs are used to ask the horse to move forward, that is when we impulse with both calves of both legs the horse should move straight ahead and move away from your legs. And most people understand that the leg can also mean to move laterally, that is the horse can move away from the leg towards the side and we can displace the haunches from one side to the other. But the third thing that is so important to collection and correct riding is …

Today we are going to try to answer a question from one of our friends in Denmark who has written to us saying when she tries to stretch her horse she goes on a loose rein, and in her particular case, the horse stops moving and seems to fall apart. So what we are going to try and answer is the correct contact.

The correct contact in the stretch is contact, the weight of the rein, it is not a loose rein (this is one of the biggest misconceptions about the stretch). The horse should be just as much on the bridle in the stretch as it is when up in the working trot, as we see Karen doing here in the video. She is going to stretch the horse correctly first and we are going to watch the horse stretch …

HAVE WE LOST OUR WAY??

(This post discusses dressage as a sport but applies to any discipline.  Horses need to have their back’s engaged and carrying the rider!!)

Are we sacrificing the principles of Classical training for sport??  Are our horses paying the price??  Gerd Heuschmann DVM describes in his book “Tug of War” and his DVD “If Horses Could Speak” the damage that is being to horses by this deviation from the Classical principles.

Written in 1959 Udo Burger details in his book “The Way To Perfect Horsemanship” how “Complete harmony is the whole essence of the art of dressage and it is unfortunate that it cannot be better rewarded in dressage competitions”…”Art is pleasurable activity which only involves appreciation of beauty and happiness in selflessly pursuing an ideal. Sport is a test of strength and courage in which ambition and …

This is Karen Loshbaugh on Perhaps, and today we are going to once again do a demonstration, with a horse that has a more advanced level of training.

This horse has shown through I1 successfully, Karen won her silver medal on the horse. It has been trained exclusively by us for some 5 years or so. We are going to demonstrate how we begin at the same place. These foundation exercises, developing the horse through the top line are something that you do at every level of training. You should always come back to it to relieve the tension across the horse’s back, and that is why they are so much more willing to work because we are letting them out of that tension.

So now what we are going to do is Karen is going to bring the horse up and …

Today we are going to give you another example of developing the horse’s top line and finding that point of balance. That is, how high we can bring the horse’s head and neck once we have engaged his back.

This is an 18 year old stallion who was never able to be trained due to some feet infections, so he only started working at the age of 16! So it took quite a while to develop his back, he did a lot of stretch work. We are just now beginning to bring him back up.

My wife Karen, who you see riding in the video, is going to get him in a nice deep stretch. This horse also has a problem because he had been overbitted in the past and always hung his tongue out the side of his mouth. We see …

So today, we are talking about introducing the young horse to the sitting trot.

The biggest mistake that most people make with this, is they sit too long. Young horse’s backs take quite a while to form, so if you just drop your stirrups (as so many people do), you will probably end up hollowing the back of the horse, because the horse won’t be able to sustain it.

So, when your first beginning the sitting trot on a horse, what you want to do is get them into the stretch, and then only sit in the stretch. This teaches the rider independence as well. My student Sarah in this video, is working with a horse that has only had a few weeks of dressage training, and is learning to stretch. To get him back in place, she waits a moment till she …

Will Faerber discusses “How to Engage Your Horse’s Back”