San Diego Horse Trainer Will Faerber from Art2Ride shows collection in the walk and trot.

San Diego Horse Trainer Will Faerber from Art2Ride gives an update on Legolas and demonstrates collection.

Will Faerber from Art 2 Ride begins a series on developing collection. These are actual schooling session with Amber and Legolas as they begin the journey toward collection. In other words, you’ve got your horse stretching and well developed in working gaits, what comes next. We show you each days schooling over a period of a few weeks so that you can get an idea of how we progress over time. A good trainer is like a chess player, he is thinking many moves ahead and how his beginning strategy will effect his end game.

San Diego Horse Trainer Will Faerber from Art2Ride gives you an update on Legolas and beginning collection.

Hi this is Will Faerber and Karen Loshbaugh from Art2Ride here with our horse Zoolander. Today we are going to start our Q&A sessions on video. We have been answering a lot of questions from people who view our videos around the world by typing them out and I thought it would be much more informative if we had a dialogue about the question itself.

The first question is: How do you get the horse on the bit? I think for a lot of people it is really confusing and I remember going through this stage too. How much pressure do you have? Should it be the weight of the rein? Should it be 20lbs of pressure? So the basic question is: How do you get a horse on the bridle? What you have to understand is what has to take …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …