Karen Loshbaugh from Art 2 Ride Saddlery takes you through the saddle fit process for Shammy. Shammy is a five year old and this is her first time being fitted for a saddle.

Work in Hand lesson with Lia and Pip from the 2017 Art2Ride Australia Classical Riding Clinic with Karen Loshbaugh.

Lunging lesson with Lia and Pip from the 2017 Art2Ride Australia Classical Riding Clinic with Karen Loshbaugh.

San Diego Horse Trainer Karen Loshbaugh from Art2Ride discusses the video sent in by Sonja and gives suggestions for further improvement.

San Diego Horse Trainer Karen Loshbaugh from Art2Ride discusses the video sent in by Polly and gives suggestions for further improvement.

San Diego Horse Trainer Karen Loshbaugh from Art2Ride discusses the video sent in by Carol and gives suggestions for further improvement.

Karen Loshbaugh from Art2Ride evaluates a saddle for Carol and Beaujolais.

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride with H2O and Barb. Barb leases this horse and it is the same horse that you saw in our last video with my wife Karen Loshbaugh. The last video was the first time that we had gotten him into a complete deep stretch, so I wanted to show you the student working on the exact same thing.

Look how easily this horse is able to work with Barbara. This horse was very very stiff, she was the kind of horse that just pulled her head up into the air and jammed her neck back into her body. Now Barbara is experiencing her very loose over her back and swinging. Much improved, beautiful! So this is really about a month of training, 3-4 days a week, just getting her softened up and lunging correctly. We …

Hello this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and today I am here showing you one of the new horses that we are training. We have been working with this horse for about a month. It was a hunter and her name is H2O.

She has quite a strong back, but she was quite stiff through her neck. I wanted to show you a video of her first day of really getting a full stretch, she has really loosened up. This was a horse that would really brace against your hands and start to run. Look at how nicely she is beginning to swing over her back after only a month! Look at how we have the full range of motion! This is my wife Karen Loshbaugh riding her today.

I wanted to introduce you to some of these horses because we will …

Good morning this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride with my lovely wife Karen and our horse Zoolander. Today, in the following video we are going to talk about the first and preliminary foundation exercise of classical dressage, and that is the leg yield…

Are branded remedies better than generic

Will Faerber and Karen Loshbaugh from Art2Ride give you an update on Bailador’s progress in lunging.

Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I am here today with my lovely wife Karen and our horse Zoolander. We had a request come in asking about rider fitness, so we are going to discuss that and what we do in particular. We will discuss how we stay in shape and the requirements to ride at this level.

You will never be a better rider than you are fit. So if you are out of shape, just know that that will always stand in your way to some level or another. You need flexibility, strength and wind to be able to ride, so in other words you need a cross training type of exercise. The most important thing is eating well. I am a raw foodist who eats about eighty percent raw food. I eat a thing called raw …

This video is about Correcting the overflexion in the horse’s neck.

Good afternoon this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride here with my lovely wife Karen Loshbaugh to wish you all a very merry Christmas! We are out here today with Bailador, who we introduced you to a few times earlier. Leslie experienced working over his back yesterday, and today Karen will be working him.

As you can see in the video, he has really begun to swing over his back. Bailador is a very big horse, 17.3 or so, and like we see with so many other horses his size, they have been shut down. They have never really been allowed to go in their full gaits because usually someone gets on them that are afraid of the size of the gait and how big the wave is. This horse has a big push through it’s back. So when you go out …

Good morning this is Will Faerber and Karen Loshbaugh from Art2Ride and we are coming to you from our clinic in Whitehouse, Ohio. Karen will now show us a little saddlefitting demonstration since we have had so many requests for it on our website.

Yesterday when we watched this horse it couldn’t move because the saddle was impeding the horse’s movement, especially in the shoulders. As a trainer, the last thing we want to do is make it difficult for the horse to perform what we are asking of him. They become unhappy and resentful because we are asking them to lift their back and carry themselves when their saddle is restricting them from doing that, which can be quite painful for them. So if you hit on certain areas of the horse’s back (which we call negative reflex points), the horse …

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 …

Good morning this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I am here with my wife Karen and our project horse Zoolander. Zoolander is developing quite nicely across the topline and stretching into the contact, so today we are going to show you what it’s like to bring the horse up and find how high we can develop the working trot before the horse drops it’s back.

We find the horse’s position in the stretch and then all you have to do is simply bring the poll up as high as you can without the horse losing it’s back, that is what the rider’s goal is. This will tell you what the horse is ready to do because it will drop it’s back if you bring it up too high. Then we are going to try a little sitting trot to see …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 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 …