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Training with Verena

  “Dressage” is a word that in most people in the horsey universe, will illicit one or another mental image of what dressage means. For one person it will mean competition dressage, for another, classical or baroque riding, for yet another simply a system for the physical and mental development of the horse to make a better riding proposition for other pursuits. Unfortunately for many, there is an overriding vision of forced outlines, tight curb chains and rowel spurs.  For me, it goes very much further. In the first instance, I favour the definition “a system for the physical and mental development of the horse to make a better riding proposition”, but also to develop trust, a bond and a partnership, with lightness, ease and a minimum of physical effort. The joy is in the journey with your friend and done properly, the destination will take care of itself. Dr Reiner Klimke once stated, “I ride to see how close I can get to the horse”. This encapsulates what I think dressage i...
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What is Farriery?

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far·rier [ˈfarɪə] NOUN a smith who shoes horses. ***** On the face of it, a farrier is a person who nails a semi-circular piece of metal with holes in it, to a horse's hoof. As a group, with a few exceptions, farriers do little to alleviate this misconception. For sure, this is part of the job, but farriery is so much more than that. Our modern domesticated horses are asked to contend with so much more than their wild ancestors, hence the invention of horseshoeing (more on that later). Our selective breeding and domestic husbandry practices, coupled with the athletic demands placed on our horses introduce challenges for the horse they never evolved to endure. Additionally, our horses are often overweight and are required to carry a human of various sizes (who may be quite large), plus saddle etc. and/or asked to perform athletic feats beyond what nature intended. At the bottom of all these questions we ask of our horses, interacting with the very earth and often at speed, is the ho...
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Hoof Balance Pt 1 The Butterfly Effect

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A Tempest in Tokyo It is often stated that a butterfly flapping its wings in San Francisco can result in a tempest in Tokyo or some variation of that. This is a somewhat hyperbolic reference to that branch of mathematics known as Chaos Theory. Put as simply as possible, it is the notion that in a complex system a small occurrence can have a huge impact on a greater aspect of that system. In the horse's hoof, we indeed have a complex system, vis a vis, Chaos in the mathematical, physical sense. A small aspect of breeding, or husbandry, or farriery, or exercise, can have disastrous, ultimately career-ending consequences, often creeping up insidiously on an unsuspecting owner. We farriers can only make an input to that complex system once every 4-6 weeks. Rest assured, just as our butterfly friend could unwittingly wreak havoc, what we do can have a huge impact on your horse, either positively or negatively. In the x-ray image above there was a cascade of mistakes both on the part of ...
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