Equestrian Strategies with Liana Antanovich

03/22/2024

Subscribe to hear the podcast with my interview to the Swedish equestrian and breeder Anne Axell of Horse and Health.

Liana Antanovich, originally from Belarus, has journeyed through Russia, Europe and the United States and now currently visits in Latvia. Her unique experien...

03/09/2024

Watching Youth Show Jumping competition in Incunkains, Latvia. 90-100 cm course. Quick observations:

Next horse is already in the arena, when a current rider starts, sometimes two following horses in the arena, and they manage to keep away of competing horse just fine.

Same classical attire, but mostly black jackets, do not think i saw any navy.

All horses are on the bit in a round frame between fences. Majority of horses are on the aids and many in front of the leg, in the uphill balance.

Most effective riders who did the course in 29-35 seconds had old school seat, maintaining vertical body position over every obstacle or combination. They also had zero or minimal faults.

J. Morris style riders who dive with chest on horse necks showed slower pace on a course, 36-59 sec, more faults.

Very good footing and maintenance. Horses look surefooted, even in super tight speedy turns.

Not a single kid cries. Started class is in the comfort zone for everyone, and kids look like - hey, can we raise the course 20cm higher?

Light trailers are pulled by SUV with hitches, this is very impressive. There are big vans as well with side load, but mostly light trailers for 2 horses straight load pulled by SUVs.

It is -1C today, ground is frozen outside.

Lots of natural light in the warmup and competition arenas.

Norhing is heated 🙂

More later!

03/03/2024

Medium trot can be as high as collected trot in some horses

Remember Always !!!

02/11/2024

Was reflecting on Cesar Parra's videos floating around on the internet, and surfing the internet thinking how can we professionally define what is over the limit? Came across this concept explaining by highly regarded Walter Zettl. Video starts right on that concept:

A Matter of Trust, Volume l - in this series Walter covers the basic guidelines for equine behavior, movement, gaits, physical and mental characteristics of ...

02/06/2024

A distressed rider pinged me about discussion going on in media regarding training video with Cesar Parra in FL. I browsed Internet and found this video. https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/usef-and-fei-investigating-training-video-of-cesar-parra/. Nowadays, it is very disturbing to see beating up of a young, lovely, gorgeous horse like this, who only demonstrates body language of coping, willing to understand demands of a rider. In my youth, which was all in 19th century, it was a common deal to "school" a horse like that into delivering reflecsive, precise reactions of desired effects and amplitudes "on a push button". Horses, especially in big sport, were on "sports economics" schedules, and many still are. Riders, especially professional/commercial riders (not professional in terms of methods, but in terms that they are making money for living from that), are always under a very big stress. They mount a horse, and horse must deliver, else the whole sporto-economic machine breaks and someone has to file bankruptcy or leave commercial sport. It would be helpful of course to use and leverage FEI and National Federations regulation engines to stop and prevent beating up sport horses. And it is also great when tactful riders demonstrate their training long videos to cultivate letting a horse develop and respond on their individual schedules, not sporto-economical ones. Please share your imperfect videos and descriptions of what you are doing in social media! Let's enjoy THEM.

02/06/2024

Is it ok to trail ride, ride on uneven terrain, or go over small jumps in dressage saddle? - this question (paraphrased) was asked in a Saddle Fitting group here on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/793338210719804. Here is what I think about that.

A dressage saddle aligns rider knee closer to hip-hill vertical line, and this alignment concentrates rider weight on the pelvic seat bones, which are triggers for engagement and collection. A horse may not collect instantly from just this seat-weight distribution, but over long periods of time (more than 40 minutes, and on uneven terrain) it might begin feeling overburdened in back in spots under saddle/seat bones. All-purpose, endurance, and jump saddles allow for rider knees to be more in front of the hip joints, thus allowing entire thighs from knee to seat bone to serve as distributed weight carriers. Riders have advantage of balancing upper body weight over broader and longer weight base, front-to-back, left-to-right, and be more mobile with upper body balance. Thus, not concentrating weight placement on one narrow spot, but using all that surface under named area, and horse's body is less tired/compromised. Another benefit of riding long-distance or on uneven terrain in non-dressage saddle, is that other saddles are flatter in the tree, and have small thigh blocks, those other saddles do not carry danger of creating a paper-clip-like or nut-crecker-like cramp from rider knee into seat bones leaning into tall back of saddle. If you ask me, I always have two saddles. One dressage saddle for collected work, and another all-purpose saddle for hills, trails, light cavaletti jumping. Having said that, I absolutely feel comfortable going on a 40 min trail ride with dressage saddle mostly in walk, with 5-10 min in posting trot included in it, and maybe 1 min canter up a slope. But I do this rarely, when I have to change plans suddenly to derail from collected work in an arena, or for a short 15 min cooling off phase after dressage work. If I plan trails/hills/cavaletti jumping right away, I use my all-purpose saddle, and my horse is very grateful for that. Pictured is my dressage horse with all-purpose saddle on vs dressage saddle on. You can see right away the forward knee design difference. I hope this helps!