Rudy Horsemanship

09/15/2026

Lessons tonight were lit! 🤣🍁🍃💨🔥🎃🤣
I don’t know about groundhog’s predicting the water, but the horses have told us that autumnal equinox is right around the corner!
(BTW, we were knowingly working on things that brought out this behavior in both horses. If I would have been working with riders who can’t handle a little spice 🌶️, we would have worked on very different things and kept it way more chill. )

09/11/2026

When you know the reasons for the rules, you know when to break the rules!
Lise is doing such an amazing job starting her young horse, Journey. But they ran into a not common problem….

So the rule is, to stop, we ALWAYS use our seat first, before we ever use our hands.
But this wasn’t working because it meant Lise never actually got to use her hands!!!

Journey is so well educated on the ground, and so feely, and so in tune with Lisé, that Lisé never actually got to use her hand!
We always said Lise could do the first ride, but I would do the first couple canters. No offense, but before I canter a horse for the first time, I want to make sure they know how to stop off of hand!!!! lol.
So I had Lise start to drive journey into her hand, and close her hand first, and then use her seat, to do a bunch of downward transitions.
This is so backwards.
If you asked me without this context, I would absolutely say no way- it’s always seat first and then Hand!!!
But leave it to Horses to teach us to never say never!!

Journey was initially offended- OFFENDED!
But this made it clear that we were correct and she really did need introduced to the ideal of a fixed hand. Of course she’s a smart little girl and picked it up very quickly.

She also picked up the canter quickly and I actually think Lisé could have asked for it today, but the arena was kind of busy. But they did do some big trot in preparation and it looked fantastic!!

09/11/2026

Just when you think you’ve given yourself plenty of time…

09/11/2026

❌ don’t twist your knee out
❌ don’t lift your heel and knee up
✅ windshield wiper your lower leg back if necessary

I always get hate when I post about this because some people have a nice leg shape and ride horses with nice barrel shapes, and they simply don’t understand the problem that we are trying to fix here!
If your leg lies nicely on the horse, and you can put your heel and ankle against them without a problem, then please disregard.

But if you have students that keep twisting their knees out, or that keep lifting their heels (and therefore their knees) up to give leg aids, they are probably doing it because they have to do SOMETHING to close the distance between their foot and the Horses side.
There are literally only three options and you have to pick the least bad of them, which is the windshield wiper, because that’s the only one that keeps your thigh where it belongs. 

09/10/2026

Some horses just don’t really care.
They don’t care if a deer jumps out of the woods
They don’t care if a loud noise happens
They don’t care if you accidentally bump their mouth
They don’t care if you applied leg
They don’t care if you meticulously applied the perfectly choreographed aids for a splendid renver!

Some horses care a lot!
If you shape your body into a half pass, they care and respond!
If your seat starts to move a little quicker, they care and respond. 
If your balance is not great, they care!
If the timing of your aids is a little off, they care!
And if the environment changes, they probably care about that too.

(Obviously, this is a gross generalization, and there are nuances to each horse’s character!)

If you care a lot - if you care about developing upper level movements,  and care about scoring high, or simply care to be fabulous- then you probably need a horse that cares about something! Anything! But keep in mind this horse might not always care about the same things you do, and most likely you’re going to have to accept that as a necessary evil on the path to fabulousness! 

And if you don’t care to do much, it’s probably wise to pick a horse that doesn’t care to do much either.

And yes, I understand the irony of posting a picture of something like vaulting where the horse is expected to not care much, and the human actually does quite a lot! Lol.

09/09/2026

We do so much weird stuff here!! Yes, we teach proper seat and healthy biomechanics, but we also do obstacles and ba****ck, and sneak in a trail ride when we can.
Get weirder!!!!
Be more fun.
BTW- we typically use badger for this particular shenanigans. So this was a first for Alicia and Dudley and they both did fantastic! (which honestly was not a surprise on either part)

09/09/2026

Captions???
Callie (taller/whiter) is in charge here, and she’s pretty good at putting her nose in and out of her bucket at her own discretion. She’s older and needs more calories than her chubby buddy (Mae).
We’ve often joked that Callie is one of the most tolerant horses we’ve ever met.

09/08/2026

Yeah. This. Find a balance between training the horse emotionally and training the horse’s body and physical balance.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the balance between giving a horse a really solid education and making sure they’re exposed to life as it actually happens.
I’ve seen horses that have been exposed to just about everything. They can go down the road, cross water, work cattle, deal with noise and activity and generally take life in stride. But sometimes there are gaps in the education that helps them find better physical and mental balance, use their bodies well, and allows us to do less rather than more as their training develops.
And I’ve seen the opposite. Horses with an incredible education in the arena that struggle when you take them outside of that carefully controlled environment.
I don’t think we have to choose between the two.
I want my horses to understand the aids, have balance and clarity, and have a thoughtful progression in their training. But I also want them to leave the arena, encounter things I couldn’t have planned for and learn how to deal with them.
Sometimes that means deliberately finding opportunities to do slightly ridiculous things with them. Because life with horses is going to provide plenty of those opportunities whether we plan for them or not.
And that’s how we came to the new unofficial tagline for the horse training business:

Well Educated Horses with a Tolerance for Dumb S**t.

~ Justin

📸Erin Gilmore Photography

09/05/2026

WHY SPANISH WALK???
1.) it’s quite easy to teach. And if you’ve never done any “trick training” or shaping behaviors through positive reinforcement, this is a fabulous place to start!
2.) It really teaches the human good timing. Once you start putting this into forward movement (whether on the ground or under saddle) you really have to be able to predict the horse’s movement, and time accordingly. 
3.) Holy s**t does it open up the shoulders!! And not just flexibility but actual range to motion.
4.) it’s biomechanically fabulous for the horse, and strengthens and stretches them in many ways while also being totally safe for horses that have quite an array of injuries
5.) DIAGONAL BALANCE! A finished Spanish Walk is a diagonal movement, and the horses really learned to utilize their core muscles to achieve this balance. 
6.) If you are constantly fighting to mentally deconstruct after years of exposure to modern dressage(🙋‍♀️🥴), and being taught that lowering the neck lifts the back (it doesn’t) the Spanish Walk is a fast track to seeing and believing that lifting the front IS GOOD and directly helps the horse to squat behind and LIFT the thoracic sling.

BTW- Equus Salutis is running a 2 week Spanish Walk Course STARTING TODAY (I know, I know- I should have posted this a week ago!)