DeHaan's Horsemanship

01/10/2026

Horsemanship is not just -

⚡️Starting c**ts and gentling mustangs.
⚡️Seeing the right distance.
⚡️Asking for the change at *just* the right moment.
⚡️Knowing when to push forward and when to leave it alone.
⚡️Good timing and feel.

Horsemanship is -

✨A well placed and quick IV.
✨Savvy enough to use unpopular management to help a horse in the moment.
✨Breaking ice in the frigid cold.
✨Checking in the middle of the night because something didn’t feel “right”.
✨Making sure trailer floors are still solid every spring and fall.
✨Keeping a medicine box and knowing how to use everything in it.
✨Mucking stalls.
✨Cleaning udders and sheaths.
✨Seeing subtle differences in gait or expression.
✨Knowing when it’s not the right fit and to move on.
✨Going to the grocery store covered in wormer.
✨Noticing hoof growth patterns.
✨Watching grey creep into the hair of an old and steady friend.
✨Knowing when to blanket and when not to.
✨Quitting a ride because something feels off - even when you can’t explain it.
✨A treat bag and a set of hobbles hanging in the tack room and using them both - often.
✨Listening to your gut when you know ‘it’s time’.
✨The bravery to stay with them through their final breath… and cry into their mane after they have crossed.
✨A gentle hand on a stared forehead.

This too is Horsemanship.

Anything less is just riding.

11/15/2025

Great explanation

06/03/2025

The barn will be closed to all students and visitors on June 10th, next tuedsay. Please reschedule Tuesday lessons to another day.

05/22/2025

Reni is on stall rest for a few weeks. She can be hand walked and grazed and ridden by kids at the walk only. No trotting. No being turned loose. Trying to get her sound again as she inflamed her stifle injury. Please feel free to give her lots of love!! She needs it!

05/03/2025

💯

04/15/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/1DwEVo6g36/?mibextid=wwXIfr

“My horse wouldn’t hurt a fly!” said his owner, yet the tension at the mounting block was palpable. It was so thick that I could barely breathe.

While she and her horse were here for a mounted lesson, I stopped them from going ahead. I realized that we had to take it back a notch, to do something else, entirely. Before that horse and rider could ever learn, we had to go back to the place where things went wrong.

While she seemed disappointed that this was going to start out an unmounted lesson on the value of meaningful ground work, I was intrigued. The rider was sending me an unspoken message that she was frightened… but that unless she was riding, she wasn’t going to be learning. She was wasting her time and money. That by stopping at her horse’s ‘mounting block issue’, she was backing down.

This disconnect between basic c**t starting and achieving goals is actually quite common in riders who want to compete. The discipline is of no consequence; they just have their eye fixed upon the prize. Over and over, we've been told that higher horsemanship means setting goals. Thing is, a faraway goal can blind us to fundamental skills that are shaky to the point of crumbling, entirely.

“What does ground work mean to you?” I remember asking. Her reply was telling, though I had to give her credit for being truthful.

“It’s what you do when you’re scared to get on!”

Fair enough. The best I could probably hope for was to convince her that ground work might be what we do when our horse was scared, or otherwise concerned, about US getting on, too. That if not for us, let’s do it for them.

I explained that we were about to do some unmounted work with her horse, to find out what was really going on inside. Rather than ‘run the horse around in circles until it became tired’, a phrase used by so many people to deride any sort of unmounted work, especially lungeing, I wanted to get an idea of where the horse’s brace and worry lived.

You see, her horse had been quietly coming apart, long before he was failing to stand still at the mounting block.

He’d been feeling the pressure long before she’d struggled with his saddling and bridling. She’d been witness to his meltdown once she’d managed to load him into the trailer by herself, for I’d heard his pawing and stamping as their truck and trailer came up our lane. I rather suspect his ‘mounting block problem’ began the minute the horse was caught and brought from his herd. Riding, to him—no, to both of them—was underlined with dread.

While she absolutely needed to do all these things—to travel and ride and build resilience and usefulness in her horse—she needed to go back to the last place the horse was ‘fine’ and go on from there.

I explained that it was more about waiting and digging around in the dirt, until we could see the truth. That soon everything would feel fine, or that the rider might say it’s not a good day to ride, or that the horse might say something similar. That even though this was a paid lesson, this was actually the perfect time and place to wait for an answer, without any attachment as to what the horse’s answer might be.

To ignore the frayed part was like knitting a sweater and wearing it, despite the fact that we'd seen that we'd dropped a stitch. Yes, it's still a sweater. It will keep us warm, for a while. But we've ignored the fact that we could have made it better by fixing the weak link. You know, making sure that all our good work doesn't come undone.

Once we made the decision to treat the lesson as a detective might piece together a crime scene, the horse very quickly came around and got into the spirit of the thing. I do remember his rider feeling surprised that the minute she let go her intention to mount up and ride at dawn, so to speak, he relaxed!

Despite their shaky start, both began to feel the other out. There was a lot of blowing and head shaking, as we encouraged the horse to walk and trot around us on the lunge. We changed direction quite a bit, did a lot of in-hand bendy work, then made a big deal of standing together for a puff.

Soon, the horse said that he was ready for the responsibility of riding in this strange place and doing his best for us. He very generously went on to stand at the mounting block. With a few pointers from me, regarding his rider's timing and helping him find his balance, along with settling very softly into the saddle, all was good.

The lesson went on as planned, because we’d taken the time to make things okay, first. We spent the majority of the lesson at the walk, which was another hard pill to swallow for our competitive-minded rider but I was seeing a need for her to slow things down and wait, until…

There is no judgement here because I was learning from this horse and rider, too.

There are many horses that I am afraid to step across; the difference being, I do not berate myself into riding them. I do not step on until the horse says, “OK. Sure.” Riding them is then something of an anticlimax. You know, we’ll tell ourselves that it is ridiculous to try lying to a horse and yet, we do it all the time.

“You’re fine, you’re fine,” we’ll mutter to the dancing horse, as we reach for the stirrup… when clearly, he is anything but.

There are still so many of us who are afraid of what our horses are telling us. We’ll resolutely ignore them, deny their truth, in the spirit of being brave. Why do we disregard the very real risk to our own personal safety? What is the reasoning here? Would we get into an elevator with a scary man? Would we sign up for friendship with someone who might hurt us, should we forget to walk on eggshells in their company?

Why do we choose to pursue relationship with another who puts that lump in our throat, that familiar heaviness in our chest, that hollow ache in our gut, every single time?

Do we honestly believe that it is in this horse’s best interests to be handled and ridden by someone who is afraid? Does he not deserve to get out from under that dark cloud? Don't we?

What is it all about? Why are we saying that our horse would never harm us and yet, it is obvious that he is not a pleasure to ride, or to be around?

What is the answer here? What is really going on?

04/14/2025

Someone asked me recently how long it would take me to get a horse "dead broke."

I took a breath, centered myself, and responded honestly:
There is no amount of time I could spend with a horse that would make that happen.
Because dead broke should not be a thing.

Blind obedience in the face of human hands is not partnership—it’s submission. And it comes at the cost of the horse’s voice, their agency, and sometimes, their soul. That isn’t training. That’s trauma.

You could send a horse to me for two years of full training, and when they leave this program, they will still have opinions. They will still communicate. They will still say no.
But they will say it in a way that is safe, regulated, and respectful—because that's what true partnership looks like.

They won’t be “broke.”
They’ll be whole.

But here’s the catch: you have to do the work, too.
You have to check your ego at the door.
You have to learn how to listen as much as you ask.
You have to soften when your horse braces, to be patient when they’re unsure, and to meet resistance with curiosity instead of control.

This isn’t the kind of program where you show up after six months of training expecting your horse to tick off the boxes.

This is the kind of program where you learn to ask better questions—of your horse and of yourself.

Because at the end of the day, you won’t be handed a robotic horse who performs on command.
You’ll be walking beside a sentient, sensitive being—one who knows how to regulate, how to set boundaries, how to trust, and how to dance through life with you – not for you.

And that?
That’s worth more than any timeline, any checklist, or any illusion of control.

That’s what real partnership feels like.
And it’s the only kind of “broke” I’ll ever believe in. 🐴💛

04/14/2025

I find myself telling this to people on a daily basis. We need old and new to mesh and find a happy, normalized middle.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩, 𝐇𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐎𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝

It’s hard not to feel like we’re at a turning point in the horse world.

Looking back, there was a time when riding and horsemanship came with a strong set of standards. Riders were taught to earn their place, to build solid foundations, and to respect the process. You didn’t rush a young horse. You didn’t skip steps. Care was hands-on, detailed, and taken seriously not just by professionals, but by everyday riders. There was structure, patience, and a sense of pride in doing things the right way, not the fast way.

Now, things feel different.

In many corners of the industry, we’ve lost a lot of that grounding. Young horses are often pushed to perform far too early. Riders sometimes expect results before they’ve learned the basics. The pressure to be seen, to compete, to win or simply to look the part has grown. Social media has brought visibility, but it’s also fuelled a culture of shortcuts and surface-level success.

It feels like the standard has dropped not just in riding, but in stable management, training ethics, and even in the way we talk about progress. There’s less time given to the process, and more focus on the product. And in the middle of it all, the horse can become an accessory to the rider’s goals, rather than a partner in the journey.

But here’s the other side of the story and it matters just as much.

While the world has sped up and some old-school standards have slipped, equine welfare has grown by leaps and bounds. We now understand far more about what horses need to live comfortably, happily, and pain-free. The 3Fs freedom, forage, and friends are no longer “nice ideas” but essential pillars of care. Research into behaviour, biomechanics, pain responses, and saddle fit has opened our eyes to issues that once went unnoticed or ignored.

We’re starting to listen to our horses more to recognise when they’re uncomfortable, mentally stressed, or physically pushed too hard. That awareness is changing the way we feed, shoe, train, and manage our horses for the better.

So now we find ourselves at a crossroads.

Because while welfare has improved, standards in many areas of horsemanship have fallen away. And we need both.

We need the knowledge and compassion of today to be paired with the discipline and depth of yesterday. We need to bring back the pride in doing things properly not just kindly, but correctly. Not just with heart, but with skill.

This is the future we should be striving for:

A riding culture where the horse’s
wellbeing is paramount, but the rider’s education is never rushed.

Where slow, solid training is respected again.

Where riders take responsibility not only for how they ride, but for how they care.

Where horses aren’t just physically well they’re mentally and emotionally understood too.

And where standards rise with welfare, not in place of it.

We can’t change the whole world. But we can choose which values we carry forward. We can protect the best parts of the past and combine them with the most compassionate parts of the present to create something better than either alone.

For me, this is where I’m stuck at a crossroads between appreciation and frustration. I’m truly grateful for how far we’ve come in caring for the horse as a living, feeling being. But I deeply miss the standards that once shaped good riding and real horsemanship. I feel like the world is moving too fast, skipping too many steps, and forgetting the foundation that makes all of this work time, patience, understanding, and respect for the process.

I don’t want to go back, but I do want to carry those values forward. I want a horse world where the welfare of today meets the wisdom of yesterday where standards rise again, not for the sake of tradition, but for the sake of the horse.

04/13/2025

We have a coffee and wine bar now! Also pop in the fridge and a water cooler that has hot and cold water! Going bougie over here! ☕️ 🍷