Blackwater Sport Horses

09/11/2026

When “I Just Want to Ride” Becomes the Problem🔥

A trainer friend of mine recently lost it with a client. This bothered her enormously because she is normally incredibly patient. She is also kind, experienced and genuinely goes out of her way to help people.

The client was lovely too, and that matters. This isn't a story about a horrible person mistreating a horse. It's about a perfectly nice person who loved her horse, wanted to ride her horse and was struggling to see that some of the things standing between her and that goal weren't going to disappear simply because she really wanted to ride.

For a couple of months, my friend had been helping her with an anxious, spooky mare. Quite quickly, she noticed several things. The mare appeared mildly footsore. Boots were purchased, but my friend suspected more investigation was needed, including looking at diet and hoof care. The saddle had also never been properly fitted.

Then there was the riding. When the mare became anxious and rushed, the rider would shortened the reins and pulled harder on her mouth. On the ground, her handling of the lead rope was inadvertently creating confusion. Nothing malicious was happening. She simply didn't yet have the capability or insight to recognise how these interactions might feel from the horse's end of the rope.

So my friend went back to groundwork. Not because groundwork is some sacred spiritual practice, but because the woman needed to learn how to communicate with her horse. The mare was already showing some anxiety on the ground, and my friend wanted to help the owner develop the skills to guide and support her there before adding the complexity of riding. The groundwork wasn't really about groundwork. It was about helping the human become clearer, more reliable and more capable of guiding the horse when things became difficult.

Each lesson, my friend explained what they were doing and why. She demonstrated, coached and gave the woman things to practise. Unfortunately, very little was practised, so they kept returning to much the same place. This wasn't a case of a trainer endlessly insisting on groundwork while refusing to let someone progress. The things preventing that progression weren't changing. The mare was still showing some anxiety on the ground, the owner's handling wasn't improving because she wasn't practising, the feet remained questionable and the saddle remained unchecked. They couldn't progress simply because time had passed when the problems they were trying to resolve were still sitting there waiting for someone to resolve them.

Then one day the client announced that she was sick of groundwork. She wanted to ride.🤨

Somewhere inside my friend's normally well-regulated nervous system, a small fuse finally reached the explosives.💥

Because the groundwork wasn't preventing her from riding. A collection of unresolved problems affecting the horse was.

The horse's feet were uncomfortable. The saddle hadn't been assessed. The owner still struggled to guide the mare clearly, and when the mare became worried under saddle, the response was to restrict her further. Getting on and riding wasn't going to magically make any of that disappear.😑

In fact, it potentially bundled all the problems together and added a human.

This is the part of the story worth committing to your memory banks.

When we describe a horse as anxious, spooky, reluctant, resistant or lacking confidence, we are describing what the situation looks like from our side. We still need to ask what the situation might look and feel like from theirs.

Perhaps the horse isn't simply anxious about the world. Perhaps she is anxious about experiencing the world while her feet hurt. Perhaps she is reluctant because the saddle is uncomfortable. Perhaps every time she becomes worried, the human shortens the reins and increases the pressure. Perhaps she doesn't feel particularly secure with the person handling her because that person is still learning how to communicate clearly.

Then we climb aboard and wonder why the horse isn't confident.😑

Determination is a wonderful human quality, but it has limitations. You cannot out-determination sore feet. You cannot positive-think a poorly fitting saddle into fitting. You cannot repeatedly confuse a horse and overcome the consequences by deciding that today you are definitely going for a ride.😑

My friend eventually lost her temper. She wishes she hadn't, but I understand why she did. Perhaps a boundary could have been established earlier, but hindsight is wonderfully articulate. She had spent weeks trying to help someone understand what she believed the horse was experiencing, and eventually her frustration got the better of her.😕

There is a useful warning here for all of us. Horses don't experience our good intentions. They experience what actually happens to them.

You can adore your horse and still accidentally make their life difficult. That doesn't make you a bad horse owner. It gives you something to investigate, learn or change.

The problem begins when the horse keeps providing information and we decide we don't want to hear it because it interferes with what WE want to do.

So perhaps the uncomfortable question is this: do I want to solve the problem my horse is experiencing, or do I just want my horse to stop having a problem with what I want to do⁉️

Because there comes a point where saddling up and getting on is no longer perseverance. If the horse is uncomfortable, the equipment is questionable, the communication is unclear and the horse keeps struggling, but we choose to ride anyway because riding is what WE want to do, perhaps we need to stop calling that determination.

At some point, refusing to listen to the horse in front of us becomes disregard for their experience.

And surely, if WE genuinely care about horses, that should matter more than whether we get to ride today.❤

Collectable Advice 289/365

Please SHARE this one, especially with the coaches and equine professionals who have found themselves in this exact situation. I suspect many of you will read this story and think, “Yep. I’ve lived this moment too.” Sometimes the hardest part of helping the horse is helping the human see what the horse has been trying to tell them.🥹

PS. I am looking forward to Project Reboot ❤

09/09/2026

08/15/2026

These are literally all my expressions I did while walking my first Advanced! 🤣

07/13/2026

Unpopular opinion incoming…between doing my own horses & working this weekend I was watching Aston International.

And if I’m completely honest what I was seeing from riders simply wasn’t good enough.

Everyone’s been getting advice on Facebook whilst it’s been 33 degrees whether they should be out competing or not.

Is it too much for my horse?

I don’t know if he’s fit enough.

Whilst it’s hotter. Harder ground. Galloping across the country, your horse is having to work harder.

And honestly?

The majority of riders I watched in the Novice couldn’t hold a 2-point seat at all, let alone for the full 5 mins & stay off their horses back.

Not every rider, but the vast majority couldn’t.

Before anyone comes at me, this is not an attack on eventing.

I love this sport. I’ve competed alot. Eventing is my blood.

I understand the work that goes into getting a horse fit to run cross country safely especially in this heat.

But when Equestrian sports are under huge scrutiny we, as riders, need to do better.

And that’s exactly why I think we need to talk MORE about rider fitness & physical capability too.

I spent a hugely inspiring day at Hartpury this week listening to research all about the female equestrian athlete & 1 point has really stayed in my head.

Horses work harder when we ride them.

(Obviously)

But actually think about that for a second.

We obsess over their fitness.

Their weight.
Their recovery.
Their soundness.
Their workload.

Yet, when the conversation turns to rider fitness, it’s treated as an optional extra or something to do “if you get time”.

Many riders joke about not “having enough steam” but it’s not a joke.

I’m not saying every rider needs to be a full time gym goer.

Or train like an elite Tennis player.

But I do think we need to be honest.

Because we can do better.

Alot better.

If you don’t have the strength to support your own body, your horse is certainly going to be picking up the slack & working harder.

Rider fitness isn’t just about better performance.

It’s a horse welfare conversation.

And it should be.

Maybe we’re not talking about it enough as watching 2 hours + of XC I think we can do better

05/23/2026

Let’s Talk About…

Have Expectations in the Horse World Become Unrealistic?

Everyone wants the perfect horse. Safe, forgiving, uncomplicated, brave. Doesn’t spook, doesn’t buck, doesn’t react, doesn’t look at anything! I could go on and on.

But at what point did we stop expecting horses to behave like animals and start expecting them to behave like robots?

Somewhere along the way, the standard for what people consider “safe” has become almost impossible. A horse flicks an ear at something, he’s labeled as distracted. Has one playful buck, he’s dangerous. Spooks at a flower box? Well that’s unacceptable!

The reality is, horses are prey animals. They are living, breathing creatures with feelings. They have insecurities and they get nervous just like we do. Some days they are fresh and others lazy. Yet more and more, it feels like people expect horses to absorb every ounce of nerves, inconsistency, poor timing, lack of confidence and lack of bravery without ever putting a foot wrong themselves. And if the horse does react? Suddenly the horse is the problem.

The truth is, truly “safe” horses are incredibly rare. The horses that quietly tolerate mistakes and pack people around courses whilst forgiving bad distances and still show up every day trying their hearts out are worth their weight in gold. But even those horses are still horses. Horses are not machines. We shouldn’t be expecting them to be emotionless schoolmasters programmed to never look at anything or have an opinion.

And maybe the bigger conversation is this: Have riders lost some of their own responsibility to become braver, better, more understanding horsemen? Because to me, good riding has never been about finding a horse that never reacts. It’s about learning how to ride through the moments when they do. Not every horse is suitable for every rider and not every rider is suitable for every horse. And there’s nothing wrong with admitting that.

Because sometimes the best amateur horse isn’t the quietest one in the barn, it’s the one that teaches the rider to improve instead of expecting the horse to be an emotionless robot and do all the work.

05/20/2026

In teaching hospitals across the country, something happens on a regular basis that the equestrian world has never quite managed to replicate, despite desperately needing it. Surgeons, residents, nurses, and department heads sit down together in a room and talk about what went wrong. Not in whispers. Not in lawsuits. Not in social media threads that run for three hundred comments before dissolving into personal attacks and tribal loyalty. They sit down, in a structured and deliberately nonjudgmental format, and they analyze adverse outcomes with one stated purpose: to prevent them from happening again.

These are called Morbidity and Mortality conferences or M&M conferences and they are among the most effective tools medicine has developed for systemic improvement. A patient died. A complication occurred. A decision was made that, in retrospect, was not the right one. The M&M conference creates a protected space to examine what happened, why it happened, what the decision-making process looked like at each step, what could have been done differently, and what changes to protocol or training or environment might reduce the likelihood of a similar outcome in the future. The person at the center of the case is not put on trial. They are invited to explain their rationale, to walk through their thinking, to participate in the analysis rather than be consumed by it.

The result, over decades of institutional practice, has been measurable improvement in patient safety, not because individual practitioners were blamed and punished, but because errors were examined as systemic events with systemic causes that systemic solutions could address.

The equestrian world and training horses has no equivalent. And the cost of that absence is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

When a training incident occurs in our sport such when a horse is injured, when a welfare concern surfaces, when a situation at a show or in a barn becomes public, the response follows a depressingly predictable pattern. First comes the gossip, traveling at the speed of a group chat through circuits and barns and online communities. Then comes the vilification, the identification of a person or persons to hold responsible, and the social fracturing around them. Then comes the silence, or the legal positioning, and then… nothing. No analysis. No learning. No structural change. The incident is either forgotten or becomes a permanent stain on someone's reputation, and the community moves on without being any better equipped to prevent the next one.

This is not how you improve a sport. This is how you preserve its worst patterns while performing the appearance of accountability.

What USEF and USHJA could do and what, with genuine leadership, they should do is create a formal, recurring structure for examining adverse outcomes in horse training and competition. Not a disciplinary proceeding. Not a tribunal. An educational conference, modeled explicitly on the M&M format, in which a diverse panel of experienced trainers, veterinarians, equine welfare specialists, and sport administrators examines specific cases with the goal of understanding what happened and why, rather than who to punish.

The trainer at the center of a reviewed case would be given the opportunity to walk through their rationale, what they saw, what they decided, why they made the choices they made in the moment. The panel would ask questions designed to illuminate the decision-making process, not to expose or embarrass. The discussion would be oriented toward systemic factors: What training context produced this approach? What pressures including from clients, from competition schedules, from economic realities shaped the choices that were made? What would a different approach have looked like, and what would it have required? What changes to education, to qualification standards, to competition formats, or to industry norms might make better outcomes more likely across the board?

This matters especially now, because we are a sport that does not have consensus on what welfare and correct training actually look like in practice. We have rules. We have guidelines. We have deeply held individual opinions, often in direct conflict with each other, held by people of genuine experience and good intention. We have almost no shared framework for examining our own practices in a structured, evidence-informed way. The result is that every training controversy becomes a values war rather than a learning opportunity, because we have no agreed-upon process for converting incidents into insight.

The M&M format works in medicine in part because it treats error as inevitable as a feature of complex systems operating under pressure, rather than as a moral failing of individual practitioners. This does not mean that individual accountability disappears. Medicine still has licensing boards and malpractice standards and consequences for genuine negligence or misconduct. But the M&M conference operates in a different register, designed to extract learning from events rather than assign blame for them, and the two functions coexist productively because they serve different purposes.

Our sport needs both of those things too, and right now it has neither working well. The disciplinary side is inconsistent and often more responsive to politics and visibility than to actual severity of harm. The educational side barely exists in any structured form when it comes to training practice. An equestrian M&M conference would not replace accountability. It would create a parallel track that we currently lack entirely — one focused on systemic understanding and collective improvement rather than individual punishment.

The trainers best positioned to participate in and lead such conversations are the ones with the most experience including the professionals who have made mistakes, learned from them, and built their practices around that learning. Their knowledge is currently transmitted informally, incompletely, and often only to the people lucky enough to ride in their barn. A structured conference format would make that knowledge a community resource.
The incidents will keep happening. Horses will continue to be trained in ways that injure them, and the community will continue to respond the way it always has with outrage, gossip, and the satisfying but ultimately unproductive ritual of identifying a villain.

Or we could try something different. We could sit down in a room, look honestly at what happened, and ask what it tells us about ourselves.

Medicine built that room decades ago. It is long past time for us to build ours.

Read more from Piper Klemm here:
https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2026/05/13/what-medicine-figured-out-that-we-havent-the-case-for-equestrian-training-mm-style-conferences/

05/12/2026

05/08/2026

I see hundreds of young horses every year in this country, and the U.S. is breeding exceptional horses. Full stop, Victoria Lustig writes.

As a handler for the Young Horse Show Series, I travel around the country handling yearlings through 5-year-olds at liberty and through a jump chute, and watch many of them compete under saddle. Beyond that, I start, develop, and show dozens of young horses every year for clients out of my own base in Lexington, Kentucky. Young horses make up the majority of my business, and it gives me a unique glimpse into what breeders are producing year after year. The quality of horses that are being bred in this country is quite high.

At every show I attend, I see young horses I would stake my professional reputation on as being true prospects for the highest levels of sport, whether as hunters, jumpers, dressage horses, or eventers. The U.S. horse industry talks about wanting to improve the quality horses in this country, but it’s time to change that conversation. The problem is not the horses we are producing; the quality is here. The problem comes when it’s time to shape that potential into real talent. The U.S. lacks the infrastructure to develop young horses.

Venues

Let’s start with the venues. That includes shows, but we need so much more than that. Not all horses bred in the U.S. are going to be show horses. In fact, most horses will never step foot in a rated show ring, but those horses still need off-property experience. The U.S. needs more venues that allow people to affordably jump a course, ride in a large group, practice an obstacle course, and gain those life experiences that don’t happen at home.

If we focus on horses destined for the show ring, there are even more problems there. For those who have never forked-over an entire paycheck to go to a rated show, you should know showing is expensive. No matter what discipline, no matter how old your horse is, showing can cost an arm-and-a-leg. With the recent increases by USEF to the already significant cost, I think everyone would agree that the current system is unsustainable.

📎 Continue reading this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2026/04/30/from-the-ground-up-developing-the-next-generation-of-u-s-bred-horses/
📸 © Sarah Schaaf Photography

04/29/2026

GREAT description of making a turn work!