Recent content by sbloom

Ye gods (again), a horse isn't a pair of skis.

And there's me thinking we normally agree on so much.

Not sure they're real photos so apologies but this just popped up on my timeline.

Which bits don't you understand? Be an easy load for your horse to carry. If you can't find a saddle that you're not fighting, you can't be an easy load to carry. What works for you works only for a minority. If I rode in a wide, open, large enough seat and sat in neutral I would bleed. A...

Me too. I've found a better way. £1500 for a brand new saddle and all accessories and a bit of my time to custom cut some rider shims I've heard so much training BS over the years, as have you, but it doesn't mean I reject trainers as a profession, and nor do I reject trainers who add to...

Amen. The perfect saddle for me, the lightbulb moment and something that was part of me spending a LOT of money on demos for a brand that has ultimately not worked out for me (and therefore cost me a fortune) was never going to be able to carry my weight. I literally realised that the three...

Horses are ill prepared, skeletally, to carry a rider. We owe it to them to load each individual rider onto each individual horse, in the best way possible. I'm sorry but that will never mean a generic wide, open seated saddle in 18" if the horse can take it. The horse can carry us best if...

Yeah, it might have been much more subtle, but NUB was using every trick in the book to keep him under control. The origins of modern rollkur lie with her. And it used to be mine. I firmly believe that the best riders in the past, the ones who could truly enjoy it and progress, had saddle...

Interesting as I'd remembered it as all wb types. And yes, saddle design has gone hand in hand with the poor decisions made with training and breeding. All of it ignores the fundamentals of healthy movement. Forgive me but no it's really not the best way. Dealing with forces best...

And it makes a fair bit of the industry worthless as GP dressage is the paradigm. I remember, about 20 years ago, Hilary Vernon used pressure eolates to "prove" that horses do not shift weight to the HQs in piaffe. Even then show ring ouaffes were baaaad. And yet we base so much of our...

Even the "best" riders/trainers are training in compression, using LDR, riding so that the back drops behind the saddle, impure gaits...all sorts. They are our role models and even the best are a fair way off the mark if you're looking for truly healthy training. As I say, it's the system...

Precisely. Anyone who steps outside of this world is basically changing what they do for a living. I don't expect to see many takers, until we "force" them. We've all seen the horse abuse bingo, they have ALL the lip service defences.

Because this would take her to a completely different paradigm. In my opinion, overall, she rides no worse nor better than the average rider at the top level. She doesn't even KNOW what she's doing wrong, we can point it out over and over but the defenders of these ways of riding absolutely...

Still don't get it, but it matters not! White has to surely be the brightest colour...though of course their eyes may work differently, but that still doesn't change why evolution has them most attracted to the rarest colour.

Two things can be true at the same time, that CDJ is a particular issue, she gets under our skin because she promoted herself as kinder, more ethical. And it is also true that it is a witch hunt really, that, IMO, most riders at the top are absolutely not putting the horse first, do not...