KMS Lessons & Training

06/10/2023

To my fellow horse lovers and those who have read and loved Margeurite Henry's books- Here's the feel good story of the year for you!

You can check out the CHINCOTEAGUE VOLUNTEER FIRE CO. page for a more detailed story BUT they're running a fundraisers to save the Beebe Ranch and protect it via a foal buyback auction. Proceeds are going to that cause and CHECK OUT THE CURRENT BID ON THIS BABY, who's going to live out her days wild on the island! This is after just a day of bidding.. 4 more to go! So cool!

I'll post a link to the auction in the comments!

05/23/2023

‘I want to just ride’ - Say this to any seasoned professional in the game and they will look at you like ‘Oh honey’ 😂

You have to learn to be a rider, groom, horseman/women, business owner, lead a team, handle clients and alongside all this you’ve still got to muck out and pick a broom up until you can earn enough money to have someone help you do this whilst you are doing something else to earn this said money.

‘I want to just ride’ doesn’t exist and if you see someone doing that you have no idea how hard they worked to get in that position. So get sweeping my friend ♥️

05/09/2023

Aaaaaaand after nearly 1 year of having the page on ghost mode, it's the moment we have waited for... IT'S BACK!

That's right, I will be back up and running at (almost) full steam this year.

To recap- I had a very difficult pregnancy, followed by some extended recovery and down time, and I decided to take it easy to get back up to speed. This year has already started off strong and I am ready to try to do some wonderful things in the local horse community once again!

Also, I'd like to introduce my assistant coach- Connor! He will tag along for intermediate/ advanced lessons and his favorite past times involve yelling at students from across the arena (I guess that's his take on what I do 😅), petting horses, and barking like a dog. He's very adorable and super chatty and is looking forward to making new friends this year! As you can see, he loves just "hanging out" while I'm in the barn and he does his best to keep me in line. Nobody has truly mastered that skill yet but he sure is trying!

Please don't forget to like, comment and share my posts to help support me!

Coming soon, I'll post about all of the current and upcoming events, lesson openings, and equine opportunities for the year. So stay tuned! 🐎

05/14/2022

Horses can detect vibrations through their feet!

Our good friend Dr Tomas Teskey DVM, an equine veterinarian specializing in natural hoof care and barefoot soundness, explains proprioception and how horses can detect a wide range of frequency vibrations through their feet.

If you are not familiar with what proprioception is or what it has to do with horse boots, metal shoes and barefoot horses, then we encourage you to read this blog:

https://scootboots.com/blogs/blog/insignt-into-proprioception-by-equine-veterinarian-dr-tomas-teskey-dvm-hoof-boots

If you would like to learn more interesting facts about your horses from a holistic perspective, please visit Dr Teskey’s website and read about his book, “Insight to Equus - Holistic Veterinary Perspectives on Health and Healing”.
www.insighttoequus.com

Photo credit: David Landreville

04/12/2022

Another tack swap coming up. Probably one of the last ones before warm weather activities kick off!

03/16/2022

Hi friends! I apologize for going silent for the past several months while I've been growing another human inside me but phew, it's been a rough go! We are in the final few weeks before we get to meet our little bundle of joy, and then, with any luck, be able to get back to normal programming! Thank you everyone for your patience!

This post is jam-packed of information for the year so please read through it all and hit me up with questions. I will start taking new rider sign ups mid to late April and plan on resuming my full lesson schedule in May, with baby 😉

I wanted to lay out some changes for the 2022 year. These changes will also be outlined in the information packet that I'll give everyone as they trickle back in for lessons.

First order of business, I will unfortunately be increasing my rate for lessons at the barn this year. This likely comes as no suprise to most, but the cost of hay usually directly reflects the cost of fuel and with that, I must expect and plan to pay more to sustain my animals this year. Last year, new students got this rate while existing students remained at the previous rate but this year, all lesson rates will be $40. If you have any existing paid lessons from last year, they will most definitely be honored as is!

Other pricing changes are traveling lessons- the 2022 price will be $45/hour within a certain radius from me. This isn't much of a change in and of itself but the way I calculate the time is changing. Time starts at our agreed upon start time, when I arrive. Some new expectations that got a little lax last year are that students must have their horse ready to the best of their ability *when I arrive*. The lessons will be 1 hour and I want us both to make the most of our time, so please have you and your horse prepared to whatever degree is safe and already practiced. Depending on experience level of student and horse, this could mean having the horse caught, groomed and tacked...warmed up via groundwork or warmed up via riding... or it could mean you're already on board, working on prerequisite exercises for whatever it is we plan on working on that day. In the end, I want to make the most of my time with you and I also need to make the most of my own time, so I'm focusing on sticking to hour long traveling lessons and, if we go over on time due to lack of preparation or more work needing done, then the rate will reflect that.

The last change for 2022 is that I'll only be accepting lessons paid as monthly packages. This means that you pay for 4 lessons at the beginning of every month and they'll be scheduled at that point as well (or, if you have a weekly ride time, that schedule will continue forward). This goes for barn lessons AND traveling lessons. Horseback riding lessons come with a commitment to ride at least weekly. Now I understand that things come up and are unavoidable at times, but for the 2022 year and beyond, 4 lessons will be paid for at the beginning of the month and they will be nonrefundable and non transferable to a different month. If you miss a lesson, you will not recieve a credit. Since 4 lessons are being paid for each month, but some months have 5 weeks- resulting in an extra lesson day- that extra lesson day will be assumed either a makeup for missed lessons, OR, if no lessons were missed, it'll be considered a bonus/freebie lesson. This practice is standard throughout the industry and I've tried to be lenient in years past but I too need predictability in my schedule and income so I can continue my teaching and this is the best way to get a win-win situation.

Now for the much more exciting stuff-

New to 2022, I will be offering monthly Fundamental Horsemanship Sessions. These sessions will be small groups of individuals who want to expand their equine knowledge. This will be perfect supplementary knowledge for the 4-H kid who wants more, the first time horse owner, the frazzled parent feeling overwhelmed and under prepared or the aspiring rider. These sessions will cover many subjects and will require no long term commitment. You can attend one or all! Each session will be announced and scheduled a month out. Payment will hold your spot. Cost is still being determined at this point. There will be subjects purely for younger groups and subjects purely for adults- each subject will be announced with the date and time of that session when sign ups begin. The sessions will be at the barn- some hands on and some hands off. We will cover horse care, safety, tack, basic knowledge, pasture safety and maintenance, first time horse ownership, feed and hay selection, and soooo much more. And as a sneek peak, one of the first sessions will involv trailer maintenance and safe hauling practices- which will be incredibly helpful to all those parents who have gotten roped into this horse thing and are learning as they go! So keep an eye out for these announcements!

I also plan on offering Homeschool/Remote Learner sessions. This is a chance for any kid who doesn't participate in public school to come out, learn a bit about horses, meet other kids who are interested in horses and take home some material to keep learning with. These sessions also won't require any long term obligation and payment at sign up will hold your spot!

Again, we will be accepting new student sign ups mid to late April and starting lessons in May, and until then, my focus will be on keeping myself healthy to have a healthy baby and everything else is coming second. Please continue to be patient as I navigate the tail end of a very difficult pregnancy. I am looking forward to seeing everyone very very soon! 🐎

01/04/2022

There are several tack exchanges coming up locally. These are great places to trade or sell things from last year and find things for this year! If you have a growing kid, they may need an entirely different size for their show shirt, hunt coat, tall boots, etc and these are great places to find that stuff without having to buy new.

This one is at the Greene County Expo Center & Fairgrounds. The link has all the info. I'll post more as I come across them!

Ohio's largest tack sale, flea market style. Second Sunday of March.

12/03/2021

11/06/2021

We don’t know what we don’t know...but we can’t un-know what we know.

Something that I’ve learned through this work is how little physical pressure it takes to facilitate a change—positive or negative.

I’ve loved horses since birth and I’ve been around them since I was a child.
I think of the billions of times I’ve had my hands on horses, whether I’ve been petting them, grooming them, tacking and untacking them, riding them, handling them, educating them.

Softness has always been my goal—in fact, I remember being told that I was too soft on more than one occasion during lessons growing up.

Across the styles, disciplines and methods of horsemanship, we hear terms like softness and lightness and feel and we know how fiercely they’re sought after, despite being seemingly elusive things.

You can hear Buck Brannaman talk about how the amount of physical pressure that’s ideal to him “wouldn’t pull the wing off a butterfly” (one of my favorite ways of thinking of it).

Philippe Karl teaches the French school of lightness (Légèreté) in classical dressage.

We can hear these things and read all about them, but until we really explore it ourselves, we don’t really know how light and soft we can be and still be effective.

Of course, then we see horses playing together or working out herd dynamics and we understand that they can certainly withstand a lot of physical pressure.
But most times, when it’s horse to horse, they have much better timing than we do and they have a much more accurate perception of what’s fair than we do.
They aren’t applying constant, poorly-timed pressure for no reason.
Just because the horse CAN withstand a lot of pressure doesn’t mean they should, and certainly not all the time.

In all the years of all the focus on softness and feel, I never thought it was possible to feel the things I’ve been taught how to feel within the horse’s body, mind and spirit, let alone to facilitate a shift within them.
The powerful, soulful pulse of the vagus nerve, the opening of blood vessels, the flow of the spinal fluid, the swing of a kidney, a fragmented heart and soul mending under my hands...

But that’s the trick...once we know, we can’t un-know.

It can be a blessing and a curse, really, to learn how light is light. It’s a never-ending lesson taught by the horses themselves if we’re willing to listen.

For the horses’ sake, I think most anything that helps us become more aware of ourselves—and, in turn, our horses—is worth knowing and maintaining a continued education upon.✨

11/02/2021

15 fun facts about donkeys:

1. A donkey is stronger than a horse of the same size
2. Donkeys can see all four of their feet at the same time
3. Donkeys can vary hugely in size, from 26 inches to 68 inches tall
4. A donkey's bray can carry up to 60 miles in the desert
5. Donkeys have incredibly efficient digestive systems, utilising 95% of what they eat
6. Donkeys don't like being in the rain for long periods as their fur is not waterproof
7. Donkeys have been used as working animals for at least 5,000 years and they are still a lifeline to families in parts of Europe, Asia, Africa and South America
8. Healthy donkeys can live well into their 50s
9. A blind donkey will often bond with a seeing donkey who will act as their guide
10. Donkeys can be a calming influence on other animals
11. Donkeys are very clever with a keen sense of curiosity
12. Donkeys are not stubborn but can be reluctant to do anything that might be unsafe - they consider situations before deciding what to do
13. Donkeys are extremely nimble and can cross tricky terrain
14. Donkeys are very sociable and form strong bonds - you will often see pairs of best friends within a herd
15. Donkeys are different to horses in their physiology, communication, thinking and behaviour - they do their best with other donkeys as companions