Tamarack Hill Farm

06/06/2026

Who pays?

Many sports don’t make the athletes pay to play.

If you were on your high school basketball or track team, you didn’t have to pay an entry fee, but if you enter a horse show, for example, or want to go skiing for a day, you do have to come up with the cash or you aren’t allowed to be there.

This fact is one of the reasons that horse sports are shrinking in many places. They have done what I remember General Burton warning about fifty years ago---pricing themselves out of reach of the average participant.

I know that around where I live, unrecognized competitions, with lower fees, usually have more entries than the ones that require memberships, drug fees, and other add ons.

And here’s another observation that I’ve heard discussed. The ones who make all those expensive to comply with rules and regulations, who are on the boards of the organizations, are usually those who can afford to do it. Their viewpoints may not mesh with how the rank and file are thinking.

Thoughts?

06/06/2026

There’s a tiny detail here that looks so normal as to be invisible, but it’s worth a discussion.

The cedar that has been placed as framing “bookends” are not necessary in terms of how the horse jumps, but they are part of what makes the jump attractive.

But every detail drives up the costs, and hence the discussion---

Someone who was probably being paid an hourly wage had to go find those little trees, cut them, haul them, set them up, and if that jump had them it’s likely that other jumps on the same cross country course did as well.

So---Which would YOU rather have, a prettier cross country course or a lower entry fee?

And this isn’t some theoretical question. It’s nicer to have an attractive course but it costs more to build, so where’s the balance?

Thoughts?

(The horse is Chestry Oak, but I don’t know where this was.)

06/06/2026

The earlier you learn to sit the gaits comfortably, the greater the chances you’ll have that independent seat for a long time, or so I have found.

The black and white photo riding Paint was taken in April of 1954, when I was 12, and the two color shots, riding Roxie, were taken in April of 2021, almost exactly 67 years later, when I was 79.

Let your kids ride ba****ck when they are still young enough to be flexible and fearless, and that ability lasts and lasts.

It’s called by many names. One name is total immersion. Most parents won’t allow it because they want “well rounded” children.

06/05/2026

Sure as it can be, we all start inept.

The awkward sprawl in my 1958 first ever jump on Lippitt Sandy at the National Morgan Horse Show is not the same as the later photo on Chestry Oak at Rolex but between them were thousands of hours of practice.

Many thousand jumps. Year after year. Decade after decade.
Simple reality.

06/05/2026

They constantly talk about practice as though if we did more we’d all become a riding version of the great champion skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who, I recently read, works out about 22 hours every day, except on Christmas when she drops back to 19 hours.

But there ARE benefits that trying to do things that may feel awkward can convey, and one of them is making the unfamiliar more familiar simply by doing it repeatedly.

Take something that I see lots of riders struggle with, cantering over jumps. Most horses do not come out of the egg with an uphill, balanced and adjustable canter. And whether the rider has a Rodney Jenkins razor blade eye for a distance or is as blind as Mr Magoo tapping toward the fence with a white cane, having a good canter makes jumping easier.

So lay some poles on the ground, pick up a canter, and go over them. You will find that the better the canter, the more easily it will get to arrive at a good take off spot. The point being that learning by doing is often effective.

Use similar techniques for any other skill sets.

If in doubt, refer to the meme photo!

06/05/2026

Watch those sales videos of the German/Dutch/Belgian girls riding at the sitting trot on those big moving dressage bred warmbloods to get your early morning dose of depression!

It’s like they were born there.

However, if you want at least SOME of that meshing with your horse ability, do what I’m doing here on Beaulieu’s Cool Skybreaker, cross your stirrups and practice without using them as a crutch.

Will it turn you/me/us into another Wilamina Von Strucklebergersteinwitzerplatzenstrom?

Probably not. But it might get us to bounce a little less!!

06/04/2026

06/04/2026

Years back I was looking at horses for sale on a ranch in Montana that used lots of OTTBs that they bought from local tracks, and I can’t remember how it came up, but someone raised that old question about dealing with the so-called “bad” Nasrullah temperament.

The ranch owner was one of those grizzled old geezers who could have been in movies as your typical western cowboy, jeans, hat, chewing to***co, the whole deal.

He said this---“The worst thing about Nasrullah in a pedigree is when it ain’t there. They can be real sonsabitches, but once you get it working for you instead of against you, they’ll go all damn day.”
Or something like that.

I should have taped it. They could have used it in Yellowstone.

(King Oscar and Epic Win, both with Nasrullah blood)

06/04/2026

This photo of the Thoroughbred stallion Epic Win on the Bromont, Quebec steeplechase course about 35 years ago is an example of THE major change that resulted in so many other changes in the basic structure of the sport of eventing.

Why?

The FEI, for many reasons, decided to get rid of the one phase of the cross country day that most thoroughly rewarded speed at the gallop. The ‘chase phase wasn’t especially fast by racing standards, even when you factor in the jumping efforts, but at 690 meters a minute at advanced, it was 120 meters a minute faster than the 570 meters a minute required on cross country.

Getting rid of it opened the door to slower warmblood crosses who were often fancier movers in dressage and often scopier horses in show jumping, and what happened was that this evened out the importance of the three parts of the event.

It made dressage and show jumping somewhat more important and made cross country somewhat less important.

If you study the results of all the five star competitions today, you will rarely see full Thoroughbred horses in the top ten placings. One or two, perhaps, now and then, but the idea of a Bally Cor or a Might Tango winning gold, or a Good Mixture or a Better And Better winning silver is just not happening.

When we Americans folded, and went along with the FEI changes without so much as a whimper---which we did---we gave away our biggest advantage, an almost limitless supply of full Thoroughbred athletes available at low cost.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong. I watched it happen, USA on top to USA as a second class power.

We might struggle back, but it won’t be easy because Europe breeds the new top horses, when once it was our strength.

https://www.pedigreequery.com/epic+win

06/03/2026

I got the Caesar Rodney quarter as change yesterday, and when I saw him depicted on a galloping horse I looked him up.

In 1776 his vote was needed to break a deadlock that would allow Delaware to vote for independence. He was many miles away and had to get to Philadelphia by the following morning to vote. 48 years old, sick with a cancerous tumor, he galloped all night covering eighty miles through heavy thunderstorms and got there in time to sign the Declaration of Independence.

So if you care about gutsy riding, and you ever get hold of a Caesar Rodney quarter, save it, don’t spend it. It might inspire you to be tougher!!