Blog : Equus Education

August Challenge (Develop a Network of Contacts)

July 31, 2014 by Christine Meunier 1 Comment

The challenge for your career for this coming month is to focus on developing contacts. As pointed out in the July Challenge:

Work to build up connections that have the potential to be beneficial to your career over the long term. Connect with people that are in the industry you’re in, the one that you aim to be in and the industry/ies that you’ve been in and can offer advice about.

You should have already started reaching out to people via online free resources, but what about those whom you can physically come into contact with? This could be via a number of different means. Some examples:

Attend horse events such as competitions, sales or advertising shows where you can talk with people.
Look up people in your area and contact them, inquiring about being able to visit their facilities/business, or even take them out for a coffee to pick their brain.
Visit local educational facilities that offer horse related courses and talk with educators about your career goals and how to get there.
Ask workmates in the industry if they know of others who could help you to further your knowledge and skills base.
Find a local horse volunteering possibility and make yourself available – who knows who you could meet whilst helping others!

It’s often said that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And at the end of the day, those who you know, know others! Don’t be afraid to ask people for advice and help, to better develop yourself. There’s nothing I love more when teaching, than finding someone who is keen to improve themselves and ask lots of questions – I could talk to them all day!

As always, make sure you set deadlines for this month’s challenge, tell someone about your specific goals (e.g. “attend one horse event and talk to 5 people in the industry I want to break into”) for the month and get started!

Wordless Wednesday – Cross Country

July 30, 2014 by Christine Meunier Leave a Comment

101 Western Dressage Exercises

July 29, 2014 by Christine Meunier Leave a Comment

101 Western Dressage Exercises for Horse & Rider by Jec Aristotle Ballou and Stephanie Boyles is a very handy resource! Aside from the terms jog and lope, I far from feel this is a book that will benefit those only interested in Western riding! In fact, can I say that everyone who wants to improve their riding and communication with their horse should read this book?

These authors have put together an amazing assortment of short exercises for the beginner, intermediate and advanced rider to help them hone the responsiveness of their mount. The diagrams are clear and easy to follow, the instructions direct and the benefits detailed before each exercise – as well as some hints to the rider. They appear to me to be easy to follow, full of enriching information and inspiring action. Seriously, a great book!

If you’re someone who instructs or has a desire to teach others, the 101 exercises in this book will allow you to easily take a hold of one or two and use them to fill a riding lesson for students. They will learn many, many exercises that they can use to effectively make their horse lighter to their aids; able to work straight and have an awareness of where their horse’s feet are being placed.

To be able to carry out such exercises as a rider, you don’t need a myriad of props. The diagrams are explained in a 60 x 20 metre arena, but having cones set out with the usual dressage letters in the same dimension would work, too. Poles are suggested for some exercises.

101 Western Dressage Exercises provides chapters on softness, looseness, rider development, engagement, adjustability and a last chapter on ground work. This is followed by a glossary of terms that are consistently used in the book. The book does not explain how to carry out actions such as the turn on the forehand or haunches, but instead this is assumed knowledge and it makes use of such movements to bring about certain responses in the horse.

Being a NetGalley copy, I only had access to read it over a short period, so will now need to go buy myself a copy – I can see it will have many, many benefits to myself as a rider and help with guiding others, should I pursue the road of teaching horse riding once again.

Authors – Jec Aristotle Ballou and Stephanie Boyles
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18229886-101-western-dressage-exercises-for-horse-rider
Non Fiction – horse riding
In my library – Not yet! But I’m rapt to have had the opportunity to read it.
Want it? Get it now at Amazon.

“If training has not made a horse more beautiful, nobler in carriage, more attentive in his behavior, revealing pleasure in his own accomplishment…then he has not truly been schooled in dressage.” – Col. Handler

Friday Feature: Driving

July 25, 2014 by Christine Meunier 1 Comment

This week’s letter is D. If you missed last week’s Friday Feature, take a look at Career Counselling (Equine).

Someone who has the skill of driving horses may be able to turn this into an income earner a few different ways. Perhaps it’s through providing carriage driving services to the public, selling horses that have been started under harness or maybe through charging a fee to start horses in harness or via racing horses as is done with trotting and pacing. I’m sure there are more options!

Someone who is interested in utilising their driving related skills to generate income may need to:

Have the ability to start driving horses under the use of lunge lines
Be involved in the carriage driving competition circuit to build up awareness of one’s skills and develop contacts
Have horses trained in harness
Have carriages that can be used with driving horses
Gain a driving license to race
Gain local council permission to run a carriage driving business on the streets

If you have an interest in working with horses in harness, but don’t yet have the skills to run your own business, consider:

Contacting local businesses where you could gain work experience or employment
Reading as much as you can on the subject
Attending events that would put you in touch with those who are already established in the industry (sales, races, competitions)

For posts that relate to this area of work on Equus-Blog, take a look at:

“If one induces the horse to assume that carriage which it would adopt of its own accord when displaying its beauty, then one directs the horse to appear joyous and magnificent, proud and remarkable for having been ridden.” – Xenophon