HORSE LORDS BLESS YOU @shaviwestwind - Tumblr Blog

Icelandic Horse

Photographer: Signe Fogelqvist

The first 4 lessons are posted to Patreon! Join me as I train my 3-year-old gelding, Bráinn frá Efri-Rauðalæk, from the very beginning. Before the pandemic, I had been in discussions with several people about traveling to do a clicker training clinic series. Since none of us know exactly when we’ll be able to travel again, I’ve decided instead to do a web series. Each episode contains a lesson, in which I discuss theory, method, and goals for the upcoming session, a full length training session, and then a follow-up talk after the session in which I dissect the session in depth to discuss what we did and why. Most lessons will be 20-30+ minutes long. The earliest lessons are the shortest, so these videos will only get longer and more information-dense over time.

Over the next several weeks you will see a horse with no previous clicker training experience be prepared for under saddle work using positive reinforcement, and get an inside look at the choices I make for his training and the theory behind everything we do.

Become a patron at patreon.com/madrivervalleyicelandics to unlock the first 4 videos and all future episodes, which I plan to post Mondays and Wednesdays 🌟

If you can’t subscribe, PLEASE share this post. I am currently unable to teach or work with clients in person, but we still have 12 horses here on the farm that need daily care and resources. I’m hoping that I can provide a helpful service by teaching these online lessons, and that I can also offset some of the sting of not being able to teach in person this way as well. Let’s ride out this storm together!

Become a patron of Mad River Valley Icelandic Horses today: Read 4 posts by Mad River Valley Icelandic Horses and get access to

#i was not paid to reblog this #just wanna support folks during this pandemic

thatsbelievable

theruby-redmare

Can you help our PhD project with Nottingham Trent University? All you need to do is watch videos of riders approaching cross country jumps and say what you think the outcome will be …

This was kinda fun if anyone else wants to help contribute to eventing safety research!

nothorses

I keep seeing posts about like, rider weight & the relation it has to riding- and I’ve had to address similar issues in a discord server, so I wanna say some shit (even though I’m hardly a horseblr blog sdjkflfdkgj)

So yes, rider weight does impact a horse’s ability to perform; just like tack weight does. This animal is physically carrying you, so you need to ensure you have an animal that is physically capable of carrying you. And you need to work to make sure you are as little of a burden to your horse as any other rider does; fitness, balance, equitation, etc. are an essential part of training.

If you can see a person’s horse struggling with the amount of weight they are carrying, it’s about as socially acceptable to comment on that as it is any other thing another person’s horse might be struggling with; which is to say, proceed with immense forethought, caution, and respect. Don’t expect to be listened to just because you think you’re right more strongly and loudly than they do. Anticipate and respect disagreement.

On the flip side of that, there IS a huge problem of fatshaming in the horse community. This isn’t a matter of people being “too sensitive” or whatever; judges, particularly and notoriously in hunter/jumper classes, literally judge riders based on perceived weight. They aren’t subtle about this. I have seen people who weigh a perfectly healthy amount be called “barrel-chested” or “top-heavy” and be docked points in Wetstern Horsemanship classes. I have worked with an instructor who has bullied multiple students out of his lessons for their perceived weight.

I know girls who starve themselves and fatshame themselves at the ripe young age of 13 for the sake of riding. Young, young girls who develop eating disorders because of this.

Can we stop and consider that maybe the solution to “you need to work on fitness” and “your horse is too small for you” is, perhaps, not to ruthlessly and systematically fatshame riders? That maybe this also has a huge, life-altering, even dangerous impact on these riders? That maybe it’s not actually justification for bullying and abuse?

Treat mismatched rider and horse due to weight like you would treat any other bad match. Treat low rider skill due to lack of fitness like you would treat any other need to grow. Stop using “but the studies!” as justification for bullying children.

life-and-lovee-and-horses2

idreaminbayandgrey

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jazzdonnerweltstein HOFIDKWTF (@dressagequeen_of_memes) on Jan 24, 2020 at 10:03am PST

I honestly don’t know who runs this account but I’m dying

agro-carnist

Literally WHAT is the difference between chestnut and sorrel????

agro-carnist

No offense horse people but horse colors are stupid

agro-carnist

I call a horse white and a horse girl breaks into my house and pummels me to death

Check out the The Isle Of Misfit Horseblrs community on Discord - hang out with 60 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

Hey folks. I've seen some "What's a discord?" messages floating around, so I figured I share this. We have 60 members so far, and a wide range of topics. You dont need to be showing, riding, or even own a horse to join, just have an interest in horses. The server is also run by 7 moderators from pretty diverse backgrounds, and we have a fairly democratic organization between the moderators and the server at large.

We'd love to have you in our group!

adrenaline-equestrian

shaviwestwind

Tstygsgggkfssffguyghji ok but ya

thecityhorse

I am so disgusted by the fatphobic rhetoric happening on some blogs right now.

Using photos of morbidly obese tourists on horses in what looks to be Caribbean island trail strings does NOT prove your point, it makes you look like more of an asshole than your original shifty post. It’s like the PETA groups constantly taking photos of carriage horses in other countries out of context to decry the American carriage industry. Using those photos but talking about the competitive H/J world is wildly misleading and dishonest.

I’m so thankful I have a reputation in my area for being a welcome/body positive trainer. I’m so thankful I’m in a position to provide a safe place for all bodies to experience horses.. and all humans to feel safe in their skin. sometimes I forget what kind of ugliness exists outside my bubble. Sometimes I forget people actual think their shitty opinions on other people bodies are so important it’s worth hurting others over.

all that said; my usual offer: if you are struggling with food / behaviors / are concerned you have or are developing an eating disorder or just need to vent to someone after reading last nights trash.. reach out. I found the original post triggering and that’s after years of treatment, and knowing my body wasn’t the type targeted. don’t struggle alone.

draftmare

Preach.

I found that line of thinking disgusting at most. The amount of fat shaming and fatphobia in the responses was horrifying, but I guess not surprising for horsblr.

I have struggled with my weight for many years. Unfortunately I will have to be on BC for the rest of my life. I can't even take a break when I'm not sexually active because without it I can't function due to period related issues. BC causes weight gain and makes losing weight hard. While I'll never give up entirely on losing weight, it is depressing.

I don't think it makes me any less of a rider, and I will be debuting at Second Level this year. So...shove it.

clickerpunk

User:

Same user:

👀 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀

#rly????????#does this count as vaguing if i leave the blogger name in the screenshots?#🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

idreaminbayandgrey

You cannot both despair at the lack of conversation on a subject and say that horsblr is lost BUT ALSO say that any opinion contrary to your own is from “a lack of reading comprehension” and just make memes.

If you want there to be discussion, then respond. And no, responding “I’m not gonna read all this” isn’t a response.

itshomolology

I’m curious, is it more charitable to assume the repeated misinterpretation of a stated statement is due to a lack of comprehension or due to willful misunderstanding?

shaviwestwind

Okay, so, I've been wondering for a bit now why there's this uhhhhh trend ig to dismiss a criticism as being due to a lack of *reading comprehension* in particular.

It we're actually dealing with "a lack of reading comprehension"--

Either the author who published the noncomprehended post did a bad job of saying what they meant to say, and that's on them for not explaining clearly enough what they're trying to say-

Or what's being talked about is people who who literally cannot exercise reading comprehension, and then we're dealing with issues related to either disability, poverty, or both. And dumping on people in this category is not very cash money and in fact is a dick move.

But say you dont actually mean an issue with actually comprehending what's being written?

Say you actually mean willfully misconstruing/misunderstanding, ie someone offering criticism is actually consciously making the choice to not understand what an author wrote. And this by default is actually predicated on the baseline that the person offering criticism or an otherwise noncongruent reaction knows what the author means, and is deliberately opting to strawman what the author said.

That's really not a lack of reading comprehension, then.

I'm going on a limb here and taking folks who have been lamenting "a lack of reading comprehension" to really mean a lack of agreement and the appearanc of what they perceive as a deliberate misconstruction of the author's words.

Which.

Again, to reiterate, struggles with reading comprehension are usually related to disability of poverty, and dunking on genuine struggles with this is ableist and/or elitist in nature.

And, like, when people wish to indicate that they consider a person unintelligent or otherwise lacking, they accuse said person of of failing to perform those tasks, ie failing to read correctly. And this kind of language in discussion/debate/argument/whatever is very much rooted in "I think your criticism is stupid so I'm gonna dismiss it by saying you obviously can't read right" which. Ableist.

**Y'all can say that someone is flagrantly misconstruing what was written. But maybe knock it off with using language rooted in bigotry?**

^ this is, by the way, very much akin to what people were originally responding to re: using language and examples rooted in fatphobia/fatshaming.