Dear all readers,

Thank you for reading my blog and sunny greetings from St. Vincent.

Today I will share with you the start of a new journey I have embarked on learning Dressage for real.  About 10 years ago when I was still living in Europe I took some dressage lessons, but got discouraged quickly due to the force I was instructed to use to “get the horses head down”. It made no sense to me and instead I started to ride western riding lessons. After a while, the western lessons made no sense either and instead I started to study the language of the horse, horsemanship and liberty training.

Magic is a young mare who is around 9-10 years old. Through liberty training, I connected deeply with Magic and the wild herd I rescued here in St. Vincent in 2007.

In 2011, I started to develop new ways to introduce three of the horses to riding in a beautiful and calm partnership. Initially I had planned to start riding Magic, but after Magic’s very “explosive” reaction to have a saddle on, I changed my mind. I decided to start with three other horses instead. ..after all I had passed 45 years old, had not ridden for some years and I not ready for any rodeo challenges.

Instead, Magic became my more advanced liberty dancing horse and a great teacher for a number of working students and clients who came to study with me here at my ranch. Magic would train the working students very well both in patience and focus as well as in courage and anger management.

Magic is a great mover, willing, naughty, always ready and has lots of opinions. She is very independent and is the herd’s Alpha mare. I like to call Magic my “Duracell” because of her endless energy and willingness.

A few weeks ago I started to study dressage with Robin Gates. We had a talk together about how to proceed with Magic’s education and decided to work together on her journey to become a dressage horses and share many of chapters with you.

The first lesson we will present is called “The Blanket Lesson” and  The second lesson is called “The Benches”

We help Magic get used to the blanket something higher than her, as a first step to get used to a rider.

You can follow Magic’s Journey to become a Dressage horse by subscribing to The Independent Liberty Trainers Network Blog.  The next lessons in Magic Journey will be available on this new blog.

I would love to hear from you,

Kind regards Stina