A bit about us
Your Life is a Reflection of your Soul
A life with horses is more than just riding and chores; it takes a lot of dedication to ensure that they develop a sense of respect and trust while never losing their spirit. As part of their training, when we go for walks to town, we'll bring our young (under 3) horses with us. As a result, a partnership is developed and as a bonus the horse becomes acquainted to life outside the corral, in a relaxed situation. Some would call that savvy.
Here Dominique is working on some ground skills with a young horse. She has incredible discipline and the success of this mare is directly related to the love and dedication she has for our horses. Sometimes we forget the benefits of disciplining ourselves to do ground skills; after all riding is often easier and less demanding in some ways. However, we are quickly reminded of the importance of ground skills when we acquire a new horse or when we visit farms where ground training is not a priority.
Our children undoubtedly are key to our farm; we do what we do because we wanted something for our family to grow together. Cleaning hooves and brushing is a family affair: our daughter is taking care of our son's Welsh pony "Spider". Spider is not part of our program, but was purchased by our son out of his savings account. He is a sharp looking Section B Welsh pony and he loves attention. We are in full agreement with his venture, mostly because Rocky Mountain Horses are so smooth to ride we felt it was critical for our children to first learn to ride a trotting horse.
Who ever said that brothers don't get along? Our eldest is helping his younger brother to ride Spider. Our children haven't been exposed to anything other than natural horsemanship and are working their way to becoming excellent equestrians. Our greatest challenge is to instill in them the fact that they must always have an eye on the horses. Not so much because we are worried about our Rockies, but because of their quiet nature, our children have a tendency to think that all horses are like them: quiet and cuddly; thus the challenge - trust vs cautiousness, and learning to read the horse.
Because having safe horses is important to us we chose the Rocky Mountain Horse for our farm. In the last three years, we have not been disappointed. Here, Grandpa is riding a three and a half year old mare with no difficulties. Sure, he had ridden horses as a youngster in the early '40s, but never since. Here he is, sixty some years of age, riding away. Our daughter, six years old, beaming away on Pilar - a Rocky truly is a dependable family horse.
While we don't know what the future holds, we do know we want to continue on with the Rockies. We also know that to be successful, we must develop the ability to connect our lives with the horse.