Sand Bar Ranch

09/11/2026

Love this one

Here is my problem with natural horsemanship. It is step one of a horse training program that somehow got marketed as the whole damn education.

It is basically horse training for dummies. Move the feet, yield the hip, back up, lick and chew, and walk circles around somebody wearing enough turquoise to interfere with air traffic. There is nothing wrong with starting there, but quit pretending the horse has a university degree because it passed kindergarten.

If every problem gets answered by tipping the nose and disengaging the hindquarters, you are not fixing the problem. You are taking the horse’s power away until it physically cannot continue doing what it was doing.That is not the same as teaching it. The hindquarters are the engine of the horse. The stop, turnaround, lead departure, lead change, forward drive, and nearly every athletic movement come from the hip.Then the natural horsemanship crowd spends every day disconnecting that engine and acting surprised when the truck will not pull a trailer.

When you disengage a horse, the inside hind foot steps across or behind the other hind foot. The hip swings away, the horse loses its power, and more weight falls onto the front end.Try it yourself. Put your left foot behind your right foot and try to walk forward with any speed. You will either have to straighten yourself out or trip over your own feet. If you fall down, just lick your lips. Apparently that means you learned something.

So you take all the power away from the horse’s hip, then expect it to stop hard, turn correctly, change leads, and perform athletically. When it stumbles, falls onto its shoulders, leans in the stop, bottle spins in the turnaround, or changes leads late behind, everybody blames the horse. Well no s**t. You spent months teaching it to throw its ass away every time it felt pressure. Now you want it to stay straight, keep its hip underneath itself, and drive forward.

You taught the wrong answer and now you are mad because the horse remembers it.

The bucking argument is just as stupid. People are taught that if a horse bucks, pull its head around and disengage it. Go watch a good bronc rider. A horse bucking straight can often be ridden because the motion is still predictable. What usually launches somebody is when the horse changes direction, jumps sideways, ducks through a shoulder, swaps leads, or throws its hip out.

So why would you take a horse that is already bucking and purposely pull it farther out of balance? Now the head is going one way, the shoulders are going another, the hip is swinging out, and the hind feet are crossing. The rider gets thrown to the outside, falls behind, gets launched over the hip, and possibly hangs a foot in a stirrup. That is where those dreaded spur marks dragged across the top of the saddle come from. But do not worry. Somebody standing safely on the ground will explain how you lacked connection.

Disengagement does have a purpose. It can establish basic control, redirect a young horse, or prevent trouble before it gets started.But it is one tool. A hammer is useful too, but if you use it to fix everything, eventually you are just the idiot beating on a washing machine.

Natural horsemanship has taught plenty of people how to perform exercises without teaching them what those exercises actually do.
They know how to move the hip, but not where the feet are going. They know how to bend the neck, but don’t know how to direct the shoulders or what is happening through the body.

They know how to make a horse look quiet, but not whether it is balanced, connected, confused, or mentally checked out.
Funny how every “liberty horse” has its ears pinned and its tail spinning like a helicopter blade.

A horse licking its lips does not mean it is trained. A horse following you does not mean it is broke. A horse walking circles around you does not make you a horseman. Sometimes it just means you both got your steps in for the day.

Can the horse stay straight? Can it carry itself? Can it drive from behind? Can it stay between your hands and legs? Can it handle pressure without falling apart? Can it still perform when things get fast, loud and hard?

That is where you find out what you have. The clock does not care about your groundwork philosophy. The judge does not score licking and chewing. The steer does not slow down because your horse followed you around without a lead rope.

At some point, the horse has to go do an actual job.

Natural horsemanship teaches the ABCs, and there is nothing wrong with that. Everyone has to begin somewhere. Just quit pretending you wrote the whole damn book because your horse can spell its name!
Written by Dusty Harvey

09/03/2026

If they can’t walk and steer, they can’t trot and steer.
If they can’t balance at the trot, they aren’t ready to canter.
If they can’t go catch their own horse, groom it, tack it up and take responsibility for it, how are they supposed to lead that horse from the saddle?

Going faster does not equal getting better. Strapping your kid to a horse and sending them into the arena isn’t making them better, it’s setting them up to get hurt.

You might think watching your kid walk circles isn’t exciting. You might think they should be cantering, jumping “doing more.”

But sometimes they’re simply not ready.

And respectfully — that’s why you hired an instructor. Because knowing how and when to progress a rider is our job.

We aren’t holding your kid back. We’re building the foundation that keeps them safe and makes them GOOD.

- Author Unknown

08/21/2026

𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐈𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐚 𝐏𝐨𝐧𝐲 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲

I am going to say this as a coach, and I already know some people will not like it, but it is not my job to entertain you. I am not there to make sure every single lesson contains jumping because that is the fun bit, or to keep changing exercises every five minutes because somebody is bored. I am there to teach you how to ride properly, and sometimes proper training is repetitive, frustrating and not particularly exciting to watch.

If I think you need polework, transitions, no stirrups or another half hour fixing your position, then that is what we are doing. If I put jumps up, they might be small, because I care far more about how you ride the line than how high the fence is. Simply making the jump bigger does not mean the riding underneath it has suddenly improved. Sometimes it just means the horse is carrying the same mistakes over a larger obstacle.

I taught some adults last night and we did very basic polework, transitions between the poles and work without stirrups. There was nothing flashy about it, but they actually felt the difference by the end. The joy when they got their stirrups back was hilarious, but that was exactly the point. They had to work properly, and then they could feel what had changed and add into the mix, my friends baby horse joined for its first ever group lesson so polework definitely was important! That is what coaching is supposed to be.

The problem now is that riding lessons seem to have drifted into this strange place where the person paying expects to decide what the lesson should contain, and the coach is somehow meant to keep everyone happy while quietly squeezing a bit of actual teaching in around the edges. That is not how training works.

If I tell you that you are not ready to jump higher, move up a group or do something more difficult, I am not being awkward. I am doing the job you are paying me to do. You are paying for my judgement, not for me to agree with you. And this matters far beyond whether somebody has a good lesson or not, because it becomes a horse welfare issue very quickly.

We are asking horses to compensate for more and more gaps in rider education. A good riding school horse can hide an unbelievable amount. They will forgive bad balance, bad timing, inconsistent hands and riders who are not quite sure what their legs are doing. Then that same rider eventually gets onto a younger, sharper or less forgiving horse and suddenly the horse is labelled difficult. Sometimes the horse has hairy moments . Sometimes the rider has simply never been properly taught. That is the uncomfortable bit nobody really wants to say out loud.

We spend a huge amount of time talking about producing better horses, better breeding and better welfare, but we do not talk enough about producing better riders. There is very little point breeding more athletic, more sensitive horses if the average rider is being rushed through the basics because everyone is terrified of boring them. You can jump a course and still have massive holes in your riding. You can compete every weekend and still need to go back to trot poles. You can own a very expensive horse and still need someone to tell you that your position is making the problem worse. That should not be insulting. That should be normal.

Good training has never been about making somebody feel brilliant every single week. Sometimes you need to hear that something is not good enough yet. Sometimes you need to repeat the same exercise until it finally clicks. Sometimes you need to go backwards before you actually move forwards. That is how riders are made.

So when people say there are no good trainers anymore, I am not convinced the trainers disappeared. I think we have created a system where coaches are expected to be entertainers, customer service staff and cheerleaders first, and trainers somewhere after that. Then we wonder why fewer people can genuinely produce a horse themselves. Maybe we need to get comfortable with being taught again. Maybe parents need to stop measuring progress by fence height. Maybe adult riders need to accept that paying for the lesson does not automatically make them the person who plans it. And maybe coaches need to be allowed to say, No, you are not ready without everybody behaving like they have just committed a crime against humanity.

Because my job is not to keep you entertained for forty-five minutes.

My job is to make you a better rider.

The horse deserves that much.

08/10/2026

Congratulations to Boomershine large pony by Bridlewood Paparazzi, Placing 6th at USEF pony finals out of 148 other top riders & ponies ! Owned & ridden by Virginia Scott

08/03/2026

Look for this large pony gelding “Boomershine”, by Bridlewood Paparazzi at pony finals , owned & ridden by Virginia Scott