Becoming an Amateur - Part 1

I started my horse trainer journey when I was fifteen years old. Our neighbor's granddaughter wanted to learn to ride and I was cheap and nearby. I charged $10 a lesson and I thought that was quite good because it was above the minimum wage. Kind of insane that it is still above the federal minimum wage, but I digress. 

Her mom would pick me up because I couldn't drive yet and my mom thought that was great because she could just stay home and I'd teach my student and ride my horse and probably end up cleaning paddocks before she'd come get me in the evening. 

My lessons were objectively not good, but I LOVED teaching so much. I loved riding more, but teaching was so much fun because I loved watching my riders progress, I loved the aha moment when they understood a new concept (or an old concept), and I loved trying to figure out how to help a tricky horse. 

Shoutout to my friends for getting this
made for me, I still have it!

Young trainer Megan
reading a test for a client
after being assured
earlier that the client
knew the test lol

I loved it so much that when I graduated from high school, I was like right, I'd like to do this for work. And my parents said no and I got sent to college instead. Since that's what you did in the early 2000s, you went to college.

Four years later I was still quite far away from a degree and completely out of the college fund that had been put aside for me. But I had grown my business and so I dropped out, moved into a cheap apartment, and took a part time job as an eventing trainer's assistant to have a more steady income outside of working with my own clients. 

A few years later, and it's in the early stages of this blog, I realized that I wanted more stability in my life (aka health insurance after I had several accidents leading up to a mild concussion that I had to ride with the day after) and so I did go back to school. I continued teaching full time in my undergrad, and then backed off to 20-30 hours a week while in graduate school. But my intention was not to quit teaching.

There were signs though

Girl you take so many days off now

So I didn't! I continued teaching while also working at my academia job until we were about a year into the pandemic. And that's when it all really came to a head. I learned SO much during the pandemic, and the main thing was this: if I live my life in a way that is right on the edge of what I can handle stress-wise, things like the pandemic, which I have no control over, are incredibly debilitating. And it's stressful to work two jobs! 

And so in 2021, I ended up taking 3 months medical leave from the college I was working at so that I could recover from intense burnout and do something I never thought I would - set myself up to stop teaching. 

I shut down my business in August of 2021, after I had my two last students achieve two big achievements - one got their USDF Silver Medal on a horse we'd trained together since the horse was 4 years old, the other achieved their C3 Dressage and HB pony club ratings less than two years after learning her diagonals with me. And then I walked away from teaching, outside of teaching a few remote lessons here and there for about a year or two afterward. 

I achieved so much myself as a pro that I think would
have been much harder to achieve as an amateur

My goal was to go into tech because I had decided, after my brother had his first kid here, that I wanted to stay in the bay area. And it's quite difficult to live here just working one job without that job being in tech. Long term, I wanted to be a data engineer at a well known tech company. I loved everything I was learning about data engineering and at the time, the bigger companies seemed much more stable (LOL not as much anymore, but it's fine). 

But I had no tech experience and was not a data engineer in my current role. So I prioritized finding a company that would not stress me out (too much) and a job that I could do with my current skills, bonus points if it seemed like I could transition to DE inside that company. 

I found just that, after months of interviewing and turning down offers when it just didn't feel right, in February of 2022. The job was easy, the company was large and stable, and there was a lot of growth potential for me in my career there. In September of that same year, I left my ex who had been supporting me through this transition and I was struggling more than I had ever been training horses. I thought briefly about teaching again, but instead, I poured myself into my work and got promoted six months later. 

Rode a lot of really cool horses too

All while this is going on, TC is starting to have issues and I was not riding as much. I prioritized work and it ended up being a really really good thing. It let me fully detach from thinking that I'd go back to showing/teaching ever, it let me find hobbies (pottery, drawing, birds, photography, traveling, etc) that were not horse related, and it let me find a life outside of horses for the first time really ever. 

In 2024, I switched teams to a data engineering team and things really started to take off for me, the salary bump made me much more comfortable and the next year I started traveling more. TC remained on the back burner, but in 2025 I decided that I was going to give it one last shot. 

And then now, this year, things are actually going pretty amazing. I got promoted to senior data engineer with a far exceeds expectations, my third one since joining the company just four years before. TC is going better than ever. And I'm truly living my amateur dream life. 

There are times that I miss teaching, I miss taking my clients to shows, I miss working on a tricky movement. I really miss the people I would meet too - boarding on private property and not really doing any clinics (like riding in them) or shows (with my students or my own), means that I don't really talk to horse people very much anymore. Outside of my core friend group, I mostly have conversations about like... work, and birds, and travel plans, what the weather is like, what television show someone is watching, someone's weekend plans, why does that man in the office clear his throat in the most disgusting way? 

But I do think that amateur life is a much better fit for me now. I do not regret the path I took or that I chose to become a professional straight out of being a junior, but I also do not regret the more recent changes either. I love that I get to experience every aspect of riding like this. 

Including traveling way more, like to this amazing
place in Uruguay, where I went for 3 weeks in
January of this year, take that, 23 year old Megan
who never took days off!

I think I'll cut it off here as more of a background post, and in the next one, I'll share more about the differences I've found and what I've learned going from a professional to an amateur. And maybe we'll talk about what the actual paperwork situation is, because I haven't done that yet (no intention of showing this year, but I am qualified to be an amateur now!). 

Clicker Training Undersaddle

On my webinar series, I did one on how I've used clicker training to work with TC. I figured I'd both link the video here and break down my speech (which I definitely mostly read from, what, I'm not being graded or anything) into sections if you prefer to read it. It's going to be long to read and lots of this information is stuff you guys already know about TC, so feel free to just skip ahead or listen to me ramble on and on. 

As an aside, if you ever wonder what it's like to take a lesson from me, this is it. I talk incessantly, don't give my riders a single moment to understand what I've said, and I do laugh at my own jokes. Sorry, not sorry. 

Link here if the below video doesn't work. 

TC's Background

Every rider has that one horse, the one that makes you question everything you thought you knew about riding horses. My current horse, TC, is that horse for me. He’s been an absolute blast to develop and he’s in a great place currently, but he was a very tricky young horse.

I began riding him in late 2014 after earning my Gold medal on my retired Grand Prix horse, Rico. I needed something fun to ride and TC was bred by a family friend who I reached out to in search of something fun to ride for free while I finished up graduate school. I had client horses to ride, but I enjoy having my own horse very much, so TC would be a surrogate until I found a horse to buy after I entered the workforce. 

Baby TC was a blast and I loved his personality and his work ethic. Sooo I bought him in the fall of 2015. And he promptly climbed up on his panel fence at his new barn, fell off of it, and ripped his suspensory out of the origin site. He went to a rehab facility until he was trotting for a good amount of time and then came back into my life. 

Rehabilitating a young, powerful horse is tough. TC had to stay in a small paddock so he wouldn’t run around, he couldn’t be turned out, and he had to stick with a small amount of work each day as he continued to heal. This led to a lot of undesirable behavior, the most undesirable of which was bolting. 

Baby TC had shown a desire to bolt, but his gangly body didn’t let him do anything really aggressive. Five year old TC was a different animal, add into it that he was cooped up and unable to let off any steam. There was no longeing him down or turning him out before riding. And winter was rapidly approaching too. 

I began clicker training him on the recommendation from a good friend who also uses clicker training in her program. I found that clicker training was incredibly helpful to get the bolting to stop. I also used it to reduce his spooking. As we went into winter, I realized that I had no way of exercising him effectively without riding him, he’s never taken to side reins very well, so I clicker trained him to reach for contact on the long lines. I moved on to teaching him to engage his hindquarters and lift his back while long lining. 

I’m using clicker training currently to continue to improve the connection, to put the piaffe on, and to reinstall the medium walk because all he wants to do is piaffe now. 

Baby TC being skeptical about sprinklers

The basis is conditioning and there are two types of conditioning, both of which are utilized in clicker training.

Classical Conditioning

Pavlovian conditioning, or classical conditioning, involves the pairing of a primary reinforcer with a secondary reinforcer. Pavlov actually was studying dog’s salivary glands. He fell into classical conditioning when he noticed that his dogs started to salivate not when they were given food, but prior to then when they knew they were given food. He called this psychic secretion and wanted to know why it happened. And that’s where the bell came in to the operation. Essentially he would ring the bell and then feed the dogs, them eventually associating the bell with the food, and would salivate to the bell. 

Now, dogs aren’t born thinking that bells sound delicious, but with enough pairing of the bell, a secondary reinforcer, to the food, a primary reinforcer, the dog then responds to the bell as they would respond to food, by salivating. 

To relate this back to clicker training, take the bell and replace it with a clicker, take the dogs and replace it with your horse, and take the food and replace it with a treat or some grain. Eventually the clicker means the same thing to the horse that the treat does. And the clicker is a much easier reinforcer for the rider to use to pinpoint the exact moment the horse does something correctly rather than trying to quickly run over and shove cookies in the horse’s mouth. 

Not spooky at this lol

Operant Conditioning

The other kind of conditioning is operant conditioning, which we all use every day with our horses. Operant conditioning was fleshed out by B.F. Skinner. Essentially operant conditioning is when a behavior is shaped by what follows it, but it’s more complicated than that. It’s a four part process, but I’m going to start with three parts because it’s easier to understand this way. 

The first part is the antecedent, but for our sport, let’s just change that to aid. The aid is a stimulus that indicates that you want the horse to perform a behavior, which is the second part. The behavior itself. Following the behavior, as we all know from growing up, we have consequences. Consequences can either reinforce a behavior or punish it. Reinforcing a behavior causes the behavior to occur more frequently and/or with greater strength. Punishing a behavior causes the behavior to occur less frequently and/or with a weaker strength. 

There are four types of consequences: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment. They can get confusing because the words positive and negative don’t refer to good and bad, they refer to whether you added or removed a stimulus. Reinforcement is anything you do that increases the frequency and/or strength of a behavior and punishment is anything you do that decreases the frequency and/or strength of a behavior. 

So positive reinforcement is the addition of an appetitive stimulus after a behavior has been performed that increases the frequency or strength of the behavior. Think of a horse finally nailing a clean flying change and getting a walk break and scratches on the wither. The addition of an appetitive stimulus, the scratches and break, after a behavior, the clean flying change, that you want to encourage to occur again. 

Negative reinforcement sounds bad or weird, but we see it everywhere as well. This is the removal (negative) of an aversive stimulus after a behavior has been performed that increases the frequency or strength of the behavior. Think of a rider who puts their spurs in their horse’s side, then when the horse moves forward (desirable behavior), the rider takes the spurs away from the horse’s side, the removal of an aversive stimulus that increases the likelihood that the horse will move forward. 

Positive punishment is another weird one, but it’s what you think of when you think of punishment. The addition (positive) of an aversive stimulus to decrease the likelihood of a behavior. For example, when TC crowds my space, I tap him with a whip on his chest. This is the addition of an aversive stimulus that will hopefully reduce his desire to crowd me. I can tell you that hasn’t worked all that well. 

Negative punishment is one we dont typically use with horses unless we’re eight years old and through tears tell our pony that just bucked us off that he is NOT getting any carrots later. It is the removal of an appetitive stimulus after a behavior that discourages the behavior. We use it rather infrequently with horses only because it’s tough to set it up where it actually discourages a specific behavior. TC isn’t going to think that I’m not giving him a cookie before I leave the barn because I was unhappy with something he did earlier in the day, horses just don’t think that way. 

Conditioning for Clicker Training

Now that we’re through conditioning, hopefully you can see how clicker training combines the two types of conditioning. We use classical conditioning to make the clicker an appetitive stimulus that you can then use as a consequence of a behavior in operant conditioning to make the behavior more likely to occur. 

To clicker train an animal, we first have to acknowledge what primary reinforcers are effective reinforcers. To classify a primary reinforcer, think of what can reinforce an animal without any conditioning history, or learning history. For example, I do my job in exchange for money, a reinforcer. But I had to be taught to value money, because children raised in a society without money will not see any inherent value in having it. Children raised in a society without food will… well they’ll die. That got dark. But children are born wanting food and water and shelter. So are horses, they aren’t born wanting praise or clicks, but they are born wanting this list, among other things. One thing to note on this list is the wither scratches. There have been studies that show that scratching a horse’s wither lowers their heart rate and therefore relaxes them, and that is also a primary reinforcer. I’ve used wither scratches as a reinforcer for horses I ride who I don’t use the clicker on, it’s a great reinforcer. 

Lots of exposure for this weirdo

Bridge Training

Our first task involves classical conditioning and it’s called bridge training. We are essentially creating a bridge between the clicker and the primary reinforcer we are using. I chose to use TC’s grain because I wanted to not worry about how many cookies he was eating in a day and I also don’t use clicker training every day, so didn’t want to have his diet changed so randomly. I can adjust the amount of grain he gets after his ride based on how much clicker training we did during the ride. 

One of the worries people have about clicker training is that it will cause the horse to mug you for food or to start biting, but the bridge training I used with TC helps eliminate that response while also bridging the clicker to the primary reinforcement of grain. 

I started with TC in his paddock and he saw that I had grain and was very interested in me. I didn’t let him come after the grain, just waited for him to get bored and realize I wasn’t going to give it to him. He was fairly rude, so it took some time. Eventually he heard a horse whinny and looked away. And that’s when I clicked and gave him a small handful of grain. He was suddenly really interested in me again, mugging me for more grain and getting in my space. I remained patient and he got bored again, looked away and then I clicked and gave him grain again. We did about five minutes a day for a few days and soon he had figured out that he only gets grain when he looks away, so he would see me coming with the clicker and my bag of grain and would not mug me, but rather look away because he knew that was how he got the grain. 

By teaching it this way, I’ve taught him to not be mouthy or mug me for grain but rather to give me space and wait for the click. [at this point I showed this video of Shawna using this bridging technique]

At this point I was finished with the classical conditioning part of the training, TC knew that a click meant grain and was happy to work for clicks because he knew grain would follow. 

Remember when he used to rear
himself calm at the trailer?

Eliminating TC's Bolting Behavior

Now, a lot of people start target training at this point, but I had a very specific goal in mind, so I didn’t go that route. I’ll eventually target train TC for fun, but I moved straight from the bridge training to addressing TC’s bolting behavior. 

I started to then begin to solidify the whoa aid to address TC’s undesirable bolting behavior. If you remember from Kate’s talk a few weeks ago, she went over Andrew McLean’s work on behavioral issues. He has an entire chapter on bolting and his main point was that bolting, at its root, is caused by the breakdown of the whoa aid leading to the horse no longer being under stimulus control, which is a fancy way of saying that I couldn’t stop him. Basically, the reinforcement he got from bolting, such as getting away from perceived danger, was way more effective than the reinforcement he got from not bolting, which at the time was just to not annoy me. 

So my goal was to increase the reinforcement history of the whoa aid so that it could override the reinforcement history that he had from bolting. Bolting is very self reinforcing, if the horse bolts and doesn’t get killed by the thing they were afraid of, no matter whether the thing actually posed a threat, the horse feels reinforced by the lack of death and that strengthens the bolting response. But TC likes food, sometimes more than he likes avoiding dangerous situations, so I began to reinforce the whoa aid. 

I worked with him on the ground first, using my aid, saying whoa and taking back on his halter, to produce a behavior, a halt, that I then reinforced with a click and some grain. When he stopped, he was not allowed to immediately climb in my lap for the grain, the whoa needed to be appropriate. At first, he didn’t get it easily, but after doing it every day for a while, he started to slam to a halt more aggressively, even offering it when I even touched his rope or when I said the word “no” because the whoa meant grain so he may as well do it as much as he could. 

From there, I schooled it on the longe line, getting it to the point where if I just shifted my weight a little or touched the line a little, he’d stop. Then I took it undersaddle, which I’ll talk about later. 

Tarp de-spooking unnecessary

Reducing TC's Spooking Behavior

TC’s bolting behavior was getting way better with the clicker training. I noticed two things about the bolting. First, I noticed that when he bolted, it was far less aggressive and easier for me to stop. He didn’t go nearly as fast and didn’t go nearly as far before I could stop him. Second, I noticed that the frequency went down, he didn’t bolt as often as he used to. For a long time, it seemed that he bolted out of the blue, without any warning. At this point it started to only happen if something scared him rather than just randomly. 

His spooking was a secondary issue, but when I noticed that his spookiness was what was keeping the bolting alive and well, I began clicker training for curiosity and relaxation. 

TC’s spooking has always been interesting to me. I took him to two bombproofing clinics and he loved them, wasn’t spooky at all. You can thwap him with plastic bags and pool noodles, ask him to walk across mattresses and water, he’s fine with all of that. He was even fine with the cats running across the front of him, dogs barking and running at him, strollers and bicycles passing him on the trail, and the resident chicken taking a dust bath in the arena. If there’s a clear reason for what is going on, he’s fine with it. But if the wind picks something up and it flys around, or if something has changes at the barn, or if a wheelbarrow is sitting by itself vs being handled by a barn worker, he is terrified of it. 

Because TC’s spooking was not just a startle and would always lead to him putting more space between him and the thing he was afraid of, which was naturally reinforcing to him because getting away from a scary object meant that the object would not attack him, I began to address it by trying to override that reinforcement history with clicker training. Now, he could choose between two reinforcers: the reinforcement that he got from running away from the object vs the reinforcement that I was going to provide to him for taking a step closer to the object. 

I started out by leading him around my barn waiting for him to become weary about something. I found a tarp that he didn’t like and made him stand still near it. Then I coaxed him forward and he took one step, so I clicked and gave him a treat. We worked on it until he was standing on the tarp and then we moved on. I did this technique for a while, until every time he saw something that made him nervous, he would approach it rather than run away from it. 

Once I got him to drag me toward things that previously scared him, I noticed that he still would stand stock still with his heart beating really hard, so I began to click for relaxation. It wasn’t good enough to stand near the object, he had to relax. It took a while at first, but soon he took a deep breath and I clicked for that. I noticed a huge decrease in his spooking once I started only clicking for both approaching the spooky object AND relaxing near it. He can still be spooky, he still hates wind, but he’s way easier to console now and definitely the spooking has both decreased in frequency and strength. He’ll startle or if it’s really bad, scoot, but gone are the moments where he’d get truly out of control. 

Happy to hang out in this tunnel

Improving the Connection on the Long Lines

I mentioned using it for long lining, and here’s the progression for that. TC has a very friesian neck, his tendency is to go the way he’s going in this first picture, with his neck retracted and his hind legs stepping short. He didn’t like long lining at first because he can be rather claustrophobic, so I had to clicker train him to reach to contact. I would aid him to bend a little more but most of this beginning work was a waiting game. He soon blew his nose, leading him to reach down a bit, so I clicked that. Then I got a lot of voluntary nose blowing, I clicked at first but soon waited until he stopped blowing but kept a bit of stretch to click. Slowly I shaped the behavior until he reached down all the time. 

I loved this because it meant that I could work him effectively in hand without having to ride him, very helpful when he would act up in the winter or when I was in a rush or when he stamped on my foot and I couldn’t ride him. I started clicking for all sorts of things, coming through with the whip meant he would flex his lumbosacral joint and step further under for a few steps and I clicked for that. I continued our work with the whoa aid there, all kinds of things. Just shaping his behavior on the long lines so I could continue developing him when I couldn’t ride him or just didn’t want to. 

Clicker Training Undersaddle

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve used it extensively undersaddle as well with TC. I started doing it with the bolting, reinforcing the whoa aid from my seat, rein, and voice. I then moved on to the spooking undersaddle, encouraging him to walk up to things. Then even did some work on reaching for contact, reinforcing any weight he put in the reins. 

Clicker training undersaddle can be tough to coordinate as a rider. I will often grab small cookies instead of a bag of grain because it’s just easier to carry around, as the grain sometimes finds its way out of the bag. Holding the clicker is tricky too, as is coordinating the click. But once the coordination is there, it’s incredibly useful. What it does for TC is provide him with a discriminative stimulus, something I wanted to throw in here at some point. 

A discriminative stimulus is an indicator to an individual that a reinforcer is available. Think of it this way, you’re walking down the street and you’re hungry, you see a restaurant, that restaurant is reinforcing to you because it means you’re about to get food, it’s the bell the dogs salivated to. But then you see that the restaurant is closed and it becomes far less reinforcing, you’re still hungry but food is not available to you. But if you see the sign is flipped to open, the restaurant immediately becomes reinforcing. The open sign is a signal to you that the reinforcer, food, is available. 

Think of a horse who acts up in the show ring because he’s figured out that his rider doesn’t have as much ability to correct him. The show ring becomes a discriminative stimulus for bad behavior, the horse can quote get away with bad behavior in there. 

What I noticed when I would grab the clicker and ride with it is that TC would be more likely to offer me things that he’s been reinforced for with clicks. Me holding onto the clicker became a discriminative stimulus. So even though I hadn’t done much work undersaddle with the clicker, he saw that I had it and knew that clicks were available, so he worked harder for them. I didn’t have to click very often undersaddle to keep him working hard for clicks. 

We’re nearing the end so I wanted to share two videos of things I’m doing with clicker training right now. Here is a video of me teaching TC to piaffe with the clicker. 

Hilarious, definitely doing more bombproofing
clinics in the future with future horses and with
TC just for funzies

Changing my Philosophy

Lastly, I wanted to talk about how this has changed my training philosophy. I’ve ridden with trainers in the past who emphasized that when a horse is doing something bad, they are meaning to be bad. There’s a lot of language used that just isn’t correct: my horse is an asshole, he knows what I want but he just doesn’t want to do it, he’s not actually afraid of that thing he just wants to get out of working. 

Clicker training for me put everything in a different perspective. TC didn’t bolt to be an asshole, TC bolted because bolting had a stronger reinforcement history than not bolting. TC didn’t spook because he was trying to get out of work, TC spooked because spooking had a stronger reinforcement history than working. TC didn’t refuse to stretch to contact because he didn’t feel like doing it, he refused to stretch to contact because there was no reinforcement history for it. 

With clicker training, TC has become an incredibly easy horse to train for me, he’s only been doing the piaffe for two months and it’s already a higher quality than my Grand Prix horse’s. He’s not got the conformation to reach to contact easily but he does it becuase he’s been reinforced for doing it. 

And I notice a difference in him too. He is very playful undersaddle, excited to work every day. He knows that I’m going to be fair to him, that if he gets an answer wrong, my first thought will never be that he is being deliberately bad. 

The End! 

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time and I know this is a bit different than my normal posts because I literally just posted my webinar in words. But it was so fun! Make sure you check out the Facebook page to find out when the other webinars are happening and look at the playlist of all the ones we've done so far on youtube. 

Teaching Video Lessons

I taught my first video lesson on Saturday! And then two more on Sunday, then one Monday. They went surprisingly well, so I figured I'd write about how we did it.

It requires a ground person and two cell phones on the rider's end, but I just sat in our office and taught as I'd normally taught.

For the first lesson, we used my client's phone, her parent's phone, and my phone and did a three-way video call using Google Duo (also can use Zoom!). Client had her phone in her pocket and used headphones with a mic. Client's parent videoed the lesson, keeping their mic off. Then I just watched on my phone and gave feedback.

My phone is just full of memes, this one is my current favorite

It's weird teaching remotely because it was a little hard to see all the intricate details (also time seemed to be a bit weird so I just told my riders to take breaks when they needed them), but I was surprised by how good I felt the lesson went. We've been working on some of the theory behind the connection, so we went back over that, then began talking about straightness.

Gave her a few small exercises with transitions, though I imagine it'd be tough to explain a real exercise and I have no setup ability. But I was already brainstorming getting my ipad out and drawing out an exercise to show her via the video because she can take her phone out of her pocket and look at me if she needs to.

Honestly, I was SO happy to teach again. Teaching is such a nice stress reliever and I haven't been able to teach much, obviously. Figured I'd share just in case anyone is trying to work out how to get this to work. It's inspiring me to get a Pixem because you can hook up your phone to it (vs a video camera) and then I'd just need to use a second phone to hear what the trainer is saying (or some kind of bluetooth headphones? not sure yet, will do some research).

Remote/Video Lessons

I've had some inquiries that since I'm sick, would I be willing to teach video lessons and/or remote lessons. Despite the impostor syndrome, I am very bored, so the answer is very much yes. Though I have never done anything of the sort.

Remote lessons would be at my normal non-travel rate, which I think is in the realm of a normal Gold-Medalist-but-not-CDI-competitor-or-judge instructor, at least in this area. I have high speed internet, a cell phone, and skype/the ability to download a skype-like video messenger.

Video lessons would be significantly less, as I can do those a little more randomly even though I anticipate both taking about the same amount of time. I anticipate needing a 3-8 minute video and then being able to write about a (long-ish) blog post's length response.

It was a beautiful day

I also have to say as a disclaimer that I am way more eloquent as a writer vs as an instructor so reading my blog and then expecting my lessons to come out in a similar manner will be disappointing to you. I can delete and rearrange things in the blog in a way I can't do in lessons.

Please email me (regentanzer at gmail) or find me on social media to talk about it. It might take me a second to get back to you, please forgive me. I'm introverted, exhausted by laundry, and until I get squared away with work and my current clients, I need to put those things first.

Mary Wanless Workshop: Teaching Takeaways

Despite getting quite a lot of things for my own riding, I went into this clinic wanting to focus on my teaching of the Mary concepts. I feel as though I understand them, I can talk about them, I can see them, but the actual teaching of them can be a little tricky.

First, I don't take a lot of biomechanics-focused lessons, and you teach the best what you are currently working on. Second, these are relatively new concepts. I, like many of us, started off in dressage by riding with very second-toolkit trainers. Tracey, who I began riding with in 2013, just six years ago, was my first first-toolkit trainer.


Increasing my Mapped Area

One of the main things that Mary drilled into us was how trainers find it way easier to teach the things they've been taught or the things they've struggled with. Elite riders tend to be those riders who have "natural talent" or their natural movement patterns are good. Unfortunately our elite riders are often our high level clinicians. No one is going to pay me $350 for a lesson! They're going to fork that out to someone who has been to the Olympics though.

The above graphic shows the linear path from beginning to end, which no one will ever take. The shaded area represents the areas of the path that the instructor has mapped. On that mapped area for me is my rogue left hand, I can see one of those instantly and can help someone fix it, my faulty posting mechanic, which I cannot unsee at this point, my previous tendency to run a lazy horse off its feet.

The pathway inside the blue area is a rider who I can teach in my sleep. But the line that ventures outside that blue area is a rider I would struggle teaching.

My main goal right now is to identify the movement patterns that come naturally to me, to determine what it looks like when my rider does not have this movement pattern, and to learn to teach it. I think I'll be taking a lesson in a few weeks that will be very interesting. Most of the lessons that I take are focused on what I am doing wrong, but I think my teaching would benefit from a lesson where the instructor tells me what I am doing right. Requesting that will be interesting, I think saying "I'd like to ignore all the things I'm doing wrong and just have you tell me how great I am" is maybe not the right way to sell it.

I worked hard for those movement patterns

Riders who have had success are harder to get to buy-in 

At the instructor dinner, I asked a question about new clients, specifically how to take a rider who has already been successful and help shift their perspective. These riders are harder to convince. They've been rewarded for what they've been doing. I've had numerous students come to me wanting to work on the harder stuff, hell, I've been that student coming in saying that all I need is a pirouette and I'm ready for PSG. When really the reason why I'm struggling to get to PSG is my fundamental understanding of connection, straightness, and collection.

So instead of the rider wanting help to expand their knowledge so they can do something different and stop bashing their head against the brick wall they've hit, they just want someone to help them bash it harder and more effectively.

As you get better as an instructor, you get higher level students. It's not hard to get the kid who I'm teaching to buy into this stuff, she's been on this planet for less time than I've been doing this sport. It's not hard to get my Training level riders to buy into this stuff because I can get them to improve their bear down and suddenly their horses come on the bit.

It IS harder to get my Fourth level riders to buy into this stuff. They're so close to PSG, they want their silvers, they want to school pirouettes and piaffe and passage. And they've been rewarded for their work already.

Mary's advice to me personally was to give my upper level riders just enough rope to hang themselves. Put them in an exercise that I know won't work unless they have correct biomechanics. Like doing transitions within shoulder-in, oh but you've got to get the neck longer, I need more energy, more cadence, more engagement. How are you going to do that? Well, by bearing down. Can't do that while doing transitions within shoulder-in? Hey let's go back to the circle and see if we can do it there.

I'm excited for gaining new clients, and I would like to find some more upper level clients, but I'm starting to feel like I'm valuing my lower level clients more. They take less convincing!




Types of Riders I will Teach

Knowing what types of riders I may teach on what types of horses is really important. Mary drew this diagram for us:

This is only one small diagram of the types of riders you could acquire as a trainer. The hollow backed rider on the hot horse, the hollow backed rider on the lazy horse, the round backed rider on the hot horse, and the round backed rider on the lazy horse (out of curiosity, where do you fall on this spectrum?). I've for sure been the hollow backed rider on the lazy horse (Larkin, Leo, Rico), the round backed rider on the lazy horse (Rico), and the round backed rider on the hot horse (TC).

Some trainers have a lot of bubbles (concepts they are good at teaching) in some quadrants and not others. Theoretically I'm quite good at teaching a hollow backed rider on a lazy horse since I spent a long time being that rider. Now I'm more round backed and am on a much more forward horse, so the recency effect says that I'll be good at teaching this type of rider too. The other quadrants, maybe I'm not as good at teaching.


Other Teaching Takeaways

- It's important to find a common language with your students by asking them to describe what they are feeling in their own words and then using those words

- You cannot change a habit until you can feel it, so you must help the riders feel what they are doing because it is difficult to feel their habits

- Is your trainer (or you) a teacher who rides or a rider who teaches? Best to find a teacher who rides (but I am a rider who teaches, sorry clients lol but hey this is why I go to these workshops)

- This weekend I found out that I struggle to differentiate between rider tone and rider movement patterns. I want to think way more about this before I start writing more than this observation down though.

- I'm way better at seeing front-back mistakes than side to side mistakes. Therefore I need to come up with some tests to have my riders do so that I can see the side to side mistakes better. If I can't see it, I can ask questions (can you feel your seat bones, does one feel heavier than the other, which movement patterns feel more like home to you, etc).

Teaching Progression

So this moment the other day that I described yesterday, the one that showed me how far I had come as a rider and instructor, actually had way more to do with the latter.

I've been teaching for a long time now, kind of on and off in intensity but now it's ramping back up and I'm seeing a big difference in my teaching. It kind of goes along with my riding progression too, so I figured I'd put these posts back to back. Also I have way less time to write last minute blogs so I wrote a bunch of these kinds of posts to put up when I don't have time to write.

Here are some differences I've noticed in my teaching.

I have no teaching progression pictures so how about TC
progression pictures? October 2017

To August 2018

Way More First Toolkit

I still teach a lot of second toolkit, don't get me wrong, I think it's important for riders to understand what things should feel like and what they currently look like. None of my clients have access to mirrors, so telling them that the horse is off the bit is necessary for them.

However, I am VERY aware of what toolkit I'm working in and I make sure that when I use second toolkit language, I back it up with first toolkit language. Like "and ride him rounder by drawing him up under you with your calf and grabbing onto him with your upper inner thigh, think about dropping your shoulder blades into your back pockets and engage the lats, add 20lbs to each elbow but continue pressing the knuckles forward against that resistance" unless I'm teaching Peony where it somehow always becomes real R rated real quick.


Willingness to Help Clients Cognitively Restructure

As an instructor, it's super easy to operate within a client's current framework. Rider comes to me telling me that their horse is a dick and that they can't get him forward... it's easy for me to give the rider a whip and talk about the importance of free forward movement, while also implying heavily that their horse is a dick.

It's WAY harder for me to break down the rider's fundamental understanding of what forward is and how they are blocking it in their body, how it isn't the horse's fault. When someone hears that they are the problem or that their framework is wrong, it leads to them being... way harder to teach. It's easy to lose clients if you challenge the way they view their horse or the way they view dressage. It's real easy to retain clients if you tell them what they want to hear and push them along the path they're already on. You can even make it seem like you're being truthful while still just operating within their framework.

Being candid and slamming a client down a bit is HARD. Especially when you're dependent on your training income. It also sucks to have to confront someone just generally, especially when it's a sport they love so much, and especially when they're at a high enough level where they know they're not bad at this. Dragging someone kicking and screaming back to the basics only for them to shit on you and tell you and everyone else that you're a bad instructor... that's fun. But that's the risk. And until recently, it was a risk I hated taking, so I didn't take it often.

October 2017

August 2018

Working on my Teaching

Ever since the first Mary clinic, I've been focusing on my teaching as a skill to be developed. Riding Alexis' horse with her helped me understand recently that me taking lessons on different types of horses helps my teaching quite a lot. Riding TC well is important to me and it will be the primary focus of where I choose to put my money, and don't get me wrong, what I learn on him can be applied to a lot of different types of horses, but riding other horses with my trainers is important for my teaching.


More Confidence

Teaching new riders when you're first starting out is nerve wracking. I used to get a lot of anxiety going to teach new people.

Now that I'm working harder on my teaching, new riders are exciting to me. I see people riding and I want to get my hands on them, I want to Mary them, which is a silly thing Kate and I always say. I feel confident that I can help a lot more people than before.

In addition, if I can't help them, no biggie, I don't want clients to ride with me and be like "eh there are no other options so I'll settle for Megan," I realize that my program is not for everyone. And I also realize that I want clients who are dedicated to my program. And I just plain like teaching people who are fun to teach. If I feel like I can't teach someone or that they don't match with me, I'm okay with pulling back and sending them elsewhere.

Being a dick in October 2017

Being a dick in August 2018

Slowing it Down

Just like my riding, my teaching has been way more focused on the basics. I'm still a big planner and like to put my agenda on my riders a bit (unless they give me theirs), but I am way more dedicated to their education than their achievements. I want my riders to understand exactly what is happening under them and know how to get to that place. Whether that means an entire lesson on how well stuffed each side of the horse is (happened more than once recently) or an entire lesson on a twenty meter circle (can count on one hand the number of times I've had anyone to do anything but that), who cares. I want my riders to be educated.

Maybe this comes from the majority of my riders riding with me once a week or less. I want them to be autonomous and to think about their own training and their horse's training as something they are in charge of. I am there to guide and to educate, they are the trainers. Not that I would turn down someone who wants a more involved trainer, but it's hard with my full time job, my commute, and my own horse. Oh and I like to sleep and have a social life sometimes. Blasphemy.

October 2017

August 2018

I'm really excited with how my teaching is going these days. I know I still have so much to learn and so much this year is going to help with that. I am, of course, attending the Mary Wanless Workshop in early February. AND I'll be doing the L program this fall! Lots of learning coming up for the next couple of years!

Train the Horse for the Rider

I taught a very interesting lesson a couple weeks ago that I wanted to write about, as I think it shows a really fundamental shift in the way that I'm approaching my training of horses now.

I don't normally like talking about my students in any detail on this blog, since this is my blog and not theirs, so some elements of this story have been changed just for privacy's sake.

Sunset on the way to my house the other night!

For some background, my student is a good rider but has been struck down a bit by fear from a semi-recent accident. It was pretty bad, she had some time off and is just now getting back into the swing of riding again while dealing with this new fear element she hasn't experienced before.

She's riding a few horses, which is great! This one was a new one for both of us. I had never met the horse before and this was my student's third ride on her. The horse is a bit spoiled, but a nice mover and has some good training in there under the spoiled attitude.

TC would like to be more spoiled please

My student longed her first and I thought she was a nice mover, though we both noted that this horse is one of the bigger movers my student rides on a regular basis. Once as horse and rider were united, I could tell things might be going a bit sour pretty immediately.

The horse was a bit lookie, which made my rider sit a little tighter than I'm used to her sitting on her personal, much more chill, horse. She told me that the horse could really spook and bolt and described her tendency to get into the landau reflex.

Sure enough, the horse is lazy hot. Spooky and reactive, but to get out of work rather than due to anything in particular. Sometimes she'd pass an obstacle in the arena and spook at it, other times she wouldn't. It was all due to my student using her leg to ask the horse to move forward, not the actual object itself.

We're doing a lot of walking in the water to get
him to use his butt in a different way, I dunno
if that's valid but it's been fun

Things were about to spiral as the horse threatened to buck and I could see my student fighting her fear. Previously this wouldn't have bothered her. I said hey, I can get on and work through this if you want.

Now, I have my own fear issues. This is a horse I don't know, I don't have my back brace or regular boots... but I clambered on. Immediately she threatened me with a TC-like basilisk move and even threatened to rear at one point. I was fine though, being fit has really allowed me to have way more control over my nerves!

So, if this had been TC, he would have gotten a right spanking and I'd be prepared to sit some shit. But he is my personal horse. And while one day he will be for sale, we can go through a week of him trying to launch me (hey we did that two weeks ago, and this week looks good for a launchy week too, yay fall weather).

BUT this is a client's horse, which means two things. One: my student is there watching me, if I smacked the horse and she erupted into bucks, my student's fear would increase. I needed to work through it without pissing off the horse. Two: I am only down there twice a month, I needed to make sure that I used aids and exercises that my student could use on her own. She's not going to give this horse a thwack with the whip when she starts to be obnoxious next time.

Never been obnoxious

So the only punishment I used was popping her one in the mouth with the bit when she went to snake her neck. My student could easily do that while holding onto the mane. Instead, I used mostly praise. She got scratches on the neck for going forward from my leg aid.

I broke it down, had her walk more forward and then slow down. She got praise for walking more forward from my leg. She got praise for slowing down. Soon the spooking stopped, I got an ear on me. From the very forward walk, it was harder for her to slow down than it was for her to trot, so I asked for trot and immediately praised and walked. Forward walk. Trot. Praise. Walk. Soon I had her trotting on a loose rein around the arena.

I put my student back on and we worked through it with her on board too.

Definitely not trying to bite my foot

At the end of the ride, my student was grinning. We worked on her posting mechanic to get her more confident riding such a big mover, worked on transitions within the walk to prepare the horse to trot from a lighter aid, and talked a lot about using reward to get the horse on board with the rider's plan.

Could I have gotten on and popped the horse with the whip and fixed it immediately? Sure. But that's not what I would have considered good training for this particular situation. Does this mean that I lost or that the horse won? Absolutely not. Training is not about winning or losing or showing the horse that they can't get away with something. I simply started to reward the behavior I wanted and make the bad behavior more difficult to perform than the good behavior. And most importantly, I wanted to do it in a way that my student could.

In another situation, maybe punishment would have been helpful to really squash the bad behavior immediately. But this was not that situation. I'm a big believer in not just training the horse to the best of your ability as a trainer, but also to look at the situation as a whole, which includes the rider too. At times you see trainers training horses for the sake of training the horse, not training the horse FOR their rider. And sometimes that can erupt into trainers getting their riders to put the horse in full training with minimal lessons, pay for the trainer to show the horse... until the rider really doesn't get to ride the horse at all.

Wandering around in the evening one day

That's just not my clientele. So I tried my best to set my rider up for success with the way I schooled the horse. Maybe I'd make more money in this business if I hadn't done that though, lol!

You Don't Win Dressage

Any time I do Kate's job, I just want to hug her, tell her it's going to be okay, and buy her something nice. Like a lifetime supply of coffee. It's HARD.

Yesterday I drove down to the bay (2 hours away) to teach ten of her lessons, then zipped up to the peninsula to teach one of mine, then drove home. I left the house at 6am, I got back in the house, after taking care of TC, at 10pm. On my way home I had to pick up ant poison at Target and had absolutely no ability to keep myself from buying a new book and a few other random things. I used excuses such as "I deserve this for reasons" and "I'm tired so I want this book and there's nothing I can do about it" as I snatched it off the shelf (then lol got one page in and fell asleep that night).

The lessons were SO fun though, all of Kate's kids have improved SO MUCH since I last saw them. And because yet again I'm not prepared with my blog (hey I was literally out of my house for 16 hours yesterday and have mostly been a zombie at work today), I'm just going to talk about some concepts that came up that I thought were worth repeating on this blog.

Have some old pictures, like from 2012, of one of my favorite
places in the world

Tempo Control for Improved Gaits
I've been using something I learned from Tanya watching her teach a lesson quite a bit lately. Slow the tempo down, then add power within the slower tempo. Lots of horses, mine included, want to scuttle over the ground without a moment of suspension in their trot, and when the rider's leg comes on to get them more forward, their legs just move faster, rather than becoming more engaged. So slowing the tempo down, then adding power, will increase engagement, prolong the time spent in the moment of suspension, and therefore make the trot much better.

In addition, slowing the tempo in a horse who wants to get quick will help to relax the back, and only when the back is relaxed can the horse fully reach under with the hind leg and track up. So sometimes if a horse is not tracking up, the answer is to... slow down.


Train the Opposite
A few times, the concept of training the opposite behavior of the horse's natural tendency came up. This is something I think about a lot with TC. His natural tendency is to get lighter in the bridle, shorter and more upright in the neck, and quicker with his legs. So I have spent a long long time teaching him to reach firmly into the bridle, lengthen the neck, and slow his tempo. If I ever were to get him going too slow, or too long, or too low, I can very easily take him back to where he came from.


You Don't Win Dressage
I mentioned to the same kid from above that it took me about three years to get TC reliably different in the contact, to go against his instincts to snap his neck back at me and get light in the bridle. This is kind of a lie, given that he's been quite good in the contact for a while now, he was VERY green when we started so a lot of the training in the last 3 years has been other stuff too, and he had basically a year total off of being trained with his injury and bad behavior. But before I could qualify my statement, the kid was like WHAT NO! THREE YEARS?!

I said hold up, do you really think that there's this moment where you throw your hands up in the air and declare that I HAVE WON DRESSAGE? Because let me tell you as someone who cantered down centerline at the Grand Prix level on a horse they trained themselves... well, I haven't hit it yet. I thought I'd be in happy tears, sobbing into Rico's neck when I got done with my test. Instead I came out and was like "that asshole halted in the piaffe, didn't he?"

If you don't find joy in the journey, dressage kind of just sucks. Sure the upper levels are fun in that I would choose to passage everywhere if I could, but they're hard and the thing about it is that even our highest scoring riders ever haven't gotten 100%. When you're working hard toward something, it's hard work. Working hard on perfecting a canter pirouette still feels just as hard of work as working hard on the connection. It's just hard. So when I got done with my test, I didn't have that moment of happiness that I was expecting, because it was clouded by the very real dressage test I just rode, which, like all do, had some mistakes in it. I get so much more happiness and joy out of the rides I have at home.

I want green grass again, but I don't want it to rain...

MOAR
One of my obsessions lately is getting TC's gaits to be big and scary. My rule is that if I don't feel like I'm going to piss my pants riding his canter, it's not good enough yet. If I don't feel like I'm going to cry while riding his trot, it's not big enough. This has been really enlightening for me. When TC is quiet and... not even behind the leg, but not really utilizing his entire body to carry us, things are a lot harder. The lateral work is more difficult, the transitions aren't as through, even just sitting his gaits is tougher, which confuses my lizard brain (which is still convinced that slower = smoother).

As I casually told Nicole after a margarita the other day, this is basically just "pull on the reins when it won't stop and hit it when it won't go" because it's not the aids that are complicated. It's really that I'm finding more and more how rusty some horses are at the zero toolkit, the basic stop-go-turn. The aids need to be SHARP. As in, in a walk to trot transition, the horse needs to immediately, without any hesitation, pick up the quality of trot you want in the show ring. The downward needs to be solely off the seat and leg and equally as sharp. Everything needs to feel electric.


Sweeping the Counter Canter Loop
One of the ahah moments I had with Tanya on TC was how to ride the counter canter loop from 1-3. One of Kate's kids is doing 1-3 soon and said that the loop was hard for them. We started with doing each half of the loop on its own and then put them together.

It became clear that she was making it too hard for herself. First, riding it on two diagonals means a sharper counter canter moment, and that's tough. Second, riding the canter a bit quick without a moment of suspension means that you have less time in the air to turn (the canter can only move laterally in the moment of suspension, so if you have a shit half pass or counter canter, maybe the canter is just shit). Third, the haunches need to be almost in and sweep through the movement, rather than follow the shoulder around. If, when passing the first quarterline, you take the haunches in and just put your rein/the horse's outside shoulder on the line of the loop, you actually point yourself back to the rail. This allows for more flow in the movement.


Introducing Walk Pirouettes
Unfortunately one of the horses had thrown a shoe and was a little ouchy, so we had a walk-only lesson. In the past I would have been unsure about teaching solely at the walk, but now I'm real confident in my ability to yammer on enough even to someone sitting on a wooden block. So we talked walk pirouettes.

Breaking it way down was helpful for me just because I'm working on getting TC's to improve. First, we started with riding shoulder-in on the circle and haunches-in on the circle. The shoulder-in is to get the horse to be more collected in the walk and active in the hind legs, and also to set the horse up for the pirouette. The haunches-in is to prepare the aid to prevent the horse from stepping out. A lot of people do haunches-in on a circle to do walk pirouettes, and that's WRONG AND STOP DOING IT. Sorry.

The pirouette should come from shoulder-in, so after the shoulder-in and haunches-in are well developed at the walk on the circle, just go shoulder in and then turn the shoulders around the haunches while holding the outside hind leg under the horse's body. If the horse steps out, school more haunches-in on the circle, if the horse sticks, make the pirouette bigger and school more shoulder-in.

South county <3

Overall it was a long day and I felt bad because I basically just complained about it rather than being incredibly grateful for the opportunity to teach some awesome kids. So I'll just say that here. I am so grateful to have such a good friend who will throw me lessons when she's out of town! It's so fun to step back into my old life (not even, I never taught 11 lessons in a day on a regular basis lol) and realize why I went back to school have so much fun.

But just like... go bring your trainer a coffee (provided they work as hard as Kate does). I am so happy to be back in the office today.