Bluebird Lane Blog – Earlier Posts

by Lori Albrough

In my last article, I talked to Alice MacGillivray about how she went from horse newbie to successfully participating in riding a scored USDF Training Level test with her Fjord mare, Bocina. One factor that stood out for me in talking to Alice, was the role that the support and encouragement of her Gabriola Horse Group community played in helping Alice get to that point.

In today’s individual-oriented culture, it’s easy to look at someone’s accomplishment and marvel at what they were able to achieve. But the truth is, if you get a chance to take a look behind the scenes of that success, you will most often find a group of people.

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by Lori Albrough

Alice MacGillivray’s story is one that so many people can relate to. After riding a bit as a teenager, Alice’s love of horses and riding got set aside for other priorities: education, family/children, and career. Many years later, Alice’s horse dream came back to the forefront, and she prepared to move to the country and buy her first horse. Fascinated with the Fjord breed, Alice did extensive research, then took the plunge and purchased a nine year old Fjord mare, Bocina, from my Bluebird Lane farm. Around the same time, she started taking riding lessons, her first time back on a horse in decades.

Bocina arrived at Alice’s west coast island home in the spring of 2011, and Alice set about building a relationship with her, learning to become both a horseman and a rider. With dedication, the guidance of two coaches, and the support of the Gabriola Horse Group, Alice has progressed from beginner rider to achieving a huge milestone…

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by Lori Albrough

The concept of soft eyes is nothing new. Sally Swift, in her landmark 1985 book, Centered Riding, was responsible for introducing riders to this way of looking, but the soft eyes principle has long been taught as a central precept in various martial arts, like Aikido and Tai Chi Chu’an.

Rather than thinking, “Yeah, yeah, soft eyes, got it”, take a moment to revisit this concept and think about whether you are using it fully to benefit your riding. Sometimes, the smallest things we change can give us the biggest results. Soft eyes just might be that thing for you.

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by Lori Albrough

There’s this philosophical argument called Sorites Paradox, also known as the paradox of the heap. Sorites (pronounced so-rite-ees) is a Greek word that simply means “heaped up”. The argument goes like this:

Suppose someone dumps a large sack of rice on the table. On the table now sits one heap of rice. Now suppose you take one grain of rice away, and set it at the other end of the table. How many heaps are there now? One grain of rice can’t be said to be a heap, so there is still just one heap, the original one. Now take another grain of rice, and relocate it to the new spot. We get the same conclusion, two grains is not a heap. The same with a third grain, and a fourth.

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by Lori Albrough

It was years ago that I first heard about Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin is an autistic woman. She also holds a PhD in animal science, is a professor at Colorado State University, a designer of humane cattle handling systems widely used in meat-packing plants throughout North America, the author of a number of books, and is a popular and sought-after lecturer and consultant.

But I didn’t know all that when I first heard about Temple Grandin. It was simply the title of her book, Thinking in Pictures, that caught my attention.

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by Lori Albrough

I’ve never worked a horse in a round pen before. It’s not that I thought it was hooey or something, I’ve just never needed to. And honestly, a lot of the round penning I had seen looked like a great deal of running the horse around for a long time on a small circle, and that I didn’t care for. It didn’t look good for their legs. But at a more basic level, with all the horses I’ve started, I’ve had my technique and it has worked for me. The Fjord horses I work with are, by nature, pretty low-fear, high-intelligence animals. I start by teaching them to lunge in my indoor arena, and they easily pick the concept up […]

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by Lori Albrough

It was just over twelve years ago that I showed up for my first dressage lesson. Excited and eager to learn proper technique from an accomplished coach, this was my first intro to true dressage riding, although I had been a rider for 25 years at that point. Less than ten minutes into the lesson, however, I found myself huffing, puffing, and overheating, and the only thing I was eager for was to take in enough oxygen and shed my top layers of clothing. And THAT was my introduction to what a physical workout riding can be!

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by Lori Albrough

The warm-up is one of the most important, and often overlooked, parts of the ride. Sometimes people approach the warm-up as something to be gotten through in order to get to the good stuff, but this line of thinking can be a mistake. Giving attention to warming up properly can set the tone for your whole ride, and really increase your chance of successfully achieving your goals that day.

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