Bluebird Lane Blog – Earlier Posts

by Lori Albrough

Sometimes it’s hard not to bring your day (or your week!) with you into your interaction with your horse. You get to the barn and the irate customers, looming projects, unreasonable co-workers, and that cop who pulled you over for speeding on the way, well, they all show up with you! And maybe as your horse comes face to face with this vortex of mixed feelings, he starts giving you even more challenges to cope with!

So, I want to share with you a four-step process I have learned, that you can use before going into a situation with your horse. By following this simple process of setting intention, or mini-intention as I call it, you will change from being in a reactive position to instead creating the situation that you would prefer to have.

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by Lori Albrough

Sitting on the horse, we want our torso to be upright and our shoulders square, as I used to say to the kids I taught in Pony Club, “like a box of cereal”. In this way, our parts are stacked in the most efficient way for us to be in balance, to go with the movement of the horse, and to influence the horse with our seat and weight.

Unfortunately, today’s lifestyle works against us being able to effortlessly achieve this nice upright square-shoulders posture.

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by Lori Albrough

I love to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of people who inspire me!

I’m guessing you’re probably a lot like me, and want to get better at riding and communicating with your horse, play a bigger game, and stretch out of your comfort zone. So, when I see someone who rides with correctness and sensitivity, and puts the best interest of the horse first, having big success on the world stage I think it lifts us all up!

Successes like these give us a model we can all learn from. That’s why I am so excited to share today’s podcast with you. In it, I interview Canadian dressage rider Tina Irwin.

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by Lori Albrough

One of the most important things to learn about working with horses is what I call the ABC’s of training: Always Be Clear.

I think most of us feel that we are being kind when we cut our horse some slack when he doesn’t respond in the way we want. We may make some excuses for him, like, “I must not be asking him the right way,” or, “Sometimes it takes a while before he can concentrate”.

In reality, however, you are far more kind to your horse if you are always black and white. When you are black and white, your horse clearly knows when he is doing something right, and when he needs to keep trying.

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by Lori Albrough

Kestrel is a home-bred mare, foaled in 2000, sired by Felix (imported from Norway) out of Roza (imported from Holland). Her dam sire is Fjelljon, born in Norway and standing in Holland where he earned the rank of Elite stallion. There are only two Fjelljon daughters in North America, and the other one (somewhat curiously) is also called Roza. Our Roza was out of a Bjorgard daughter called Lisa. This is quite an impressive dam line, with Roza’s dam, grand-dam, and great-grand-dam all being ster mares. Bjorgard himself was sired by the great Astrix and out of the Elite mare Sunngard. Kestrel was trained in dressage with Lori, and shown successfully. At her first show, the National Spring into Dressage […]

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by Lori Albrough

The Fjord horse has several different sorts of dun colour. This is the same kind of colour as the wild horse of Central Asia, the Przewalski, and the Tarpan, the European wild horse. This kind of colour is also called wild colour.

The basic wild colours are brown dun, red dun and grey. In addition, uls dun and yellow dun are genuine colours of the breed. At the annual general meeting of Norges Fjordhestlag in 1980, it was agreed upon and decided that these five colours shall be acknowledged as the genuine and typical colours of the Fjordhorse.

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by Lori Albrough

The use of cavalletti in the training program has benefits for all riding horses, whether they are destined for a career in dressage, jumping, eventing, or pleasure riding.

Work over cavalletti can enhance the regularity and rhythm of paces, loosen up and strengthen the muscles, contribute to development of the heart and circulatory systems, increase balance, sure-footedness, and suspension, and develop and test the ability to learn.

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by Lori Albrough

I thought it would be fun to share the story of some of our preparations in getting Kestrel ready for going to her first show! We entered her in Training Level at the National Spring into Dressage show at Palgrave.

Leading up to the show, we took some photos of our preparations for the big outing. Here is a bit of a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the story…

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