Evenstride Farm

Evenstride Farm Trainer Elissa Allen has over 30 years experience handling and riding horses. She has a very success

So true!
05/20/2024

So true!

Imagine you’re assigned a partner project in school. Only one of you gets to read the directions for the assignment, and then you have to explain it to your partner in a language that is secondary to both of you. You’d expect some miscommunications and misunderstandings, right?

That’s basically what’s happening while riding a horse. Whether in a lesson or a ride of your own direction, you as the rider are the only one who knows the assignment. It’s then your responsibility to relay that information to your horse, speaking through intention and cues that are a second language to both you and your horse. Your horse doesn’t understand what your trainer is saying he’s supposed to do - he’s relying on you to tell him.

Keep this in mind any time you’re riding and you feel like your horse isn’t listening, or you get frustrated with a missed distance or a sloppy transition. Remember that you’re the only member of this team who knows the assignment, and your horse is relying on you to tell him the game plan. Sometimes we make mistakes in our cues or our timing, we start thinking too many steps ahead or we forget to clue him into the next movement in time. Sometimes the horse is a little distracted, or tired, or not feeling it today. But most of the time, he’s doing his best he can with the information you’re giving him!

100%!!!
09/05/2022

100%!!!

EVERY single one! 🤦🏼‍♀️😂😂

05/24/2022

You know it 😉😉😂😂

It’s been a while but too great not to share!!
01/04/2022

It’s been a while but too great not to share!!

Got this one at home! Morning!
12/15/2021

Got this one at home! Morning!

My photographer caught this stunner of a sunrise! Photo credit to Armin!
12/15/2021

My photographer caught this stunner of a sunrise! Photo credit to Armin!

Couple of guys hanging out at the water cooler…
12/14/2021

Couple of guys hanging out at the water cooler…

This was last Monday! Loving the stripes! ❤️
11/27/2021

This was last Monday! Loving the stripes! ❤️

Late night apple snacks! Life is good here!
11/16/2021

Late night apple snacks! Life is good here!

11/15/2021

Pepper doing her flying changes like a pro! I love her! ❤️❤️❤️❤️🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Tonight‘s theme is stripes!
11/04/2021

Tonight‘s theme is stripes!

OMG!
11/02/2021

OMG!

Came home just in time to catch this!
11/02/2021

Came home just in time to catch this!

Another beauty last night
10/21/2021

Another beauty last night

The flying Max! ❤️❤️❤️
10/21/2021

The flying Max! ❤️❤️❤️

10/11/2021

The round pen is finished!
10/02/2021

The round pen is finished!

09/24/2021

One whistle! ❤️😂🦄🦄🦄

So true…
09/24/2021

So true…

To my fellow trainers. My hat is off to you.....

Here's a glimpse of our life in reality. We have a passion, usually starts almost at birth, we go after it.
We work for free to learn. Muck stalls, buck hay, build fence, drag arenas, wash horses, sweep floors and a thousand other tasks just in hopes of learning something about these amazing animals.
Endless and often thankless hours. To get lucky enough to get on some nasty suckers no one wants to ride. But you get on...maybe scared, maybe unsure, but you'd crawl in the middle of a red eyed lion just to prove to yourself that you can. You ride anything they run at you....
Then one day, usually years later, you strike out on your own. You become a trainer..But you still crawl on the bad ones and make the best you can of them. You still get je**ed around trying to lead a knothead to the barn, still get rope burns, get kicked and pawed and bit. Have runaways, broncs, flippers and ones that smash your legs into the fence. Often times risk your life...
Even easy day are abusive to your body. You are stiff and sore so often you don't even notice anymore. You ride, drive, learn, teach and soul search endless hours...
What little money you actually make you buy or replace gear, struggle to get a truck and trailer, find a place to train out of...yeah it's a real cakewalk.
Through endless hours of learning, failing, trying harder, wanting to quit, digging deeper, you learn to train well and maybe show well...
You start winning, winning starts to become habit...surely you have made it...nope.
You still ain't above mucking stalls or dragging the arena...you basically do what you did in the beginning..you just get paid a little more and have a different title...
After all of this, day and night, you still work crazy odd hours and hunger to get better..If we took a pencil to what we earned per hour we'd go hang ourselves...
Then...the clients. Some good, some bad, some amazing and some absolutely awful..
They go from singing your praises to saying what a poor job you did, how they expected so much more but fail to see what you had to go through to get their less than stellar, pissy, less than world class bred horse to the point that they can ride it, maybe even show it.
Then they decide to ride with another trainer down the road and suddenly they forget how overjoyed they were with all you had accomplished on their baby.
I know you know this...horses aren't the tough part of this business, people are.
Hang in there fellow fools for horse. You are not alone...
Remember why you started my friends...you started because of the love....hang in there, don't lose your passion, your heart and soul over people...keep doing it for the horse.

Follow the training journey of
09/14/2021

Follow the training journey of

Welcome to the family Cuban Rocket! You’re as pretty as you are sweet!
09/05/2021

Welcome to the family Cuban Rocket! You’re as pretty as you are sweet!

Address

61 Farmersville Road
Califon, NJ
07830

Website

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11886618@N07/collections/72157619884600125/, http

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