Talisman Farm

10/07/2026

“He’s not lazy. He’s thinking.”

A slower walk, fewer corrections, softer steps. On the longe, a pause is where balance and calmness begin. 🐴

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10/07/2026

The walk is often treated as the part of the lesson where riders warm up, cool down, catch their breath, or wait for the next exercise. Some of the most useful teaching can happen at the walk because the slower pace gives riders more time to think, organize, and actually feel what is happening underneath them.

Walk work is a great place to focus on accuracy. Ask riders to ride exact circles, straight centerlines, square turns, serpentines, changes of rein, or specific tracks without relying on the rail. Since everything is happening more slowly, you can be much more particular about where the horse is going and whether the rider is planning the line rather than simply steering at the last second.

The walk is also ideal for introducing lateral work. For a basic leg yield exercise, ride down the quarter line and ask the horse to move gradually toward the rail while staying mostly straight. Start with only a few steps, straighten, and repeat. Focus on the rider understanding the relationship between the inside leg, outside rein, and direction of travel rather than trying to produce a dramatic sideways movement.

For more experienced riders, use shoulder fore down the long side. Ask for only a slight positioning of the shoulders to the inside while keeping the hindquarters on the track. This can be especially useful for teaching straightness and preparing riders for more advanced lateral work without overwhelming them.

You can also use turn on the forehand into walk away. Halt near the rail, ask for a few deliberate steps of turn on the forehand, then immediately walk forward on the new line. This teaches the rider that lateral work should lead somewhere rather than becoming an isolated trick.

For planning ahead, create a walk pattern that changes every few movements. For example, ride a 20-meter circle, change rein across the diagonal, halt on the centerline, walk on, ride a square turn, then leg-yield back to the rail. Before the rider begins, ask them to tell you where each preparation needs to happen. During the exercise, try not to coach every step. Let them make decisions. Another variation is to give them the pattern once and then ask them to ride it independently. Afterward, ask “Where did you feel most prepared and where did you feel late?” That turns the exercise into a lesson in self assessment rather than simple obedience.

Walk work can be incredibly useful for rider position too. Without the added motion of trot or canter, riders can focus on where their seat bones are, whether one shoulder is lower, whether one leg tends to creep forward, how evenly they are holding the reins, and whether they are actually sitting in the middle of the horse. You can also use short periods without stirrups, arm exercises, or deliberate position changes to improve body awareness without overwhelming the rider.

One exercise that works well is walk-halt-walk with exact markers. Choose two cones and ask the rider to halt precisely between them. Once that is easy, ask for the halt at a single marker, then ask them to walk on again without hesitation. Focus on preparation of the halt, which should not begin when they reach the cone. The rider should already be organizing the horse several steps beforehand. This is a great way to teach the idea that transitions are prepared before they occur.

You can also turn this into a counting exercise. Ask for six purposeful walk steps, halt for three seconds, then walk another eight steps. This encourages the rider to control the rhythm and think ahead instead of simply moving around the arena.

You can also ask riders to identify their seat bones. At the walk, have them notice whether they feel equal pressure on both sides. Then ride a circle and ask whether one side feels different. This can lead naturally into discussions about crookedness, collapsing through a hip, or leaning.

Transitions do not have to mean only changing gait. Walk-halt-walk, lengthening and shortening the walk, frequent changes of direction, and transitions within the walk can teach riders a lot about preparation, responsiveness, and timing. Instead of allowing the horse to shuffle into a halt or wander back into walk, ask for a specific number of purposeful steps and make the rider plan the transition before it happens.

The walk is also a great place to teach riders to think ahead. Give them a pattern and ask them to tell you where they need to prepare for the next movement. Ask what they are going to do before the corner, where they need to straighten, or when they should begin asking for the next exercise. Since riders have more time to prepare, they can practice planning instead of simply reacting.

Another productive exercise is lengthening and shortening the walk. Pick two points in the arena. Between the first pair of markers, ask for a more forward, ground covering walk. Between the next pair, ask the rider to shorten the steps while maintaining activity. The goal is not simply fast versus slow. It is teaching the rider to influence stride length while preserving rhythm.

For group lessons, walk work can become a spacing and awareness exercise. Ask riders to maintain a specific number of horse lengths between one another without passing. Change direction, add circles, or ask one rider to halt while the others reorganize. This teaches riders to pay attention to the entire arena rather than focusing only on their own horse.

Do not underestimate how useful the walk is for developing feel. Ask the rider if they can feel the four beat rhythm. Can they feel which hind leg is stepping? Can they tell when the horse becomes crooked, loses energy, or starts leaning on one rein? Can they feel the difference between a purposeful walk and a horse simply wandering around the arena?

The walk does not have to be the “easy” part of the lesson. Done well, it can be where riders develop accuracy, body awareness, timing, independence, and a much better understanding of how their aids actually influence the horse. Sometimes slowing everything down is exactly what allows the rider to learn more.

10/06/2026

In late 1863, after the Battle of Chattanooga, General Ulysses S. Grant received an unusual gift. A d*ing man in St. Louis offered him a magnificent horse, asking only that the animal be treated kindly. Grant gave his word and named the horse Cincinnati.

Cincinnati was the son of Lexington, the fastest four mile Thoroughbred in America. He soon became Grant's favorite, carrying him through the brutal Overland Campaign of 1864. Soldiers marveled at how calm he stayed amid the roar of battle.

Grant guarded him closely and almost never let anyone else ride him. One exception was President Abraham Lincoln, who rode Cincinnati every day while visiting Grant at City Point in 1865.

That April Cincinnati carried Grant to Appomattox, where Lee surrendered.

After the war, Grant turned down $10,000 for him. Cincinnati followed Grant to the White House, then spent his final years on a Maryland farm owned by Grant's boyhood friend. He d*ed there in 1878.

Rest easy, Cincinnati. You served well.

10/05/2026

10/05/2026

3 small consistencies can change a horse’s first few minutes:

Same calm greeting. Clear cue before touch. Pause after the answer.

Watch for the shift from watchful and braced to a soft eye and steady breath.

Call or text us at 702.592.8381 to schedule an appointment

10/04/2026

10/03/2026

Your horse may be compensating before you notice.

A shorter stride or missed transition can be the first clue. Pushing past it may turn a small strain into tomorrow’s soreness.

Classical training gives the body time to catch up.

Call or text us at 702.592.8381 to schedule an appointment

10/02/2026

How we retrain without rushing progress: relaxed, balanced, responding softly, then repeat until it’s consistent. Weeks or months, the horse sets the pace. Call or text us at 702.592.8381 to schedule an appointment.

09/30/2026

Horse feeling lazy at the start? The relaxed walk comes first. Give your horse time to become regular and mentally present before asking for more. Call or text us at 702.592.8381 to schedule an appointment.

09/30/2026

Dyslexia is far more common in your lesson program than you might realize and it shows up in ways that are not always immediately obvious. A student who struggles to remember which is left and which is right. A rider who cannot process a multi-step verbal instruction by the time the horse has taken three more strides. Someone who hears everything you say but cannot translate it into a physical response quickly enough to make it useful. These are not focus problems or effort problems. They are processing differences that require a different delivery system and once you understand that the adjustments you need to make are surprisingly practical and effective.

1. What riding actually does for a dyslexic rider.
Before we get into the teaching strategies, it is worth understanding why riding is such a powerful environment for a dyslexic student in the first place. The rhythmic motion of a horse at the walk closely mimics the pattern of human gait and that movement stimulates the vestibular system which governs balance and spatial orientation, the proprioceptive system which develops body awareness, and the tactile system through the physical contact and movement of riding. For a dyslexic rider whose brain is working to build better sensory processing and motor coordination, the horse is doing genuine neurological work with every stride. The movement helps the brain organize incoming sensory information more effectively and builds the kind of body awareness that supports not just riding but reading, writing, and fine motor tasks outside the barn. Riding also builds neuromotor and neurosensory pathways that support how the brain processes language. The lesson you are delivering is doing more for your dyslexic student than developing their position and their feel. It is actively supporting how their brain learns.

2. Replace left and right with something physical.
Left and right reversal is one of the most common dyslexia related challenges and it causes enormous frustration in riding lessons where direction changes are constant and fast. Stop relying on left and right as your primary directional language and replace it with landmarks. Head for the E marker then turn toward the barn. Track toward the gate. Ride to the corner near the road then turn toward the woods. Physical landmarks in the environment are processed faster and more reliably than left and right for many dyslexic riders and the confusion disappears almost immediately once you make the switch. For some riders the instruction go out to the rail and take the right rein is genuinely impossible to process in real time. Head for the E marker then turn toward the barn gets there in a fraction of the time.

3. Use a whiteboard for figures, patterns, and courses.
Keep a small whiteboard and dry erase markers at the arena with you and use them. When you want to teach a figure, a pattern, or a jump course draw it rather than describe it. Include the dressage letters if you have them, draw in your arena landmarks like the barn, the road, the woods, whatever is visible and then hand the board to the rider and ask them to trace the pattern with their finger before they ride it. The physical act of tracing the route with a finger before riding it is one of the most effective processing tools available for a dyslexic rider. They have seen it, touched it, and traced it before their horse takes a single step. The result is a rider who knows exactly where they are going rather than one trying to process verbal directions while managing a moving horse.

4. Color code the horse's shoulder for the posting diagonal.
The posting diagonal is one of the most consistently difficult skills for a dyslexic rider to develop visually and the standard approach of looking down at the outside shoulder does not work well for a brain that processes visual information differently. Try this instead. Put colored tape along the blade of each of the horse's shoulders such as red on the right shoulder and a different color on the left. Put matching colored tape on the rider's hands or use different colored gloves. Now the rider has a full color coded system that gives them multiple reference points for identifying and matching the correct diagonal rather than relying on a single brief glance at a shoulder while posting.

If the color system still is not landing stop trying to solve it visually and teach the feel instead. Have them drop briefly to sitting trot and feel which diagonal pair is moving before rising again. It works beautifully for riders who cannot reliably use visual confirmation. The feel approach is actually more correct long term anyway and for a dyslexic rider it may simply be the more natural path to get there.

5. Hop on another horse and show your rider
For younger dyslexic riders who cannot readily process verbal instruction at all, ride a horse yourself and ask them to mimic your posting. The rider watches your movement and copies it rather than trying to process and execute a verbal instruction. Mimicry bypasses the processing bottleneck entirely and for young children it is often the fastest route to a correct independent posting trot.

6. Give one instruction at a time.
A multi-step correction is genuinely impossible for many dyslexic riders to hold in their working memory long enough to execute. Pick the single most important thing, say it once clearly and give them time to try it. Then add the next piece but one thing at a time always. The lesson moves more deliberately and the rider improves significantly faster.

7. Use physical demonstration over verbal explanation.
Show it before you say it. Walk alongside the horse and demonstrate the position with your own body. Use your hands to physically cue the correct position when appropriate and safe. For a rider whose brain processes visual and physical input more reliably than auditory language the demonstration does in three seconds what ten repetitions of the verbal correction never achieves.

8. Be consistent with your language.
Dyslexic riders often need to hear the same instruction phrased the same way every time before it becomes automatic. Pick your vocabulary for each concept and stick to it. The consistency reduces the processing load and the instruction lands faster.

9. Never draw attention to the processing difference in front of others.
A dyslexic rider who is already working harder than their peers to process your instruction does not need the additional weight of being visibly different in a group setting. Make the accommodations quietly and matter of factly as part of how you teach this specific rider. Most of the adjustments that help dyslexic riders like clearer language, one instruction at a time, more visual demonstration, landmark based directions help every rider in your program anyway.

A dyslexic rider who finds an instructor who understands how their brain works is a rider who stays in your program for years. The horse is already doing more for them than most people realize. Your job is to make sure the instruction that goes with it is delivered in a way their brain can actually use.

Do you have dyslexic riders in your program? What strategies have worked for you?