Month: January 2022

Covid has so dominated everything for the last few years it is hard to remember we once were able to travel! One of our last trips was to Equitana in New Zealand. I doubt Equitana will ever run again in New Zealand (I hope I am wrong) as it was poorly attended. The event though was great and because there were so few people there it was easy to talk freely with amazing trainers like Al Dunning and Stacy Westfall. Stacy is one of the most amazing horsewomen I have ever seen. She is so natural, generous and kind. There is a huge amount of free content on her website at https://stacywestfall.com/ It includes hundreds of podcasts, videos, transcripts and reflections.
Amongst her many must see videos are the Wedding Dress, and later Bareback and Bridleless also on Whizards Baby Doll (Roxy).   The tragic too early death of Roxy robbed us of seeing more of this great horse, but Stacy continues to inspire and share her knowledge and wisdom.

Same video but with Stacy explaining her run from Roxy’s point of view

Everything is so rushed all the time. I find listening to Dwayne is a great way to slow down and just enjoy relaxing will sharing his knowledge.

I have had horses for most of my life and we always just made do with a yard or small paddock to train. When we moved to Grenville over 30 years ago I built a round yard for handling youngsters.

Each night I would come home from work and dig a few holes. I just put it out in the side paddock, with easy access but out of the way. It has served me well, but I can’t say I even thought much about the location.

We had never had an arena, so building one was more of a challenge. I was really fortunate in that our local earth moving contractor was super helpful.  He said at the outset that the critical aspect was citing. Lacking modern political correctness, but plenty of common sense he said ‘you can either put it where your wife wants it, or put it where it should go’. After plenty of discussion we put it where it should go – half way up the hill rather than on the flat. The excavation provided the soil for the lower side of the arena. If we had put it on the flat it would have cost thousands of dollars more for fill and been much harder to drain.

All up the earthworks and kaolin topping cost about $5,000. It was about another $2,000 to fence it and I used split conveyor belt for the rails. The arena has provided us with a year round work area for 10 years now and I couldn’t be happier. We will top it this year with unwashed river sand which should make the surface easier.

That our arena and round yard have worked so well is partly good luck, but the citing was good management. I know of people who have spent between $50,000 and $100,000 on arenas that are still to wet to ride on for half the year.

I have had so many saddles over the years I have lost count. Forty five years ago my favourite was an RM Williams Colt. It was really a breaking saddle but I remember I did love it. Although I learnt to ride in English saddles, once I started doing stock work everyone used traditional Australian stock saddles. Most stock horses were thoroughbred types and fairly narrow. We didn’t think much about saddle fit. You just has a saddle and that was it. I do remember the Barcoo Poley was novel and different as it had a felt lining.

Fast forward to today and I have far to many saddles. Horses have changed and saddle fitting has become a full time profession. I have a Syd Hill Steve Brady Special which is probably the last traditional Australian stock saddle I will own. It is a great saddle, but I found it only fitted random horses. About five years ago I bought a custom made swinging fender saddle, but I am getting older and just find it is too heavy to handle, and it is a lot of extra weight for my horses.

I must have read somewhere about Liversage saddles and I made it a mission to track them down. The Australian agent is Greg Steemson and he lives in Western Australia so I hopped on a plane and flew over for a few days, just before covid hit.

Greg and I became friends and I now own about ten Liversage saddles. They are super light weight, well made and very affordable. I started off with a Trail Rider but my wife claimed it, I then used a Kentucky and it was my favourite. Because I started competing in extreme cowboy racing (EXCA) for a bit of fun, I realised after 12 months or so that I really needed a saddle with a horn to carry a rope so I now use a reiner.

For most of my life I have pretty much ridden English and Western riding was pretty much alien to me. After a visit to Montana about five years ago, and more recently involvement with EXCA, I am a late life convert to what I would call ‘Cross over western’ riding and the reiner is now the best saddle I have owned. It is super light, fits a wide variety of horses, and it is great for long trail rides (with a sheepskin seat cover).