Program Cost: $3200
Join expert riding instructor Peggy Brown for an educational and enriching riding experience at the ranch.
Overview
Riders will learn the Centered Riding® basics, to increase their body awareness in order to maintain a dynamic balance and freedom of movement with their horses. These basics will be explored in groundwork exercises, as well as in the mounted sessions daily. This will allow for the ability to release unrealized tension in the body that inhibits the flow and ease of the connection with the horse. Learning these basics and the tools to explore them has an empowering effect for the students and they can take on to each mounted experience.
The Clinic will deal directly with practical advice on how Centered Riding applies to the real world of ranch and trail riding. Riders will learn how to balance and help their horse in rough terrain and how to remain confident and in control in real life situations. A good ranch rider learns to protect and take care of their own body as well as their horse’s body in order to go the distance and spend the hours in the saddle that real western trail riding and ranch work can often demand. Peggy explains the whys and how’s of safely negotiating the challenging terrain of the American West and provides inside information on how the horse perceives the world and how ranch horses are able do the amazing things that they do.
Meet your Instructor
Peggy Brown is a Level IV Centered Riding and Driving Clinician from Toledo, Ohio who was honored to be trained directly by Sally Swift and Susan Harris. She is classified as an Expert Instructor and Instructor Educator by the American Riding Instructor Association and was honored to be named the 2005 Instructor of the Year. Peggy generously shares her years of experience in competing, handling and training horses and riders in all disciplines including hunter, jumper, dressage, western, games and speed events, combined and pleasure driving, and trail competition.
A firm believer in solid foundation training for horse and rider, Peggy helps riders learn to use their bodies wisely to prevent injury and to communicate clearly, in balance and harmony with their horse. Working domestically and internationally, Peggy as the Visible Rider wears a bone suit that helps riders learn more about their own bodies and how the rider’s position affects the horse’s body. She has taught riding and driving in North America, Australia, Iceland, Scandinavia, Japan, Egypt, Israel, Europe, and the United Kingdom.
Itinerary
Monday through Thursday will entail 4 hour sessions each morning followed by 2 hour trail rides in the afternoon where riders can integrate the concepts learned in their riding lesson in the spectacular terrain around the ranch.
SUNDAY: Arrive in the afternoon and settle into your cozy log cabin. Meet your fellow clinic participants over cocktails and dinner.
MONDAY: What do horses want from us? Dynamic balance and communicating in the language of horses.
TUESDAY: The secrets behind protecting your body and staying in the saddle until you’re ninety! The biomechanics of the 3 seats of the trot.
WEDNESDAY: Make your horse’s job easier by using center to steer and stop your. horse.
THURSDAY: The true artistry of using your mind and your body for comfort, safety, and understanding at all gaits.
FRIDAY:A long ride in the morning is followed by a friendly team sorting competition in the afternoon (July, August and September). Four team members attempt to drive ten Highland yearlings in numerical order from one end of the ring to the other in 4 minutes.
SATURDAY: Enjoy a long picnic ride in the National Forest.
SUNDAY: Departure after breakfast.
