Tuesday my Hackney cowkicked the vet while (he was) sedated for powerfloat.
Nailed her on the thigh 
I may threaten to take up archery WITH him stalled!
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This should give you a lot of insight into your current stumbling block, and these are not the only options for solving it. First, it’s probably pretty clear to you at this point the issue isn’t the hunters (even if that doesn’t end up being the discipline you stay with), it’s frustration with where you are in your training progression. You do not have the skill set to teach your horse the things he needs to learn, and that’s ok - the majority of the amateur riders do not, and people riding and competing at more advanced levels still have the pros hop on for tune ups regularly, because they bring something to the table that we don’t have. But that does NOT mean just handing your horse to your trainer and waiting til they are done. Riding a schoolmaster will help you feel what you are working toward (and I guarantee you some that you think are getting no rider input are actually getting more support than you realize), but you and your horse can still progress together. It sounds like adding training rides to the routine would be beneficial - I have always found it works best if the program keeps the horse just a little bit ahead of the rider, because it lets the trainer teach the horse something with clear signals, then teach the owner/rider how to implement it as well. That way, you are still learning together, but your horse is less confused than if you are trying to learn it yourself and teach it to him at the same time. It also helps to go watch the training ride if you can - see what your trainer does, and see what they are noticing/feeling. That too is educational. Basically, it sounds like you feel stuck right now, and the way to fix that is to change up the tools you are using, one way or another. The current trainer may have more to offer than you are taking advantage of, or it may be that you need additional or different help. But regardless of which discipline you end up wanting to aim for, as everyone has noted, these are foundational issues that will need to be addressed. Good luck!
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This is 100% true - straightness, a rhythmic canter, and consistent striding go a long, long way in the 2’ divisions! And lots of horses aren’t hack winners, and that’s ok. You can improve placing a little bit by learning to present your horse in the best way possible, but you aren’t going to turn a low or no ribbon mover into a top 3 ribbon, and that’s just the way it goes for lots of people.
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Did you mean to reply to me? I think you meant this for the OP.
I compete in hunters and dressage and am well aware that both require precision and accuracy. But they are distinctly different in that missing a stride in dressage has significantly less impact than missing a distance to a jump. In dressage, you might get a low score on an element (ex. a 4 for a missed departure) but can still get an overall decent score in the 60s so long as it wasn’t a double coefficient. In hunters, if you miss a stride and take a rail you get an automatic 45 (heavy penalty) and in jumpers if you do the same you get faults. Or worse - you totally miss the distance and fly off and injure yourself. If you miss a stride in dressage, you aren’t likely to put yourself in a sticky situation, AND the judge will give you feedback and you will better understand WHY you go the score you got. I do think OP could benefit from professional feedback and I agree with you that accuracy and precision are of COURSE important for all disciplines, and yes dressage as well.
But if OP isn’t interested in getting experience at lower levels and focusing on where she can be successful, then I am not sure what sport would work for the OP. Maybe just enjoying the horse at home?
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@trubandloki A quick web search “Mounted Archery NY” turned up a couple of groups --I think they are on facebook. Good place to start!
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@danhelm441 – to answer your question on the arrows --people with flat property generally use back drops (archery curtains) or make their target stands really huge --I have a farm that has low hills so I put my archery track so that my arrows, if they miss the target, go into a hillside. Other people use round bales --take a look on the WWW for Mounted Archery Course and you’ll see a variety. But in all honesty, once you get the hang of shooting from your horse, you don’t lose many arrows --my misses are usually within a foot or two of the target.
But --did want to address one more aspect of your post --finding an archery set at GoodWill and practicing with it is wonderful —BUT on the level with: I found a set of golf clubs at good will and went to the golf course where I practiced. --Mounted Archery Bows (Traditional Asian Horse Bows are required for MA —can you use another bow? A recurve? A long bow? Yes, but you cannot compete with it. Secondly, to shoot well in MA you need to be able to shoot 3 arrows in 14 seconds at a canter. The Asian Horse Bow is designed for that type of rapid shooting --there is no arrow rest --the archer just grabs an arrow and puts it on the hand holding the bow, and shoots --we actually don’t even aim. It’s called “instinctive shooting.” Do it enough, and you hit what you are shooting at --no “dominant eye” no lining up the target, etc.
The statement that your fingers hurt makes me think that you are not using the right kind of arrows --feather fletched. Plastic will shred your bow hand. And most people don’t use gloves as any variation in the leather from one practice to the next will throw off your aim. Finally most archers use “thumb draw” (see Youtube) or Persian draw.
You should be measured for your bow correctly; and then your arrows need to fit your draw. Finally, you’ll need to decide on a quiver. There are many kinds --most people try quite a few before they find what works best for them. I am one of those that prefers a “belly cross draw” --others use thigh quivers, back quivers, and side cross draw quivers. My arms are long --so my arrows are long --that makes a thigh quiver (unless I fasten it to my calf) too long for my arrows. They catch. The cross draw works for me. On a good day, I can accurately shoot 9 arrows in 14 seconds --that’s competitive. At the highest levels, the top archers are doing 21 and hitting what they shoot at.
I’d do a search “Mounted Archery near me” or “Mounted archery [your state]” and see if anyone is close to you. If no one is, the I’d suggest a ZOOM call with Jennifer Dawson at Ground Zero Archery in Niles MI --she owns her own archery store, is a high level mounted archer, and over a ZOOM call can measure you for a bow, get you the right arrows, and help you get started. A good starting bow is about $200, and you’d want 6-10 arrows.
Let me know if I can help at all --if you are close to Northern Indiana , you can come and shoot with me!
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Oh, absolutely. 100 lbs would be extraordinarily heavy. And probably best left in the past. There’s some debate as to how heavy the draw weight really was – estimates range from 85-200+ lbs. Whatever it might have been, it was definitely hard on the body as the skeletons of English bowyer from that time period are often identifiable by the presence of significant bone damage & degeneration in the left arm & right fingers.
Might still be fun to see how heavy I could reasonably work up to. I’m thinking mounted archery sounds like more fun, though!
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I guess I was thinking of a different COTH member named Foxglove whom was/is clearly a VERY different person.
A more mature, tall, very ample woman who used to post on here. She was from the PA area.
Sorry for my confusing you with her. 
@Moneypitt- No worries --FYI I am nearly 70 and tall --ample is in the eye of the beholder --not from PA, however but northern IN.
I’m a teacher of voice & yoga. Yes, I could teach them in a mathamatical x + y = result kind of way. * I don’t.* Instead, I use a framework in which I describe the way the end result should generally feel like in the body & then evaluate whether that elicited the result I’m looking for. Why? Because everyone’s bodies are different. When I imagine pointing my tailbone towards my spine, my pelvis comes to a neutral tilt & there’s a feeling of engagement through the muscles of my glutes & core. For other people, that same cue creates a “booty pop” anterior pelvic tilt and an overload through the quads.
I get the feeling that the same is going on here. There’s no one size fits all approach with horses. Your horse is bulging & blowing off your leg in response to something you did several strides back. That something may well be one thing this time & something entirely different the next. The idea is to teach you to fish & not just give you a fish – the better goal is for you learn to prevent the bulge & blowing off of your leg in the first place. And that takes trial & error & learning for yourself what your “correct” feels like for you & this particular horse.
Does that make sense? It’s like when new students come into our jiu jitsu gym from someplace run by a purple belt & ask our IBJJF-certified 3rd degree black belt from Brazil for drills to escape the arm bar. His response? “Don’t get arm barred.” He’s not being a smart alek. He just knows there are a zillion variables at play & he could show you 5 escapes & chances are you would need the 6th in that next fight. So, let’s focus on not ending up there in the first place.
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If you are looking at it as ‘only working at the walk and trot’, you might be missing the big picture. If you can’t do it at the walk and trot, you will not be able to do it at the canter. First, keep your horse straight at the walk and trot, transitions within the gait at the walk and trot, etc.
I’ll recommend two books for you. One is 101 Arena Exercises for Horse and Rider. The other is Anne Kursinski’s Riding and Jumping Clinic. Start at the beginning. Do all of the exercises. Pay attention to every exercise.
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That’s a really well thought out approach to the problem that will have the best possible solution!
As for the schoolmaster/ full training route, it’s certainly an approach to this sport, and not necessarily a bad approach. On this I can only offer my own experience… When I started “training” my own horses was pretty much the moment I got a horse. And I use that term loosely. But thankfully for me there was no internet to tell me how misguided, wrong, stupid, foolish (I could go on)… I was for the, umm, homegrown approach. (My first horse was a green broke 4 year old, but thanks to a very good seller, it worked out really well).
With age and experience I have learned that it was not the fastest way to become a good rider, but for me, it was the best way to become an accomplished horse person. It also taught me how to really think through training problems and break them down to root causes faster than I’d someone has told me to do x to solve problem y. I also improved in both my riding and training with each progressive horse I trained and was able to switch disciplines much easier. But, this means, with wisdom, I can look back with regret at how I “ruined” a few horses through my learning experiences. Except - and this is the really important part - from the horse’s perspective they weren’t ruined. Their life was just fine. Good food, great turnout, excellent care. Raven may have spit me off at a show now and again because he couldn’t take a joke and I was quite the comedian when I started him, but I doubt he cared for 1 second beyond that. His life was just fine from birth to death.
So of you decide that “your” path is through lessons and the school of hard knocks, and you enjoy that approach, then don’t let anyone beat you or your confidence down because of it. On the other hand, you also must accept that your journey will be slower than many others, but you will gain a different level of expertise. Also, further down the road in this journey, you’re going to look back and realize you had some total bonehead clueless moments. 
And that is also ok, we’ve all been there.
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Yup! And the walk is realistically the hardest gait to master. I remember the first time I realized I kind of sort of knew something about what I was looking at: Watching a video of Edward Gal & Totilas’ Olympia freestyle & thinking to myself, “Hmm. His free walk looks a little tense,” and then hearing the commentator note the same at the end.
We’re at a juncture in my household – my 14yo has had the goal of going to Pony Finals for hunters. She’s finding she really no longer enjoys it. There’s been a lot of stress & jangled nerves lately with barn drama ( that doesn’t involve us but still affects the tone of the barn), the coach dealing with some stressful life events, a chaotic atmosphere with a lot of littles rightfully being the coach’s focus, & artifical pressure to bring a sweet but anxious leased pony back into work & up to speed
We went today to school while the wee pony riders, coach, and barn drama adults were away at a show. Watching them jump around without an already stressed out coach trying to pound the square peg pony into a round hole while simultaneously worrying about little kids on shady ponies & just the whole negative juju of the barn drama was…pretty freaking amazing. The pony prefers to go as a jumper with light, reassuring hand connection, seat, and leg. Daughter rides better as a jumper. They just seemed to be on each other’s wave length for the first time & both having a blast. They both practically high-fived me walking back into the barn. Driving home, daughter looked at me & said “Ok, I don’t know why we’re killing ourselves trying to do hunters at this point when a jumper style round is just so much more relaxed for us.” She’s had solid, high-quality jumper coaching with emphasis on pacing, balance, striding, etc, so it isn’t a matter of a kid just wanting to be a speed demon around a course.
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Not every “schoolmaster” is auto everything. Now, they aren’t going to crash a jump because the rider is telling them to do something stupid, and so they may take over in those instances. But there are “packers” and “schoolmasters”. A good schoolmaster won’t just go on auto pilot. They will generally do as you instruct, and if you instruct wrong, they tell on you.
Some horses do naturally have better canters than others. Whether it’s just their natural movement, or some tend to be anxious, others behind the leg, whatever. But part of learning feel is learning what is a good canter and what is not, for each particular horse. And if you want to do any competitive discipline, you will need to learn how to achieve it in a short period of time after starting the canter. And how to maintain it if you have a horse who builds or gets heavy or something else as you go along. Straightness is the first step, really.
If you are having issues with your trainer’s communication style such that you aren’t picking up on how to execute the basics, try taking to them. Sometimes, a different voice helps, so keep up with learning from others available to you. But it isn’t helping you if your trainer says to straighten the horse and you don’t know how to do that and you don’t say, “I don’t know what to do to get him straighter than this. Can you please explain the aids or what I am doing to encourage the crookedness?”
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Agreed! @danhelm441, as a 13 year told who did jumpers and pony club from age 6 to 12, I found out a reputable dressage trainer was moving into the empty boarding barn walking distance from my parents house. I switched to dressage after my favorite horse was sold from under my ‘care lease’. I was jumping 2’3 consistently for a few years, about to consider moving up to 2’6.
I did not canter for a year + (nearly 18 months if you don’t count cantering on a lunge line). I didn’t have irons on my saddle for that entire time. Dressage trainer literally restarted me and sincerely is the reason why I ride in the classic style I currently have. It was life changing, I was so fit, the old School Masters I rode taught me about every shift of weight. Was my education for everyone? No, so many people couldn’t be bothered with the immensely detailed, amazingly physically challenging journey. But can I do around the world on a cantering horse on a lunge? Can I do shoulder in and haunches in to warm up my spicy jumper to get her paying attention to my aids? Can I do a sloppy canter pirouette as a rollback turn in a jumper course in a clinic to show off? Do I feel secure without my irons for a few fences during a jump off because of the ‘leg drape and even weight distribution’ I learned during those 18 months without them? Yes to all of the above.
I’m nearly a year out of the saddle and I am already prepping for 4x a week of WTC dressage lessons for a few months before I even consider fences after doing .90m pre-pandemic and riding for nearly 20 years…
Basics are not ‘only’ they are your foundation. You will only be as good as the lowest level hole in your education and training.
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