Paula Curtis (00:42)
are welcoming Jillian Kreinbring and Jillian is an expert in understanding biomechanics, movement, and soundness. How a horse's body works and how we can train in a way that supports long-term soundness. With a foundation in classical riding and years of study of equine anatomy, Jillian helps riders develop their horses in a way that promotes both health and harmony. So let's dive in. We're really looking forward, Jillian. So glad to have you here and we really appreciate you being
a part of the fair for many years now and all of the wisdom and knowledge that you bring to the horse community. Well, thank you. It's a real honor to be a part of this. I think the best way to start is probably if you could share a little bit about your journey, what sparked your interest? What did it look like and what brought you to where you are here today with horses and your teachings?
That's quite a journey. Every year that I get older, the journey is longer. Well, I was very, very fortunate to be riding in the womb, like literally. So my parents were horse people and they were more involved in kind of buying and selling horses and, you know, raising a few babies every year and so forth. I just was one of those kids that had the absolute wonderful experience of growing up with horses. I was an only child.
And I was pretty untethered. So, you know, my days were just spent with the horses from morning to night, you know, so I was a horse nut from the very beginning. And then, you know, as the business evolved through the years, my, my parents ended up moving more into standing a stallion and getting brood mares. And then of course, then we raised all these foals that had to, had to be marketed in some way or another.
And so we started to show. So when I was eight years old, we started to compete pretty heavily and we had all different kinds of horses. Like we raised some amazing, believe it or not, paint ponies. They were about 14 hand paint ponies. Everybody like in the nation wanted one of these ponies. They were just such nice ponies. So showed those ponies, showed the babies, showed AQHA and APHA. And it was just really such a wonderful way to grow up.
And so, you know, I was just always surrounded by these kind of craggy old cowboys that imported just basic horse knowledge or horse sense or stewardship of horses onto me. And, you know, so it was never just a hobby. It's always just been a lifestyle. It's just always been my life. And my father tried to talk me out of having horses be my, my career. So, you know, I went off to college, got a degree.
still showed horses, still rode horses on my winter breaks and my summer breaks. And then he, my father was hit with the final blow. When I graduated from college, I was offered a training position in Germany. So I tried to convince him, ⁓ I'm just going cause I'm going to go like travel the world and I have this great opportunity. Well, it just never stopped. I just stayed in the horse business. And so I trained and rode in Germany for two and a half years.
And believe it or not, it was with quarter horses. So we were, you know, pretty involved in like all facets of AQHA. So versatility was really the, the goal at that particular establishment. But it was also during that time, you know, of, you know, training horses and competing these young horses that I started to recognize perhaps that the way that I was going about working with horses.
was really based in dominance and subjugation. And I didn't know there was a different way. So I have to be like really kind to myself about my younger years because I didn't have anything to compare it to. But being in Germany, I started to see the influences of classical dressage even within the AQHA world. And I would notice that their horses had a different way of going than some of the horses I saw in the States.
So that really piqued my curiosity. So that was probably the first moment that I got this bug for classical dressage when I was 20, 21 years old. But the real determining factor was I started to not want to go to the barn. I was so stressed all the time to train these horses to fit a trend so that
I could compete and be competitive and always be in the top three. So you continued to get the clients and you know, it's just kind of like this hamster wheel thing. So there was something internally, like my value system started to kick in because I realized like, wow, I'm just not having fun with my horses like I did when I was a little girl. And you know, wasn't under all this pressure. And then like I would go to get a horse to play with that day and the horse would walk away. And I'm like, hmm, okay, that.
That says something. wasn't old enough or wise enough to understand really what that meant, but there was something internally that felt off. But of course, know, you're 21, 22 years old. You think you know everything. And just a silly kid who had a very overinflated head. I knew nothing, but at least I knew that I wanted to do it differently.
So I moved back to the United States and I had to establish residency in Wisconsin to go to the university there, because I'm originally from Iowa. I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to study in graduate school, but I knew it had to do something with horses. So of course, in that year that I had to establish residency in Wisconsin, I had to work and I had to have something, you know, to bring an income in. So of course I did what I thought I knew. I, you know, I thought I knew how to do, which was train horses.
So, you know, found a little barn, got a couple of horses in training. And, ⁓ just to give you the very simplified version, I had a horse in training and I actually had a very serious riding accident. So I broke my leg and I, and I broke my back. And I have to say, you know, for the people who take my functional anatomy course, they get the whole story, but for the sake of our time together, I will just say that when I was laying there waiting for the ambulance, I realized.
that I didn't know anything about horses. You know, it didn't matter, you know, how many ribbons I won or how much money I won. I really didn't know anything about horses other than how to dominate and how to subjugate them and to befuddle them and contort them into postures that were trendy and winning blue ribbons. And so that accident was really a huge gift for me because it started me down a completely different path.
completely different trajectory of who I actually wanted to be. And it helped me determine what I wanted to study in graduate school. And so I really started to learn about horses as a species and I started to learn about their anatomy and then beyond their anatomy, how should they move their anatomy, hence functional anatomy. So my research at the university essentially became looking at muscle development as it relates to posture.
So you can start to look at the body and how those muscles develop, kind of like a storybook. And it starts to lead you down a path and you start to discover, when I start to see these muscular developmental patterns, I can make a pretty good educated guess as to this is how this horse is traveling through time and space or this is how this horse is being worked and ridden. And then as I delved deeper into the study of functional anatomy, it became very clear that so many training practices were actually working against the horses
physicality or against their own anatomy, hence also their mentality. And then I became very passionate about understanding how, do horses and how should horses move their bodies? How should they be sculpted and educated to move in a way or in postures that actually help them carry the weight of the rider? And so that not only can they live long lives with a relationship with the human on their back,
but more importantly that they can live vital lives. Like it's not enough for me that a horse has to be retired at 10 because some human used that horse sock. I want to ride my horses into their twenties because it's been a constant journey of development for the betterment of the horse, both mentally, physically, and I would even say spiritually. I think that's great. That's, that's beautiful because you're incorporating the whole picture and your understanding. You know, oftentimes in horsemanship were
focusing very much, and I think it's becoming more and more this way on the mind, which is fantastic because now the horse has a say and now we are actually becoming better students and listening to our horses. But you're, you're also bringing to into effect that the body is huge. It plays a very large role in how the horse is mentally, because if they're sore or you're asking them to do things that are not using their bodies in the way that they're meant to be used.
Now that horse, it's going to bring up a level of anxiety, right? There be pain. There's going to be a lot of things that play a big picture in the mental component. And I think that's really important for people to understand in the whole, it's across disciplines. It doesn't matter, you know, from the Western pleasures to dressage to jumping to, you know, you see extremes in like saddle seat. There's all of the disciplines have these extremes and they are
They show up differently for each discipline, but it's a gross misrepresentation of the horse's natural beauty made to look like what has been promoted for that, whatever that discipline is. And unfortunately it goes back even into like our early art and the statues and things that have been created that display the horse in a manner that is really not the true beauty of the horse and the way that the horse
should actually be in their body. Yeah, absolutely. know, it's like sometimes we come across a methodology using techniques that has the goal of getting to the horse's mind through the body. And then you also have methodologies or techniques that get to the body through the mind. And I always tell people both is true. You cannot ferret the body away from the mind and the mind away from the body. It's both.
And that can change for a horse from day to day. Like some days maybe I can help sculpt the body in a particular way that makes a shift in the mentality. Or some days I might work with the horse in a way that I can get a shift in the body by directing the mind, you know. And posture is a reflection of the internal processes of the horse. It's not just how they move the anatomy, but posture is also determined by what's going on in their.
in their neurology and in their mental being. And we as humans, tend to gravitate towards thinking that what is beautiful is the most extreme or, you know, like a lot of these sports, I call them, they've become extreme sports, right? Because the spectacular is what becomes beautiful. And then in my world, the spectacular isn't what's beautiful. It's the horse's natural way of going. And he brings his body along with his mental state. And so that's a type of beauty.
that I look for, which isn't always the most spectacular. exactly. We've seen and we've experienced this and we've seen this many times where a horse comes in with a, like an asymmetry in its movements. And maybe that horse at one point had a lameness and then due to just muscle memory, the horse guards and now it's asymmetrical. But I've even seen horses that are slightly off.
that we improve as we work with and ride, and not just ride, but ground school and ride. And I've seen multiple times horses get better and better and better. And like in our training program, when they leave, usually they leave way more sound than when they came in, way more even, I guess, is what I'm getting at, more symmetrical. Do you have any examples of that where you might've picked up a horse that maybe there was just something a little off and you investigate, but you can't quite...
find it, but as you work with it over time, it gets better and better. All the time. I always joke that if you stare at any horse long enough, they all look lame. But they're not necessarily lame because the difference between lameness and as you said, being asymmetrical. you know, there isn't a horse I've met that hasn't been asymmetrical to some degree. Like one of my mentors, Mark Russell, always used to say, Jill, you know, you ride two horses a day. You ride a right horse and you ride a left horse.
And he was, he was so true and he was, spent a lot of time helping to train my eye and learn exercises that you would apply maybe differently on working the horse to the left or working the horse to the right. So for example, let's say I'm working a horse to the left and that horse has a hard time bending through the joints of the left hind limb. Well, then we would work that horse in a slightly lower posture to help the horse not to carry too much weight on that.
leg that has to bend, but maybe going to the right, he's very strong in the right hind. And so he can actually bend that joint more deeply. So maybe that posture can come up a little bit. Then you always have to think about the stabilizing outside leg. So it's like constantly always like being in trying to become more and more masterful at observation and then like spending your life acquiring tools.
that can help you manifest different movement patterns based upon that individual's asymmetry. So I think once a horse gets comfortable, and as you were saying, let's say he had an old injury, so he doesn't even know that he can move through a full range of motion because he's just stuck in that pattern. But if you start to mobilize them in little ways,
here and there and right and left and from shifting the weight from the front and the back and from side to side and across the diagonal, the horse starts to let go and let go and then all of a sudden they don't even realize they've done it but they're suddenly moving through a more plentiful range of motion and then yeah, you start to see like major, major changes. So a horse that may have appeared laying that was really just simply asymmetric, know, two, three months down the road look pretty darn symmetrical. You'd have to really, really look to see.
to see the difference from right to left. I think that's great. What it sounds like is that you're opening up options for the horse and allowing them through soft exploration. You're educating the body in a way where it's... Because the trouble can be when you've got a previous injury and there's some guarding and the the mind, you might not even need to worry about too much because actually that memory is in the body.
And so we need to help the horse explore and find out that it's got more ability to move. And, and what you're describing, think really it allows for a horse to not feel threatened. And, and then because they're not threatened, they're able to give you that much, that much more when they, you know, as you know, when they get into survival mode, now you're just going to go.
right back to whatever patterns and behaviors are their fallback. Absolutely. I sometimes like to use the example of several years ago, I broke my toe. So I hobbled around and hobbled around and hobbled around. And then one day I'm like, my gosh, does it still hurt? So I'm like, okay. So I put all my weight on my foot and I rolled over my foot and I'm like, my gosh, it doesn't hurt. That's awesome. So I went 10, 15 minutes walking normally and then I got busy.
And then suddenly I was limping again and I'm like, why am I limping again? I'm like, there's that unconscious muscle memory. And I love it when I have experiences in my own body that way, because it like makes a light bulb go off and I'm like, okay. So like horses just sometimes don't know. And that's why we can be so helpful of saying, let like, I loved your expression. Like let's gently explore, you know, what range of mobility you actually have. Okay. So.
Okay, so this is how you can move. You've got this little box of limitation. Let's just play in that box a little bit. And then all of a sudden that box of limitation gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's always such a fun thing to witness. it takes me to Moshe Feldenkrais, which I just, love Feldenkrais, right? It's like, this is what it reminds me of. And Moshe always used to say, you make the impossible possible.
then over time possible becomes easy. And if we're lucky, easy becomes elegant. And that's what I always think about like when I'm moving my horses, because the horse might go, oh, no, I can't do that. And then somehow you just move him through time and space and all of a sudden he's doing it. And then the horse is like, I can do this. Then it gets easier. And then like someday, hopefully we're like dancing around the arena and it looks elegant. I love that. So, you know,
going back to yourself as, you know, in your youth and early twenties and whatnot, what would be one piece of advice because of your knowledge now that you would love to tell your younger self that would make a big difference in where they were at, at that particular point in time? Well, that's a really good question. I think something important for young people to understand is to trust the process.
that it's okay that you don't know everything in your 20s and to let the anxiety move away. Like you don't have to know it all. Nobody is ever going to know it all. And to be gentle with yourself through that process because what you learn when you're 20 might mean something completely different when you're 40 or even when you're 25. And I used to say to myself, man, I really wish I had known what I know now when I was 20.
And when I reflect on that and meditate on that, I realize maybe not so much because I wouldn't have had the mental maturity to be able to manage that knowledge. And so I think my biggest advice would be to just fall in love with the process and to understand it. It's a lifelong journey and it's okay to make mistakes. It's okay.
to get curious about something and it's okay to do it wrong and that you're going to learn something from every horse and just to assure them that it's a lifelong journey and to be kind to yourself. Because I think, you know, we as horse people, we want to do well for all different kinds of reasons. Like people are motivated for all different kinds of reasons. But when it doesn't work out, sometimes some of us will go home and we'll beat ourselves up emotionally or mentally.
You you wake up at three in the morning like, I should have done this or I should have done that. But just to be gentle in your own learning and that to embrace the fact that it is lifelong journey. It is a process and to love that process and not just get hung up on an end result all the time. I mean, I think about that question quite a bit and maybe the way I did things, although I regret many things that I did and, and, but maybe that was needed. Maybe.
Maybe that was something that I had to try that at the time is what I thought I needed to do. Maybe I saw somebody else do it that I looked up to. And so maybe it was necessary for me to go through that cycle or that period so that I could come back around and find what I really want to do and what really comes from the heart. And in our younger years, we are more ego driven or we worry more about what other people think.
Yes. And that causes us to sometimes do push things or go faster or force something, let's say, maybe to show or to get to the show. my client is happy or whatever it is. But then as we go, it starts to become more natural and something from within us. I'm hard on myself too, but then talking to other professionals, I'm not the only one that did this. had this period in our life of...
Doing that. Well, I think that this is something that equestrians feel throughout their life. You know, many, many people come in in their thirties, forties fees and finally have the dream of having their horse. And there's this pressure by their peers, peers to be doing all sorts of things that maybe they're not comfortable with or ready for and giving ourselves grace to just be present with where we are and what we need to be doing with our
course right now. And that means we have to tune into our intuition, right? And we have to feel like you said from the heart. And so I think the message that you gave to yourself and to young people, I think that just applies. It's a beautiful message and it applies to all of us because there's always little places where we can say, hey, it's okay. You can make mistakes.
As long as you're always willing to learn and be open and make some changes and experiment. like you talked about in the, in the very beginning, really listening to our horses, body, mind, and observing you said, which is I think so important. Now, now we're going to, when we reflect back, even when we make those mistakes, we can go, you know, I was doing the best that I could do with the knowledge that I had. at that time. Yeah. Absolutely.
And I think, you know, what we sometimes forget is that, you know, we are in relationship, whether we're in relationship with ourselves or in a relationship with a partner or with a horse, that it's about thirds, right? Like I have my work to do, my horse has his work to do or her work to do, and then we come together in our own relationship as a unit, right?
And my teacher Manola always says when he understands and when I understand to become one. And I think like when that starts to happen, we all as horse people have moments like that, you know, and I always joke in my class when you get those one or two perfect strides, you'll ride for another year just to feel that again. Right. And it is really about relationship with ourselves and our horses. And we just sometimes forget that we don't
give to ourselves. Like, so many people will spend their last dime on getting a massage for their horse, but they won't do for their own body. And I, and I do try to teach my young students as well. said, one of the greatest gifts you can give your horse is to take care of self mentally and physically. That is a part of that relationship. You're third. And, and, that, and that's important. That's very, very important. Yeah, that is very well said. So now, you know, you do a lot with the anatomy.
of the horse and understanding the biomechanics. And I know your presentations for the fair, we've got some that are going to be getting into that a little bit, both for riders and for the horses. And I think the neat thing is you incorporated all, you do it on the ground and talk to some of the points on the ground, but as well as in the saddle. So I'd love for you to highlight for people what they can expect in your presentations this year. just kind of...
you know, share a little bit about that. Yeah, you know, talking about the thirds this year, I did a little bit of a video on how do I prepare myself before I ride or work my horses. I try to give thought to what is my own range of motion, you know, where's my own asymmetry? Am I putting my own asymmetry into my horses? So, you know, I tried to look for different ways of learning about how to move my own body.
whether it's spelled in Christ or a massage or acupuncture or what have you, because I realized that in order for me to communicate to my horse through AIDS, right, meaning to help my horse through the use of my natural aid, which is my body, then I need to make sure that I have a full range of motion. I'm not bringing tension into my work with my horses, which might also be mental tension. You know, sometimes
My preparation before I work a horse might be to sit and meditate for five minutes or that I go through a physical, physical exercises, which I demonstrate in the video about what I do with my own body. Now I am not a professional body, human body person. So all I could share was what I've learned about my own body through my own teachers. And I was very, very lucky that when I came back after my riding accident, where I had this epiphany that
I was being mostly just driven by my ego and not for what was good for the horse. My first lesson was with a woman named Peggy Cummings. And Peggy became a mentor of mine and Peggy was Sally Swift's head instructor for many years. So she brought in a lot of knowledge about Alexander work. She worked with Linda Tellington Jones. She brought a lot of Feldenkrais work in and then of course, centered writing. you know, those formative years where I was very vulnerable after my writing accident,
actually did focus on the use of my body, finding neutral posture, so that I could help horses move better through the use of my body, as opposed to hindering good movement of the horse because I was braced, tight, locking, this or that or whatever. So that's why I thought that was important to share that particular exercise for the fair this year. Yeah, the riders warm up for those of you that are listening. That's the one we're talking to right now. Yes.
Yeah, take some time for yourself to also prepare yourself. So I thought that that would be interesting for the viewership to see. definitely. And then I think with, you know, with incorporating those different modalities that Sally brought in and Feldenkrais and the X-A-L-E-L-E-X-A-N-D-E-R technique and all of those really help a person discover things about themselves.
And I think the Writers' Warm Up is going to help people with that piece of self-discovery because once we know, now we've got information and we can start playing with it and increasing our range, whether it be our mental capacity range or our physical body. And our ability to observe and see what's taking place and be present, which are all ingredients we need to be in harmony with anything.
But especially with horses. then when things show up in our horse, if we've done our warmup and we've noticed, this is a little different today and this is a little different today. And then our horse shows up a little different in a couple areas. Yeah. We can start to go, uh-huh. Okay. I need to, and that's, that's what you alluded to in the beginning with observation. First we have to observe so we can make those observations and then now we can make some changes.
You've also got my, my, my teacher Manolo. mean, he's, he's so wise beyond belief because what he taught me is that in order to understand horses better, have to study all creatures and the natural world around you. And I think that that's what makes him so amazing in, in his work with horses is that he's not trapped by dogma, but he actually looks to the natural world and the behaviors of all animals to help.
understand his work with horses on a deeper level. And I noticed that consistently I can see patterns in the natural world that are very clearly reflected in the work with horses. So that observation is such a ⁓ key component and it also puts us in a place where we can be in that moment and allow and redirect as opposed to getting caught up in that framework of
I must make this horse do something. And then like I hear my other teacher, Mark Russell, who's like, Jill, it's all about shaping energy. That's what we're doing. It's the shaping of energy when we're working with horses, both mental and physical. And I think that, you know, because of people like you as well, more and more people are waking up and opening up their eyes to this, you know, observing animals in the natural world, but
their horses and the whole horse, the whole environment and, not just working with them. And, you know, the, the horsemanship revolution, that might've been great for understanding the horse's mind, but then what about when you're not with your horse and how are they living? And more and more people are aware of, you know, I've got to do what is better for my horse and not just what's easier for me.
when I keep my horse, but I think that- sometimes not easier for us. right, right. But I think it's getting out there and I do think that more and more people are aware and sort of waking up to this. I agree wholeheartedly and, you know, it's like I tell the people who attend my class, it's a grassroots movement. You know, there's a whole lot more people on the grassroots level that can drive change within the industry than looking at it from the top down.
It's the grassroots movement. know, when I first started teaching my functional anatomy course, which is 18 years ago, I can't believe it. You know, I would do it in people's living rooms and there'd be three or four people, you know, and every year that's grown and grown and grown. And I feel so blessed because in teaching the functional anatomy of the horse, the people who are interested in coming to those courses are people who really care.
They really, really want to do good for the horses in their lives. And so I feel like I live in this joyous little bubble of discovery and happiness. But that doesn't mean I'm not aware that there are also, you know, things within the industry that need to fit. like you said, it comes from the bottom up because the top down, it's too, it's too part of the dogma of it all. You know, it's just what...
they do at that level. and then you've got a couple other presentations that are in hand work, but they're both a little different. Do you want to talk to those? So the video on halting, I thought that was a good video to share because it is an important part of the layering process of the development of horses in hand.
all the way to under saddle. And so I'll have a student come and they want to start in hand work. Well, I try to make a distinction between there's ground work and there's in hand work. And your ground work is necessary in order for a course to transition to in hand work in the bridle. So oftentimes I'll have people show up and they have the course bridle and they go into in hand work, but the course doesn't even yet know how to regulate tempo.
they don't understand following the human body. For example, I think last year I showed when your hips and shoulders are straight, the horse trebles straight. When I draw, the horse draws. When I yield, the horse yields. When I go, the horse goes. When I pick up my tempo, the horse picks up the tempo. When I bring my body back, it's like tapping the brake. I feather the brake. I can slow the horse down. And then I can half halt, half halt, slow the horse or think,
Slow, slow. So I like to teach my students these principles of groundwork before layering it into the in-hand work. Because otherwise, if you just put the bridle on the horse and you try to do these things, you're just going to be in the horse's face all the time, which is the opposite of what you really want the horse to do. You want the horse to move in front of the leg into a correct bridle connection. And when he understands to follow your body,
You don't have to be cranking the horse around and hauling the horse around through the bridle. So in the halt video, that's very important because that's where you start your process of teaching the horse to follow your body, where you don't have to use a backwards acting hand to compress the neck and drive the horse into a halt. I want the horse to read my body and when the horse comes to a halt, then I can start that process of shifting weight. And that is so, so, so important.
because in the shifting of weight, whether it's from the front to the back, from side to side, or from left front to right hind, or right front to left hind, is that when you have the horse that can make those fine water movement skills, what you're doing is you're addressing the stabilizer muscles. And that is so important to layer into your work, because you don't want the horse to careen around the arena just using his big locomotive muscles all the time.
because he'll just get heavier and heavier and his movements won't be finessed, so to speak. So they need to have those stabilizer muscles. And when I can teach a horse to halt, shift the weight, lower the head, start to square up, I know that I'm working with those intrinsic muscles that are such a valuable part to later on when you want to educate your horses to the actual in hand.
So that if I want to shift my horse's weight, I'm going to do it through the use of my energy and my body and not my hand. So that's the halt exercise. And, like I said, I have lots of students come in the horses blow through them. They don't understand those basic groundwork concepts. So I thought that would be good to, demonstrate. And then the next video was just kind of like playing around like a, well, so why do we even do in hand work in the bridle, which would be, you know, working the horse from the ground.
educating the horse to the bridle. Well, that's where we want to get to. This is where we start to work on postures without the horse having to carry weight so that you can develop a horse to be able to easily or do it in an easier way than just jumping on the horse and hoping he's going to learn how to carry your additional weight, right? The in-hand work then becomes also diagnostic.
Meaning a lot, a lot of times I see people wanting to do in hand work because it's cool. Like, look at, I'm doing a shoulder in or, or look at, I'm doing a haunches in or I have pass or whatever, but they're not thinking about why they're doing it. Right. It, I'm not teaching my horse's shoulder in for the sake of perfecting the shoulder in. I want to teach my courses a shoulder in or a counter shoulder in so I can help the courses.
become straighter and to develop their body in a more symmetrical way and to teach them how to access the postural muscles. So if I'm doing a shoulder in in the beginning and then I do a counter shoulder and I want to teach the counter shoulder in so that if the horse gets out of balance in the shoulder and I can use the counter shoulder in to balance him again. Right. So this, the, the third video, which was showing, well, how do you use your lateral movements
to address a specific area in the body, like the scapulothoracic joint, or how the scapula moves in relationship to the torso of the horse. Well, if I can use my in-hand work, I can isolate that exact part of the body that I wanna isolate that I know I need to bring a change to. So it was just an evolution of, take care of yourself. Hey, let's think about some groundwork principles. And then, know,
layer after layer after layer, you can educate your horse to more upper level movements in hand that not only help the horse, but they're fun. It also gives the horses another skill set to do. But I've just been very, very fortunate in my career to just have the right teachers follow into my path at the right time that taught me these different skills, because you can, you can spend just as much time learning groundwork and handwork as you can spend learning how to ride.
because it's essentially riding from the ground. But I just noticed if I layer it in that way, I have a more well-rounded horse and a healthier horse mentally and physically. And I like your approach and the respect that you're saying, you know, there's some basic elements that we have to have here where the horse is really tuning into us and what we're asking them to do so that, let's talk about the halt one, for instance, you're halting in a way that the horse is available, their whole body is available to you.
because you haven't compressed them. haven't had to use physical pressure to create the halt. It's coming from your feel and from the fact that they're responding to you as a whole. They understand what's expected of them. And I love that you're talking about that in hand work as well. You're focused on get these foundation pieces and we're gradually building, building, building, which is...
a lovely message because, you know, the foundation is really the platform that we can springboard off. And sometimes the foundation seems a little boring until you start playing with it. And then you go, ⁓ there's a lot, there's a lot of interacting and a lot of fun stuff going on here in this conversation between myself and my horse. And I think you, bring a nice, a nice take on that. Thank you. Yeah.
And now I say, okay, this might seem like watching paint dry. Or, you know, like if you think of yourself, like any more, I think of my horsemanship journey in a more artful way. You know, like I think we all have to go through this time in the journey where we become very motivated by technique. You know, like do it this way, sit this way, hand here, move here. And then once you start to kind of
get a feel for the technique, you can kind of let that hard brain dissipate and you go into your feeling. So it kind of comes full circle. And so like where I went through that time in my life where I was very technique driven, I realized I was a slave to the technique and I was making the horse as a slave to the technique as well. But once you start to move beyond that and it starts to become more artful, you start to compromise because you realize, I don't have to drill this horse or it doesn't have to be my way or like
Let's just have this conversation. And it's just such a lovely thing, but in the beginning, yeah, it might look like watching paint dry, but any great piece of work on a canvas started with one stroke. Right. And it might not look like anything for weeks on end. You're just putting a stroke here and little color here, a little, you know, swoop here. And suddenly the picture starts to take form. And that's kind of how I think about that process is like.
You know, at some point your whole arena will become a canvas and you're going to really enjoy the picture that is there. But it has to start with one paint stroke. And if you invest in that time, I promise you that the richness and the texture of what you're going to create will be just something of beauty that you want to look at. Right. But you have to start with that little paintbrush stroke. And I anymore find those little
individual strokes to be vastly more interesting than what I think the end picture is going to be. definitely. you hear like in classical dressage, it's like the development of your horse or you and your horse, it's like a tree growing. know, so at first it's spindly and it's, you know, it's tall, but it's, but after a while it's beautiful. It's it's it's a thing, it's, it's, you don't notice it. just happens. I love that.
But I appreciate the hows and sort of the whys and why you're doing in hand so that people understand exactly the benefits of doing it. And you're putting it all together and you're making it super clear and super obvious why people should be doing it. So I really appreciate that. Where can people find more information about you, Jillian? I always tell people, don't message me because I'm terrible.
That's why have this, ⁓ Casey, my partner is hands down handles most everything for me. So always, can always get ahold of me through my webpage, jilliancrimebringinspired.com. And there's a place there where you can sign up for information. I think there's like a free video that goes through my grooming process, which I'm like a nut hole about. and, and then through there, you can always email me, send messages, questions.
and so forth. I would drive them either to my Facebook page or to my website. Perfect. Perfect. And if you're watching this at the FAIR website, you can go to Jillian's bio and you can find all those links at the bottom of her bio. Well, thank you so much, Jillian. We appreciate all the years you've participated in the FAIR and your valuable insights for everybody. And this was a
a lot of fun to sit here and visit with you. really was. And thank you both for what you have done for the horse community. It's very commendable. And every year I'm like, wow, they have so-and-so speaking. wow, this is great. So thank you. Thank you both for what you're doing for our industry.
