At Next Level Horsemanship we train all breeds and don’t discriminate by discipline. If your horse needs improvement we can help make him or her a better partner for you. In a new series, The Next Level Horse, I’d like to introduce to our fans and viewers the variety of horses we care for in our training program. In the past we have trained anything from mules, to Quarter Horses, Arabians, Warmbloods, Fresians, Tennesee Walkers, Draft breeds and beyond. Today I introduce Jake.

Jake is a Quarter Horse owned by a super nice couple located near Altoona PA. Jake had very good ground manners when he arrived at our farm but he came to us because the owners noticed that he was sometimes spooky and insecure outside. Additionally, the owners had not yet done any cantering on Jake and wanted us to help advance his skills under saddle.

And so Jake’s journey began. After a few days of refreshing the groundwork and introducing some new groundwork concepts we began riding Jake to find a very polite and well mannered horse under saddle. Although he was willing he just didn’t have what I would call a lot of “buttons” or well developed cues. So we began to help Jake realize what we wanted from him by establishing those buttons. By the end of his stay with us, Jake was a much handier horse from the perspective that he could give his rider a much more meaningful riding experience because he knew how to do a lot of cool things. Jake was cantering well, would leg yield when asked, backed up freely, side passed easily and offered many more things to his rider than he had prior to his visit with us. And, Jake learned to be confident on the trail. He had many experiences outside of the arena that lended to him building confidence in many different scenarios. It was so much fun working with Jake and he is truly a nice horse. We continue to work now with his owners in our lesson program to help them become better riders so that they can maximize their experience on Jake.

Stay tuned to meet another, Next Level Horse!