Welcome to Silent Oak Ranch
EXCA season has begun! Erin, my niece and I competed in our first event for 2010 on April 17. Go to the Horse Event Photos link to see pictures!
 

EXCA is a fun and challenging team sport! This year my goal is to have better, smoother runs that look more refined. So I decided that maybe my niece, Erin could help me achieve this goal.  I've been working with my niece, who has been taking natural horsemanship lessons for the last five years, on some of Sparky's issues and I've already seen improvment. Some of the issues are crossing cracks, refusals, and hesitant jumps. He also refuses to do the three foot, three tiered step ups and sometimes he is hesitant on entering water. Already I have seen improvement in his confidence when I ask him to go over a crack. I'm working him on the ground until he has no hesitation crossing, then I will move to the saddle. Teaching him his space and building trust with excercises that help us learn from each other on communication.  I also have to learn better collection techniques and learn how to get Sparky to do spins and nice rollbacks to improve our scores, since you almost always have one of those as a test.

We've posted some pictures that we hope you will enjoy and we're updating frequently so visit often ;)
UPDATE: TRISTAN IS NOW UNDER SADDLE! Go to the "Youngsters of Silent Oak" page to see him out on trail.
Kick off your boots and stay a while!
Photo below was taken by Brooke Flagtwet.