Canterbury Court
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| Our Facilities and Training |
We use two main facilities for our
operations. Our new training facilities are
located in Sanger, California, on old river
bottom land. We are located directly on
the beautiful Fresno Blossom Trail The
trail is a nearly 70 mile long self-guided
tour of the flowering orchards of eastern
Fresno County, California. The is an
optional Orange Blossom and Wildflower
Trail located off the main Blossom Trail as
well. In addition to our fabulous views, we
have a Barnmaster 12 stall barn with
indoor wash racks and saddling areas.
The stalls are matted with SoftStall to
protect the horses' legs and feet. We have
SoftStep on all aisles and racks. SoftStep
provides excellent traction and
cushioning for both horse and humans.
Our natural sand arena is the same
material that most others have to import
into their arenas. We also have three large
mixed forage pastures where we keep our
brood mares in the winter and our young
horses in the summer.
Our second facility is in the Sierra Nevada
foothills and is operated by Season's
Stables. There are a pair of steep hills, a
small lake, and a valley. Here we breed
and foal out our mares. We also winter our
young horses there so that they can learn
to be sure footed, travelling over streams,
rocks, and dead fall. The pastures are
large enough to allow development on
sound bones, joints, and tendons. We
have found that alternating our young
stock between the rough hills and green
pastures as well as carefully monitoring
their diet has resulted in nearly 100% of
our horses being OCD free.
Training
We periodically bring our young horses to
busy stables through their first three
years. There they learn that chickens,
goats, kids on bikes, and freight trains are
not really there to eat them. They learn to
live in stalls, tie quietly, come when
called, and accept the leadership of
human beings. They are introduced to the
concepts of saddle and bridle very gently.
We want our horses trained not broken.
When they show sufficient balance of
body and mind, they are started under
saddle. This usually occurs sometime
during their three year old year though we
have mounted horses as young as 2 1/2
and as old as 4 1/2 depending on their
individual needs. As warmbloods often
continue to grow through their seventh
year we observe our young horses for
changes in balance during their training.
We will often return them to pasture either
to finish a growth phase, because they
need a mental break, or to give them a
well deserved vacation. As their training
progresses they are tested to find their
particular talents. We firmly believe that
all dressage horses should be able to
jump as it increases their ability to come
under themselves and push off effectively.
We also believe that all jumping horses
should know dressage to allow them to be
more responsive to collecting and
extending between jumps. Dressage also
allows for the systematic building of
strength and suppleness in any horse.
Young horses will often let us know where
their talents and passions lie. One of our
best jumpers was bred to be a dressage
horse. However when she began jumping
out of a 4 1/2 foot arena at three months,
we were sure that she had another career
in mind.
