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ABOUT EQUINE STUDIES INSTITUTE
A Welcome By Dr. Deb Bennett, Ph.D.:
When you get to the point in your career as a rider and horse owner where a little voice in the back of your mind starts to bother you with the thought that you may have missed something essential, that’s the point where I will most enjoy meeting you – because when you get to that point, you will be open to new ideas and a different way of doing things.
Students have different ways of expressing this readiness.You may tell me that the dull sameness of “rail classes”, dressage tests, or reining patterns drove you to look for something more. Or you may tell me that your horse keeps doing stuff that scares you or makes you uncomfortable (stuff like shying, balking, bolting, pulling back, refusing, etc.) -- and that you’ve tried everything and can’t get him over it. Or again, you might say that even after working with several teachers, you just “can’t” seem to get your horse to canter on one lead, or you “can’t” sit the trot comfortably. Maybe you’ve been told that you lack talent, or that your horse is “stubborn and resistant”, or that you need to buy a better horse (especially, that you need to buy a horse being offered for sale by whatever particular coach).
So: you have gone looking for a qualified teacher who can help you progress past these problems, and you have arrived here. Perhaps a friend suggested that you visit this website, or perhaps you found us by chance. Either way, I’d like to make you welcome with the assurance that your questions will be answered. If I don’t know the answer myself, I will gladly refer you. But notice the important implication: In this school of horsemanship, the student must ask. You will not receive an answer if you are not willing to risk asking.
Where do we begin? Horsemanship is my main focus; it's a much broader and deeper thing than just going for rides, going to shows, or going to whatever clinician-du-jour. I work with you and your horse as a team, and we begin not by trying to "fix" your difficulties but instead by delving into them so as to uncover the roots of the problem. As part of this, you will be treated with respect, but so equally will be your horse. I hope and expect that you, as my student, will have an interest in working toward mastery. My overall goal is to help you achieve true success with your horse: a joyful and deeply satisfying experience through lifetime practice of the world’s most ancient art and science -- horsemanship.
This Website exists to help you get started. It contains much information of interest to anyone involved with horses, whether as owner, rider, trainer, or breeder. No matter what style you ride or what breed of horse you fancy, you'll find good help here.
Online use of this Website is free to everyone. We feature an extensive Knowledge Base section which contains numerous articles at various levels of technical difficulty. It also contains articles which I require students to read and study prior to participation in horsemanship clinics.
We also offer a popular Q/A Horsemanship Forum, which functions as my international classroom. Participation is free to anyone, although I ask you to review the rules for participation by clicking on the “Forum” button below. The ESI Forum has been continuously online since 1997, and it is the oldest, largest, and most reliable horse-information site on the Internet.
Your financial support of the Institute is welcomed. There is a button below where you can make a donation. Many people who have supported us through the years have commented that the answers they have received through the Forum are worth more than anything they had been paying for private riding instruction. Your financial support helps to keep this website online. It also assists us in producing new books and other educational materials concerning horsemanship.
You can shop our Bookstore to find even more information to advance your horsemanship knowledge and skills. In an effort to reach the maximum number of dedicated students worldwide, we provide more information for less money than any other horse-oriented website.
All of the text and images that make up the content of this Website are copyrighted and we ask that you do not dub information out in order to post it anywhere else on the Internet. If you have a horse-oriented website, business, or club, and you want to put our LINK in your website so that your friends and neighbors become aware of the information that is posted here, that is great.
Here's the Equine Studies Institute link:
Just go up to the top line in your browser, dub it in, and send it along to your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and whatnot. We thank you for doing that -- we don't advertise but we do thrive by word of mouth.