Montie EagleEagle-Glenn Farm340 N. Middlesex Rd, Carlisle, PA 17013 |
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Montie Eagle has studied classical dressage since 1984, working for several years with Pat Smeltzer and her mentor Karl Mikolka. Karl is a former head rider from the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. As a protégée of Karl's, Pat was careful to teach as he had taught her. This was the technique Karl always called the Weyrother Method, originating with Max Ritter von Weyrother, a former head rider of the SRS from the early nineteenth century. |
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Other important influences on Montie's riding were Karen Ramsing-Bixler, Erik Herbermann and Olympian Lendon Gray. |
| Montie's growing interest in producing calm and obedient dressage horses led her to work with Jay Catherman, who gave her a firm foundation in ground work and round penning. "The horse you lead is the horse you ride", Jay always told her. And it's true. If your horse won't listen to you when you're next to him, why do you think things will change when you're sitting on his back? |
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Montie and John Lyons, at his November 2008 clinic in Chesterfield VA |
Many of the techniques Jay uses came from his study of John Lyons' work. Montie had audited John's symposiums for ten years before being invited by John's wife Jody Lyons to ride with John in a professionals' clinic he taught in June 2006. She was just one of two riders other than John Lyons certified trainers to be invited. "Just as my work with Pat and Karl had tremendously influenced my thinking, my work with John completely changed my approach. This clinic allowed me to work one on one with John and share ideas with trainers from all around the East Coast, South and Midwest." "John's way of stressing the simplest and easiest way to get results made great sense. His horses understood what he wanted and this applied to whatever point in their training they were. They gave him incredible softness and obedience. I saw that the simple approach is best. At the same time John says as riders we need to be specific in our requests to the horse because asking in a general way only gets a general response," says Montie. |
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Late in 2006 Montie audited a clinic given by Jack Brainard, noted reining horse trainer and producer of ten world champions. Jack's training is completely dressage-based, compatible with the same techniques she had learned from Karl Mikolka. Since then she has ridden in several of Jack's clinics and flew to Texas to ride and study with Jack for four days at his ranch in November 2012. "Working with the best of both classical dressage and western riding made me want to seek out the underlying principles of all the valid lines of thought I had experienced in decades of learning. What were the ideas and truths all these great horsemen trained by and taught? And more importantly, how could these ideas help my students understand their own horses better and continue to become better horse people?" |
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Montie was a guest clinician at the PA Horse World Expo in 2005 and 2006. Topics that she taught included "Those Darn Diagonals," "Preparing for Your First Show," "Concerns for the Older Rider," and "How You Think and What You Say is How You Ride." This year she returns to speak on "Do You Have the Right Horse?" and reprises "Concerns for the Older Rider".
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Mission Statement
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To train horses through training their riders; to help riders learn how their position influences their horses; to show riders how to maximize their understanding of how to train by coordinating their cues to the horses’ footfalls in any given gait. By doing so, riders greatly increase their understanding of their horses’ response and bring themselves and their horses into alignment with their Creator-given capabilities.
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| Montie is available for clinics and inspirational lectures including: "How You Think and What You Say is How You Ride", "Concerns for the Older Rider", and "Preparing for Your First Show". | |
| Contact Montie | |
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