At Thompson House Equestrian Centre Chris Ainscough takes horses and ponies for breaking and schooling for carriage driving. Although he trains horses for pleasure drivers and other driving disciplines, as with his teaching his specialist subject is competition driving. He aims to train all his client’s horses regardless of their chosen discipline to be confident, relaxed, balanced and straight, with this grounding he believes that the horses he trains have a solid foundation to go on and enjoy any discipline.
Christ Ainscough, Dressage, Advanced Single Pony, Catton Park 2013
The systematic training programme that Chris employs takes time and patience in order to achieve maximum benefit, so training is broken down and horses will only move onto the next stage of training when they are ready to do so. This applies to both breaking a horse to drive and when developing an existing driving horse’s education, confidence and strength on behalf of the owner.
We use harness and carriages that we believe allow the horse to move in maximum comfort and in a biomechanically correct manner. Our equipment is able to accommodate 11-15.2 hands, outside of these heights owners are asked to provide their own equipment.
Clearly Chris is unable to guarantee complete success for all horses but Chris’s policy is to be honest and transparent with owners throughout the training process therefore allowing owners to make sensible informed choices about their horses’ education and further progress.
Please note, Chris does not take horses for training for road work, his clients horses will be driven in both the indoor and outdoor arenas, around the farm tracks and weather permitting on the grass fields. Chris is happy to assess and discuss when it comes to ‘problem horses’ all he asks for is the utmost honesty from owners so he can make informed decisions and offer the best advice he can.