Leilani Wirth-Martin
Leilani Wirth-Martin is nothing short of amazing. At a very young age she has the "touch". She has studied with Aimee Brimhall and Kalley Krickeberg. She is a young master of starting young horses (mustangs) and her favorite Liberty on the ground and riding ( bridleless and bareback). She is a Luna Tierra Ranch sponsored rider and junior trainer. She is available for lessons on a very limited basis.
About Liberty
For me, the most important thing for a horse is trust, so with liberty they are not bound by anything. There are no contraptions to hold them, so they have complete free will. The way that I do it they have complete free will. If they choose to be with me, it’s just a great honor and we work up from there to start doing really fun and more advanced moves. It just kind of escalates and grows from there.
Polaris and Leilani
From Leilani:
I am 17 years old. I started riding when I was nine. I like to do liberty work, riding at liberty, so bareback and bridle-less. I’m also interested in dressage. I haven’t studied it a lot but that’s where I’m headed next. I’ve had a little bit of experience jumping. I think mainly right now my focus has been training horses, training young horses, so starting horses and bringing them up from there.
About getting the trust of horses
To have a really strong center is important so that they feel like you are a trustworthy leader, so they don’t feel like they also have to watch their own back - they know that you are going to watch their back. And to be fair with them, so not to push them too hard, but also not to not give them enough instruction. So to be a fair leader, I guess, and being kind, and treat them like you would any other friend.
Noche
She had not been ridden, so I started her, from the ground up. I’ve done a lot with her ground work, and also liberty. She’s really gained there and her entire body has changed, from a young filly to a mature horse. Noche's confirmation has be. And that Freisian part of her, her neck was really overdeveloped underneath so she would lift her head up really high and kind of just zone out and not really pay attention to the person (which would be me) next to her. What I have been doing with her is, again, gaining trust and doing this neck-release thing whenever she’s standing next to me so that she drops her neck and then she ends up using her back when she moves because her neck is down but also collected by her withers, not just by her poll, and so she ends up lifting her back. I don’t know - it just works. But I’ve been doing a lot of liberty with her. As for riding, I”m kinda going in the direction of dressage with her and lots of ground work. We just had our first outing, which is cool - a dressage lesson. I’ve been taking her out on the trails a little bit, not much yet, but we’ll start doing that more often.
