An Interview with Dora Hebrock

For several years now, I’ve wanted to give my Austrian-born wife Dora the opportunity to answer some questions about her work as a licensed Straightness Training Instructor and certified natural hoof care professional, and her thoughts about the relationship between the two. Not, mind you, because she’s my wife, but because I daily witness the amazing work she does with horses, and recognize she has a great deal to offer the horse world.

Straightness Training, for those of you who may not be familiar with it, is a method of training that embraces the idea that the role of horse training is to acknowledge and address both natural and human-created asymmetries in the horse’s body and consequent movement to slowly and methodically bring the horse’s body into balance. It also recognizes that the goal of classical dressage wasn’t to win pretty ribbons at the local horse show, but to have a horse so athletically and mentally fit that it could successfully perform the high-level dressage movements as preparation for mounted warfare. Extensive study of the works of the old riding masters of dressage such as Pluvinel, Guérinière, and Baucher led Dutch-born founder Marijke de Jong to develop a system of unmounted and mounted exercises designed to strengthen and supple the horse’s body and create a strong, willing partner for whatever discipline you may be interested in. And it works!

Dora also studied natural hoof care with Liberated Horsemanship (which is how we met), and continued on to become a Certified Natural Hoof Care Professional and Field Instructor. And she’s noticed a strong connection between the results of her work in Straightness Training and her hoof care, which is one of the topics we’ll explore with her in our upcoming interview. So please join us for this Facebook Live Event, and bring your questions! And meanwhile, if you’d like to read more about Dora prior to the interview, you can learn more on her website.

Hope to see you soon…