Michelle O’Neill
Training & Horsemanship
Michelle has been involved with horses her whole life. Michelle commenced her riding career doing stock work on the family farm before joining Pony Club at Adaminaby and then Cooma.
Whilst at Pony Club, Michelle participated in everything from sporting to jumping, tent pegging to showing. From these experiences, she developed a strong interest in dressage.
After several years of dressage competition, Michelle changed tack and started rodeoing, specialising in barrel racing and steer undecorating. It was the love of the calm temperament of the Quarter Horse, and her interest in breeding true all round competitors, that lead her to start breeding her own horses to compete on. Michelle has been known to compete beyond the rodeo arena in such things as camp drafting, western pleasure, reining and showing at halter.
An experienced educator; Michelle teaches clinics across the country and at her home under her business Cherry Tree Equine. She has a strong reputation for instilling confidence in all her students. She does this using both ground and ridden work; the same principles that have enabled her to train many horses for herself and others.
In 2023 Michelle launched Cherry Tree Virtual; a complete training program for horse people that shows real horses and real horse problems. There is no smoke or mirrors; just honest horsemanship with real solutions that anyone can achieve.
Michelle writes a training article for each edition of the Australian Performance Horse Magazine. She previously had her own Question and Answer column in HorseWyse Magazine.
She is the co-producer of DVD “Please…Can I Have A Pony”, which was co-produced with Horsewyse Magazine.
Visit Michelle O’Neill at the following sessions
Details
Friday November 15th
Redbuck Arena (Demo Arena 3)
Finding the Perfect Equine Partner
It doesn’t matter you are looking to buy your first horse or your fiftieth, its easy to get caught up in emotions and forget to be realistic, honest and practical so that you end up with the horse you need, not the horse you want.
Looking for the perfect equine partner should not be a stressful experience, it should in fact be fun!
If you follow some basic principles, and make sure that you stick to them, you can take much of the stress out of buying a horse. It is worth taking the time to be well prepared to save the heartache and cost of trying to fix a problem later that could have been avoided.
Details
Saturday November 16th
Redbuck Arena (Demo Arena 3)
Enjoying the Trail – shouldn’t be daunting
So every horse can trail ride….or can they? Getting off the trail alive and enjoying the ride.
Trail riding is where we take our horses training and test it, often unintentionally, when things we can’t control happen without warning.
To avoid unexpected situations becoming out of control disasters, prior preparation is important!
With so many horse and rider combinations living very “urbanized” lives, they have little chance to become used too many of the things on the trail that can happen. But this need not be the case.
Using simple props and training tools, people can practice at home handling the potential dangers they may face. Good horsemanship and good training are the basics of this preparation.
