Terry Golson

Recap: Tonka has had recurrent sacroiliac joint issues which cause back pain, which I know because he tells me in a myriad of ways. When the SI joint flares up, Tonka moves away from the mounting block. He doesn’t willing do upward transitions. It gets so bad that he refuses […]

Tonka’s Sacroiliac Joint Progress

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It can be aggravating when you’re just setting down into the saddle and your horse moves off before you’ve even slid your feet into the stirrups. If that’s the case, your reaction might be to pull back on the reins and say something in a harsh voice. That can set […]

Mounting Block Manners Quick Fix

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For the last few weeks there’s been a lot of activity near the horses’ paddocks. A crew of two men have been putting up a new fence. First there were the piles of posts and rails in places where there had never been posts and rails. Then the guys got […]

Losing Fear By Making Friends

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As promised in my last post, here is a link to a new piece of writing by Karen Pryor. It’s about her time on board a tuna fishing vessel. She was there to study dolphin behavior so that better ways to fish could be implemented so that dolphins wouldn’t end […]

My Takeaways from Karen’s Writing

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I take the craft of writing seriously. Whether it’s books, articles, or this blog, my goal is to communicate in a voice that brings clarity to the story that I’m trying to tell. If I do it right, my reader will have a useful thought they might not have had otherwise, […]

Writing Friend

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When you ride dressage, you care about the details. Where each hoof falls, the height of the poll, the way the shoulder follows the arc of a circle. It’s all too easy to micromanage every stride, to push and constrain so that the horse’s body goes exactly where you want […]

The Square Halt

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When I arrived at the barn this afternoon, the ground was frozen hard. Tonka was way out back in the furthest paddock, and he was on the far side of that. He came when I called. (Here’s how to train a horse to come.)   Honestly, he doesn’t always have […]

Clean/Dirty

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Did you wake up on New Year’s Day at the normal time to take care of your animals, and it wasn’t a problem, because you went to sleep at the normal time the night before? Like before 10 pm? And you were happy to get up and be greeted by […]

A New Year’s Day

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With 2018 coming to a close it’s time for year end lists. My website service provides me with stats so that I know which posts reached the most people. Can you guess what the top five posts at Cooperative Horse were? The most read post 2018 was (drum roll please): […]

Top Five Posts (and a couple you missed)

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