horse body language

The weather yesterday did not feel like fall. It was hot and muggy, but Tonka and I had a special lesson to take, so off we went to a farm twenty miles away. Eva Rainsborough, a German Grand Prix rider and trainer, was here for a clinic. She coaches my […]

Sticky Peppermint Mouth

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There’s an expression in riding that you “throw your heart over the fence and your horse will follow.” The idea is that if you have courage and are committed to a path, that your horse will bravely carry you there. If only it were that simple. You can throw your […]

Heart First

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As I wrote about recently, Tonka was going great, and then he wasn’t. All four legs were working fine, but instead of going willingly, he felt tight and recalcitrant. In this video clip you see him putting his nose in the air, sinking his back, and refusing to trot. I […]

One Step Back, Three Ahead

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Yesterday Tonka was ticked off at me. He made it very clear. I had to look back through my archives to find a photo to illustrate his demeanor. This does it. Pinned ears, narrow nostrils, tight lips, tense neck, eyes showing some white. This is a pissed off horse.   […]

Tonka is Ticked Off

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Tonka and I have been having a good summer. He’s been happy and sound. We’ve been competing – successfully! – in the dressage arena. Dressage is an incremental sport. You achieve one movement and you work towards the next, each builds on what came before and each is a slight […]

Knowing When To Ease Up

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We’ve all grown up the visual story of cowboys on horses, herding cattle across the plains. Of horses fearlessly chasing down the rogue steer. But horses aren’t born believing that they’re the masters of cows. They have to learn this. Most horses that I know haven’t had the opportunity to […]

My Horse And Cows

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It’s been a buggy and humid summer, the sort of weather that keeps you out of the woods where the deer flies and mosquitos stage their attacks. It’s better to ride in open spaces, but those are hard to find. Around here, most fields are in hay production, and farmers […]

Challenges Welcome

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My work with clients and their horses is ostensibly about teaching the humans how to ride, or the equines new behaviors. But underneath that, before that training can start, I need both horse and rider to be in a calm and confident place. Whether it’s the off-track thoroughbred learning how […]

Build on Small Moments of Calm

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The sport that I choose to compete in is not something that Tonka would have thought up on his own. Exerting oneself while doing precise patterns in a ring while the sun beats down on you, is not an activity that a horse would innately see as a sensible thing […]

Horse Show Happy

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