horse body language

Note: this blog is the third in a continuing series about training Bailey, and her person, Lisa. You might want to start here. It was a month before I could return to work with Lisa and Bailey. It was a hot and humid August, not the best riding weather, but the pair […]

More on Retraining a Barn Sour Horse

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Note: this blog is the second in a continuing series about training Bailey, and her person, Lisa. You might want to start here. Lisa’s barn is a 2+ hour drive from mine, so I can’t get there on a weekly basis. My first visit was at the beginning of July. […]

Retraining a Barn Sour Horse

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Getting a horse to go where you want is not about respect. It’s not about dominance. It’s not about the horse fearing the rider more than fearing what’s ahead of them. It’s about clarity and trust. You build this relationship through training. Lisa asked me to help her with her […]

Training Polite Hand Grazing

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Tonka is not a horse that likes to get his feet wet.  Some horses like to roll in mud. He does not. As far as Tonka is concerned, dust is fine but muck is yucky. It’s not that he’s scared of water, he just doesn’t like it. When on the trail, […]

Water Play

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Tonka is a laid-back guy and he travels well. Some horses kick, fidget and work up a sweat when on the road. Not Tonka. He arrives at the destination looking as if he’s only just stepped onto the trailer. While I get things organized, Tonka, bright-eyed, looks around.   Sometimes […]

The Nose Knows

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The work that I do with animals uses, what I call, the clicker perspective. It’s not, however, always clicker training per se. Much of the time I don’t use the – a sharp sound that marks the moment the animal has done the right thing, which is then followed by a reward. That’s […]

Starting From a Safe Place

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In the 1980s I owned a chestnut thoroughbred mare named Gnomer. Those of you who know horses know that having a (1) chestnut (2) thoroughbred (3) mare is like “winning” the trifecta, if winning means having a temperamental diva in your life. I used to joke that Gnomer was a […]

Horses Use Tools

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The type of riding that I compete in, dressage, is rather formal. What one wears is dictated by show rules and tradition. Garb is muted and includes dark jackets, white shirts and breeches, and tall and polished black boots. None of that I mind so much, in fact I like how it looks, […]

Braids

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On Sunday we trailered an hour and a half to the Beland Dressage Show. Tonk and I have moved up to USDF recognized shows where the competition is stiffer and the judges are more exacting than the schooling shows that we attended last year. About 80% of the horses at these […]

Tonk’s Guy Crush

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