Five years ago, I brought Tonka into my life. Since then, he’s lived at four stables. The one he’s currently at is perfect, and yet we’re looking for a new home. I’m not a difficult boarder and my horse is easy to take care of. So why all of the […]
horse body language
Sit in a field with horses. Listen. You hear them tearing up grass with their teeth and chewing. A swish of a tail. A hoof stomping the ground to shake off a fly. There’s rarely verbal communication going on, and when it happens, it’s brief. Perhaps a horse is out […]
Train Quietly
At one time, Dolly was the pony of every horse-crazy child’s dreams. Snow white with big dark eyes. Petite. Pretty. Likely purebred Welsh. You could imagine her a unicorn. She lived in a small field behind her people’s house. The children rode her, but didn’t do pony club or 4-H, […]
Touching the Uncatchable Pony
I have a friend who lives a good distance away. We both have what we consider to be “perfect” trail horses. For months now, we’ve been trying to meet at a halfway point to ride together. We were finally able to find a date, on a day when the weather […]
When To Get Off
Tonka says that he shouldn’t have to wear his fly mask anymore. He’s right. But I wish that he didn’t also think that now that the grass is grazed down, that the ground is best for rolling in and getting dirty. He’s also right that there aren’t a […]
A Change Of Seasons
Summer is a Quarter Horse who was rescued from the kill pen by Rita. She is one lucky mare. Rita is lucky, too, because Summer is a super little horse. Summer does, of course, have issues, but Rita accepts and accommodates them. In return, Summer adores her person. I was […]
Being Calm is Self-reinforcing
Today, Karen Pryor and I went on our annual autumnal outing to apple orchards. We buy this and that, what catches our fancy. This year both of us couldn’t resist the five varieties of plums grown at Westward Orchards, nor the delicata squash, still with dirt on them, from Carlson […]
Karen Pryor And Tonka
In my last post I wrote about how horses can show herd-bound behavior in some situations and not others. I have a story for you to further illustrate this. Tonka lives in a barn with seven horses. There are only six grass paddocks. During the day, all of the […]
Herd Bound, Continued
I can ride Tonka past the paddocks and into the woods, and he doesn’t give the barn a backward glance. He loads willingly into the trailer and looks forward to adventures off of the farm. We can arrive at a trail head where there are other horses, and he’ll sometimes […]