horse training

My clients come to me with a mix of experience and training knowledge. Many of them are doing, or want to start, clicker training. Some have done a lot of research and have read books and watched videos. Some have found this training methodology on FaceBook. Almost all have heard […]

Horse Training Starting Point

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Like you, a horse will get uncomfortable, and even walk funny, if they need to pee and have to hold it in. Unlike you, horses are not taught where to go. Eventually, they’ll stop and let it pour wherever they are. But, people do get mad at them if they […]

Teaching A Horse To Pee On Cue

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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

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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

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Last weekend I audited a dressage clinic. Most of the participants were on mounts that I call the Lamborghinis of the horse world – huge warmbloods with power and flash. I happened to sit next to a woman who was up here from Texas, visiting a friend who rides dressage. […]

Frame-By-Frame

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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

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Most horses have three gaits – walk, trot and canter. But a few breeds have other ways of moving their four legs. Some horses pace, which is when legs move in lateral pairs. The Icelandic horse has a unique fourth gear – the tolt. It’s four-beat, like a walk, but […]

Riding The Tolt

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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

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