I’ve been doing a lot of theory blogs recently so I thought it might be fun to mix it up and do something a little bit more accessible that you can incorporate with your horse right away. When I was trying to come up with a topic I kept going Read more
Every horse in every minute gives off a certain energy. In fact every creature does, we are just very bad at reading it. Most people can feel the energy shift when a horse tenses and bolts off or sighs and softens through their body after something stressful. But can you Read more
I seem to be on a bit of a trend here with blogs on training philosophy. I think it’s because I’ve become a lot more clear on a few topics recently and really wanted to share them. This week I wanted to discuss the difference between giving your horse an Read more
Horsemanship and riding often revolve around us being in control of the horse. Although that has become the status quo, there are quite a few problems with it. If we are always focused on being in control then it makes it much harder for us to listen to our horses. Read more
Last week I wrote about forcing horses to comply to our demands. If you didn’t see that article, check it out here. What was interesting to me is the conversations that article brought up. It seemed that everyone took something different from the article, but there was a common theme Read more
In the last several weeks this has been coming up for me more and more and it’s starting to really bother me so I figured it would be a good topic for a blog post. If you think about how we tend to talk about horses we use dominance based Read more
This week I really been thinking about safety and where people feel safe. I think most if not all of rider’s problems come from feeling insecure or not safe. As soon as they start to feel this discomfort they get tense and tension is really the biggest issue you run Read more
My lessons last weekend really got me thinking, and it took me a bit to organize my thoughts into words. My weekend students are wonderful, caring riders, but they were struggling with my basic approach to riding and training today. I felt as if I had failed them because they Read more
Every horse has a certain amount of work they are comfortable with and a certain level of work they are comfortable doing. As riders it is our job to slowly expand that comfort zone while keeping the horse happy to work with us. This can be quite the challenge. Just Read more
Okay so fair warning, this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. If you have spent time with me you probably already know my thoughts on this subject. If not, then lets start at the beginning. A lot of jumpers are ridden with large bits – often gags Read more