A Better Way to Deal with Bad Behavior

Recently, on the Yahoo Classical Dressage group talk has turned to how to deal with ‘bad’ behavior such as biting and kicking. Absolutely all agree that this is not something that we ‘wee humans’ can really tolerate since our bodies are pretty...

When the grass is greener over there

Recently this issue came up on the Clickryder group. What to do when you are walking your horse and he just dives for the grass without any thought of you. No amount of clicker training for leading nicely seems to keep the horse from running to the grass when he sees...

Danke’s story: solving a perplexing problem

Danke, a tall and beautiful sensitive chestnut mare, came to me for training with quite a bit of emotional baggage as a result of some unsettling prior experiences in her life. One positive was, though, she arrived quite clicker-savvy because her owner used clicker...

Teaching a horse to stand for mounting

OK I’ll be honest!! I can’t stand watching the little dance of line up horse to mounting block, he moves as soon as rider starts to get on block, so rider stops getting on and repositions the horse, and the whole thing starts over again ad infinitum. Good...

Getting a horse feeling OK inside about having his feet handled

Charlie is a 7 year old TWH. His owners, Jim and Donna Dehaas, who were relatively new to horses, just happened to find me after an online search for trainers in the area. One of the problems the Dehaas’ had with Charlie was handling his feet. In fact,...

Hard to Catch

I have been working for the last couple/few months with a 6 yr old gaited mare named Pamela. The mare is owned by a lovely, but mostly inexperienced, older couple who are so tickled with the change in their horse. When we started this mare was so not OK. The slightest...