Watch the feet

I’m often asking people to ask themselves, where is your horse, mentally? Is he here with you or is he mentally back at the barn or with his buddies in the pasture? There are a number of things we can look at which give us clues as to what the horse is thinking about. Let’s say you are longing. The obvious things are eyes and ears of course. We can also look at the head and neck. A kink in the...

Transformations

A few weeks ago I wrote about a mare I’ve been working with. I’d only had a handful of sessions with her at that time. We’ve since had a few more sessions together. Each time the mare has improved dramatically. I just love seeing these kinds of transformations. When we first started the mare, Cheyenne, was very distant. Mentally, her thoughts were so back with her buddies. As you may recall,...

On being particular, every day

The other day I was writing about reinforcement and that by doing nothing to get in the way of a behavior is the same as rewarding it.  Then, while riding yesterday and today I realized that I was letting my mare, Danke, get out of balance and I was doing absolutely nothing about it!  So, guess what? Since I allowed this to continue, of course, little by little the problem was getting bigger and bigger. ...