Recently, Dr. Deb Bennett posted this excellent essay on the forum at her Equine Studies Institute site. Here are just a few quotes to entice you to read the whole thing.
On the horse’s fear:
“Why this is, is that horses, more than most other creatures, embody their feelings and thoughts: they ‘body them forth’. No horse that spooks and runs away does it because of effort by his muscles, even though effort by his muscles is what moves his legs. A horse runs away because he is frightened: the adrenalin is pumping: the thoughts are not focused on any task [more...]
This morning I received an email from Jane Savoie about her Freedom from Fear DVD set which has just been released. I congratulate Jane on this achievement! I know Jane has made it her life’s work to help people have happier more enjoyable relationships with their horses and I want to support her work. To find out more about her program click here.
In her email she also included a link to a clip from the video. In the clip she demonstrates a little bit about how she uses clicker training to help train horses who [more...]
Jane Savoie (photo by Susan Sexton)
I had the honor of being interviewed by Jane Savoie about my experiences with clicker training. Jane maintains a wonderful website called Dressage Mentor which is geared toward helping dressage riders address the problems they are having with their horses and riding. A very hot issue for her members is the matter of fear… fear of losing control, fear of falling off, fear of getting seriously hurt by their horses…the list goes on.
In the interview we talked a lot about fear and ways of using clicker training to improve safety. What [more...]
