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 fragile when compared to horses. They can do Real Damage to us! There is no agreement, however, as to what is the right way to deal with such behavior.

Several people weighed in with their techniques for biting or kicking back those horses who offered such behavior. I shake my head reading these suggestions. [more...]

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, he’d already kicked Jim. And after slamming the farrier hard he had to be sedated for shoeing.

It didn’t need to be like that. The Dehaas’ wanted Charlie barefoot so the first order of business was getting the shoes off

Getting the shoes off would be Lauren (Gruber’s) job. But [more...]