How to Stop Taking Your Horse Personally

Bhim is a one-of-a-kind, I surely hope. People might say he’s still with me ten years after he came for halter training because I couldn’t get it done. Does he look cute? Tell that to the humans he’s taken out. And to be clear, he’s here because Edgar Rice Burro asked if he could have … Read more

There Will Be No Faith Healings Today

  We’ve all seen it. Someone holding a lead rope and hyper-stimulating a young horse with a stick until he shuts down, et voila, a tame horse. Or someone in spurs climbs on a young horse in a round pen, runs him through the gaits, pulls back to get a stop, and hallelujah, a trained … Read more

Being the Railbird: Anniversary Edition

A reader gave me a writing assignment. She asked me to write something from the perspective of a railbird. This won’t be fiction. I was at the National Western Stock Show. It would take me two more years to get there with a horse but showing was the dream since I was a kid. Over … Read more

Patience in Real Time

A clinic organizer was telling me about a trainer she brought in, someone whose approach was significantly more aggressive than mine. I asked how it worked to have such different approaches for the same riders and she said, “Oh no, he has the same training theory as you do. He told me that for a … Read more

Brain Science and the Art of Play

It’s cold on the flat windy treeless prairie of Colorado. The next few months will be even colder but right now, we have no tolerance so forty degrees brings out the Elmer Fudd hat. By spring, we’ll be talking trash about a North Pole expedition because the horses are wooly enough and we’ve been wearing … Read more

Your Horse’s Memory is Your Best Training Aid.

Our memories of horses haunt us in all the best and worst ways. We remember childhood horses and horses we met in books or at the movies.  We love our friend’s horses as we love our own, marking when they came and the day they died, so we can say their name to our friends … Read more

Why Horses Don’t Multi-task

Imagine what it means to have senses as keen as a prey animal. Feel the roar of nature even on a still morning. The scent in the air during the spring mating and birthing season for all mammals. The blustering storms stirring up musty leaves and revealing death and new growth. The jangle and hum … Read more

Altering Time to Benefit Your Horse

You have a plan for your horse and an expectation of how it will go, but it’s taking way too long. It’s a simple task. Maybe you’ve seen someone else do the same thing easily, so you lose confidence. You’re probably doing something wrong. If you were doing it right, your horse would do the … Read more