My 5 C’s that prevent connection between horse and rider. These 5 C’s create defensiveness in the horse and rider.

You can’t fix a bad canter by riding more bad canter. You fix problems in the canter by identifying the issues in the walk and trot. Fix the problems in those gaits to fix the canter. Canter problems are walk and trot issues that have been ignored.

Cold weather… ugh. Not my favorite. When you are dealing with rehab horses, these cold weather swings are HARD. Horses with pathology, just like humans, struggle in the cooler weather. Their compromised joints are stiff. The horses tend to be a little more crankly because they are tight from standing around being cold. They will be more prone to colic.

If you want relaxation in your horse, you must relax first.

It’s cold. It’s miserable. Two days ago we were over 70 degrees. I still worked horses.

The mounting block is a great tool. That being said, too many rider’s teach their horses bad habits at the mounting block. A few mounting block tips:

The halt is generally a mirror image of how the horse was carrying itself in the forward movement. When learning how to maintain straightness in your horse it can be hard to feel the crookedness. As you develop feel, it will become easier to identify when your horse loses their balance and affects their straightness.

Everything about domestication is unnatural for a horse. We limit movement, confine them without a way to escape, we limit forage types, and we put them in small caves (trailers) to transport them away from herd members just to name a few offenses. Domestication requires a lot of compromise and inconvenience on the part of the horse.

Yes, a day late. Sometimes life just makes priorities change.

Yes late…. Oh the wind. Depending on the day in Texas, it is either closing us north or blowing us south. We are in that time of year where it is just warm and blustery or cold and blustery. At our horse, the horses still have to be worked. Many of us have adversion to riding in the wind. We feel the horses are more reactive, so we get nervous and feed that anxiety to the horses.

Everything is dangerous to a horse until proven otherwise. It is your job to prove otherwise. It is not the horse’s job to be brave for you.

A huge pet peeve of mine is walking into a lesson and seeing a rider that’s been on their horse less than ten minutes and they are trotting the horse around. The rider skipped all the walk warm up and when they did walk, they did not walk straight or with a purpose.

Pay attention to the little details to avoid bigger problems. Many of the large problems we have with our horses can be avoided by not missing their small communications.

Corrections are sometimes necessary when training horses. I try to avoid them as much as possible by trying to keep training easy for the horse to understand with logical progression. That’s easy to do when I raise and start them. I handle a lot of rehabs and restarts. Unfortunately, that means the horses usually come with habits that may not be safe for the human part of their herd.

Slow down. If I find myself repeating one thing frequently it is this: We are always in a hurry. In a hurry to catch our horses. In a hurry to groom. In a hurry to tack up. In a hurry to get our ride in. We rush through the exercises just to check a box.

Relationships. Horses establish relationships with their herd mates. They need herds to feel safe in a world of predators. The most well adjusted horses live with other horses and have the safety of the herd. When you are with your horse, you are part of their herd. The boundaries of the relationship you establish are important.

In order for your horse to be balanced in a turn, they must be connected to your outside aids. Most horses want to keep their barrel rotated to one side. In one turn your horse will be leaning into the turn and in the opposite turn, they’re leaning away from the turn. When you turn the direction that their barrel is locked, and add your outside aids you will just create more lean without getting any bend. When you turn the direction in which the horse is leaning to the outs

Working with horses is hard. This skill set requires us to continually evolve and work on self improvement. I often hear riders talk about what they want from their horses and how they want their horses to behave. It got me thinking. What if our horses could tell us what they want from us and how they want us to behave. Here are some thoughts that I think horses would have:

New tasks may not be pleasant for horses. The tasks may be physically or mentally more demanding and the horse may have the responses of bracing, evading or even fighting.

We want our horses to find some relaxation in their work sessions. Training is stressful for them. When they get confused, we need to pause. Too often I see riders do the opposite. The begin demanding. A kick to the side, jerk of the reins. Horses can only have one response to that…brace and become defensive. You would not relax or want to participate if someone kicked you in the side or punched you in the face. Your horse won’t either. Try a pause. Break the information dow