The best way to have a good lesson:

Effective immediately group lessons are being suspended. I will be offering private lessons. I will offer semi private for my students...

Trailering becomes hard when horses have been taught to react instead of think, are painful or don’t have a good relationship with humans.

Hard to believe we are 1/4 of the way through 2025. I am not taking any short term internships at this time (less than 3 months). I am...

Releasing a rein aid is not the same as giving to your horse. I had this epiphany several months ago and I have been trying to actively adjust my riding accordingly. Often times we think that because we quit pulling, fiddling or holding on to the rein that we are giving to the horse. Really what we are doing is just ceasing pulling, fiddling and holding. That is not equivalent to giving to the horse.

When your horse is having a hard day, you must remain persistently patient. I find humans, in general, are not the most patient creatures. We are into instant gratification. We can get almost anything we want at our fingertips.

https://youtu.be/M1_c3xHxEUo?si=95Tv1HOFlFFdno9_

Training is not linear. When you are working with horses, you will have good days, bad days, and some days that are in between. Having a good day yesterday doesn’t guarantee a good day today. Same is true of bad days. We have to meet the horse where they are at. The key is to keep showing up. You can’t make progress working your horse once a week.

Horses at attention to detail. It keeps them alive. When something in their environment changes, they notice. They notice how we move, our position, our mood, etc.

March25

Password: GWG25

Hauling young horses for the first time makes me have ulcers. Horses weren’t meant to be in small, confined areas that move them away...

The power of waiting. Waiting can build confidence in a rider, strength in a horse, competence as a team. Waiting can also become a crutch. We can indefinitely wait trying to get things perfect (which doesn’t exist). We can cripple ourselves and our horses by waiting too long. We can easily stay in the safety of our comfort zone telling ourselves that always waiting is good. We can stifle progress. It’s a tight rope.

Refuse to fight with your horse. It takes two to fight. The horse won’t quit first, unless you make them think they are going to die. I don’t want my horse ever feeling like it is going to die with me.

3/26 7pm cst

Things change quickly around here! There will be a WHC show at the farm on March 29th and April 26th. March lessons are booked. I am...

I was struggling with one of my personal horses. Nothing big but something that I knew needed to be corrected. I sought help which did not bring me any clarity to the solution for problem. I tried everything I could think of to address what I saw as the problem. I got frustrated, decided there was a physical cause and that I would just have to live with it.

We homeschooled our boys. One time I had them write a paper on making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I gave instructions to write the paper as if they were talking to someone that had never made a sandwich before. We ended up with some interesting outcomes. None of the outcomes resulted in a sandwich because small details were missed like taking the bread out of the bag, knife out of the drawer, and lids off jars.

Things have been a bit hectic. Losing a computer upended the flow for a few days. I hope to be caught up by the end of the weekend. Blog...

Yes very late. There have been some unexpected challenges lately