Do not spend 5 strides preparing for a transition. If your horse is balanced and straight, they should be able to perform the transition within a stride or two at the most. If this doesn’t happen, then you need to do more work on straightness and balance not more poor transitions. Stop, regroup, try again. Do not beg or chase a transition.

Favorite Things Friday

Let’s talk about pain management. Ultimately it is up to the horse to decide what is working for them.

You can’t train pain. A painful horse will brace, compensate, recruit incorrect systems to perform a job until they can’t and hit a wall. Painful horses often have mysterious, rotating lamenesses that have unclear diagnoses.

Favorite Things Friday

We need to create a moment of silence after our aids make a request of our horse. We do not need to nag until we get the answer we want. We do not need to prevent them from making a mistake. It is our job to present our request with accurate aids. It is the horse's job to interpret that request and formulate a response. They might get it wrong. Let them. Do not get frustrated, angry or irritated. Review and present your aids again. Do not make your aids more firm. J

Trainer’s Tip Tuesday

Favorite Things Friday

We get more from our horses by giving then we do by taking. Taking generally creates bracing. Bracing will never lead to relaxation or self carriage.

When you think you need to do more, do less. When you think you need to add more leg or take more rein, try pausing your aids instead. Go to neutral for a second... or ten. After your pause, reapply the aids and see if you get a different response. Sometimes instead of increasing the aid, we need to give the horse a moment to think. When we increase our aids we often build tension. We brace in our attempt to add more. This creates bracing in our horses. Practice your pause

Things that make you go hmmmmm

I had a different post planned. Maybe I'll do that one tomorrow. I had someone complain about a bill on a horse that I have put in far...

Monthly Master Zoom

Favorite Things Friday

One of the hardest things I have to teach a horse is how to be a horse. I often get horses that have been kept in small areas, kept in isolation, been on high sugar diets, not been socialized and kept in a bubble trying to keep anything being unpleasant for them.

The shoulder is not likely the problem. The shoulder is more likely a symptom. We recognize that the horse is weighting and leaning into a shoulder and our brain becomes fixated on the shoulder. We must remember the shoulder is only connected via muscle, tendon and ligament, no boney connection to the trunk/body. The shoulder is not the problem. The shoulder is bearing the weight of the problem.

Favorite Things Friday

February Master Zoom Recording

Change takes time. Sometimes years. A positive change won't last if not nourished and maintained. We live in a world of quick fixes and instant gratification. We want the same concepts with our horses. The facts are that horses are a living organism and building muscle, changing hormones, repairing and supporting pathologies take time and constant maintenance. There are no quick fixes when it comes to horses. There are no easy solutions. Change takes the involvement of multip

Video Exercise