You can't teach a horse to deal with pressure by avoiding pressure. Tip toeing around our tense horses to avoid adding more pressure only makes their tension and confusion worse. What they need from us is confidence, boundaries and clear communication.

Your horse should be able to handle time off without training falling apart. Taking a two week vacation should not make you lose ground with your horse. Breaks can even be beneficial.

I LOVE horses, just in case you hadn’t noticed 😉. That being said, sometimes loving them isn’t enough. While traveling and teaching I run into people who have found horses they love. However, they purchased a “deal”, got a free horse, or rescued a horse out of a poor situation. Often times these horses are a bit more than they bargained for.

If life is getting in the way and your riding is sporadic, walking is your friend. Focus on the details in your walk. Straightness and bend. Work on your three walks. Transitions will get your horse stronger. We need strength then mobility. Straight is strong. Crooked is crippled. Forward is your friend. Faster creates chaos.

If your horse has time off and it feels like starting over with training when you start back to work, something is wrong. Good education doesn’t disappear with time off. Fitness does. While it may take time to build up your horse’s fitness, they should not feel like they “forgot” what they knew.

If you are having a hard time string the trot, relax your ankles and lift your toes. Your ankles act as shock absorbers. When you are grabbing with your toes, your ankles are braced. Your seat will be braced. Your body will resist the movement instead of flowing with the movement.

Trainer’sTip

Part of our survival instinct is to remember negative events and work to avoid them. This makes us really good at recognizing all the things our horses do wrong. We like to remember those things and carry that baggage with us to every ride. We inadvertently set our horses up to fail because we unpack that bag and review all the negative evidence right before we get in the saddle.

Horses learn when they feel safe. Your horse won’t feel safe if they are receiving a lot of mixed signals from you. Some ways we create mixed signals for our horses:

It’s all connected. That bulging left you feel under saddle is also your horse sucking in behind you while you are leading them. It’s shrinking the circle lunging left track and dragging you out of the circle right track. Evading left getting in the trailer? Yep, same problem.

Simple things you can do with your horse that will have a positive impact on posture and relationship.

I had a really tough ride on a young horse yesterday. Nothing went correctly. She was emotional. My timing seemed off. I probably didn’t...

Why do you still take lessons? Don’t you know how to ride your horse yet?

When we ride our horses there are two nervous systems involving, yours and your horse’s. Your horse has the nervous system of a prey animal. Often times if they are stressed that comes with react first and think later. That reaction in turn sends our nervous system into defense mode. We often make big, rapid movements in our “fight for survival”. Unfortunately, this reinforces the horse’s nervous system reaction about their perceived perilous situation. Alas, the chain react

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

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.

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.

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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...

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.