Continuing education

Stop striving for perfection

Sorry the posts this week are late. I was at a CEU with not enough service to upload anything.

Are you listening to your horse?

What would your horse say about you if they could tell me?

Pain creates panic. Our horses are prey animals. As such they are masters at hiding pain. The weakest horse in the herd gets eaten. By the time your horse is expressing lameness or undesirable behavior due to pain, they have been in pain for a long period of time (unless it is a traumatic injury). If they are exhibiting changes in body use, gait and hoof morphology, the pain has been there and hiding for awhile. Having recently had surgery with uncontrollable pain, I can at

Having horses is expensive. Most of us try to save where we can. Investing in good equipment and proper care is important but expensive. I have a few musts for horses leaving my program. It’s to keep the owner and horse on the best track forward in their relationship. Some owners head the advice. Some don’t. The ones that don’t usually end up with far more problems.

A day late. Sorry. It’s hard to get life at home back in track after being out of town.

I know change is possible because I was once that willfully ignorant rider.

Our horses are stoic creatures. They will function through discomfort because they don’t feel they have a way out. This is called Learned Helplessness. The discomfort can come from handler, rider, tack, feet, body issues, etc. The horse will shut down and do the work just to get through. We then acted surprised when they blow up or have behavior issues. Pay attention to the small indicators. Tension, fascial expression, body language, evasions, spooking, worry, refusing to en

Be the constant. Don’t change everything on your horse.

Sometimes the only path forward is to backtrack

Remember your horse didn’t sign up to help you accomplish your goals.

There is no such thing as finished when training a horse. Horses learn from every interaction.

As soon as you see the tiniest bit of progress, move on to something else.

Remember they didn’t volunteer for this. They are carrying us around for our gratification.

Well Texas is off her meds again. We are getting another 40 degree temperature swing with windchills making it feel like a 55-60 degree temperature change. It is extremely hard on the horses to adjust from 78 to feels like 18 in less than 12hrs. It takes three weeks plus for horses to adjust to new climates. We are swapping climates in a few hours once or twice a week right now. Some horses are even shedding.

Horse’s revert to their owner/handler’s experience and expectation. Horses don’t stay trained forever if the training and expectations are not consistent. every interaction teaches them something…good or bad. If we get sloppy in our training and handling of the horses the horses revert to the level of what is being expected. If we start letting them walk us soon they will be dragging us because we lowered our expectations. Every interaction with the horse teaches them about o

If you don’t show up to practice don’t expect your horse to. It is important to remember that our horses did not sign up to compete or help us reach our goals. They were voluntold that participation was a requirement in the relationship. The horse isn’t going to practice on its own. So if you don’t show up to practice, put in the effort, the time, the miles don’t complain when your horse doesn’t perform as expected. If you have a different set of expectations at home than you

Half way releasing is not releasing. It’s micromanagement disguised as a release. It’s saying here is the information but I don’t trust you to make the right decision with it, so I’ll just make sure you do. It’s the same as riding your clutch or brake.