Anna Blake I have a problem. I’m a clinician who loves her job and at the same time, wonders if there are better ways to do it. I’m obsessed with evolving clinics to be easier for horses and less stressful for riders. We love the camaraderie of a clinic weekend, if it isn’t our horse in a … Read more
We are in Limbo. It’s that week between Christmas and New Year when nobody knows what day it is. Not that it matters because that’s the point of limbo. If you are in the Northern Hemisphere you are in-between storms. Entire states seem to have traded places. Some of us have ice rinks, and some … Read more
I was standing outside of a hotel at five in the morning waiting for my limo. Obviously, several things had gone wrong and it wasn’t even dawn yet. I was pacing, wondering if the limo would cost more than my flight home when I saw a horse sculpture. It was not quite abstract or realistic. … Read more
Warning: Loudmouth Party Pooper Rant. I think we all know whose side I’m on in this horse training reality show. As an early holiday gift to my favorite four-legged friends, I thought I’d lob a few ideas to folks who actually like their horses. In a world where we normalize fear-based training, I hope to … Read more
Your inner monster screams, “Just Kick Him!” but you don’t. You aren’t that person. You don’t use spurs or whips. You are so frustrated, so confused, so unhappy. Your horse doesn’t want to go forward and you’re at your wit’s end. This isn’t about one of my clients; this is about more than I can … Read more
Do you like the writing I share? It’s free, and it always will be. That’s my gift to horses, hopefully. But do you know I have six published books, and three of them are award winners? If you’d like to read more, consider these. Stable Relation is a memoir and Horse Prayers and Horse. Woman. … Read more
I can’t be the only woman of a certain age whose parents thought she needed to be muffled indefinitely. They wanted a quiet polite daughter and look how that turned out. And I’m probably the wrong person to write this since I have a rescue dog that hasn’t stopped barking since 2014. Here goes anyway. … Read more
It was at the dark ages of VHS, long before the dawn of cyberspace, and I’d heard there was such a thing as a horse training DVD. A few barn friends and I watched one, and were horrified at the techniques and laughed at the backward sales pitch. But the only reason that was … Read more
If my horses could see the big picture, they’d still say my job is hay. They have not read one of these blogs over the last dozen years or attended any of my clinics. They don’t care about how I brilliantly jabber on. It’s the hay. Boarded or at home, that’s what your horses care … Read more
The exercise was to halter your horse thoughtfully, asking the horse’s permission for each step of the process, and acknowledging his calming signals. A teenage girl was with her recently off-the-track thoroughbred, a tall dark gelding unsettled in new surroundings. We know how track horses are [not] taught to lead and she was using a … Read more