Relaxed & Forward Blog

Culture Wars in the Barn

There is a recent article in the NYT about the culture wars going on in dog training that's worth reading....
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Famous Cruelty, Ordinary Cruelty, and an Affirmative Solution

  Another story of cruelty hit the international press last week. Operation X documented horrors happening in a well-known Danish...
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Thanksgiving: Our First Horse Was a Dog

Meet my dogs, Preacher Man, Mister, and Jack. They're in the doorway to my writing studio. It's Thanksgiving night, which...
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The Difference Between Training and Retraining a Horse

Lesson #1. Learning to Lead Horse Training is the process of collecting good experiences. Let it...
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The Thing About Dimensionally Succinct Horses

I've written "The Thing About" essays on Mares, Geldings, and Donkeys to dispel untrue myths and sing their praises. These...
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How to Stop Taking Your Horse Personally

Bhim is a one-of-a-kind, I surely hope. People might say he's still with me ten years after he came for...
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The Season of Letting Go

The autumnal equinox is about change. There's a miserable fog today, dense and so uncommon on my high prairie. Chilly...
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There Will Be No Faith Healings Today

  We've all seen it. Someone holding a lead rope and hyper-stimulating a young horse with a stick until he...
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Mental Maturity in Horses

Darryl, Darryl, and his other brother, Darryl I've never been good at remembering dates, so sometimes...
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Calming Signals. You Can’t Save ‘Em All. Cat Version.

I walk in my pasture. Women of a certain over-thinking age do well to put a few miles in a...
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A Book Report and What We Know Now.

A bit of explanation: I grew up on a farm without a bookshelf. We were not readers. Once we finally...
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For the Fragility of a Horse…

"When we see horses galloping with ears sharp, tails flagged, and hooves churning up the soil, they are the epitome...
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Life Happens: The Unplanned Dismount

"I owned horses for 20 years until divorce happened," the reader said, asking me to write about it. "I think...
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Can Horses Forgive Us?

The reader said that an essay I'd written "brought to mind how many times my involuntary predatory instincts have surfaced...
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Photo & Poem: As if Love

She declared that she loved her horse as if loving took a sort of noble skill rare to our kind....
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Things My Dogs Don’t Care About.

I'm the kind of person who has big dogs. I always have been, not that my dogs care. I have...
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Do Horses Fear Death?

  It's been an ordinary year. Animals died here. What could be more normal? Infinity Farm has an extended herd...
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Photo & Poem: Braced

  Black eyes sunk deep in her skull, certain she knows what will come next. The trail of scars on...
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