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...
Bhim: We’re Not Perfect: The Great Halloween Wreck of ’23.
In my online Barnie group, we do performance art around Halloween. My horse, Bhim, along with Edgar Rice Burro, Arthur,...
Book Launch: Say Hello to ‘Undomesticated Women’ by Anna Blake
It's before dawn on a Friday morning and I'm in an RV park in Amarillo, Texas. I've been mud-wrestling...
Nube: A Living Lesson in “Less is More”
There's a woman and a tall young horse, moving in perfect strides together but with a healthy space between them....
Riding Lessons: Seeing Your Horse Through New Eyes
A reader request: "I hope you will someday do an article on looking at the horse's ears and eyes to...
Nube: How a Horse Taught Me a Canter Cue
The short version is that my horse poked me in my sit bone, which isn’t possible, is it? But let’s...
Balancing Energy with a Horse
Is your horse lazy? Lazy is a name we call horses when we want to denigrate them by comparing them...
The Difference Between Peaceful Persistence and Nagging.
Today, I’d like to use you as a human demo horse. Please, play along with me. Let’s say you come...
The Difference Between Training and Retraining a Horse
Lesson #1. Learning to Lead Horse Training is the process of collecting good experiences. Let it...
Human Calming Signals: Help Your Horse to Take Your Cue
You think it's a simple task you're asking your horse to do. You use an affirmative approach, not willing to...
Do You Have Coyote Eyes? How to Look Without Looking
Can you tell when someone's looking at you? Or maybe a child in a waiting room, or it could be...
Peaceful Persistence, a Horse Training Manifesto
What does "not conceding" mean? Oh, I can't wait to bray about this, says this trainer whose spirit animal...
Legacy: We’re Riding for the Next Horse
Driving home through northern Colorado yesterday, I passed the Berthoud off-ramp. Otherwise known as the Grandfather Horse off-ramp. I've only...
Bhim: Through Life Drama and Training Plateaus
It's been six months now since starting Bhim's Training Diary online. But time is a fluid thing for a horse....
Training Tip: Improving Your Eye
Sometimes we look back at how we kept horses as kids, and it seemed so simple then. None of them...
Affirmative Training is Fine, But What-if…
A few years back, a pretty well-known trainer made a statement about using force with horses. Flat out, the...
Calming Signals: What Are You Really Afraid Of?
What are you afraid of? Maybe this question. Take a breath and check your shoulders. Are they down where they...
Nube: We Cheat at Trailer Training
Nube was a beanpole of a yearling. If he and Ernest weren’t trying to get me bucked off a horse…...
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