Relaxed & Forward Blog

A Message from Heaven (for my professional friends)

I am a woman who possesses an interesting range of enviable skills. Getting surgery is not on the list. One...
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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...
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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...
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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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Nube: An Iberian Stall Toy for the Donkeys

Daryl, Daryl, and their other brother, Daryl. In the first months after coming to our farm,...
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How to Measure the Heart of a Horse

Have you experienced this? Someone says something that is a throw-away comment, not meant to be anything, they toss it...
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Letting Go of Shame and Blame. Do It for Your Horse.

Nope. Not me. I was allergic to this color, but Hannah dressed for success from the...
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Nube: When He Came Home

I was forty-nine years old with gray hair, calloused banged-up fingers, and chronic lameness in my left foot. He was...
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What To Do When You’ve Tried Everything

"I tried everything," my client says. This isn't something that I hear once in a long while. It's a time-honored...
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Problem Solved: Space to Breathe.

I'm walking next to you and I'm talking loudly. I am so close that you feel the heat of my...
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Nube: How We Met

one year later... I was forty- nine years old, and my upcoming birthday was hanging in...
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Affirmative Training: The Opposite of Dominance Isn’t What You’d Think

Sitting in a horse pen is the easiest thing in the world. I might even like to cook if I...
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Cleaning Out the Toolbox

If it weren't for manure frozen into the ice, we'd have no traction at all and it's only the eleventh...
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Calming Signals: Repeat after me, “Not that I care…”

Because they're doing construction down the road. His previous owner says he once spooked at a llama. The wind is...
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An Invitation to a Clinic in Your Home

I have a problem. I'm a clinician who loves her job and at the same time, wonders if there are...
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Silent Night: The Truest Words Aren’t Words At All.

I was standing outside of a hotel at five in the morning waiting for my limo. Obviously, several things had...
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You Know I’m a Small Business, Right?

Do you like the writing I share? It's free, and it always will be. That's my gift to horses, hopefully....
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Thank You, Mother: an Ode to a Farm

It's late afternoon as I drive along the front of my farm to the gate. The field fence is shrouded...
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