Permission to NOT Ride.
Last Tuesday I had an 8 a.m. lesson with a boarder and her sweet gelding. He's had a good summer;...
Listening with Your Seat.
How's your derrière? Is posterior a more delicate word than rump? Our culture has a lot of fanny chatter: too...
Dressage Factions and the Real Reason to Compete.
I'm a traditionalist when it comes to the art of dressage. I love the structure, the fundamentals, the words of...
Natural Instinct: The Human Half
The more we riders understand about horse instinct, the better. Instinct is the starting place; a behavioral baseline from which...
How to Ride like a Kid.
Remember riding when you were a kid? We climbed on top from a gate or a truck bumper. No bridle,...
Calming Signals and Equine Gastric Ulcers.
These are two of my favorite topics and I write about them often, but this post is about how calming...
Respecting Your "Other" Space
I assume your horse respects your space; that on the ground he stands a couple of feet away, relaxed and...
How to Train Your Horse to Hate Arena Work.
Does your horse go better out of the arena? It seems like some horses just won't go forward and no...
How to Listen to Your Horse.
I had a friend who visited my farm during my first years here. She arrived for the weekend with books...
Riding with Intention.
He knows what you're thinking. Does anyone think they can hide their feelings from their horse?...
An Equine Cure for a Type-A Personality.
First, consider the horse. He is a majestic, elegant animal with a free spirit--intelligent, playful and spontaneous. He is nothing...
Left in the Dust: Your Ridiculously Slow Response Time.
Have you noticed that horses are incredibly quicker than we are? I'm going to tell you the good news about...
The Stepford Horses, Dominated to Submission.
Remember the Stepford Wives--a little too submissive, a little too darkly docile? I saw horses just like them last week...
The Everyday Value of Dressage.
Is your horse a different person under-saddle? Maybe tacking up is all good, but once you are ready to mount,...
Being Grateful for Things You Don't Like.
My favorite training mentor had a habit that drove me nuts. She would be working with a horse who spooked...
*Needs Confident Rider*
*Needs a confident rider*. If you see those words while paging though horse ads, what do you think? Used car salesmen...
A Recipe for Patience.
I want to start by saying I used to consider patience the exact same thing as procrastination. I had no...
What does the horsie say? Seriously.
Our barn rat, Hannah, didn't meet the horses her first visit to the farm. She was only 3 days old....
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