Relaxed & Forward Blog

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...
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Nube: How to Train a Horse to be Patient

I don't like cameras. How you can tell is my neck swells up and my double chins flare out wider...
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Human Calming Signals: Actions Louder than Words

"Anna, after reading this piece I realized that I know how to do this; just not with horses. As a...
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Undomesticated Women, Anecdotal Evidence from the Road

Amanda and Stable Relation at the Pan Am Games. I don't know if I told you......
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Focus is Active Listening. Horses Do It Naturally.

I had a friend who used to write me little vignettes about the antics of her and her horse at...
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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...
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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...
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Calming Signals: What If Horses Are Meant to be a Mystery?

I'm not sure when I started sitting on horses, but I hadn't started school. You couldn't really call it riding....
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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...
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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....
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Nube: Ulcer Nostalgia and What I Didn’t Know

I get nostalgic for the days when I didn't know what I know now. I miss the bittersweet, marginally innocent...
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Human Calming Signals: I Want my Horse to be Fearless.

  So, you want a horse that doesn't spook? Don't we all? Great, you wanna look for something over 25...
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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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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...
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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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1,354th Friday Morning and Not Bucked Off

  No, I’m not dreaming of a career as a hand model. My hands have looked like an elderly mechanic’s...
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