I get nostalgic for the days when I didn’t know what I know now. I miss the bittersweet, marginally innocent time. My sense of humor was better then, too. It was 2005 and not many of us knew. We surely do now. Nube (rhymes with eBay) was two years old. A tall Iberian Sporthorse gelding … Read more
A few years back, a pretty well-known trainer made a statement about using force with horses. Flat out, the craziest thing I’d ever heard. The short version was if you wanted to lollygag around your pasture, and ride like a girl, fine… but if you competed, you had to win and that meant dominating … Read more
In the first months after coming to our farm, it was a simple schedule for Nube: wrestle, eat, sleep, repeat. The horses were kind, but it was mutually agreed they could do without Nube’s adolescent fart games. It was great news because fart games are the bread and butter of donkey life. I’d given the … Read more
“I tried everything,” my client says. This isn’t something that I hear once in a long while. It’s a time-honored tradition, consistently stated. Sometimes, there is a time deadline but mostly it happens on an ordinary day. My client says it, so I’ll know what they have been thorough before contacting me. It’s implied, almost … Read more
Sitting in a horse pen is the easiest thing in the world. I might even like to cook if I could do it in a horse pen. I am dead certain a root canal would be better out there. We all love the sound of hay being chewed and we even like the sound of … Read more
If it weren’t for manure frozen into the ice, we’d have no traction at all and it’s only the eleventh week of January. It’s been dark with below-freezing temperatures outside for so long that I can’t remember. I’m standing in front of the fridge, seriously considering cleaning it out. I can see a jar of … Read more
I have a problem. I’m a clinician who loves her job and at the same time, wonders if there are better ways to do it. I’m obsessed with evolving clinics to be easier for horses and less stressful for riders. We love the camaraderie of a clinic weekend, if it isn’t our horse in a … Read more
I can’t be the only woman of a certain age whose parents thought she needed to be muffled indefinitely. They wanted a quiet polite daughter and look how that turned out. And I’m probably the wrong person to write this since I have a rescue dog that hasn’t stopped barking since 2014. Here goes anyway. … Read more
It was at the dark ages of VHS, long before the dawn of cyberspace, and I’d heard there was such a thing as a horse training DVD. A few barn friends and I watched one, and were horrified at the techniques and laughed at the backward sales pitch. But the only reason that was … Read more
Sometimes I find myself standing in front of people talking about horses’ feelings. I’m almost embarrassed; I was raised to be tough. Yes, I cite scientific research. Inside, I still hear my father curse me for spoiling horses, but most people didn’t think horses had feelings in his day. Except I think part of us … Read more
Bhim is a one-of-a-kind, I surely hope. People might say he’s still with me ten years after he came for halter training because I couldn’t get it done. Does he look cute? Tell that to the humans he’s taken out. And to be clear, he’s here because Edgar Rice Burro asked if he could have … Read more
No other animal is quite like a horse; never fully wild and never quite domesticated. Engaged with us but never ours entirely. Some see horses as simple creatures and others of us hold them as a mystery we will never completely solve and we like it that way. In 2012, a group of prestigious scientists … Read more
Want to do a kindness for your horse? Perhaps show your affection in a “love language” that suits horses? Did I just do that? Refer to a nineties self-help book for couples? Yes, let me give you the gist: maybe you want flowers but your partner changes the oil in your truck. Expressing love is … Read more
I see people in the grocery store thoughtfully reading labels and pondering choices. The Dude Rancher and I look like game show contestants for speed shopping. We buy the same things every week and tag-team the aisles, scurrying down some and skipping others. We always get fresh berries and never any chips. Get the ice … Read more
“Can Competition Horses be Trained Affirmatively?” she asked. I know why she asks. This rider has been trained to think that it’s hard to be good enough, that the work is hard so you have to ask your horse in ways that are hard. She has seen trainers claim that force is justifiable to win, … Read more
It was back around the time the light bulb was invented. My Grandfather Horse was a lanky spooky colt, I was still biting my lip instead of breathing, and my mentor put a western saddle on her stallion and attached her tackle box and pole to go fishing, (but the same thing might happen if … Read more
My client and I were having an online meeting. We’d been working on a systematic process of getting her and Bradley, her gelding, back to riding. It’s a process that I’ve developed that has space for horses and riders to be individuals, and more than traditional training, we focus on listening to calming signals and … Read more
A reader gave me a writing assignment. She asked me to write something from the perspective of a railbird. This won’t be fiction. I was at the National Western Stock Show. It would take me two more years to get there with a horse but showing was the dream since I was a kid. Over … Read more