The future of horsemanship is the consilience of tradition and science
No-Stirrup November is an opportunity to work on your balance separate from your stirrups, and maybe even pinpoint some muscle memory patterns you have that no longer serve you. Here are some of the most common ones, and certainly ones that have afflicted me: - Bracing the knee (ouch!) and heavily weighting the stirrup; some… Continue reading Happy No-stirrup November!
We talk a lot about poisoned cues, but what happens when those of us who could be ambassadors of positive reinforcement are poisoning the movement by being aversive? What happened to the idea of successive approximation? Allowing behavior extinction as something is no longer found reinforcing? If we know that Pavlov is always on our… Continue reading Contradicting Ourselves: Shaming and Judgement in the Positive Reinforcement Community
Sometimes my approach can come off a bit mystic, but science is always at the heart of what I'm doing... MY BACKGROUND For a few years, I facilitated an equine program for a detention center. In addition to the wonderful sessions I shared with the incarcerated individuals I met, I was emersed in learning about… Continue reading Parallels Between Equine Facilitated Therapy and Horse Training
The only way to keep evolving in our horsemanship is to open up our minds- and maybe our pens, too...
No matter how experienced we are, it's important to understand we never stop perfecting our position and biomechanics.
Kyler is a budding horseman, and has begun taking on project ponies under the watchful eye of myself and other horsemanship mentors.
THROWBACK THURSDAY: June 21, 2017 Today I sold my round pen... I had a response to this, an emotional attachment to it, and I've decided to explore that... As a trainer, it was a goal to have a nice big round pen I could start colts in, work problem horses in, and do liberty training… Continue reading Today I sold my round pen…
Like many project horses, I see the potential; now all we need is a lot of persistence and a little patience. Great things happen when we recognize our littlest achievements and use them as inspiration to keep improving day by day…
Fit is what makes or breaks the function of the hackamore; if you don't get it right, you lose what makes the hackamore unique: its pre-signal.
Ok, we all love John Wayne. But we don't necessarily want to be described as having 'John Wayne elbows'...
