Here’s a simple pattern Shiloh and I were playing with at liberty on Sunday afternoon
1) Shiloh approaches me and targets an exercise ball I am holding. Once he touches it with his nose, I click and give him a treat.
2) As I feed the treat in front of him, I move to his shoulder, ending [...]

This is the first of several posts on introducing a young horse to a saddle.
Sebastian and I have been playing a lot with saddle blankets, cinches, bareback pads and saddles over the past month. He’s done great and accepted all of this in stride. In fact, the first time I saddled him, he stood calmly [...]

I recently watched one of Mark Rashid’s DVDs, Ground Driving 101
, after renting it from Giddyupflix. I was interested in watching this DVD because I love Mark Rashid’s books and would like to start with some ground driving work with a few of the rescue horses. Overall, I was not very impressed with this [...]

Question: How long does it take to train a horse?
Answer: As long as it takes.
This is a follow up post to my previous post, In a Whisper or In a Shout? Training under Time Restraints, which discussed training unhandled colts in 2 1/2 hours.
Do you remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? [...]

Recently I watched a documentary film called In A Whisper. It’s a DVD of a colt starting challenge that was held in Fort Worth in 2002. The three trainers in the competition, Craig Cameron, Pat Parelli and Josh Lyons, each had 2 1/2 hours to start a two year old colt. The horses had [...]