I’m no longer a fan of many of the teachings of the Parelli Natural Horsemanship program. However, many of the program’s ground exercises offer a good foundation for the young horse, especially if they are adapted with clicker training to reduce/eliminate the amount of negative reinforcement used during teaching. The Parelli friendly game is essentially [...]

I posted yesterday evening about Sebastian’s history, everything we’ve been working on, and how far we’ve come. (Read about Sebastian.) Here are the short video clips I promised. I’m having problems with youtube and will probably be using vimeo for my videos from here on out, unless anyone has suggestions for other video services.

I’ve been playing a lot lately with Sebastian, who is a cute and curious three year old red roan quarter horse. Sebastian has changed tremendously from a shy, unconfident  youngster to a eager beaver who is interested in people and engaged during training.
When I met Sebastian last spring he was a pretty shy guy who didn’t want [...]

Rosie and I played with a saddle pad for the second time yesterday. In traditional horse training, many horses will learn to put up with saddling without truly ever accepting the process. Or, through rough handling, they later learn to resent the act of being saddled. I want Rosie to like being saddled and to [...]