I’ll be finishing up my posts from the ORCA Art and Science of Animal Training Conference this week. (About time!, you’re probably saying.) Figure I need to get them wrapped up, as I’ll be attending ClickerExpo in Lexington in about 2 weeks and, well, I should have plenty to write about that!

The weather here has [...]

Here are some recent photos of two of our geldings at the rescue, Shiloh and Sebastian, playing with each other and generally having a great time. The weather was quite nice last week and the horses really seemed to enjoy it. Shiloh is the dun (the one on the right in the photo below) and [...]

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 have been working on picking up Sebastian’s feet. Teaching a horse to let you pick up their feet is an important skill so that you can pick out their hooves and so that the farrier can trim their feet. When teaching this, I like to start with one front foot, then once that is [...]

Mom and Sebastian make friends over the fence.
Sebastian is getting pretty comfortable with me touching him over most of his body with both my hands and a carrot stick. (Read about Sebastian here or watch a few video clips here.)
Here’s three of our next tasks to work on:
1. Touching sensitive body parts (legs, ears, face)
2. [...]