Dogs, horses, and rats. Birds, goldfish, cats. Dolphins, raccoons, and elephants. What animals can’t we train? In this section you’ll find lots of great training stories and tips. You will also get to meet many of the wonderful animals that I get to train. I hope that you’ll enjoy reading about my adventures (and misadventures) and that these articles and tales can provide you with insight that will help you with your own animals.
It’s hard work being a young horse! Here are four of the colts at the rescue taking a morning nap in the sun. Doolittle is the cute little paint colt in the front, Suede, Moody and Tilde are the chestnuts in the back. As you can probably tell, it’s been really muddy lately! For now, […]
The rescue I volunteer at saved 23 horses at the end of the summer. The horses finally legally belong to the rescue and we are looking for adoptive homes or foster homes. We recently have also had several horses returned from adoptive homes that could no longer care for them. The rescue now has over […]
Rosie and I recently started playing with a big green ball. It’s not quite as big as some of the ones marketed by natural horse trainers, but it’s still pretty big! The ball is actually an exercise ball I bought at a sporting goods store. I just hope it will be strong enough for the […]
This is a video I found yesterday that I really like. It’s a great example of a trainer setting the animal up for success and then patiently clicking successive approximations to the final goal. Horses are curious by nature and are usually interested in exploring new items in their surrounding. If we can reward even […]
These are our babies at the rescue, getting to practice wearing halters. Suede is wearing the pink halter, Moody is wearing the teal halter and Tilde isn’t wearing a halter. Tilde’s a bit more shy than the other two. While he’s starting to enjoy getting scratched, he’s still not at the point where he’s comfortable […]
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 […]
