I recently rented Carolyn Resnick’s DVD, An Introduction to the Waterhole Rituals, from horseflix. I learned about Carolyn’s methods from several friends. Carolyn advocates beginning the training process at liberty and working on developing a bond with the horse, rather than immediately teaching a set of behaviors. I think training at liberty is extremely valuable–it empowers […]
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Did you know that horses could be trained with clicker training? In this section you’ll find lots of information about how positive reinforcement training methods can be used to create horses that are smart, brave, athletic and enthusiastic about training. If you’re skeptical, I recommend starting with this blog post, which summarizes a research study that examined whether clicker training causes horses to bite.
Teaching Hoof Handling Using Shaping
Teaching a horse to pick up it’s feet can be a frustrating job. The horse gets frustrated because he doesn’t know what the trainer is asking and the trainer often goes too fast, too soon. This can get dangerous when working with back feet because an irriated, frustrated horse is more likely to take a […]
Sebastian Gets a Shot
Sebastian is a young red roan gelding who I’ve just started working with a bit. He’s pretty shy still and can be unconfident around people. He’s curious, but he’s not too sure about being caught or being touched and groomed. Last weekend, he needed a shot and I got to be the one to give […]
Miniature Horse with an Attitude!
Many miniature horses are sassy, spunky little things. I think they know they’re adorable, and know that since they’re small and cute they can get away with things that people would never put up with from big horses. The camp where I’ll be working this summer has 2 miniature horses, Blossom and Midnight. The minis […]
Working on haltering with Austin
I’ve been wanting to play with Austin, a young draft-cross gelding who lives at the rescue. He’s had a bit of training in the past, including being halter trained and being trained to lead. However, he’s pretty shy, a little skeptical of people and hasn’t had anybody working with him consistently recently. When I first […]
Half a dozen new horses
I talked a little bit awhile ago about the camp where I’ll be working this summer. I’ll be volunteering at several weekend sessions before camp starts so that I can start to get to know the horses and learn how the program works. I went out for the first time this morning and everything went […]