I watched a video awhile back of someone working with an animal who did not like having his ears touched. The trainer started by touching the animal’s neck, then touching close to the ear, touching near the base of the ear, touching the ear briefly, and eventually touching the ear for a little longer. The […]
Tag Archives | scary things
Blossom’s recycling day ride
This summer I’ve been working quite a bit with a young horse at the rescue named Blossom. We went slowly last summer when we started Blossom with her training for riding, giving her time to learn to be relaxed and confident while being ridden. Too many trainers rush at the beginning when riding young horses […]
The continuous nature of targeting
I worked some with Beau over the weekend. Beau is a big black and white horse who was very badly abused at some point. He has made a ton of progress in the past year and is now a pretty friendly guy. Beau enjoys interacting with people and will approach you in the pasture, follow […]
Letting Curiosity Work For You
These are some pictures from last summer that I just ran across. I know they are old, but I’m still posting them because I LOVE them! Most horses are naturally VERY curious. Especially if they are given the time and space to explore something new. Horses get scared when we force them to interact with […]
Are you listening to your horse?
I rode Cricket, one of our little paint ponies, yesterday morning. It was a short, fun bareback ride. It’s really too hot to do any really intensive riding. When I went to get on him, he lined up perfectly for the mounting block. However, as I sat down on him, he took off walking. Oops!!! […]
Tex Practices Being Brave
The weather was perfect this weekend for playing with the ponies at the rescue. I spent quite a bit of time on Saturday working with Tex, one of our two year old ponies. He’s friendly and halter-broke, but really hasn’t had a whole lot of training. Tex was absolutely TERRIFIED of people when we first […]