Thought provoking
🥰Love can be soft, hard, strong, fierce and bold.
Your horse has priorities. These are like rungs on a ladder, and when you skip one, things don’t work well. Many empathetic riders accidentally skip the second rung. They want their horse to feel safe and secure, but they make the mistake of trying to create safety with ‘soft’ love. Love is amazing, but it…
Read MoreBridle-less riding reveals the level of understanding.
Twenty years ago, I competed bridle-less for the first time. Ten years before that, I made my first attempt at it. Both times, I failed. Failed to communicate clearly. Failed to prepare properly. And failed to achieve what I had set out to do. As a teen, this resulted in riding a flat out run…
Read MoreKnowing when to sell your horse
There’s no doubt that some of the happiest moments of horse ownership come when you take delivery of that new horse. It’s kind of like infatuation —easy to see all the great things about the new partner, and any negatives or possible problems are easily overlooked. Expectations are high and as far as potential success…
Read MoreWhy do horses swish or wring or use their tails? With and without riders…
I know I am opening a huge can of worms here….but lets talk about horses using their tails. I am talking about tail swishing, tail wringing, etc. Here are some questions for you…(my answer follows the question.) Do horses ever use their tails because of the rider? Yes Do horses ever use their tails because…
Read MoreWhy lunge a horse before you ride?
The ability to lunging a horse has many uses. In this article, I’m going to focus on one area: prevention. One role that lunging, or groundwork, fills for me is prevention. Preventing the horse from getting into a habit that I might not enjoy now…or in the future. Have you ever seen someone mount up…
Read MoreHow does feeling nervous or excited impact your riding?
“Stacy, Do you get nervous before you show?” I always have tension in my body before I show…but sometimes this tension is helpful and sometimes it is NOT helpful. I want a feeling of positive tension in my body as I prepare. I want to feel ready to go and excited. There have been times…
Read MoreDealing with stallions that bite; habits and hormones
“Hi Stacy, again a very interesting podcast. I love how you break it down into parts. This makes is much easier to understand. I have a 4-year-old stallion in training, who was really disrespectful when I first started. Very pushy, using his shoulders to run right through me, not respecting my space at all. The…
Read MoreWhy riders often experience fear, frustration, confusion with their horse.
Mismatch:(noun) a failure to correspond or match. a discrepancy. Mismatched: (verb) match (people or things) unsuitably or incorrectly In sports, there is something called a mismatch. I’m not a sports person but my husband is. My understanding of a mismatch is that when teams are preparing to play each other they study the strengths and…
Read MoreQuickly Evaluating Problems with Horses and Riders
Have you ever felt stuck when evaluating a problem with your horse? I found myself drawing this chart over and over again in my journals and explaining it to friends. It is my simple evaluation tool that I use to analyzing problems or answer questions about horses and riders. The problem. When someone poses a problem…
Read MoreDoes your horse find you predictable AND interesting?
When we train, we train using patterns. Patterns of behavior that create habits. Lead to the saddling area. Ground-tie. Brush. Saddle. Mount. Warm up. Work period. Rest period. Work period. On the surface it may look to an outside observer that we are teaching the horse to perform a pattern, like a trick, however, we…
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