...I’ve never chosen the horses I work with. I’ve always taken any kind of horse - any breed, any age, any issues. Clients bring me...

6 Months Ago Friday is a Quarter Horse with a downhill build and a low-set, thick neck. He came to me late last summer, overweight and...

Neither is any other kind of good horsemanship. Studying and following a tradition or theory does not mean locking ourselves into a rigid...

The signals we give, with our seat, hands and legs are the vocabulary we use. But a language is more than a collection of random,...

The most obvious form is harsh punishment used out of frustration, human ambition, or because we’ve run out of things we know how to do....

“Arena work is so boring!” “My horse just doesn’t enjoy working in the arena!” I hear this from my students a lot, especially when we...

“I saw a stop sign, and it occurred to me that just as no one expects a stop sign to stop a car, I shouldn’t expect words to substitute...

Why do we lead, tack up, mount, and dismount on the left side? There used to be a valid reason for soldiers in the cavalry: they wore...

Yes, he most definitely is. I am currently working with no fewer than five horses who are in their teens but still fairly inexperienced....

Sometimes, the most important lessons horses teach us happen at the most unlikely points in our lives. For me, the path to lightness came...

The crazy, spooky Arabian. The dumb Warmblood who won’t stay sound. The runaway Thoroughbred with four bad feet. The stubborn pony. I...

When I used to show Western horses, the trail class was always something I looked forward to. I don’t show much anymore, but I still use...

There is one exception to the Goldilocks rule of “not too much, not too little” that serves us so well in every other aspect of good...

I’ve been reading (and writing) a lot about the shift happening in today’s horse industry - from competitive goals to progress based on...

When telegraph lines first arrived in the Western US, Native Americans referred to them as singing wires - a description as poetic as it...

I regularly come across social media posts bemoaning the decline of correct riding in our modern age. Many armchair experts blame this on...

Are they really? Or are they just misunderstood? I grew up riding ponies. I have continued to ride ponies throughout my career. Not fancy...

I hear this about a lot of horses. I used to say it about a lot of horses. But most horses we call lazy are not lazy at all. Some of them...

"Neutral" sounds bland, boring, and blah. It makes us yawn. It does not conjure up images of horse and rider dancing together in perfect...

The technical knowledge of how to talk to your horse, of which aids to give so the horse knows which maneuver to perform, is one part of...