Grooming is the first thing you do with your horse after catching them. The quality of grooming time can set the tone for all that’s to follow so it’s import...

Recently I found myself saying to a student, ‘it’s a conversation, not a command’. This one phrase is probably the most important thing I can teach. When the...

Training is the action of teaching a person or animal a particular skill or type of behaviour, according to Google. The main word in this sentence is teachin...

One thing many people have difficulty with is horses sticking their heads up when under saddle. This is undesirable for a number of reasons; it doesn’t look ...

Asking a horse to drop their head with a soft and immediate response is one of the best things you will ever train into your horse. When a horse is stressed ...

Recently I experienced a high level of grief in my life. After three weeks away I returned home a different version of my former self. I arrived home in the ...

In the horse world, there are two main types of people, horse riders and horse trainers. While trainers are an excellent option for starting young horses, th...

Recently a student pointed out that my work is defined by how I listen to horses. The traditional way of interacting with horses is to tell them what to do, ...

‘You don’t know what you don’t know’, this a wonderful expression. Sometimes we do things that hurt others because we simply don’t know. I did things that hu...

In the Spanish language, horses are caballos. Recently I was staying with a Colombian family who had a large farm in the Andes that had been in the family fo...

I sometimes hear the phrase, ‘It’s amazing that you ride bitless’. Then; your horses must be very quiet, you must be a great rider, you must be an experience...

Many people use positive reinforcement with horses, instead of or as well as other forms of training (negative reinforcement, habituation, desensitisation, s...

When a young horse misbehaves, the lead mare may send them out of the herd, running them in circles until they give signals saying they accept the rules of t...

Anthropomorphism is defined as the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-humans and is considered to be an innate tendency of human psy...

For quite a while I have been trying to work out exactly what it is that I do with horses. I have called it Natural Horsemanship, and in the past I have stud...

Recently while doing a bitless presentation, I discovered that the main thing people wanted to know was how to transition to a bitless bridle. Over the 10 ye...

In most articles or books about horsemanship you’ll find a reference to timing. While many people are aware of the idea of effective timing the practise of i...

Humanity has come a long way in terms of respect for animals. We now have animal rights written into our government policies and animal groups looking after ...

Lately I've been thinking about health and training. Recently I was working with some horses and noticed one had an enormous bean at the entrance to the uret...

Here’s a good question to ask. When I am with my horse am I making it easy for my horse to succeed or difficult? Sometimes I see people making things difficu...