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...

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 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, ...

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

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...

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 ...

I was recently talking with a lady who understood that animals are sentient and should be treated with respect and kindness. But even though she was clear ab...

I’m sure you’re familiar with this word being used in relation to horses, but what does it mean and how do you get it? A dictionary translation is ‘a relatio...

For most of the history of horse domestication, we've tended to have communications between humans and horses that are unidirectional. Humans order, horses o...

Whenever your horse does something that you've asked for it's imperative that you give a reward. This reward lets the horse know that they gave the correct r...

When I meet a new horse we often go through what I call ‘the conversation’. This is where we check each other out and decide how we’re going to progress from...

This is a great game to play with any horse that has a rusty ‘go button’. It develops forwardness in the horse, gets snappy responses to leg aids, builds hor...

This heading sounds a bit like a topic for a conference, not the horse paddock. But it’s a very important subject to be aware of when working with horses. A ...

I looked up the definition of this word and came up with – ‘regard with deference, avoid degrading, insulting, injuring or interrupting and treat with consid...

Everyone’s looking for the happy place. This is where life is beautiful, there are no pressures on us and no stress, this is where we can relax and enjoy wha...

I am very fortunate to be able to meet and work with many different types of horses. Every single one of those horses without exception has a brain. Horses a...

It has been suggested that one of the things that sets humans apart from other animals is our ability to think of the past and of the future. It is certainly...

Softness Posted on July 14, 2016 by happyhorsesbitless This is a word that’s used often in the horse world, soft hands, soft seat, soft horse…. but what is i...