I am juiced to start the day after a phone call with Kathy. She called to touch base on today’s training sessions. Christa wanted to add Ebony to the list, to develop her canter transitions. We agreed it was too windy to practice trailer loading, which is the next hurdle to their updated goal of [...]

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The family was finally ready to live their dream of a family trail ride. I trailered the ever-dependable Lucy over to join them. While the family was tacking up, Lucy and I fully enjoyed playing in an actual ARENA. Our grassy riding area at home has lots of obstacles and natural challenges, but the consistent [...]

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I started teaching the Knock’s several years ago.  Their dream was to trail ride as a family.  When we started, they had one young, barely broke, extremely fearful Quarter Horse.  Hardly material for group pleasure ride success! Stormy the been-there-done-that school horse joined the family.  The flashy but fiery Tommy “followed them home” from a [...]

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In uploading video from this weekends’ Cavalry demonstration, I noticed another example of natural horsemanship principles at work in the very unnatural setting of the sabre skirmish:         Watch the grey and the palomino. Notice their riders aren’t carrying weapons. (Notice, too, the grey starts out clearly saying “no way!” to the [...]

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The Horse Whisperer. Both history and the pop culture notion of natural horsemanship paint an image of the silent, mystical horseman whose mere presence calms the wildest equine outlaw. By using skills invisible to the average human, the horse whisperer inspires the most savage horse to willingly submit and perform any feat. People attributed this [...]

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Natural horsemanship pops up in the most unexpected places! Mark and I stopped in at the National Conservation Center for their Autumn Conservation Festival. The Center is located almost next door to Mark’s house, which we’ve been prepping for sale throughout the summer. Throughout the early 1900′s, the Center acted as a bustling Cavalry Remount [...]

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WOW! I would be speechless but the words tumble over each other in their hurry to get out. Stormy was AMAZING tonight. She could have been the poster pony for natural horsemanship! Now what made that training session extraordinary in my mind was this: through no fault of her own, Stormy’s training has been backburnered [...]

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Suzi invited us trail riding at Stoney Creek Farm when we first met Mikey, our large, lovely TB gelding. Today needed to bring home Cricket, the 6 year old appendix Quarter Horse mare. We used the extra trailer space to transform this task into an adventure! I had the tack loaded in the horse trailer [...]

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We woke before the sun to groom and load the horses. Ours was the first trailer to roll into the horse show grounds. I hopped on Gideon first, determined to give him the slow warm-up he responds so well to– and to avoid my mistakes from the county fair horse show. Lucy and Angus practiced [...]

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Despite visiting family, we managed to work in a quick trip to the Maryland/Pennsylvania Horse Show Circuit show. We brought along Angus, Lucy and Gideon. The show grounds offered an indoor and outdoor arena, and a large field to play in. We left Angus and Lucy contentedly munching hay at the trailer. We set off [...]

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