Observing Yourself

Showing someone a video of them playing with their horse or dog is priceless. We can feel as if our posture is just great, our body language clear, and our communication couldn’t be better… until we actually see it on video. People will raise their eye brows, mouths open, saying, “That’s how I look?” “Wow, I look down a lot.” …

Taming A Lizard?

My boyfriend has a wild baby lizard. Recently, he has started applying some of his newly-learned horsemanship skills when he handles her (picks her out of the aquarium). I have never heard of a lizard trainer, and I know that the “norm” is just to snatch the lizard up.”One day, it will just let you do that without running away!” …

Some New Inspiration

I get such a kick out of working with different animals and seeing how far we can go together, so it’s always inspiring to see others do the same! Here’s a video I found on Youtube. Hope it inspires you! Here is another update on my mustang halter project, Eclipse. He got his first ride this morning! It went so …

Picture Update

I took one of the “mustang girls” out the other day, along with my McNab puppy, and took some pictures!   Below: Spanish walk and smiling!  

“That Was The Way To Go!”

“You start something and maybe he thinks he needs to defend himself and then you quit while he’s still defending himself. Well then you told him, that was the way to go, that was the right approach. Whereas you get him to the point where he doesn’t need to defend himself anymore and then maybe you’ve encouraged him to start …

Limiting Ourselves

We can always advance and approve upon what we’re capable of. We either take it, or we slouch a bit and mumble, “Oh, you know, I’m not quite there yet. I wouldn’t be able to do that, because I’m not good enough. Maybe I’ll just stick with the basics for another year or two.” The funny thing is, if any …

Waiting

The best we can do to form a responsible, light partner (animal or human), is to set up scenarios and wait. You might miss your lunch because you’re waiting so long, but it pays off. We want to keep the lightness and not immediately go in with the big guns when someone doesn’t immediately respond. I get the best results …

A Bit Of Meditation

I found myself skimming through Karen Rohlf’s book Dressage Naturally (…Results in Harmony) this morning. On the last few pages, Karen shared this great, heart-warming meditation. We all have our ways of getting into a meditative state (in nature, with our animals, with friends and family, or completely alone). How we get there doesn’t really matter, but it benefits our …

Making It Their Idea

In life, if you can cause your idea to become the idea of others – you practically have the world handed to you on a silver platter. It’s a win-win in any scenario with both humans and animals. The other person or animal thinks they had this brilliant idea, which they did, but you also feel great. You feel great, …

Redirect

“It’s a matter of timing… to approach a horse with a so-called philosophy where you wait til the horse does something wrong and then you beat on him or punish him afterwards – it’s not even logical. Yet the horse isn’t so different from us – in order to learn, you have to make mistakes. Then you re-calibrate, make a …