Author Archives: Janet Jones, PhD

True is progressing nicely in many ways and is still sticky in others. I’ll write a full assessment for you soon, and we will go back to the topics of...

So much of brain-based horsemanship depends on forming a bond of mutual trust between horse and rider. Every day, I am reminded that my methods of teaching a horse a...

A friend and I were walking along the other day with our horses. I had just rinsed True with water and a jelly scrubber—I rarely use soap because it strips...

Mr. True North outdid himself this week! With a series of calm attentive rides, he finally mastered the art of distinguishing between aids for the leg yield and aids for...

True fell in love with the little bay mare in an adjacent turnout about six months ago. “Fell in love” is a human phrase, of course. True stood as near her...

British equestrian Charlotte Dujardin withdrew from the Paris Olympics on Tuesday when a video showed her abusing a horse. The discovery marks a moment of deep sadness for horse lovers...

My own horses watch closely when they see me riding a horse in training. One of my former horses ran the fenceline whinnying for an hour the first time he...

Brain-based horsemanship offers a thousand reasons to slow down with horses, to give them more time to assimilate new knowledge. But every now and then, my human prefrontal cortex tells...

A lot of people ask me what sort of fly mask True wears and whether I leave it on at night. The answers? None and no. But you might be...

Too often, we forget to consider the basic building blocks of a horse’s training. I’m not referring to signals for “whoa” and “go” or to direct reining left and right....

I’ve been training True to observe, approach, and accept cows as described in my last few Horse Network articles. The sequence offers a concrete example of training a young horse...

Twice so far I have shared True’s experiences with cows. In my first article about it a couple of weeks ago, he produced a spectacular display of equine fear upon...

Last week, I described True’s first experience with cows. That event actually happened about a year ago. Three had escaped from a neighbor’s pasture and came within a few hundred...

Just when green horses begin to settle and learn, something unexpected jumps in the way. That’s a big part of training youngsters: getting them used to all the strange smells,...

I like to assess my horses’ progress every few months, as described previously in this column. Each time, I consider in detail what the horse has and has not learned,...

Sasquatch finally has hoof boots! You might recall from last week that True’s feet are very hard to fit because they are wider than they are long. Not to mention,...

Be careful if you ever get into a “discussion” with other horse people about the shod foot/bare foot controversy. Perfect strangers have scolded me loudly and in public at horse...

Lateral work is helpful in strengthening and suppling the equine body, and in teaching the horse more advanced moves in performance. Most people start moving a horse’s shoulders and hips...

Last week, we talked about teaching a horse to trot with you in groundwork, with crisp forward movement when you request it. But he also needs to back up when...

Last week, I introduced the basics of teaching True to stand still and respect human spatial boundaries on a halter and lead. Once he understood those foundations, we moved on...