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...
If you’ve logged into Jumpr App recently, you may have noticed things look a little bit different. A crisper, cleaner interface, for one thing, and new rider photos and timelines...
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...
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...
The following is an excerpt from Never Trust a Sneaky Pony, and Other Things They Did Not Teach Me in Vet School, by Dr. Madison Seamans, DVM. College for most...
Each spring, the best team and individual riders in the country are crowned in hunter-seat and western competition during the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association’s National Championship. As the cameras flash...
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...
Q: I see lots of horses—hunters, especially—jumping what feels like a lot of rounds, sometimes multiple divisions at shows. How much is too much? A: That’s a hard question, as...
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,...
If I had a dollar every time I uttered “Huh, I didn’t know that,” while researching stuff I’d be a very rich woman indeed. Hopefully, what I present to you...
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...
“He’s due for work.” “She might need injections.” “It’s time for some routine maintenance.” They’re all different expressions for the same, common veterinary treatment in horses. For many equine athletes,...
