Fear, rising prices, and the pressure to maintain an adequate work/life/sport balance is leaving many amateur equestrians feeling the burn. So how do you know if it’s time to hit...
Brain-based horsemanship makes a person pretty skeptical about what horses do and don’t “like.” Without a prefrontal cortex that can evaluate and judge, horse brains are left to innate instincts...
What makes a chestnut horse a chestnut? I have written about roans, palominos, bays and Appaloosas and today I thought I’d add to the collection and talk about chestnuts. Chestnuts...
Innovation in the 21st century has reshaped society in ways good, bad, and largely still unknown. In addition to rapid gene sequencing (good!), AI (terrifying!), and space travel (we’ll get...
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, November is far from the most heinous month of the calendar year. February, for instance, is arguably much worse with its modest...
If you’ve read Horse Brain, Human Brain, you know that our human noggins are designed to rely on vision as their primary sense, but horse brains are ruled by smell. True,...
Sick horses are a lot like sick kids. Once one in the household catches a cold, it’s likely to spread through the entire family. When one horse shows signs of...
This week's theme is horses and numbers. What got me onto the topic in the first place was the word martingale. Confused? You're not alone. My original goal was to...
My green Warmblood True is doing well with his early hopping lessons, except for one little thing. I call it “crosspole roulette.” Crosspole roulette is evidently some kind of equine...
There are many things in this world with the word horse attached to them. Most we understand such as a sawhorse or horseradish, which I've written about. But then we...
Dana Hart Callanan is a successful hunter, jumper and equitation coach, an ‘R’ judge, and a sales broker. Here she answers common questions about A level sport. A: As a...
This is the second installment of "UK versus North America," which I’ve just deemed a mini-series. Last time, I started the post discussing whether you keep your horse at livery...
Forget no-stirrup-November. For many riders (**raises hand**) there is literally nothing scarier than trot jumps. Unfortunately for us, according to 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games Team gold medalist and 2018...
I’ve been avoiding the phrases "horse sense," "horse play" and "horse around" for a long time for a number of reasons. Mostly because they aren’t in common use anymore and,...
True, my young Warmblood, is trotting individual ground poles and sequences of up to four poles in a row, in both directions at various locations around the arena by now....
Writing a column like this, where one article follows another in perfect lockstep, suggests that horse training is a serial process. It’s as if my green Warmblood True learns one...
I made an observation while writing my last two articles and I admit, what you’re about to read is from the point of view of a slightly bitter woman. Just...
Q: Why do riders who are competing in the U25 division continue to compete in the equitation? Isn’t the whole point of the equitation division to prepare them the skills...
Don’t worry, we won’t be on poles forever. Last week, my four-year-old Warmblood True was clearing a three-inch raised pole by three feet. I redirected him to a different task...
