Sometimes the hardest part of horse training is training the human. This problem shows up in many ways—we humans often reward at the wrong moment, apply different cues at once,...
It astounds me how little I know about the horse world. I have been involved with horses my whole life, though almost entirely on the English side of things and...
With the help of a grande vanilla latte, I like to get to barns early for lameness exams. I watch the sunrise, observe horses in pastures, ask questions about feeding,...
Two years ago, I had just purchased my then-three-year-old Warmblood True. He’d been with me for three months, and I took him to a small schooling show just to ride...
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...
My green Warmblood True, like most youngsters, has these beautiful lower legs with clear definition between his strong tendons that brings a smile to any jumping rider’s face. We protect...
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...
