All Blog Posts Tagged 'natural horsemanship' (128)

Building Equestrian Connection

This article is for those people who enjoy increasing their connection, performance and horsemanship from the direct experiences they share with their horses. If you don’t have a good relationship with your horse, all you need to do is change your viewpoint, step back and start at the beginning.

1. Do what you can do

2. Stay away from what you cannot do

3. Build on what you can do in each moment

4. If you hit resistance, change to a program that builds back… Continue

Added by Carolyn Resnick on May 19, 2010 at 10:00am — No Comments

A Conversation with Jessie

I was up at six and had the horses moved and Jessie saddled by six-thirty. Armed with with my index card of exercises, fresh from re-watching the DVD's for the ??th time, we were ready to go.

The first exercise, Yield-to-Stop at walk, trot, and cantor, went pretty well. Jessie stops easily and isn't crazy about yielding or flexing, but I could feel her trying and getting softer in the process. The next exercise is the same except I add a bending circle around my inside leg and her head… Continue

Added by John Harrer on May 13, 2010 at 1:11pm — No Comments

Learning From Horses

My family instilled in me that dogs learn fast, horses can too, and most animals seem to learn faster than humans. It was this idea that caused me when I was a child to understand that I needed to develop my ability to learn from horses so I could be on par with them.

Both sides of my family were horse lovers. The big joke in my family is that they were bound and determined to raise me to have an interest in horses, as if they could have stopped me. It is hard to say if… Continue

Added by Carolyn Resnick on May 12, 2010 at 10:00am — No Comments

Horse Rescue Series!

This is Horse Rescue at its finest!

Lindsey has a history of saving horses from auction sales that may have gone to slaughter. She retrains them and gives them a second chance at life.

Any horse can be a caring and willing partner if only the handler takes the time to connect with the horse and show them that humans can be great partners! As Gary Convery believed - there are no

bad horses, only humans who don't have the desire or…

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Added by Lindsey Forkun on May 9, 2010 at 5:30pm — No Comments

Natural Horsemanship Solutions: My horse tries to leave the ring!

How do you work with a horse that is trying to leave the ring?

First things first, why is the horse trying to leave the ring?

It sounds like you would benefit from bringing a coach/natural horsemanship expert to observe you and your horse to help diagnose the problem and fix it accordingly. Below are some tips and things to think about in the mean… Continue

Added by Lindsey Forkun on May 6, 2010 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Friendship and Communication with your Horse

Barefoot and Bridle-less

I feel strongly about this topic as I have a herd of fourteen warmbloods that have lived without bits and shoes. They are as God made them, living on 320 acres, of meadows, hills and rocky terrain,…

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Added by liz Mitten Ryan on May 5, 2010 at 2:13pm — No Comments

More on Stallions and Connection

Right, we were talking about stallions and that they can be difficult to handle, especially if they feel you don’t respect them or you try to lower their position. Instead of fighting with a stallion to gain control after the bond and respect have been established it is best to put them to a task that brings connection like the Uberstreichen exercises or ask for something you know would bring back his focus, which in turn will bring connection. Sometimes all that is necessary is… Continue

Added by Carolyn Resnick on May 5, 2010 at 10:00am — No Comments

A Little Riding - A Little Cleaning

Friday night we had tickets to the rodeo... It was fun except for the second bareback rider got hung up and then under his horse. They said he was okay, but they took him out by stretcher anyway. Those guys are crazy tough.

Saturday morning I had to get more hay. The rain and cool weather has limited the supply. Most farms are just now cutting their second, so I opted for getting more of last year's hay. It looks good.

We rode for about 2 1/2 hours Saturday afternoon. Mostly… Continue

Added by John Harrer on May 3, 2010 at 6:46pm — No Comments

Natural Horsemanship Solutions: Working with the head shy horse

When teaching a horse to be comfortable around their head, you need to remember two principles of natural horsemanship:

1) The reward is in the release: This means that when you are touching the horse, you

need to make sure you only stop touching when the horse is being

pleasant. If the horse were…

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Added by Lindsey Forkun on April 30, 2010 at 11:00pm — No Comments

How Mares, Geldings and Stallions Communicate

Today I would like to talk to you a little about mares, geldings and stallions and how they respond differently when communicating with us.

Mares can be moody. In these periods I find that if I take the time to connect with them slowly in the beginning before riding or training on the days they are moody, they will come around and forget…

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Added by Carolyn Resnick on April 28, 2010 at 10:00am — No Comments

Natural Horsemanship Solutions: Bending and Collection - How do I set my horses head?

We often can see rider's setting their horse's heads by pulling the reins back and forth and the horse ends up in a head set, without experiencing true collection.... so how can we get our horses to offer collection and a nice round head set?…

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Added by Lindsey Forkun on April 27, 2010 at 10:30pm — No Comments

Catching My Horse

I've only owned two horses (and my wife has owned two), I've played with a couple more and I'm relatively new to natural horsemanship (about 6 years). My point is, I'm not always sure if the behavior I see in my horse is due to my fab skills or just that I have a good horse (I'm fairly certain it's the horse). I don't really think it makes much of a difference as long as I am getting the behavior I want.

Here's what got me thinking about this: Catching my horse. I understand some folks… Continue

Added by John Harrer on April 22, 2010 at 2:44pm — No Comments

The Riding Quotient Report-When Less is Actually More

My trainer for many years would say, “You spend the first fifteen years of your riding career learning to do, the last seventy-five years is spent learning how to do less.” Intellectually, this made sense to me. But clarification and implementation of “doing IT with less” came from The Feldenkrais Method…

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Added by Suzanne DeStefano on April 21, 2010 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Nature Helps in Bonding with Horses

Horses prefer being with horses in the wild. The carrot of freedom and self direction and community of the herd is stronger than anything that people have to offer so to develop your bond of trust with your horse, rather than getting the horse to join you, why don’t you focus on joining…

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Added by Carolyn Resnick on April 21, 2010 at 10:00am — No Comments

Choosing a Horse to Suit You

Choosing a Horse to Suit You

There are three main criteria for judging the suitability of a horse for you: confidence, dominance, and sensitivity.

Confidence

Confidence can sometimes be described as bravery. It’s largely a product of environment, but horses are all born with different amounts of confidence. Some horses can build confidence more easily than others, and… Continue

Added by Lindsey Forkun on April 20, 2010 at 9:00am — No Comments

A Busy Weekend

Friday evening I got home in time for a short ride - which was perfect. We worked on riding out by ourselves. Everything is always scarier when we are alone. One of the houses along the canal we ride had goats tethered to keep the weeds and grass down. They were a very scary looking bunch. Jessie did well and as soon as she relaxed we turned around and headed back.

Saturday the weather was perfect and we decided to trailer out to the… Continue

Added by John Harrer on April 19, 2010 at 7:11pm — 2 Comments

Help Your Horse Jump - The Rider influences a horse's jump in many ways, learn how you can help your horse through your riding

Help Your Horse Jump

Jumping horses is an aspect of many equestrian disciplines and in many of these disciplines we often see a horse refusing, drifting, jumping crooked, taking a bad take off spot, or rushing the fence. Horses can make these mistakes when jumping for many reasons and the rider can be the cause of the mistake, more often than not. Riders can interfere in many ways with a horse’s jumping and it’s important that you have an… Continue

Added by Lindsey Forkun on April 12, 2010 at 9:30pm — 1 Comment

The Care and Feeding of Jessie and Dusty

Thought you might be interested in how we keep our horses. Here's a little run down:

We live in Southern California. We have two quarter horses on our 1/2 acre property. Each horse has it's own 40' x 40' pen. Unfortunately, we do not have cover for them yet. Our climate is temperate and our rainfall averages less than 6" a year. Both my wife an I work so we clean pickup the the manure twice a week Thursdays and Sundays. It's taken to the green waste facility. We use… Continue

Added by John Harrer on April 9, 2010 at 1:00pm — No Comments

Natural Horsemanship Solutions: Refusing and Rushing Fences - fix that jump!

Refusing and Rushing Horses

Having a horse refuse a fence can be a frustrating and a scary experience. It happens to the best of us and usually our first reaction is to blame the horse. Take a step back and look at it from the horse’s perspective. Leave your crop back in the barn so you’re not tempted to use it—a refusal is usually a message from your horse that there is some reason they cannot jump. Recognize the communication and try to figure… Continue

Added by Lindsey Forkun on April 8, 2010 at 9:30pm — No Comments

Spectacular Equine Behavior Achieved Through Copying

The story that I am going to share with you today is about a horse that you may have seen on some of my videos by the name of Panadero. He is an Andalusian Stallion and he is absolutely just the most expressive horse you could ever wish to meet.

Every day that I went out to see him he would run up to me and we would play this game where we used to run along the fence of his paddock. He would run along with me and then I’d ask him to leave and he would take off and run… Continue

Added by Carolyn Resnick on April 7, 2010 at 10:00am — No Comments