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This vlog is based on the video clip where I have the opportunity to explain what I am doing and why.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y31TmgtaGjM

I have six barefoot horses and they are living together in a park where they have to walk a lot to keep their hooves in self trimmed.

I enter the park and the horses are very aware right in the moment I enter, my lead mare will usually come right away to be trained. I find just this a great pleasure.

I have worked with horses for a long time and always wanted to be able to create a program so that the horses really want to be trained. The mutual energy really grows from this.

My lead mare will come up and we will say hello (the horse will smell my hand) before she will follow me to where I am going to train her.

I start by connecting and take some time to find out how my horse feel today. I connect today by doing some companion walking that is to just walk together where I am at my horses shoulder and ask for walk and ask for halt, ask for walk and ask for halt. If my horse is connecting well I could give her a treat or I wait for a better connection or an initiative from the horse before she will get a treat. I use lots of treats when I train my horses.

We can do three speed of trot and walk and we are working on three speed of canter. Today we could get to two different speeds and the training was feeling very light. I usually train in very short sessions, the canter session today was between 5-10 minutes and when it goes very good I will change to do something else.

Before we are going to ride I want to be able to lead my horse on one line or two lines, the horse shall stay connected really listen to my voice and body language. You can say I am going for a total connection from the ground before I am going to ride. I did ride this mare a few times before, but it was not a pleasure not for me and certainly not for the horse.

This training you see in the video is training through The Carolyn Resnick Waterhole Rituals, when we are out walking you see me do Leading from Behind. Leading from Behind is taken from what lead horses do in nature and this ritual creates a willing horse. The other rituals are Sharing Space, Saying Hello, Eye Contact, Taking Territory, Companion Walking and Go Trot and Come Up. All these rituals are of equal importance. It is not possible to do one and not the other, it all goes together. The rituals are a way of being with horses, it’s also a way to help the trainer become a better leader the horse wants to follow.

We took a long walk in the nature and my mare is now so connected and responsive that we are very close to be able to ride connected.

There are a few more things we are going to work on before we can ride with only a neckrope in the beautiful nature that surrounds us, more about that in our next Vlog.