Articles

  • chestnut horse self loads at liberty into left side stall of a trailer while handler stands outside watching but not interfering. bay dressage competition horse trained with Positive Reinforcement

    A Tale of Poe – Part 4

    Spoiler Alert! In our next session, Poe got on the trailer all by himself,

  • a bay horse partially loaded into a white trailer with his nose near a white cone target

    A Tale of Poe – Part 3

    If Poe had the skills to load, but still wasn’t confident inside the trailer itself, what could we do to help him gain that confidence?

  • chestnut horse leads at liberty on reverse round pen with tall young woman in yellow shirt and riding helmet holding blue and white stick target

    A Tale of Poe – Part 2

    When I had asked Poe to get on the trailer and he refused, it was kind of like expecting someone who’d never diced an onion to throw a big dinner party.

  • Via Nova Assistant Trainer, Clara Mikovec and Dutch Warmblood, Poe.

    A Tale of Poe – Part 1

    I was incredibly frustrated that Poe wouldn’t get on this trailer because I “knew” that he “knew” how to get on a trailer.

  • Perfectly balanced Wooden scale with blocks marked with a minus sign on the left and a plus sign on the right

    Is it +R or R+?

    You Know It Means “Positive Reinforcement”, But Does the Plus Sign Come BEFORE or AFTER the R??!

  • art shot of bay horse head and shoulder from rear angle with rider’s leg and tall black boot, white glove, white breeches visible. High desert vegetation, sand colored arena and flag on pole out of focus in background. Competition horse trained with Positive Reinforcement, no whip no spurs

    No Spurs?

    The Journey to No Spurs We’ve had “No Stirrup November” for quite a while. Now there’s a new challenge: “No SPURS November.” I don’t ride my horse, Imagine Via Nova, with spurs now, not in November or any other month. I don’t need spurs to communicate to my partner what movement or transition I need…

  • A hand holding a round lens with focused image of two-track road through a field. The image appears to have been flipped so the lens image is right-side up and the blurry background is upside-down with the sky at the bottom of the image

    It’s Not Magic, It’s Behavior

    What do I mean by that? Each time you give an aid, you cue the horse to do something, right? Looking through a behavioral lens means studying the horse’s response, good or bad, to your cues. Looking through a behavioral lens means studying the horse’s response, good or bad, to your cues. When you start…