About time for an introduction! Meet April! The newest member of the grey liberty team. Straight off of the Kluver ranch in Colstrip MT. This 3/4 thoroughbred mare is bred for work. She’s intelligent, gritty, and good minded.
Check out her liberty progress in just a few sessions!
She’s taken a back burner to prioritize client horses, but she’s showing amazing aptitude for her new career!
Younger full siblings of hers are available, PM if interested.
First three rescues arrived! We partnered with Jeremy Richardson, who rescued these (and 13 more) wildies down south, to get these cuties halter broke and adopted. Can’t wait for work on Monday!
Team Refinement
Slowing things down for refinement. Getting better quality maneuvers means it doesn’t always look big and impressive… sometimes it’s actually a little boring. Taking the time and having patience for the small steps makes all the difference in the final result.
The Beauty of R+
And incredible moment executed by my assistant.
Haylee has completely transformed her horse through liberty and positive reinforcement training.
In only a few months she’s taken a horse that was hard to catch, flighty, and extremely weary of people to a horse that is eager to work, creative, connected, and seeking new answers.
Before tonight Brandy had never been willing to lay down to roll with a human even in the the arena. After a single session of positive reinforcement training Haylee was able to ask her to lay down on cue. Not once did Brandy disconnect while she carefully searched for her answer at liberty.
Congratulations to this team, the future is bright!
If you’d like to learn more about how positive reinforcement can better your relationship come to our ladies night demonstration! Thursday January 11th in Belgrade MT!
Flawless transition from dog to horse thanks to my amazing assistant behind the scenes! #dogandponyshow #goodboy #libertyhorsemanship #trickdogs #trickdogtraining
Got my patterns submitted for the April online ILHA show…. and now it’s time to rest!
Time for my official maternity leave to begin 😌
I’ll still be available for any questions and future booking but will otherwise be off
See you in July!!
Avalon update: sad to see her go but glad she’s gone to a good home and gave her owners the 💵 they deserved for her. Congrats K’Lee and Dylan I know it wasn’t an easy decision
June is making tons of progress!
As I await baby #2’s arrival I’ve slowed down a bit and been focusing a lot on the grey team. We’ve been alternating liberty and long lining every other day (with an occasional ride thrown in) and both have been steadily improving
Looking forward to performing with both in 2023!!
PS Lenny has been healthy and is still enjoying liberty work, he will likely join us for some performances and demos as well as long as he says he’s up for it
Gelding a Recently Gentled Horse: Fear Free
Spartan has been an incredible challenge and learning experience for me and the team.
He came to me sold as a feral 4 yr old gelding that had started the gentling process
It quickly became apparent that everything I was told couldn’t be further from the truth.
After first finding out he was a stallion and second realizing he’d clearly never worn a halter; I had the goal of halter breaking and using R+ methods to teach him to willingly take oral and injected medications so we could get him gelded fear free.
Once he was down to be gelded we got to do a thorough check for the first time and discovered he was also much older than we had thought and may have old injuries from failed attempts to take control of him.
The video shows our successful fear free gelding experience. Although I’m sad to know that he’s had a rough life prior to coming into my hands, myself and my team have worked very hard to give him the best shot at a happy and fulfilling life moving forward.
Glad to finally have a happy and healing gelding on my hands.
August: Liberty Session 1
My first liberty session with August! How it started to how it ended after about 25min. I’m going to do my best to document his progress on here so stay tuned! Very excited about this little guy.
Using R+ to teach Spartan to voluntarily take oral medications. #fearfree #positivereinforcementtraining
Using R+ to teach Spartan to voluntarily take oral medications.
Although the video quality isn’t great I thought it would be nice to share some raw footage of my second Liberty session with Jedi.
Jedi has a great foundation of training and has always had a positive relationship with people. As he gets older we have started to notice what originally seemed like the attention span of a baby horse has turned into him believing that the release of pressure is away from his rider.
What I mean by this is that he is seeking out the release often with his friends or outside of the arena instead of staying focused on what’s being asked of him.
For a while it seemed that he had a short attention span so we remedied the situation with short effective sessions. Now it’s becoming clear that he’s wanting to opt out of certain tasks instead of being a willing participant.
At just over 19.1 hands you can imagine how that could become problematic.
This is something I’ve found common in many of the draft horses that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Their natural instinct is to pull and so often they use that instinct to try and find the release of pressure.
I’m finding liberty work to be incredibly effective to keep draft horses engaged in their training. Where classic training methods of using physical pressure and release fail these large and incredibly strong animals, liberty fills the gap and encourages them to engage and enjoy working with their people.
It’s exciting to start this journey with Jedi and see how it will eventually translate into his riding. I plan on using concepts of liberty to help him with his barn and buddy sour habits. I truly believe this will make him a much more willing participant moving forward.
In this footage you can see his first liberty circles and changes of direction. I see moments where my movements weren’t as smooth as I’d like but he gracefully overlooked those and stayed engaged. I can tell that I have to change my whip position to compensate for his size (and my lack
Trainers eye view, Liberty with the best girl #libertyhorse #azteca #andalusian
Been a while since I had a good horse post! June is making phenomenal progress with her liberty work. I’m so impressed and pleased. We’re starting to use smaller whips and we’ve got a good handle on our stop cue. Such a good girl 🥰 #libertyhorse #aztecahorse #andalusian
Can’t thank Dan James @doubledanhorsemanship enough for all he taught me at the recent clinic. Liberty has never felt better!
Little bit of horse training from the last week (or so). Couldn’t be more proud of these horses and my crew. We’re busy, sweaty, and tired but wouldn’t trade this life for anything.
Desensitizing to bear spray (don’t worry this in an inert training can). This was Avalon’s first time seeing it and the biggest reaction she had! Soon I’ll be trying it off of her back, gotta stay safe in grizzly country!
Dialing in the basics of leading. I’m very proud of this mare. #fjordhorse #horsetraining
Oh the drama 😂 I sure do love these two. Maverick always seems to be a little “extra” with everything... but thats what makes him so lovable.
