Passionate Way Horsemanship, LLC

06/24/2024

06/24/2024

I always leave the horse with clarity... When I help depends on the state of struggle in the exercise.

It is also a promise I make to the person that I will always rescue them if they feel themselves getting too frustrated.

I also will step in and help the horse if the horse becomes too emotional.

The one promise I always keep with my horses is that I will never leave them in a scattered frame of mind.

06/23/2024

Getting my pastures mowed today!

06/23/2024

Oh Faith... 🥴 Second kick my poor leg got from her.

This time it was a knee jerk response to being UP and spooky. She spun, while her owner was managing her, as the ribs came my way I tried to push away, but she tagged me on my departure.

It was a knee jerk situation, but I won't say completely innocent. I'm sure she felt it was a bonus to get to tag me. She didn't set out to kick me, you know, she didn't LINE ME UP, but I doubt she's feeling bad... 😂

06/23/2024

🐎 SENSORY SENSITIVITY CONSIDERATIONS 🐎

06/22/2024

YOU DON'T HAVE A HOSE REEL? TRY THIS EASY SOLUTION

06/21/2024

Waiting for the VIP spot

06/21/2024

🐴 HELP AN OVERACHIEVER 🐴

Sometimes a horse wants so badly to do something well, that they give you more than you are actually asking for. This too requires communication.

If the horse is overachieving, they are in the game, they are trying, the WANT to do good. The last thing you want to do to be "corrective", yet you really need to tone down how much they bring to the table.

How do you correct without breaking the desire to please? How can you explain that they bring TOO MUCH, but you love their try? How can you ask them for less without making them feel wrong in moments that they are learning to be proud of themselves?

This is where LOVE actually can be a correction... I loved on her, to give her an understanding of "stop here", I don't need you to keep coming with more.

If I had poked her, shook the rope or even verbalized some sort of correction, some sort of criticism, I could have been instrumental in grooming doubt in her mind that she wasn't even right at all.

06/21/2024

🐴👁️🪰 EYE CARE DUE TO FLY IRRIGATION 🪰👁️🐴

06/21/2024

🐎🍼🎓 PLEASE PLEASE PUT YOUR BABY HORSES IN EARLY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS 🎓🍼🐎

I am sure you could interview many trainers who would say, with genuine sadness, that the confused, angry, defensive, aggressive, scared, and simply put, dangerous horse, that they've been asked to "fix", didn't have to be the way they were.

If they had been in some sort of Early Development Program when they were as little as still beside their mammas, they'd be confident, calm, clear minded, level headed, responsive, and even agreeable to try new things.

I cannot stress enough the value of guiding babies, through a true structured program, to be well rounded, happy horses!

Of course they have short attention spans for too much detail, but add play and they'll hang out all day, eager to learn!

06/20/2024

Yesterday I posted one of the videos of this very emotional mare's journey learning to believe in human guidance. This was a great example of progression. I have the whole series posted, yet it would likely be a bit of a hunt. Her name is Penny, if you want to search her name specifically, you might find videos of where she first started this TRUST journey with me.

06/19/2024

🐎 HELPING EXPLAIN THE WORLD TO EMOTIONAL HORSES THROUGH THE USE OF PUZZLES 🐎

I am absolutely passionate about the incredible value puzzles have in educating our horses. Not only do puzzles create a fun "playtime" to look forward to, but they help develop trust and language skills between a human and a horse.

When I work with people in puzzles, it tends to be an eye-opening experience for the person. They get to see how much we say without meaning to, and how little we say, while assuming the horse should just KNOW.

I feel like puzzles can almost be like "family therapy" sometimes. It gives the horse a chance to show you that they try, but you don't see that they did do exactly as you asked. You just didn't know you asked for what they properly did. Sometimes they try to tell you that they're not trying to be bad, but they just don't understand what you're asking them to do.

I find that working with people and their horses, doing puzzles, also helps people "turn down the volume". I know they don't set out to start every conversation yelling at their horse, but sadly many do. Body language and energy are remarkably powerful. I'm passionate about helping people tap into that power and turn all the noise into a whisper.

Penny here, she clearly had been in a "yelling" environment before coming to PWH. Mind you, this is a statement offered in defense of the innocence of the under educated. I am not saying she was abused, I'm saying, Penny is a sensitive horse who feels things to the core and cannot handle indefinable energy. Simply said, it scares her. Living in a state of fear has left Penny a basket case, for lack of a better way to put it.

I used puzzles to help Penny find a connection with me, in trusting that I have calm, direct, clear, defined and patient instruction, and if she can just pause her frantic mind for a split second, things can make sense. With a steady diet of puzzles, Penny can learn that at least, for now, one human is trying to support her mentally AND emotionally.

06/19/2024

🐎 WITH CONSISTENCY YOUR HORSE CAN LEARN A RAISED EYEBROW 🐎

I know you're like what? A raised eyebrow?

Yeah, it brings me back to my childhood, when my mother would want to make sure we knew she disapproved if something that we were doing, yet didn't want to verbalize, or physically act on correcting us. She would simply look at us with "that look", and raise one eyebrow. That was our very strong warning that we were to stop doing whatever it was that we were doing.

We didn't usually challenge the raised eyebrow.

With consistency you can teach your horse how to properly respond to a raised eyebrow too! This video of Ritz this morning , is a perfect example. All I did was stop my feet and he said, "What might I have done wrong here?"

It made him stop and realize that his agenda to get into the stall, to get to his breakfast, clouded his understanding of what the rules were, and what his job, before he got to the stall was. My stopping is all I needed to do to make him say, "uh-oh!"

I didn't need to say anything. I didn't need to physically do anything. I didn't do anything but stop my feet, and wait. That is equivalent to my mother raising her eyebrow.

With consistent training about what the rules are, and the non-negotiables about the rules, the black and whiteness of the rules, you can create horses that can think through your raised eyebrow.

06/18/2024

🐎 PUZZLES CAN BE FUN, UNTIL THEY'RE NOT 🐎

Focusing on the big picture can sometimes make you forget about the horse. That's why I always go over what the elements of a puzzle are, making sure my horse can complete each element, AWAY from the puzzle first.

It seems, that once you get into the puzzle, the focus becomes about completing the puzzle, and very often the horse is left in a fog.

When the bigger picture gets too overwhelming, pause and make sure you haven't left your horse behind. Pause, and check in with your horse. Is he high headed? Are his eyes wide and unblinking? Did he get fire in his feet, and start to enter "flight mode"?

We need to stay "piece by piece" present. We need to plan the next move, before looking at the finish line.

If we find our horses dangling over the edge, completely overwhelmed and only hoping this playtime would soon end, STOP and break it back down to individual pieces.

You can always rip apart your puzzles, reach clarity on the ONE piece that you, or your horse, have been struggling with, and THEN try to put the puzzle back together. This is supposed to be fun... FOR YOU BOTH!

06/18/2024

YOU CAN HAVE AMAZING SUCCESS WHEN YOU TEACH YOUR HORSE TO THINK

06/18/2024

They always say tie horses high and dogs low. When do you think it's a good time to keep the rope low with a horse?

I'll give you two examples

The following video is one example. The baby went to walk away, and I needed to get control of her nose to turn her back.

Whenever a horse can get their nose, even slightly tipped away from center, they gain leverage and absolute control of the direction their feet can go.

It's very hard without good techniques and even sometimes equipment, like a rope halter versus a nylon flat halter, to regain control once the horse "gets a hold of their nose".

To correct this, think ropes low. Think get their nose low and tipped back. Also think low because horses will resist your efforts to regain control of the nose and throw their heads up. If they throw their head up with even minimal forward momentum, they can VERY EASILY flip over, especially if they get the rope up and over their back.

If you watch movie horses, that are in war scenes, watch how they make the horse fall... Yep, you guessed it, they tip the nose UP AND BACK.

Another time I want you to think ropes or reins low, is when executing the "one rein stop". It has to be taught out of you, to not want to pull up, towards your collarbone. You need to think low, get the horse's nose to my toe, not even to my knees, low.

In order to insure you get the right message, I always have called this practice, "save your hiney". If you think to bring the rein to the back of your saddle and NOT up to your chin, you can train yourself to avoid accidentally flipping your horse over.

06/17/2024

HAVING FUN WITH SIMULATIONS

Sometimes the best thing, for both the horse and the handler, is to try to work out the kinks without impacting the relationship. If we're fumbling a bit, and sending mixed communications, our horse doesn't actually understand. Not to mention during moments of frustration, and blurry understanding of something still, on the part of the handler, it's easy to lose control of peaceful FAIR energy.

Taking a minute to enlist a friend to play a game. Try to get someone, that you can apologize to, to help you by pretending to be your horse. Allowing yourself the freedom to fail, without impacting the horse's feelings ABOUT you. This is such a great way to smooth out any bumps that YOU keep running into.

Try it... it's usually God for a few belly laughs too!

06/17/2024

06/15/2024

The Electric Fence Effect

Sometimes people think that I stand for all love, pets and carrots when it come to working with horses, right? That I'm always just trying to sympatheticly understand WHY he was bad, instead of correcting the legit bad behavior.

No... I very much believe that there are non-negotiables. I believe that there are things that need to be made clear in single lesson experiences, as things that are NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Things like when your horse knows the routine, but does something dangerous in effort to satisfy his interests. Routines like "turn in", where your horse knows that another horse goes out of the gate first, and then you will come back for him. The horse left behind KNOWS that you will return, it is very much an established routine.

Every once in a while, like this morning, one horse will try to glue himself to the horse that was being brought out of the gate.

Here's a quick visual: Have you ever been that "nice" person in traffic willing to let a waiting truck out of a side street, only to have two trucks come out? You feel like you got tricked into letting two out, because the truck in the back somehow seemed to glue himself to the truck you WERE letting out?

That's kind of what Dewey tried to do this morning. Now something like that is a non-negotiable! Something like that isn't a, you know, "Let me sit down here and figure out the psychology of this behavior."

The psychology of this is, he's trying to sneak out the gate. He's doing something potentially very dangerous... that's the psychology of that.

And THAT'S a non-negotiable.

So I have to tell him that trying to sneak out of the gate with another horse is not negotiable. That's when I create something that makes it an electric fence. I believe in the "electric fence effect" over "after the fact" correction. I believe if you can make a horse THINK that he did something to himself, during an effort to do something undesirable, you can correct it a lot faster than you can correct something through retaliation... through discipline after the fact.

Here's where I would act like an elevator door TOWARDS him, or that RAILROAD CROSSING GATE that comes down mercilessly. See, "I was closing the gate, I wasn't expecting you to be coming out of the gate.

You... walked... into... my hand."

Because we met each other in that halfway point, he believes he did it to himself. He believes that that's something that happened to him as a result of what he was doing, not something that I did to him.

Same thing when I teach young horses not to bite, or any horse actually,

I learn a "biter's" pattern. I learn what triggers them to try to bite so I can set them up.

Let's say a horse is known to be girthy or cinchy. You know, from experience, that they're going to swing around and bite you when you touch the girth. The behavior is an established pattern and something you can predictably use to your advantage, when trying to fix the very same behavior.

What I do to set them up is, I stand on the left side of the saddled horse. I stand angled a little closer to the front of the horse, versus standing directly AT the girth. I plan on touching the girth with my right hand, perhaps mimicking tightening it. Then when, as predicted, the horse goes to swing his head around in a bite strike way, I meet his nose halfway. In other words, I take my left hand and stretch it in the direction of where the nose is coming from and plan to connect with the nose in a "ran into you" kind of way. This is way different than a "hit". The horse is going to run into your hand, you didn't haul off and hit the horse. In this case, the horse will think he ran into you, that he did it to himself. This works about as well as watching a horse put his nose on an electric fence, they USUALLY won't do it twice.

Now, like I said, this is different than a retaliatory hit. If you retaliate, after the fact, then that is actually viewed as an exchange between you and the horse. That could very easily result in a more aggressive bite strike or a whole new game of, "How fast can I bite you and get away?"

Anything that is dangerous and really shouldn't be given a "learning curve", is handled with some sort of "electric fence effect". You want it to be a one time experience where the horse recognizes that it is something he would NOT want do again. When he choose to not put his nose on an electric fence twice, it's because he believed it to be the best choice, not something he was disciplined for.

Pictured below is an example of how solid those "electric fence" experiences, (lessons) can be. Clearly Teddy learned, at one point, that he wouldn't want to put his nose, or any part of this body, against that electric fence. It is his choice to stay where he is, and he likely only ever touched an electric fence ONCE in his life.

06/15/2024

🧩 PUZZLE TIME WITH PWH 🧩

Can you and your horse do this one? We'd love to see. Prop your phone up on the fence and record a short video and share it here!!!

06/15/2024

PLAYING WITH TYSON OFF OF KATIE

🐎 HORSING AROUND WITH PWH 🐎

This is only the second time I have ever tried to use Katie as the saddle horse, while working with another horse. And... Tyson has some strong PTSD from early life abuse at the hands of multiple trainers who never investigated if his behavior was PAIN related!

It was... He had sustained a broken back (in two places) some time when he was a foal. The vet believed it could have even been at birth.

Tyson found me, I cared to investigate and with a cross my heart, I promised him that no one would ever hurt him again.

That was 16 years ago!

06/14/2024

🐎 🐎 I teach lessons. I do clinics and workshops. I train horses for people and help people learn how to train them for themselves.

I guess that's my product or service, but my business isn't to sell you anything.

I am incredibly passionate about wanting to help people experience a connection with horses the way that I do.

It's not about just having a bag full of cues, that the horse is trained to respond to. It's a language so clear, that you have no doubt that you are having a conversation with your horse 🐎 🐎

06/14/2024

HORSING AROUND WITH PWH

This is a great exercise for trust building. In order for her to successfully back into the stall with me behind her, she had to trust my guidance. It is also a great exercise to help them learn the value of listening FOR that guidance. Learning that IF they listen, you might actually be trying to help them!

I left the last piece without narration... Can you SEE the whole conversation?