Cedar Grace Farm

02/26/2025

Littles brushing Patches tail!🐴❤️

02/08/2025

What NOT to do

🚫 This is NOT good horse training. 🚫

I’ve been seeing this trend pop up more and more—the whole “if you spook at it, it’s now your hat” approach—and I want to make it crystal clear: this is harmful, not helpful, even if the image is just intended as a joke.

This isn’t training. It’s flooding.

When you force a horse to wear or be trapped by something they’re afraid of without proper desensitization, you’re not helping them overcome fear—you’re overwhelming their nervous system. What often looks like “success” in these videos is actually a horse that’s entered a freeze response, not a calm, confident horse. That’s not learning. That’s learned helplessness.

Dr. Temple Grandin’s research on animal behavior teaches us that fear responses are hardwired into animals like horses. They’re prey animals—spooking is a survival mechanism, not a behavior that needs to be “fixed” through force or punishment. Instead of punishing that instinct, we should be teaching horses that they’re safe through gradual exposure and thoughtful desensitization.

Think of it like shaking a bottle of soda.
🍾 If you keep shaking without pause—adding stress on top of stress—and then suddenly take the cap off, what happens? It explodes.
🍾 But if you shake the bottle gently and release a little pressure at a time, the soda settles.

The same applies to horses:
Add small amounts of stress, then give them a chance to process and relax before adding more. That’s how you create true confidence.

So no, if my horse spooks at something, it’s not going on their head. I’m going to take the time to show them it’s safe through small, manageable steps that build trust—not fear.

Let’s expect horses to act like horses.
Let’s train with empathy, understanding, and patience.
Because our goal shouldn’t be a horse that gives up—it should be a horse that feels safe.

02/04/2025

10/28/2024

Difficult horses expose you for the rider and trainer that you are.

They highlight your inadequacies and showcase them for everyone to see.

They get louder if you refuse to listen.

They will embarrass you, humble, you, infuriate you but, also, they will teach you. If you let them.

Horses who refuse to succumb to forceful pressures and instead fight back often aren’t the most liked horses.

How we respond to these horses exposes a lot about us and where we are in our horsemanship journey.

If we let our ego run the show, we can quickly resort to toxic attitudes that blame the horse and cause us to respond in anger.

We may stereotype the horse off of their breed, color, s*x, or whatever trait we can grasp to try to blame. ie: “she’s such a chestnut thoroughbred mare, that’s why she’s being such a witch!”

While this may provide temporary relief and it takes the focus off of how we are creating negative behaviour in the Horse, it stunts our growth.

And it soothes our ego at the expense of the horse.

It’s easy to like horses who do what we want.

Who are simple, uncomplicated, easy to push and get the answer we want.

But, how we respond to the horses who won’t do that perhaps says the most about us as a human.

The empathy and compassion with which we can approach the difficult horse speaks volumes about our own ability to emotionally regulate and how we show up as a rider and/or trainer.

One of the most telling things about a trainer may just be how they behave when things don’t go their way.

How do they treat the horses who don’t respond well to their methods?

Do they get angry and try harder to force a result?

Or do they pause, recalibrate and find a new approach?

10/01/2024

😳😂

05/23/2024

First Day of Summer Fun!!

05/16/2024

Thanks Everyone for my Bday Wishes!!💚💜💙

04/02/2024

First really warm day of spring.

05/26/2023

Developing Empathy

Frustrated by your horse? Try this---

Go for a run. Yes, you, human rider. Intersperse your run with sets of push-ups. See how long it takes before you lose athletic buoyancy, before you “just can’t.”

Fatigue in a horse, which is pretty much the same thing that you just felt, creates leaning, tripping, stumbling, slow reactions, poor coordination, lugging on the hand, all sorts of what you may be mistaking for “bad behavior.”

The tired horse will feel just like a “disobedient” horse. And then what will happen to that horse if the rider doesn’t tune into the horse’s fatigue? You know exactly what will happen to the horse. It will get drilled on. Drilled on just when the exact opposite should happen.

Trainers who lack the ability to sense what the horse is going through are among the worst drillers, and they create tense, scared, resistant horses, and they then do something even worse, they blame the horse.

Change your mind set. Think how YOU would feel if you had gotten beyond your limits and then got ground on and punished to fix your bad behavior.

You think I’m kidding? You think this isn’t going to happen today, all across the world where people ride and drive horses? That unfit for the task horses won’t be cranked and pressured? Dream on.

The best thing that you can do if your goal is to become a competent trainer is to constantly be aware of your own frustration meter. And stop before you create damage, physical and emotional injury and distress. Get a little and end on that. If even a little seems elusive, DO NOT GRIND. Go walk, try again tomorrow. Don’t add fear and anxiety to the training process.

I will say this one more time---“Don’t add fear and anxiety to the training process.”

Why am I saying this so often? Because if I had learned this decades sooner, I would have been a far better trainer and horse person---That’s why. Learn, if you are capable of doing so, from the mistakes that others have made. Do not drill your horse.

01/15/2023

08/02/2022

😂

When you need to cheaply MacGyver something up to keep your horses cool, here’s a rig with just a 2”x2”x8’ piece of wood, 2 screws, a hose, and an $8 lawn sprinkler. If you like, just add a roughly $20 battery-powered digital sprinkler timer to save water. Also helps hooves from cracking, chipping, and drying out. Harv and Hank approve!

06/22/2022

DANGER…A HEEL CRACK is a WARNING SIGN. See the following example provided by: Josephine Trott, PhD UC Davis during a clinical trial of No Thrush powder

06/15/2022