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Stand Up for Spring Song

Here’s Spring Song with Sue Parker and me at the three month and 9 day mark in our 2014 American Horsewoman Challenge journey. A magazine based in Western Canada asked for a progress report from the three Canadian women in …

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Of Body Language and Blankets

A young American has been staying with me these last 10 days, on an impromptu kind of intensive crash course (with no crashes, mind!) in learning horse body language, then adapting long lining for horse therapeutic purposes. She will put …

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Hot, Hot, Hot!

This week was a scorcher. It was hot, humid and incredibly sticky. Thinking I was smart enough to beat the heat, I headed to the barn early this week, but the sun still made it there before me. Even before …

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Intro to Cowboy Dressage

Today was a lesson on Spring Song with Alex Reinfels. Ron Marino came to help set up the Cowboy Dressage Court. We used Dominique’s measuring wheel to help position the twenty poles in the correct locations.

Alex talked us through …

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Three Sitting

Watch Zelador, Pax and Zeloso sit on their bean bags.

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My Introduction to Liberty Work

Groundwork and free (liberty) work cunningly slid into what I thought was a reasonably well informed horse knowledge life ten years back, and I bless that then seemingly odd fascination, practicing now for that section of the ‘Challenge.

Personally, I …

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Low Note, High Note

This week’s ride started off on a low note. Really low. When my sister and I arrived at the barn early Saturday morning we quickly discovered there was a lot of commotion going on – dump trucks, tractors, quads and …

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Showing Off for the New Girl

I was riding Zelador and doing different tasks while Sue Parker led Spring Song (my three-year-old partner for the 2014 American Horsewoman’s Challenge). Zelador and I opened a “gate” made out of a few horse leg wraps (polos). Sue decided …

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Challenge Accepted

As photographs go, this looks like pretty dull material. A dark bay horse munching from a haynet, big deal.

In fact, it is a big deal and it’s taken a ton of being super aware, concentrating like crazy on horse-language …

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Does Zelador Really Know the Alphabet?

Recently Allen Pogue emailed one of the “Beautiful Jim Key” booklets from 1900ish. I read it several years ago and enjoyed rereading it. One section talks about Dr. Bill Key teaching the horse the letter “A”. I’ve attempted sporadically to …

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Spray Away

I hope you enjoyed my article in the July/August issue of Horse-Canada called “Make fly spray application a breeze” about using clicker training principles to help you get your horse comfortable being sprayed, and maybe even enjoy it!

Luckily, the …

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Working and Playing Together

It is always nice to get together with like minded individuals. At a recent gathering, six of us got together to play and help each other out with our training. To be able to work together, and help each other …

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Finally…A Bit of Rest

Here we are, after the 100 mile ride at Fort St John, B.C., where we achieved our CoC (certificate of capability) to represent Canada at WEG (World Equestrian Games), having a much needed rest.

It’s been a very busy time. …