Equiosity

Goblins and Ghosts - Oh My Oh My! What do you do when your horse spooks? That’s the opening question of this podcast. We explore what it means to be a constructional trainer. You want to build the skills you’re going to need BEFORE you need them. A great skill building exercise is the creativity game: “101 Things a Handler Can Do While A Horse Stands on a Mat.” We describe how you can use this to...

It’s spring here in the Northeast which means the Siren’s call of the grass is pulling at our horses. In this podcast we talk about how to turn the grass from a distraction into a reinforcer. That takes us to the general training principle of “Train where you can, not where you can’t.” We define Loopy Training and look at how that teaching strategy can help create clean training. Be sure to listen...

How well does your horse adjust to change? When you take your horse on a weekend outing or you move him to a new barn, how well does he settle in? Do you recognize his signs of stress and do you adjust your expectations based on his needs? These are just a few of the threads we follow in this week’s conversation. We wind our way around to the homecoming many of us find when we begin to explore cli...

Have you ever gone on a treasure hunt? A good treasure hunt should follow the Goldilock’s principle. If the clues are too hard, you’ll become frustrated and quit. If the clues are too easy, there’s no pleasure in solving them. When the clues are just right, at first they puzzle you. What does this clue mean? What is the answer? And then you get it. That little feeling of frustration turns to pleas...

Clicker training lets us work so effectively at liberty should we even put leads on our horses?  If we do, how do we use them? How do we turn rope handling into a clicker-compatible tool?  These are some of the many questions we explore in Part One of a two part series on rope handling.  In this podcast we talk about the "dance" that evolves out of good rope handling.  Used well, the lead becomes...

This episode is packed!  It's as though we used an over-sized suitcase and had three people sitting on it to get the lid to close!  It is stuffed full of good things.  In this episode we talk about each of the six foundation lessons of clicker training.  I won’t list them here. You’ll be learning about each one in the podcast.
 
 The foundation lessons let us respond to the emotional needs of our...

After taping episodes 1 and 2, we took a short break from our conversation and went for a walk with Dominique’s dogs.  When we came back, I asked Dominique to share a story she had just told me about how she solved the dilemma of getting her dogs to come in at night.  This relates to all of us who have eager clicker learners who don’t want the training sessions to end.  
 
 Several more stories fo...

This podcast is packed! We start off by talking about the bonds horses form with one another and how important it is to support and protect the friendships horses form.  Then we move on to a discussion of smart learners, enthusiasm and the need to develop calm, settled behaviors to create emotional balance.  That leads us to a discussion of mats: how to train them, how to use them.  
 
 Still with...

This first podcast focuses on the importance of building a relationship with the animals you train. That seems a very appropriate topic for our first episode. Come get to know us as we introduce you to Pellias and Elyan, my two cashmere goats. We’ll also be talking about horses, relationship building, control and choice. These are topics that are getting serious scientific attention these days, an...