Be Your Best Horsemanship

When I first started out as a trainer, the only thing I trained was rope horses. While I still train a lot of horses that go on to excel in various roping disciplines, I've learned that the techniques I use to train roping horses are beneficial for horses in other disciplines as well.  On this episode, I'm sharing a few training methods specific to the roping pen that help a horse recognize y...

Pulling back is a topic that is important to discuss for your safety and the safety of others. The first step to overcoming the habit of pulling back is to understand why horses do it in the first place. Pulling back is a reactive response, just like running away, bucking or rearing. It is a defense mechanism that a horse engages when it feels restricted or claustrophobic. On this episode, I'm sha...

"My horse works great at slower speeds, but when I ask for a little more, everything falls apart." Have you ever asked for a little more speed from your horse only to feel like you went all the way back to square one? If so, you're not alone.  The thing to remember is that there’s a difference between falling back to square one and having a moment where you are back at square one. When the wh...

I believe that there are varying degrees of reactive responses. And, I truly don’t think that horses display undesirable responses just to spite us. These reactive responses are simply a horse’s method of communicating that they are scared or insecure with the situation that they are in. Once you reframe your mindset to understand why these horses react in the ways they do, you are one step closer...

In my part of the world, I think most people consider a ‘colt’ to be 2-3 years old. However, in my barn, I would argue that 6 can very well still be considered a colt. I find that a lot of people use age as the sole determinant of where a horse should be in its training career. However, there are so many more factors that should influence our perceptions and expectations of where a horse ‘should’...

One of the most common body position errors I see is uneven weight distribution. This shows up frequently when a horse is entering a turn. Poor body position will often cause a horse to drop its shoulder to the inside or, alternatively, the shoulder will fall to the outside. In either case, the horse is not in an optimal position to maintain balance and power leaving that turn. In this episode, I...

Two very powerful parts of the horse's body--the shoulders and the hindquarters--are connected by the horse’s ribcage. If the ribcage does not communicate with these other two body parts, it is very difficult to create a fluid forward motion with your horse. On this episode, I’m sharing my methods for establishing better control of your horse’s ribcage and how this can benefit your horse’s body po...

In my experience as a clinician, insecurities, doubt, and lack of self-confidence are the #1 issues that come up for trainers. There are so many things that go on in our lives that naturally create insecurity. There are drawbacks. There are failures. There are days when you feel challenged beyond what you can handle. I don’t know that you ever truly eliminate insecurity--but you can learn to contr...

A few weeks ago, my family and I took a trip to North Dakota to celebrate the 2021 North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame induction ceremony. I was honored and blessed to be part of this group of inductees, and with this honor came the opportunity to give an acceptance speech. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to include in my speech, and it ended up evolving into a story about a series of sma...

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for very long, you’ve probably heard me reference the “1% rule” a time or two. This is the philosophy we carry around our training facility to remind us to strive for incremental growth of 1% better every day. Each person is going to have their own definition of what 1% improvement looks like in their training program. On this episode, I am breaking down th...

“Triggers” are certain occurrences or exercises that dictate which state of mind your horse is in. Triggers can work two different ways -- they can either trigger a reactive response, or they can trigger a horse to engage the “thinking” side of its brain. On this episode, I'm sharing my methods for overcoming negative triggers and reinforcing positive triggers to create an animal that is more awar...

Speed is a reactive response. When horses are faced with dangerous situations, their first line of defense is to run away. Every time we ask for our horses to display more speed, we are engaging their instinctive “flight” mechanism. This means that we have even more reactive tendencies to manage. With this in mind, the importance of maintaining control of speed and direction is even more imperativ...

Horsemanship is the reflection of excellent communication between horse and rider. Excellent communication is the understanding of how to get more response with less effort. When training, we teach the horse to search for the release. But, we also want to teach them to find this release with the least amount of pressure possible. On this episode, I'm explaining how a few of our key fundamental exe...

Understanding a horse’s self-preservation instincts is a key part of the horsemanship journey. Reactive responses, such as anxiety in the trailer, pawing when tied up, fighting the bridle, or bucking, are each an extension of a horse’s natural survival instincts. When a horse demonstrates these reactive tendencies, the goal is to turn these trigger points into safe spaces. On this episode, I am di...

Over time, there have been truly great horses in every era. One thing that sets the current era apart from others is access to knowledge. Now, more than ever before, we have easily-accessible resources that help us build our knowledge and understanding of how to develop our horse’s potential. Our job is to apply simply this knowledge. On this episode, I am sharing the top 3 things I believe it tak...

Many of us are training under some sort of deadline--whether that is a self-imposed deadline or a deadline that is dictated by a certain event, such as a futurity. When we are faced with a deadline, we tend to feel increased pressure to make our horses "great" in a shorter amount of time. When we are so focused on where we want to be, it can be easy to lose sight of the system it takes to produce...

Every horse owner, rider, and trainer goes through a similar process on their journey to better horsemanship. Some may be in a season where they are just looking for that one thing to add to their toolbox to maintain the high level that they are at, where others may be looking for a few tools to get their toolkit started. Regardless of where you’re at along this journey, many of us have the same s...

Setting goals is easy. Achieving these goals, on the other hand, can be more challenging. Sometimes, it’s not always the fear of failure that gets in our way--it’s the fear of success. As high achievers, we tend to set such big goals for ourselves that the thought of achieving them can become intimidating, overwhelming, or even unrealistic. When we get overwhelmed by our goals, we can become paral...

One of the biggest limiting factors I see in performance horses is a lack of collection. And, I believe this starts with a misconception of what collection really is. On this episode, I am debunking some common misunderstandings about collection, discussing how to establish "the signal before the signal," and explaining why collection is essential for performance horses. To learn more about the ex...

Our horses are very forgiving. Given the opportunity to find the right answer, they will find it. The key to allowing your horse to find this answer consistently is to overcome your impatience. This means, giving your horse the chance to do it right before stepping in to help. If you step in too early, you’ll simply be in the way. In this episode, I'm sharing one of the most common impatient tende...

I believe that effort is a learned response. And, I believe this principle holds true for both horses and people. While some people and horses naturally give more effort than others, I believe that the amount of effort put forth always has a direct relationship to the expectations that have been set.  It is easy to wake up every morning and talk yourself out of doing the things that are uncom...

The work that it takes to develop a horse’s physical and mental ability is a continual process. Therefore, a horse is never truly “finished.” A horse may reach a point in its training where it feels confident and adaptable to many different situations. But, there is really no way to know how a horse will react in every scenario. In this episode, I'm sharing some recent conversations I've had about...

It took me many years to become comfortable with the idea of investing in myself. In fact, for the better part of my early training career, I would invest in everything but myself. The reason that I wasn’t investing in myself wasn’t because I didn’t have the time or money to do so. It was because I didn’t feel like I was worthy of the investment. When I was able to see my own value, that’s when th...

When you come across an anxious horse, it is easy to become frustrated both with yourself and with the horse. The fact of the matter is--some horses are just wired this way. It has nothing to do with you or your training program. But, you and your training program can be the thing that makes the difference for this type of horse. On this episode, I'm sharing some perspectives that can help you dev...

What if we could be assured that all of our hard work would pay off? What if we knew without a doubt that all the time spent performing thousands of repetitions of those fundamental exercises would finally result in a paycheck? Would our levels of commitment be different? In this episode, I'm talking about developing a "survival mode" mindset toward your horsemanship journey and developing habits...