Contemporary Horsemanship Podcast

I recently saw a video showing some of the reasons why a race horse had the best care. I definitely disagreed with these reasons as horses don’t care about most of them. People tend to anthropomorphize with our horses. We need to instead look at what is really important for a horse from his point of view. I talk about the 5 freedoms and what horses truly need.

I’ll go over the steps on how to teach a horse to do a spin on the ground. This is an easy trick, that my horses enjoy doing. I explain how to teach it using R+ or R-.

I’m discussing the different types and kinds of fly masks. I also talk about the process of training a horse to wear a fly mask.

I watched the most recent horse starting competition recently and wanted to share my thoughts on the event. I’m going to discuss the competition its self and the training procedures used by the different trainers.

If you are considering getting a mustang either wild or trained there are few important things you should know first. I have gained so much from my experience with my mustangs. I want others who are interested and their horses to have good experiences and stay safe too.

Having a horse that has more energy or gets spooky durning cooler weather is pretty common. It can also be very frustrating. I’ll discuss some reasons why this happens and how to deal with it.

There are many unwanted behaviors that can occur as consequences of using aversives in training. Escape, Avoidance, Learned Helplessness, Coercion, and Aggression are some common issues that can happen. I’m going to give an overview on what these side effects are and how to avoid them.

In this episode, I’ll talk about the punishment side of the learning quadrants. Unlike reinforcement, punishment is effective when it decreases or stops a behavior. Lots of people use punishment effectively or ineffectively without knowing it. I’ll discuss what punishment is and the details of negative punishment versus positive punishment.

There are four learning quadrants. They are positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment. I’m going to stick with the reinforcement side for this episode. It is common for people to get confused on what positive and negative reinforcement is and the terms are used in the wrong way a lot. I want to clear up what each of these are and how they effect u...

Operant conditioning is the kind of conditioning that you will see most often during training and it is more obvious than classical conditioning. Operant conditioning is when an animal operates on its environment to get what it wants or avoid what it does not like. Operant conditioning is happening all the time whether using R+ or R- training methods.

Classical conditioning is happening all the time, for better or for worse. It is essentially learning by association. This can work in a negative way such as when you hear a bee buzzing right before you get stung. Now you associate buzzing with being stung. Or classical conditioning can work in a positive way. You hear the song of an ice cream truck and want to go toward it and get a treat. I’ll t...

I’ll talk about what desensitization and habituation are and how they differ. Most importantly I’ll cover how they affect the horse during training. What we are usually doing and calling desensitization is actually not and is more flooding/ habituation. I’ll clear up what these terms mean and what’s best for the horse.

I’ll talk about the role sensitization plays in training horses. I’ll also cover what unconditional and conditional reflexes are. These topics are the beginning of training a horse to respond to different cues, either with R+ or R-.

I want to do a series on the science behind horse training and behavior. First I want to talk about reflexes. Why they are important to clicker training and why normal reactions in horses can cause us so much frustration.

I want to talk about common reasons why horses kick and some ways that we can help to change that behavior.

I wanted to do another book review, this time on Ray Hunt’s book Think Harmony With Horses. It had some good ideas, but overall I preferred Mark Rashid’s book Horses Never Lie. Mark has very similar ideas but explained them in more detail.

I’ll go over the process of how I train a horse to get vaccines and how to give them.

I recently read one of Mark Rashid’s books Horses Never Lie. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot, so I wanted to share what I though about it in a little review.

The reason that horses have problem behaviors is because they are either afraid or uncomfortable. When a horse feels like this they often default to using flight or fight behaviors, which almost all are what we consider problems. If the horse learns that a behavior, like biting, works to get the human to stop doing what is making them uncomfortable it then becomes a learned behavior. We need to fi...

You never know when a horse will need eye drops or ointment. I like to prepare them for this by doing desensitizing and targeting so that they will be comfortable when I need to handle the eyes. I’ll cover why horses become afraid when you hold them for these procedures and how to train a horse to stand quietly for them.

Lots of horses get worried when they have to be near the clippers. I will walk you through the process that I use to get a horse comfortable being clipped.

Lots of things that have been happening in the horse world recently have really disappointed me and made me think of how we can change the industry for the better. I go into my story with horses and how I have grown throughout the years in my training. Hopefully this will open some minds when seeing or trying out new methods of working with horses.

This is a very quick episode talking about why horses chew wood and what you can do about it.

I just wanted to discuss some of the recent events that happened at this year’s derby. I’ll also talk a little about other horse sports and racing in general. These are just my opinions on racing. The overall ideas I hope to share are how to make the world better and safer for horses.

In part 2 I’ll be talking about feeding, environment, and exercise and how they effect the horse’s behavior. I’m also going to cover some red flags to look out for when buying and selling.