The blessing of a truly gifted trainer, someone with both experience and knowledge, one gifted with years of studying throughout the years, each and every day all day long, is that they can take what can be a strength in training and take every last nuance out of that knowledge and help you eek every last element of benefit out of the training exercise that you are working on.

Retraining the Ex-Racehorse: An ongoing series from Horses For LIFE on the concerns and opportunities involved with retraining the ex-racehorse.

We began our series of retraining the ex-racehorse, discussing the reasons why or why not you may want to work with a horse from the track, and those special considerations that you may want to look at in the decision-making process of picking out which horse will more likely be able to succeed in the transition from racetrack to working off the track. this month we discuss where can we start in teaching the ex-racehorse not to pull and bear down on the bit and the rein.

The introduction to a new series. One that every rider can relate to: May you too feel "the moments of pure exhilaration, of sheer joy, of a love felt purely as it flowed between species."

"Who knows what is good?"... The horse. Only the horse.

Dressage competition rules are now changing in order to adapt to the "competitors" instead of having competitors having to adapt and follow the Principles of riding.

The best way to directly address the mental/emotional state is to first offer the horse a calm, quiet feel. We want to feel within ourselves what we want our horse to feel. If we feel fear, we will increase the chance he will become afraid. If we feel confused or agitated or frustrated or resentful, etc., we will increase the chance he will mirror our own inner state...

We need to first have a clear idea in our own mind exactly what it is we want a horse to do. This is a challenging endeavor in itself, and is one of the reasons I am not a proponent of punishment. Too often horses are punished for responding to what they are actually being asked to do even though the person is not aware of the conflicting signals and emotions they are emitting...

Stephen Budiansky, an author on animal behaviour, says in the context of the origin of our relationship with horses: “There were sound evolutionary reasons that made horses ripe for domestication. ...The pressures that placed a premium on adaptability favored the retention into adulthood of juvenile characteristics, an evolutionary process known as neoteny. Juveniles are curious and adaptable...they are also playful, submissive, and dependent, traits that proved valuable to man in domestication.”

Considerations of bit pressure and pain to the horse based on the experiments carried out by the Forensic Medical Examination Office in St. Petersburg, while you may disagree on the amount of pain that might be felt by the horse, we should all be aware of the astounding amount of pressure measured in this experiment from the pressure of the bit.

A prominent clinician and judge, writes in a prominent magazine of noticing horses with purple and blue tongues on the horses, especially after the introduction of the double bridle to lower levels. Do the horses deserve more than a meeting?