equine

Breathe Your Way to Better Connection

By using two simple breathing exercises, Rachel works with Claire and Selena to help build their connection on the ground. These exercises can also be done in the saddle which will work wonders to help your horse tune into you.   Using and Fading the Target At first, we build connection by teaching our horses to […]

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Success In Your Comfort Zone!

Ever been frightened when riding and been told “Don’t be silly. You’ve got to leave your comfort zone if you want to improve!” I take a sideways look at this mantra and shows that, when it comes to horses, it’s plain wrong (although I use a ruder word than that!). I’ll explain why in this

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Ponies Decorate the Christmas Tree!

🎶 Deck the halls, tree and stables 🎶 Falalala la lala la la Who decorates the Christmas Tree at Hope Pastures rescue centre? The rescued ponies and donkeys of course! Hannah worked with the staff at Hope Pastures to teach these cuties some tricks to add Christmas cheer to the stables. “It’s pretty heartbreaking to see the state

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Teaching the Pirouette – First Steps. Reward Based Training

Teaching any movement to your horse is fairly straightforward when you’ve taught all the elements needed to create it – things like weight shifts, flexions, moving the shoulders and quarters independently and so on. By breaking it down and teaching each movement separately, you can then combine them any way you like. Of course, using

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Can I Mix Negative and Positive Reinforcement?

This is a great question and one we get asked a lot. Many people coming to reward-based training have horses who already understand many different behaviors and they always want to know if they have to start training everything again from scratch. As always, the answer comes to down to emotions of the individual horse

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From Rescue to Ridden with our First CT Instructor!

We are delighted to announce our first CT Instructor, Claire Waldron! Claire has really impressed us with her dedication to learning and practicing Connection Training techniques. She has worked extensively with her horse, Segura (see below), and her two troubled rescued ponies, Hope and Valiente. She has also worked with a local rescue centre and

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Panksepp’s Emotional Systems in Horses: Conclusion

This video concludes the series exploring Panksepp’s emotional brain systems in horses. These brain systems are found in all mammals and are at the core of how we understand and train our horses. The systems are: SEEKING, CARE, PLAY, FEAR, PANIC, RAGE and LUST. To view the whole series from the start click HERE. You

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From Frustration to Fury – 6. The RAGE System

Horses are naturally peaceable animals in the wild. So why do we see so many aggressive behaviours in domesticity? In this video, I explore many facets of the RAGE system – does dominance exist in the brain? Why do horses resource-guard? What elements of the RAGE system are triggered through training? The wonderful clips in

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