“Give and Take”

Forty seven years ago when I first read Vladimir Littauer’s “Common Sense Horsemanship” I was first introduced to the mysteries of effective contact.  All of my previous riding, four years of trail riding in Chile and Uruguay, had been done on loose reins, and contact was a deep, deep mystery to me.  I tried to learn all I could from books since I could not ride much until I got my first horse 5 years later.  Then, since I could not afford good lessons, it was…

  Re-adjusted my focus!! Cathy River's new blog post The Language of Confidence. Amazing what I've been saying to myself...#shift #mindset....

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Love this new blog post by expert Confidence + Money Breakthrough Coach, Cathy Rivers of Big Horse Dreams, Inc.!

Also, I was asked the question not long ago: Do I think that your success and confidence as an equestrian is connected to your relationship with money?…

Hi all! This is a GIFT invitation for 4 Free Discovery Sessions offered by Cathy Rivers, a.k.a. The Confident Equestrian Coach. I'm posting this because an "equestrian" lifestyle can be costly and having a successful relationship with money is key! We all know that! 

Here's the info:

Offered by Cathy Rivers of Big Horse Dreams, Inc.…

  Check-out Cathy Rivers newest blog post! Often over-looked horsemanship lesson! Great info!

  Cathy Rivers, www.bighorsedreams.com

June 19th 2012

At some point in your horse ownership life there will come a time when you won’t be able to make it home to feed the horses. Are you prepared? What if you can’t do feeding and chores for 2 weeks or more? Are you prepared? What if you are at the Emergency Room and…

   Love! that Cathy Rivers is now offering that following: 

Horses know exactly who you are. That’s a fact. So wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly who they are? Especially if you’re equestrian genre is competitive dressage? How about resolving – once and for all – the frustrating challenges in your horse’s training, as well as in your own, that’s keeping you both from the winner’s marks.

Cathy Rivers, holistic horse therapist, accomplished dressage…

   Had the opportunity to experience the process of Inner Nature Design...amazing...Cathy (Rivers) did my design....she's now offering the process to the equine community! It was definitely the missing piece for me...so I want to share and re-post this from her blog!  Also, she's doing a free 30-minute Discover Session if anyone's interested...it's so worth it!

 …

Olympia, Washington, May 4, 2012 -- Everyone knows that confidence and success come hand-in-hand. So whether you need a little boost or a lot of building, nationally known equestrian confidence coach Cathy Rivers, as part of her Big Horse Dreams, The Confident Equestrian Program, has designed a new e-Workbook that provides a proven learning progression for mastering confidence skills in order to improve your training, riding, competing, communication and overall enjoyment…

Think of it as a trip to the amusement park- with your horse.

I didn’t start out doing Natural Horsemanship. I started out before that phrase was invented.  Like a lot of us, I used voice commands while lunging and required good ground manners. I did the rest from my saddle; riding was my thing.

To tell…

Horses are my life. As a person who is deeply involved in all aspects of the horse on a daily basis, I strive for a connection with each of them and work at understanding and communicating in a way that is fair, humane and encourages trust and connection. This stuff doesn't happen overnight (necessarily) - it…

Originally posted at: http://frwdnrnd.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/a-cautionary-horse-tale/

Once you decide to ride horses, you put into place a domino effect of consequences, which will occur whether you are conscious of them or not. It is like a rule of nature – the results are the results regardless of your intentions, desires and motivations.

And so you proceed to put your weight on horse’s…

Ever since I started reading books on riding I have been trying to puzzle out what the horsemen actually MEANT.  When I got my first horse I had the comforting illusion that I knew at least a little bit about riding (I had 4 years of trail riding as a young kid).  My first horse, a 5 year old just gelded green broke Anglo-Arab gelding quickly taught me that I did not know much at all.  Fortunately a few months after I got him I ran into and quickly adopted the…

I fell in love with horses all over again this week. Yes, it was a pretty short fall and yes, it does happen every week. And no, it never gets old. Does my enthusiasm make me seem less professional?

It has been also been one of those weeks when most of my clients are having challenges with their horses. Some of the challenges are old ones and some are brand new but regardless of origin or cause- a challenge is an opportunity by another name.…

Henk writes:

I share my paddock with 4 other horses: two are Friesians (Wilby and Charlee), one is a Welsh pony (Bella), and the fourth is a Standardbred (Sunny). When it’s time to go inside for the night (and, of course, dinner!) Wilby gets to go first if he wants to. He’s the boss. Sometimes he chooses not to exercise this right, and lets me, Charlee, and on occasion even the pony, go ahead of him. Sometimes he hangs back like we’re allowed to go ahead of him, and then…

The Running Horse





A Bi-monthly Newsletter from Horse Play…

Hot, humid, bad air quality, smog.  Yep, that says it all about the weather in the summertime in the sunny, sunny South.  At least WE are used to this type of weather, I feel so, so sorry for you people further North who are discovering what people living in the South have known all along.  Summers can be as brutal as winters. 

Last week both mares told me that I was not…

Wednesday I saw a tornado.  Up close, while trapped in my car on an elevated stretch of highway in Springfield, Mass.  (The video I shot, is posted on Brody’s Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/brody.cheval)  Scary!   Funny what a random lethal event does to your head.  It’s clarifying. 

My sister, a fellow agnostic, asked me if I prayed.  The question took me off guard, and its answer surprised me a bit: I didn’t.  I’d…