Category Archives: Equine Behaviour
Articles on equine behaviour.
Human ⥈ Horse : the balance : Part Three
The final instalment in a series of threeLast week, we looked at horse centricity and making life better.This week we round off with making the change and looking at where the problems lie. Making the change Maybe you are already well established in a good horse-human relationship. Maybe you feel the relationship between you and […]
Continue readingHuman ⥈ Horse : the balance : Part Two
an article in instalments. Part Three will be published on 15 July.Last week, we finished by discussing dogma-driven, ego-driven and horse-centric. The dogma-driven rider is the one who, often under peer-pressure, resorts to the age old (mis-)conceptions of the horse in the traditional riding-world. The thoughts are with the horse, only tradition has put misguided […]
Continue readingHuman ⥈ Horse : the balance : Part One
an article in instalments. Part Two will be published on 7 July. For most of us, confinement is behind us, albeit there are still restrictions in place for many. It has been a complicated time, probably because of its simplicity and lack of choices — stay in; don’t mingle; keep your distance. Right at […]
Continue readingSnorting Horses
To those of us most involved in the true well-being of our equine friends, these findings will not come as a surprise but a recent French study of snorting in horses shows that the horse living in a relaxed environment produces far more snorts that one in a stressful situation. And, also not surprisingly, the […]
Continue readingReturning to riding. Part Two, a trek across Dartmoor and Exmoor
Harry had only been backed the previous year, so was not an experienced horse. But he had proved to be reliable, calm and co-operative, and quite good in traffic. Since I would be camping with Harry, perhaps in the open, I accustomed him to being tied up for grazing, and line tied as well. The […]
Continue readingTime for Behaviour – by Suzanne Rogers
In my work as an equine behaviourist one of the main concerns of my clients and potential clients is how long it will take for a problem to be resolved and how much time will they need to invest to solve the problem. Both concerns are of course completely valid and it is important that […]
Continue readingBehaviour Based Horse Management – A Blueprint for the 21st Century
The first question is why do we need anything other than the customary practice we’ve built up over the years? And the answer would be that many of those practices are remnants of a past that was radically different from today.
Continue readingThe relationship first
I have a rocksteady faith in building a relationship through lots of positive reinforcement, before you’re even allowed to actually work with pressure. And that’s not just because then you can’t do what you’ve always done quite instinctively (push just a little bit, pull just a little bit, tap just a little bit, hit just […]
Continue readingWhat is Clicker Training Actually Good for? by Catherine Bell
Clicker training is one of the recent success stories of equestrianism. It makes use of a bridging signal to indicate the moment of the desired behaviour, followed by positive reinforcement. We are told that training with positive reinforcement is more ethical than training with negative reinforcement and/or punishment. We are told that positive reinforcement activates […]
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