Category: Horsemanship Page 3 of 4

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

Gilbert C. Chesterton

For me, Thanksgiving is the holiday of food, fellowship and good cheer. It’s a day where I give myself full permission to sit back and enjoy the things I love the most. When I had a full-time office career (back in my Washington DC days), Thanksgiving meant a day with my horses. Back then, a trip to the boarding barn meant a two-hour round trip (often longer, thanks to DC traffic). To fly down empty roads on a weekday was a rare treat.

Things have changed since then. My commute is a five-minute walk to my own barn. Horses fill my days. They are my office now. My job is all about working with horses, helping horses and taking care of horses. But they are still in my life entirely for my pleasure – for my learning and delight.

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For me, Horse Wise began in 2007. Back then, I was running a racehorse adoption ranch and blogging about my experiences. Whenever I would write about a key lesson that a horse taught me, I would tag the post as “Horse Wise.” From that beginning, Horse Wise has evolved into a coaching and teaching service for people and horses.

My history with horses started with learning to ride as an adult (in weekly group riding lessons). A full-time office worker with a normal job, I soon found horses taking over more and more of my life (including a memorable volunteer stint with a mounted Park Police unit). Eventually, I moved from Washington DC to Texas and started the racehorse adoption charity, LOPE. The ex-racehorses provided me with an incredible education about horses, horsemanship and life itself.

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We are excited to announce that Horse Wise will sponsor a special screening of The Mustang on May 16! The event will benefit LOPE, a racehorse adoption and youth education charity.

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We are thrilled to announce that the Horse Wise has started its own podcast! Hosted by Lynn Reardon, the podcast will share stories of horses and people – and what they teach each other.

Horses bring wisdom, humor, athleticism and inspiration into our lives. Join Lynn as she encounters entertaining characters (horse and human) on her own horsemanship journey as Horse Wise’s founder and head coach.

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Over the course of my work, I’ve met many horse owners entrenched in the grip of horsemanship fail patterns. None of them intend to create situations that set their horses up for failure. But because they are unaware of their actions, they simply don’t see the habits they perpetuate with their horses and riding routines.

The best way to illustrate this principle is to create ridiculously exaggerated parodies of horse owner types who do this. So we can safely mock them while surreptitiously assessing if we’ve made similar mistakes with our horses.

That way, everyone wins.

So, without further ado, here are the Horse Wise Top Eight #HorsemanshipFail Owner Categories.

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One of my favorite concepts in vaquero horsemanship is “it’s a feel following a feel.”

In that short, almost silly sounding phrase (which conjures up imagines of painfully awkward, hormone-infused prom dances) is the core of an entire philosophy.

Whenever I’ve heard a clinician say it, I’ve nodded sagely in agreement. So obvious, right? You feel for the horse. He feels for you. And off you go, riding as one in zen-like feeliness. (yes, that’s really a word in my world).

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