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From Horses to Killer Whales
I woke up in the early morning dark in November 2020. Like many, I was pandemic fatigued, but that wasn’t why I was awake. For the fourth time in as many nights, I’d had the same dream: a killer whale shimmering under the turquoise water in a concrete tank. Dreams have many meanings to me. […]
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The Devolution of the Pushbutton Horse
About a decade ago, I went to the Scottsdale All Arabian Horse show. I was excited to revisit a place I had happy childhood and early adulthood memories of. I sat in the stands, watching an English class, feeling a sense of unease washing over me. As the class went on, all I could see […]
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What Sustains You?
We were working in Arizona last month, doing a series of clinics. After the warm day had cooled to a crisp desert evening, my friend Lori asked me this question. “What sustains you?” I didn’t have an answer off the top of my head. More disconcerting was that upon reflection, I couldn’t come up with […]
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Quality Vs. Quantity
Where there was once green grass, there’s now snow and the leftovers of what was a lush pasture. It’s March, which means it’s also time for our horses to come home. As Mark and I walked out, the halters jingling at our sides, we saw six sets of furry ears pointed in our direction. Each […]
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Truce
When I started learning about horses, it was from a place of deep and abiding love. The way of being with horses that I fell into came from a place of entrenched warfare. Not everything done to them was horrible, or drew blood, but looking back I can see how dominating it was. Between learning […]
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Sanity in a Wheelbarrow
I confess: cleaning stalls, scrubbing water troughs, and slinging hay have been my lifelines to sanity this year. Add in horsehair in my mouth as I groom the summer coat from our horse’s bodies, and I can almost forget this is 2020. The barn, the horses, and all the chores that aren’t really chores are […]
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Thinking, Judging, Feeling
Despite several big worries that have been gnawing their way through my psyche today, that hot bath feeling of peace visited me. A part of my brain, the part that seems to ignite with anxiety at the smallest spark, jumped up and said, “What’s that?!” “What’s what?” I answered myself. “That feeling! What is it? […]
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Uncovering softness
It was October, and Top stood quietly at the trailer while being groomed and saddled. When Mark bridled him and then gathered up the reins to see how Top would respond to pressure, it was clear that what Top knew was how to push. He raised his head really well too. Since these aren’t the […]
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Riding into Relaxation
We sometimes forget that horses can perform any movement we need them to do already. They are masters of movement. All horses are talented creatures; they can fly without wings (not for long), they can figure out how to talk their owners into being fed early (who can resist those liquid eyes and low rumbly […]
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Bree Returns
I didn’t know I needed to see Bree until I saw her again. Five years had passed since she and I had the accident that put me in the hospital with a small brain bleed. For five years, she had been fostered by a kind Texas horsewoman who took her in as a companion for […]
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Shedding A heavy coat
It’s that time of year. Our horse Rocky is so itchy, he’s rubbing up against pine trees to scratch the hair off. I took the shedding brushes out to his paddock and spent some time reaching all the parts he couldn’t. He’s twenty-one this year, and like most of us when we get older, is […]
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It’s Not a Catching Problem
Our new clinic horse Top is a chocolate bay with a kind eye and a pink spot on his lower lip that makes him look like his tongue is always out. He came to us from South Dakota, and before that he was a working ranch horse. Top’s ten years old. Undoubtedly, he knows stuff. […]
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Too Much Lateral Flexion
In 1996 I’d been training horses for less than a year. I got a call from a neighbor who wanted help with her horse. When I arrived, Polly, a paint mare, stood quietly at the hitch rail, a spring breeze lifting her brown and white mane. I was chatting with her owner that morning, finding […]
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The Best Tools
There’s an expression currently making its rounds in the horse world. “It’s another tool for my toolbox.” Having answers to our horse’s questions is a good thing. To be with horses safely and with pleasure, there are things we must know about them. They are prey animals, and running will always be their first instinct; […]
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The Season of Acceptance
There are things I like about this time of year. The Christmas lights that festoon the trees lining our downtown main street are magical, especially after a nighttime snowfall. I like that the dark reminds us to go inside and recharge after a season of working from light’s beginning to light’s end. I like that […]
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Excerpt from “Continuing The Ride.”
In the summer, I like to keep a few pots of herbs and vegetables on our south-facing porch. The growing season is short where we live, and between the weather and the deer who like the same herbs and vegetables I do, growing food in pots means the odds that I’ll be able to enjoy […]
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One Rein Thoughts
By the time Shelly came into the arena for her lesson with me, her mare’s bay coat was almost black with sweat. When Shelly bought the mare, Jewel, the previous year, she hadn’t noticed anything alarming about her behavior other than the horse seemed a little more nervous than other horses Shelly had come across. […]
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You Already Have Timing and Feel
As I was brushing our horses yesterday, I noticed that despite the rivulet of sweat running down my back, their short summer coats were falling out. In the shade of a day edging toward 90 degrees, while I was in a t-shirt and cropped jeans, our herd is preparing for snowmageddon. The ability of horses […]
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Your Horse Isn’t Distracted
After learning about the horse’s brain at a recent seminar and getting to hold a horse brain, I felt a thrill much like roller coasters must be thrilling for some people. The seminar, given by Dr. Steve Peters (author of “Evidence-Based Horsemanship”), covered a lot of ground. Here’s what I’m chewing on this month: Your […]
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Living In The Center
As we stood at the gate to the horse’s paddock on a sunny afternoon, my nephew said: “Aunt Crissi, I want to pet every horse in the pen!” “Let’s do that,” I said. “Before we go in, though, let’s breathe and feel our belly. Horses really like it when we are breathing and centered.” He […]
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A Gratitude of Horses
Thorny was an old cowboy my parents knew, and the first person who introduced me to horses. I was still in diapers, holding on to the lead rope of a gray speckled pony that wasn’t much taller than I was. I can still see the ghost of a smile on that toddler’s face. Thorny seemed […]
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The Whole Horse
It was a warm and sunny morning as I chatted with Jaycee about what she would like to work on with her horse Scamp. “I’ve been making him move his feet because everyone I’ve worked with says he needs to move his feet more. But he’s always spooky,” Jaycee said. I thought about this […]
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Removing Mental Hobbles
Life–and horses, for that matter– both have an uncanny knack of knowing just when you need a little insight and humility. We recently posted a photo on our online Classroom page on Facebook. In the photo, one of our horses was standing hobbled. We posted this in response to requests from several of our […]
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Assumptions and Knowledge
I was in my mid-twenties when I started training horses (and assumed I knew more than I actually did). I brought Jack, a young gelding, home. I’d given him a couple of weeks to settle in with my older gelding Caleb before riding him in the arena next to our house. I caught him, […]
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In Praise of Simplicity
When I was in my late twenties, I became fascinated by the art of Dressage. Honestly? I am still fascinated. Back then, however, the trouble was that I wasn’t a very talented technical rider. And I was on an unconventional horse for dressage; a 16’2 Appendix Quarter horse who excelled more at trails and jumping. […]
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Release and Relief
I think we learn and go through life much like a pendulum; we swing all the way to one side and then we swing the opposite way before realizing that the middle is where balance and skill lie. When we begin learning about horses, we are at the apex of knowing nothing. The only time […]
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The More You Learn, The More You See
When Rusty arrived, his eyes were as hard as his muscles. He had rain rot from withers to tail and large old white scars on his back where someone had ridden in a saddle that didn’t fit. I chalked up his disinterest in his new surroundings to the long trailer ride from Texas. A few […]
Crissi McDonald
Heartline Horse Training