A Workshop in Horse-Centered Horsemanship

Training video from Jack and Paula Curtis shows how to create real partnerships by getting curious

There's something really compelling about watching Paula Curtis work with horses. In this training video, she walks into a pasture with a tarp, some traffic cones, and a barrel, not to drill the horses on anything specific, but to find out what the horses themselves find interesting.

It's a totally different way of thinking about working with horses. Instead of showing up with a plan of what we want to accomplish, she's asking the horses what captures their attention and curiosity.

Breathing all wrong, and the other habits horses forgive

Ciara Glaisher treats horses and their riders as one system. This week: the breathing habit most of us picked up at school, and what it does in the saddle.

Horse sleep: what the research shows, and where it runs out.

The strongest signal in the research is a horse nobody has watched lie down. Four papers on what that means, and the number everyone quotes that has no source.

I learned to ride before I learned anything about horses

She asks the question most of us never think to ask: if the only reward on offer is the removal of something annoying, where is the horse's reason to actually enjoy the work?

Treated like kings, when all they want is to be horses

The deaths, she says, are the easiest thing to see and, oddly, among the easier things to fix; fewer runners, lower fences, a better start. What is harder, and far more common, is the ordinary life of a racehorse when no camera is pointed at it.

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Breathing all wrong, and the other habits horses forgive

Horse sleep: what the research shows, and where it runs out.

I learned to ride before I learned anything about horses

Treated like kings, when all they want is to be horses