All natural horse care in the west of Ireland

Due to the inclement weather the last couple of weeks I decided it might be time for Baby to start wearing her rugs. I was well prepared this year and bought her some (4) decent rugs when they were well priced during the summer. BUT they don't fit here this year. During the Equine Touch course, Heather, the instructor commented on how Baby now had muscle development around her chest and shoulders.

December 2009 October 2010

How many of us know the difference between negative re-inforcement and punishment?? Or do we generelly use the term negative re-inforcement in place of punishment?

Holding the reins closed whilst asking for a change of direction is negative re-inforcement. Smacking the horse because it didn't do as you asked is punishment.

May 2010

What happened was the fields where my horses graze was fertilized by the farmer who owns the land. I dont like fertilizing the land for the horses but the farmer insisted that it so after a lot of discussion he put fertilizer on very lightly. Only half a ton over 5 acres.

Well I was away in UK in May and my husband called to say that he was asked to move the horses into the pasture which had only been fertlilized 10 days before. I was not happy about this but was assured by the owner that it would be OK as we had had some rain.

I had read somewhere that you should not put horses out on fertilized land until you had seen at least 1inch of rain. We had not seen anywhere near an inch of rain by this time.

This is a fantastic video showing true communication between horse and human. This horse has sooo much try!!!

Gotan Liberté by Clémence Faivre from Franck Semonin on Vimeo.

In addition to Rhianne, today we were joined by Tamira and her lovely horses Tally & Ginny. Two very different horses. Ginny is a little left brain horse whereas it became quite apparent that Tally is more of a right brain so could be prone to explosions if put under too much pressure or if we proceed too quickly with her.

Some pics from our training session: