Fun and Imagination Can Be Useful Tools in Training: Introducing Colts to the Trailer

By Mary Gallagher

Recently I trailered a couple of young horses I’ve been training back to their home at Wensleydale Farm in Oregon. I invited two of my advanced Hoof Beats students, Elise and Elly, since they had been handling and riding the trainees, and since there are more great young horses at Wensleydale, including new colts. I really enjoy coaching my students, and this day was extra fun for us all because we got to play with baby horses!


Horses are full faculty learners at birth, ready within a few hours to follow Mom out into the big world. What this means for trainers is, you can’t start too early exposing a baby horse to all sorts of different things, familiarizing them with human contact and making it easier for them to adapt to the human world in the future.

With talented students, it is a match made in heaven—a curious colt and an imaginative handler. In this case, there were no great deeds to accomplish, just a chance to let the girls help two colts test out life in a safe way.

We decided to try some basic yields which would help prepare the youngsters for trailer loading. Elise and Elly played some preparatory games on line, getting the babies to follow a feel in all directions. After they all got comfortable moving around outside, we thought of asking them to move in and out of open stalls in the barn.

Body Language 101: the Value of Quiet Work

by Mary Gallagher

Nina and Mary working quietly.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the deeper aspects of communicating with our horses. We all know, more or less, that we humans tend to express ourselves with words, and that horses are more about body language. Most of us are accustomed to our horses watching and responding to us in our daily interactions. For an obvious example, your  horse notices when your hand enters your pocket, right? and responds by asking for a treat? Or when picking out your horses feet—does he offer his hoof to you before you ask? or even better, does he shift his weight as you prepare to ask? If your horse can do this, how much more might he perceive?

Things go along pretty well as we use all the horsemanship tools we’ve been given to direct the actions of our horses. We even call it ‘schooling’, with us as the teacher and the horse as the student. Horses pretty much buy into being schooled, as they are hard-wired to accept leadership. But if we really pay attention as we school our horses, we may discover that they are teachers in their own right. How many times have we thought we have things going pretty well, only to have our horse show us something we missed? Or maybe it’s just that we aren’t getting the result we were looking for, and despite our best efforts, we seem to be at an impasse…?

Connecting to the Feet, Part 2: Feeling the Feet, Placing the Feet

By Mary Gallagher

Why: To become aware of your horse’s foot placement, feeling it through your body, enhancing your ability to support your horse with well-timed aids.  Part two of a series of articles on Connecting to the Feet, in advance of Mary Gallagher's clinic of the same name (at Freedom Farm this August, 2019). (Read Part 1 here.)

The exercises in this article series are aimed at helping you connect with your horse ever more deeply, through greater awareness of what he’s doing with his feet at any given time. In part one, we got you synchronizing with your horse’s front feet, stepping together over cavalettis on the ground, feeling those same steps from the saddle. Now lets go to the hind feet to complete the picture.

Leadership Learning with the Boundary Box, Part 2: Safety and Emotional Fitness

by Mary Gallagher

I’d recommend reading Part One of this new series first. The Boundary Box® is a process I am developing, and my last post describes the basic premise and practices. -M

Horses are big scaredy cats—that’s why they have those long legs, you see, so they can get out of Dodge fast when Dodge turns into Scary Town. And as we all know, that happens incredibly fast with our equine friends. Everything is going great and then BOOM, a threat appears—a blowing tarp, shiny puddle, unfamiliar dog—just about anything sudden and unfamiliar can trigger their flight response. Our understanding of just how instinctively quick horses are with their feet when threatened can help us help them to become braver. 

Lesson Notes: An Exercise in Influence

 by Mary Gallagher

 Further thoughts on influence as leadership, which I wrote about here in March. - MG

One of the core ideas I convey to my students is that, 'I don't want you to make your horse do things, or control your horse, I want you to influence your horse.' When you influence your horse, you take control and force out of the equation, and communication is what you have left.