The Horse PT

03/27/2026

Escape from the horrors of the world with us for a moment 🩵

Nothing better than baby horses to keep you present 🦄🦄

03/27/2026

Many people believe that horses who are over excited, pushy, intense, or even aggressive about food should not be trained with food. When actually, food can be the best solution! Usually these issues come about because the horse feels insecurity about their resources. So addressing this should be our top priority.

We can do this by first addressing their lifestyle. They should have 24/7 access to forage and never have to fight for resources. We can and should provide regular enrichment which provide a variety of foods as well, including the food we use in training. This takes the pressure off our training as being the "one and only" good thing in their life.

We want to ensure our horse feels comfortable when and where we train and they have already eatten and are nice and relaxed when we begin our training. Using protected contact can be a useful tool, we don't want to add punishment into the mix, which would add stress/anxiety. So, you can both feel more safe if you have some sort of barrier between you.

When you train use food that has longer chew time and is of lower value, something closer to their usual food, and have another source of free food available while you train. Chopped hay, hay pellets, soaked cubes all make good options depending on your horse. Feed large quantities of low value food, and work with a fairly high rate of reinforcement. This means you need to break your criteria down into small enough steps you can maintain a higher training speed.

Finally, when training always maintain clean food delivery practices- click when they do the correct behavior, then grab the food, keep your hand closed until you stretch your arm well away from your body to feed away from you, into their space. Train a few safe behaviors, particularly a safe default behavior for them to return to when they don't know what else to do. Standing Facing Forward works well for this (like a dog's sit/stay). As well as head down and back up or touching a target. So they have a safe and appropriate behavior to go to if they are confused or frustrated.

03/25/2026

👏👏👏

Training with brute force requires no real skill.

It requires no patience.

No emotional regulation.

No knowledge of behavior.

No correct understanding of operant conditioning.

All it requires is a willingness to disregard the impact of what you are doing.

I say this, as someone who was taught to train in a very forceful manner.

I did not have to be skilled. I just had to be enough of a bully.

It is much more difficult and requires a lot more skill to actually convinced a horse to want to do what you ask.

This is why so many people are terrified of training with more autonomy and consent.

Because in their current state, where they rely on immense force, they know that horses would not do what they ask if they were given the choice.

If their ability to force and apply as much coercion and punishment as needed was taken away, they cannot be successful.

Not without changing their behaviour and improving their knowledge.

And that would require work that many are not willing to do.

So instead, they refuse. They doubled down. They make excuses.

They mock and degrade the skill set of anyone who is not willing to resort to the same punitive and powerful practises as them.

Because they know their entire existence as a trainer is reliant on justifying excessive force.

That the very fabric of creating behavioural change in horses for them relies on making horses afraid of them.

Making horses afraid of what happens if they do not comply.

If that threat is taken away, they have nothing.

And the thought of that terrifies them.

So, of course they need to defend painful and coercive equipment.

Of course they need to defend hitting
horses.

Of course they need to defend making horses afraid of them in exchange for obedience.

Because without that, they are nothing.

Their “success” was achieved by force.

If they are held to the standard of valuing ethics and how they go about achieving their results, their entire program falls apart.

So, they cannot care about the impact of their methods on the horse.

If you give a man a weapon, and they threaten an unarmed person, they can probably sell anything.

But, that does not make them a salesman.

03/24/2026

Take a short ride with me and Luna 🦄

We are starting to focus in on refining our rein aids and adding leg aids for bend. Our steering initially came from large opening rein aids and I’m now working to make those smaller and more refined while starting to pair some leg pressure with the change in bend as she weaves around the cones (an exercise she knows fairly well now)

The leg aid doesn’t mean a whole lot to her yet, but it will soon! She is one smart cookie!

I can feel her getting so much stronger with this new work on changing bends and weaving cones. The first time I ever got on Luna I was afraid she might fall over when she reached around to take a treat from my hand...

She feels so much more stable and secure with everything we’re doing!

03/24/2026

Spend 6 minutes with me and Mickey and see how we transition from sending to cones to walking in-hand.

Mickey has some old hang ups from in-hand exercises that he didn’t quite enjoy doing before and even just adding a hand on the reins would get him feeling insecure.

By training it this way with R+ we can quickly work through those worries and build new positive associations around wearing the cavesson, receiving a feel through the reins, and having a person walking with him at his shoulder.

Over time we will rely more on the reins and verbal cues and less on my big “point” and the cones and this will turn into what looks more like traditional in-hand work, but all trained with R+ 🤗

03/23/2026

Please. Just. Stop.

We can do so much better.

03/21/2026

4 minutes of training with Chassie 🤗

We are using the same cone setup as Buckle from my last video but I’m working on teaching Chassie to send past me to the next cone as we lead around the pattern.

We will use this skill of sending past me to the cone as a foundational skill that builds towards things like in-hand work and long lining.

In this video you’ll see me take Chassie to a feed pan on the ground (just off camera) for a “pause” and we also take a few breaks for scratches.

These are both strategies I am using to help keep her settled and calm. I could feel her getting tense (pushing into my space a bit more and taking food in a “grabbier” way) with all of the wind today - so when she started to tense up, we redirected to one of those options for a moment before continuing.

Babies can get overstimulated pretty quickly, so catching these little signs early to keep them below threshold during training is really important! Emotional regulation is a learned skill, too 🦄

03/21/2026

4 minutes of training with Buckle:

She has a tendency to barge into me and want to climb into my body with me, so we are using cones to help create clarity around what I’m wanting with leading and create more situations where I can reinforce her for making the choice to step away from me while still staying connected.

Leading between cones gives her a clear visual for where we’re headed to reduce frustration. Asking her to step outside the cone while I walk inside creates situations to reinforce stepping away while also giving a natural reason for stepping away.

She’ll make a mistake a few times in this video and by having my handheld target ready, I can get her back on track without making her feel “wrong” or letting her get too frustrated.

(Using the handheld target is how we initially taught her leading with a halter and lead rope that we show in the very beginning, too)

What do we think? Do we want more long-form video shares? Or are little clips better?

03/05/2026

It can (and should) be this easy to catch and halter your horses.

Halter training babies does NOT require leaving halters on them in the field and it especially doesn’t require leaving drag lines attached to those halters.

Oh, and I have the perfect online course to help you if you’re struggling with any of this 🤗🤗

03/05/2026

Check out a really fun podcast episode with me and Suzzi!!

‼️NEW EPISODE‼️

NEW PR REACHED! This episode features the MOST red mares we’ve had on so far! Today, the girls have two INCREDIBLE guests on the show. Dr. Barbra Parks and Suzzi Peeler take us through a fun and educational conversation about the impact of equine dentition on biomechanics. Dr. Barbara Parks, PT, DPT, CEPT, CTRI, CEMT 💪🏼 of Imagine Equine Services, has partnered with Neuromuscular Dentist extraordinaire, Suzzi Peeler 🦷 to create a comprehensive approach to equine functionality. Their partnership offers educational classes for equestrians of all levels, and of course, in their daily practices with clients. These two amazing gals have a big conversation ahead so buckle in, get ready to learn and as always, grab some snacks 🍿

💪🏼Dr. Barbara Parks: https://www.drbarbaraparks.com/
*Find their online classes here on Dr. Parks’ website! 📚

🦷Suzzi Peeler: suzzipeelerequineservices@gmail.com

🎧Available on:
🎙️Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-red-mare-project/id1817818294?i=1000752880626
🎙️Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0EcygOoqwVHg9iKkRibFGG?si=p_u-uJMOQyqksckf4AmAmg

📧Email us with your interesting stories. Your horse may be able to help another.
redmareproject@gmail.com

Taylor CL Schouten, MS, APF-I
Hoofcare Practitioner
Wild Hoof Equine LLC
www.wildhoofequine.com

Kahlan Ettere
Holistic Equine Nutrition
Wise Choice Equine Wellness LLC

Check out our website: www.theredmareproject.com
Follow along on Facebook: The Red Mare Project
Instagram: Wild_Hoof_Equine

03/05/2026

Friendly reminder that R+ training is not slow

It feels slow because you only found it later after the horse already has trauma and baggage

It feels slow because you have to go back to pony preschool to build a new language with your riding horse

It feels slow because you’re learning a new skillset and deconstructing old patterns of doing and thinking at the same time

R+ training is not slow. Buckle is a 9 month old baby, this training session was a grand total of 15 minutes long. This was the first time she’s ever done liberty leading between multiple cone targets.

We just don’t all have the luxury of starting things exactly the way we wanted to start them from day one, and we all have to navigate the learning curve process to become good trainers, too. These things take time, and things can really be slow as a result.

But R+ training is not slow.

03/05/2026

I’m so proud of this dynamic duo!

Luna and Dana have been working so hard building their riding skills and are such a great team!

We introduced the weave last week and Luna was struggling a bit to get her body organized to change bends back and forth so the training was a little slow and messy - but this week things really started to click 🤗

I love R+ training so much because Dana doesn’t have to “hold Luna together” with reins or legs when she struggles with something like changing bend - instead we work as a team to teach the horse how to organize their own body

They figure things out so fast when we give them the opportunity to have this much agency in training!