After the Storm – Reconditioning Your Trail Horse

The world is a different place than it was a few months ago when I was thinking about traveling, camping trips with the horses, and getting ready for a fun season of trail riding. Like many, my barn has been closed to boarders and I haven’t been able to see him in weeks. I miss…



Helping Your Horse Find Peace Through Horsemanship

This week I (virtually) sit down with Jennifer Poulin of Cold Hollow Hoofcare, LLC to talk a little about horsemanship. For the past 15 years Jen has been on a journey of learning about horsemanship – apprenticing, attending clinics, lessons, and watching many wonderful quality horse men and women. She has taken the time to…



A Refuge with 4 Legs, a Mane, and a Tail

We all know that the world is currently a crazy scary place for so many people. As I arrived at the barn tonight after a stressful and worrying day, I couldn’t help but breathe a little easier. I felt some of my stress melt away immediately and the longer I spent with the horses, the…



Finding Your Corner Pieces

The other day I was talking to my co-worker Elissa, who has a 4-year old daughter (let’s call her “Luna”). Now, Luna is a very imaginative person and a creative thinker who has lots of adventures in her head. Just the other night Luna was telling her mom that sometimes at night the noise that…



How to Get Access to More Riding Trails – Stand up and be Counted!

Are you satisfied with how many trails you have access to and the quality of those trails? Have you seen your access to trails – whether it be on your neighbors’ land or public land – decreasing over time? If you live in the western US, you might be pretty happy with your trails. But…



DIY Obstacles!

We really enjoy mixing up normal ring riding in the winter with obstacles. These obstacles do a number of things: help us build trust with our equine partners,break up the routine ring work, andhelp desensitize our horses to new and potentially scary objects. Our general go-to obstacles in our ring are fairly limited. We mostly…



Trouble-Shooting Trailer Wiring

If you’ve ever had a light (or all the lights) go out on your trailer, you know that trouble-shooting it can be really intimidating. You’re smart enough to know that the problem could be the truck wiring, a bad trailer wire, or bad light. But how do you figure out which one of these it…



Living the Dream: A Trail-Riding Nomad

Do you yearn to get a living quarters trailer, grab a friend, and spend months or years traveling all over creation with your horses riding the most beautiful trails you can find? I certainly do! Jess Isbrecht, 37, is living this dream with her partner, Byron. I caught up with her via Skype in their…



Trail Riding From Zero to Eighty

I cannot think of many other activities that involve people from every age group to the extent that horseback riding does. My trail riding companions typically range in age from teens to seventies. Some children start riding before they can walk and there are plenty of examples of people riding well into their 90s.  In…



T-Rex on Horseback – How Quiet People Make Spooky Horses

Humans are weird. We talk with our hands. We make strange noises. We move erratically. Sometimes, it feels like we should try to be quiet and still around horses so that they are quiet around us. Not exposing horses to these weird things actually can make them more spooky because they are not desensitized to…