This conversation with Kathy Sierra literally shifted my direction with my horses! It was pivotal in the best possible way and I am excited to share her work with you, as I believe it is one of the keys to changing our minds about our horses, our training, their movement, and their performance, and supporting so many horses to be happier and healthier.

It was such a pleasure to chat with Noah Tillman-Young of Steady Horse in this episode of the Whole Horse Podcast!

This chat with Animal Intuitive Lilly Ludwig was about as refreshing as they come, and her take on animal communication and busting down myths in the horse world is my cup of tea! In this episode, we discuss how to support our animals through transitions with the help of clear communication, how it doesn’t take any sort of gift to do it, what her mare Athena has to say about, well, everything, and the many ways our horses will surprise us if we let them. Enjoy!

This podcast episode with Josh Nichol went in an entirely different direction than expected, and I'm so grateful. It became a tribute to the two beings Josh supported in transitioning the previous day, including his best cattle dog Jake. Josh shares about his experience, the process that happened for both animals, the role of the other animals and his family and we got into ways to create a legacy for our dear ones, when they have left their physical forms. Get your tissues out, this conversation is powerful and important.

What a treat of a conversation with Jane Pike of The Confident Rider for this episode of the Whole Horse Podcast. Before we even started recording, my face was hurting from giggling. That spirit continued as we traversed territory around working with and not against our emotions with our horses, practical simple steps to restore regulation in our nervous systems and build in resilience, how to work with healthy activation and discomfort, and how to navigate losing our tempers with grace and growth so that we can find better footing in the future. An excellent listen for any horse person, who, like me, loves adding tools to my toolkit that facilitate connection with my horses and beyond.

One of my favourite podcast guests is back, because we all can use a little humour right about now. Liberty trainer Heather Nelson joined me to chat about the training of her “magical unicorns” aka her three horse herd. We got into some excellent detail about the unicorn creation process, mainly diving into working at liberty in different positions (including long-lining) and in different ways with each of her horses, and I was riveted and inspired. I hope you will be too!

I am deeply appreciative to Stephanie Kallstrom for this opportunity to have an important conversation and to continue the discussion around diversity and inclusion within the horse industry, and to begin the essential conversation about anti-racism, the impact of racial trauma, and how we can begin to adopt a trauma-informed approach in barn cultures, horse communities and beyond.

Heather Nelson and I sat together on her parents cozy couch in Cowichan Bay, British Columbia, with her recently injured leg propped up for this hilarious, open and real conversation about being with injuries, seeing opportunities, laughter, the fun of felting horses and much more. So good!

One of my favourite podcast guests is back and dropping some amazing wisdom about horses and life! Heather Nelson and I connected over the interwebs to chat about what staying home for the winter means for her training and her own horses, where her new learning edge lies, and why and how she’s shifting the way that she’s working with her horses. It is showing up in my lessons with her and my mare Raven (and why I was quite terrible at it!). As always, we giggled a lot, and had an impressive amount of fun while discussing our horse time. Enjoy!

For years, the sage advice of classical dressage master Nuno Oliveira guided my daily rides. I had read a quote by him deriding the use of a watch or any kind of timepiece when schooling a horse. His philosophy was that riders needed to school by feeling and responding to the horse rather than by any kind of external measurements or parameters. I adopted this idea wholeheartedly for many years, modulating the duration of my training exercises and sessions based on how I felt the horse was, or was not, making gains from them.