I'm EXHAUSTED 😩 A couple of weeks ago, I hit a rough patch. Likely the aftermath of an insane summer schedule with the kids (at least for my routine-loving, introverted self), layered with the heavy administrative load of bringing to life the new all-inclusive Academy, and the seriously oppressive nature of the hot and very humid summer here in Texas. All of that resulted in a burned-out Adele. 💀 I started feeling better for literally 24 hours, and then... 💥 serious head cold now. UGH. The results? Everything having to do with the horses has been the bare minimum. I'm tempted to feel guilty, but you know what? There's no need to be. I've worked long and hard to make sure my horse's needs are all met without me. ✔️ 24/7 appropriate forage, slow-fed for their caloric needs ✔️ Peaceful herd mates for safety and social interaction ✔️ Unlimited access to movement (no stalling here!) ✔️ Shelter they can access if/when needed ✔️ Plentiful resources that are not guarded or restricted ✔️ Diversity and enrichment in their day-to-day life ✔️ The training necessary to have their needs met or to handle emergencies After all that... training is a bonus. Doing stuff together is for us to enjoy because we enjoy each other's company and have fun together. It's OKAY for me to take a season off, to take a long break, and to not be feeling my best. It's OKAY for my horses to *just* be horses. They are not being wasted, and they are living a good life. That's all I want for them. To live a good life, by horse standards. So, if you're in the same season as me at the moment. Just know THAT IS OKAY. And if you're looking at that list and realizing some missing gaps need to be addressed, that's okay too. This is your sign to make a plan and work on the little "boring" things that will set your horse up for success for future busy, sick, or just not yourself seasons. It doesn't have to be perfect; in fact, it'll never be "perfect", but you can get a little closer every day. So that when things pop up, you'll know your horse will be that much more okay. So that you can do what you need to do to get back to enjoying your time at the barn and having fun with your horse. ❤️

Relationship 𝗔𝗡𝗗 functional, practical, important behaviors. ✨ My horses meeting me at the gate 𝗔𝗡𝗗 safe, easy to handle, enjoyable to work with horses. Kind, patient, positive training 𝗔𝗡𝗗 effective outcomes. Connection 𝗔𝗡𝗗 communication. I 100% believe we can have it all. It’s not one or the other. Far too often R+ (positive reinforcement) focused training is limited to just some fun tricks or to fixing a few problem behaviors, when it can be SO much more than that. Or worse, it’s dismissed as not being “real” training that is practical or safe. Meanwhile pressure and release, natural horsemanship, and more traditional training approaches are thought of as the only way to achieve more “serious” training. I’ve been challenging that belief system for many years now and proving it 𝒘𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈. All of my horses and all of my training is R+ focused. I hike, ride, travel, teach lessons, do all the normal vet and farrier stuff with my horses… all with R+ training as our focus. And I teach my clients to do the same. 💪 The trick is that you have to have a foundation, and then you have to know how to build that foundation until it becomes the every day stuff, and the advanced stuff. It becomes a way of interacting with horses, it becomes a conversation. The way you solve problems. The way you prepare for real life. The way you become the kind of person your horse can trust when the world gets weird. 💫 That’s exactly what I teach inside The Willing Equine Academy. The Academy is now all-inclusive, so you get the complete foundation curriculum plus all of my specialty courses covering the practical things we actually need to do with horses. From cooperative care and hoof handling to tying, under-saddle training, blanketing, and more. It’s designed to help you move beyond “I know the basics of R+” and learn how to actually use this approach as your horsemanship. If you want the relationship and the real-life skills, I’d love to have you inside. 🤍 Link in bio to join The Willing Equine Academy. thewillingequine.com/academy

Look, horses aren’t out to “get us”. And horses are not people. They don’t plan revenge. They aren’t being spiteful. They aren’t faking it or being “dramatic”. If your horse is giving you a hard time it’s because they are HAVING A HARD TIME. It’s up to us to slow down, step back, and figure out why. The reasons why your horse may be acting a certain way are endless really. And not always easily understood. But there is *always* a reason. And it’s not malicious or purposeless. Don’t roll your eyes, tell them to just “get over it”, ignore them, or punish them. Take your horse seriously. Be their advocate. Just like you would want someone to take you seriously if you told them you were scared, in pain, angry, sad, confused, etc.

I love watching the beautiful liberty videos, horse's doing talking buttons, and all the really amazing and cool things people are out there doing with their horses. But my heart is really with the "boring" training. Boring in the best possible way. The calm and easy hoof trims. The quiet rides away from home. The easy tacking up. This is the kind of “boring” I want more people to experience with their horses. And it’s exactly what we spend so much time building inside the Academy. thewillingequine.com/academy

Pumpkin has never liked being bathed. She tolerated it when I insisted, either through tying her up or persisting until she was still. I didn’t even have to do much, just a gentle hand on the halter kept her around while I hosed her down after a ride or gave her a bath. Even her just feeling “trapped” through body language or being in a more restricted space, or even just the perception that she didn’t have a choice, would cause her to go still and tolerate being bathed. But if she was totally free to leave. Where she felt comfortable in escaping and that nothing bad would happen…. She would leave quickly. And if she saw the other horses being bathed, she wouldn’t join them, she would disappear as inconspicuously as possible. So, I mostly left her alone. I bathed her only occasionally , and for the most part I used wet cloths to wipe her down if she was hot and sweaty after a ride. A couple of years ago I very casually, and only periodically, started to associate food with water. Counter conditioning. I just fed her continuously while getting her wet. I went at her pace, took it slow, and had no expectations. I saw tremendous progress, but I wasn’t really putting enough consistent practice into it to see a total transformation. Just gentle progress. And then something else happened not too long ago. I was at the barn, Pumpkin looked hot, and none of the other horses were around… so I decided to see if she’d be open to being hosed. I was so shocked when she came right up (totally at liberty, all the places to go, no pressure from me, completely her choice) and enjoyed a full body hose down as if she’d been doing this her whole life. Why? Well I’m sure being hot helped, but living in the south… we are always hot and have certainly had hotter days. I’m also sure the counter conditioning made a bigger impact than I realized, even with just a handful of practices over a couple of years. I also believe that me no longer forcing her to be hosed down played a BIG role. I decided to let it be her decision, even if I was hot just looking at her be hot. But the biggest thing of all ⬇️ None of the other horses were around. 💡 I don’t think this was the ONLY factor, but I do believe it was a big final piece to the puzzle. See Pumpkin is a passivist in the herd. She is deeply connected to her herd and feels safest around them, but also largely likes to be left alone and just be able to eat in peace. She doesn’t push her way into the herd when they are clambering for attention at the fence, or take over the shelter during nap times. So even though possibly she wanted to be hosed off in the past, as soon as other horses were around she abandoned the idea completely. This is such a beautiful example of how antecedents (the environment, the factors surrounding the behavior, the “stage” it happens upon) play a significant role in behavior. We can train and train and train all day long, but if we ignore everything that comes before, during, and after then we are just spinning our wheels. I just wish I would have caught onto this earlier, but honestly… that’s okay. Sometimes it’s hardest to see the things right in front of us. Especially with our own personal horses. It’s much easier for someone to come into a situation with an objective view and no personal investment.. and spot the blind spot. Which is exactly why behavior consulting and working with a professional can be so invaluable! —— If you feel like you could use a fresh eye on things, need help supporting your horse through their dislike of things like (water, injections, oral meds, blanket, tack, you name it), or if you’d like to learn more about how to fade out subtle coercion from your handling and training… I’d love to invite you and your horse(s) to The Willing Equine Academy. A private online learning community created by an equine behavior consultant for the compassionate equestrian who wants to become skilled, observant, without becoming passive, permissive or impractical. thewillingequine.com/academy

A lot of people say they put the horse first. But what about when doing so inconveniences us? When we already made plans. When our friends are waiting on the trail, we paid the entry fee, or when we only have an hour to ride. When the horse we bought specifically to ride is very clearly saying, “not today.” This is where “horse first” often covertly becomes “horse first… as long as I still get to do what I wanted.” And then we give ourselves permission. They’re being lazy. They need more exercise. They don’t get asked to do much. They’ll be fine once we get going. We just need to ask differently. We can’t let them learn that saying no works. Which brings me to an idea I strongly reject: That because we feed them, house them, care for them, train them, or bought them for a particular purpose… they owe us access to their body. They don’t. And inevitably, someone asks, “But what about an emergency?” Sometimes something truly has to happen for a horse’s immediate safety or medical welfare. But an emergency is not a blanket justification for routinely overriding a horse’s communication. A trail ride is not an emergency. Riding today instead of tomorrow is not an emergency. Getting the hoof picked up right now because it’s convenient is not an emergency. And preparing horses for situations where we will need their cooperation is exactly why I care so much about collaborative training and cooperative care. We can teach horses to participate and build skills before we need them. We can create trust and willingness rather than waiting… then using force as proof that force was necessary all along. And none of this means humans are not allowed to have goals. I want to ride, hike, and do interesting things with my horses. It’s completely okay to want a relationship with horses that includes things we enjoy too. But I do not believe my enjoyment outranks their experience. The goal can usually stay, but the timeline, plan, and the way we get there may need to change. And sometimes, yes, the goal itself may need to change. Because for me, collaboration means the horse gets a real voice in what happens to them, even when it’s inconvenient.

One of the most powerful tools used by the religious cult was the possibility of losing your belonging. Shame, gossip, judgment and subtle rejection were used to keep people in line. Dress correctly. Speak correctly. Believe the right things. Follow the rules. Because if you didn’t, you risked losing your friends, your community, and the only world you knew. Years later, when I began questioning the way I had been taught to work with horses, I found myself facing a surprisingly familiar choice. I could continue doing what was socially accepted within the horse world… or I could listen to what my horses were telling me. Changing the way I trained wasn’t the hardest part. The hardest part was becoming the strange one. The unsafe one. The person people talked about, distanced themselves from or warned others about. Not because my horses were suffering… They were safer, happier and more willing than they had ever been. But because I was no longer conforming. None of this means we need to become wishy-washy about our beliefs or pretend every way of treating horses is equally ethical. We can have strong standards, draw firm boundaries around harm, and believe deeply in what we do… all while remaining willing to question ourselves, learn, and change. What we don’t need is shame, humiliation or threatened rejection to force everyone into sameness. A healthy community should leave room for questions, mistakes, growth and thoughtful disagreement. It should help us become more attentive to the horse in front of us—not more concerned with performing correctly for the people around us.

I want to tell you about an Academy member named Macey and her mare, because her story is such a good example of what I mean when I talk about looking beyond whether or not a horse simply does the thing we need them to do. For a long time, Macey’s mare had been getting through routine hoof trims. Maybe not perfectly, but enough that there wasn’t a reason to think something much bigger was going on underneath the surface. Until one appointment when her mare had a huge explosion during the trim. It became very clear that what had looked like a horse tolerating hoof handling was actually a horse who had been holding a tremendous amount in. Something often referred to as “shut down” or “learned helplessness.” Looking back, Macey realized her mare had been much more shut down than relaxed. She wasn’t comfortable with what was happening, she had just learned how to get through it. And eventually… she couldn’t anymore. That realization changed the way Macey approached the problem. She started building a stronger positive reinforcement foundation and working on the emotional experience surrounding hoof handling. She paid attention to where and how they practiced, created better associations, and focused on keeping her mare where she could actually learn rather than simply endure. By the next farrier appointment, the difference was huge. There was no explosion. Her mare was noticeably more comfortable and they were able to keep her under threshold. Even when things became stressful, instead of mentally disappearing or escalating, the mare looked to Macey for help. And THAT is exactly the result we are looking for! 🙌 The goal isn’t a horse who never experiences stress. We can’t promise our horses that nothing difficult or unexpected will ever happen. But we can work toward a horse who has the skills and confidence in us to stay engaged when those moments happen. And apparently the difference was noticeable to more than just Macey, because her farrier told her: “Whatever you’ve been doing, keep doing it because it’s working!” Macey later told me that the Academy had truly changed her horse’s life. ❤️ And while that is an incredibly meaningful thing to hear, what I love most about this story is that there wasn’t one magical exercise that fixed everything. Macey learned to see her horse differently. She learned to pay attention to the emotional pieces alongside the practical ones, and built skills between appointments rather than waiting until the farrier arrived to deal with the problem. That’s the kind of progress I want for Academy members. Of course I want your horse to stand for the farrier, load into the trailer, line up at the mounting block, and participate in all of the practical things we need horses to do. But I also want to teach you how to look underneath those behaviors, recognize what your horse may actually be experiencing, and know what you can change when something isn’t working. Because the biggest transformation isn’t just getting the outcome we wanted, it’s that when things get hard our horses feel they can look to us for guidance and support. If that’s the kind of relationship and training you want to create with your horse, I’d love to have you join us inside the Academy. 🖤 thewillingequine.com/academy

I think it’s easy to think “cult = bad” and “I would never!” … but the reality is that a lot of the horse world demonstrates very cult like behavior. ⬇️ • Rejection for anyone and everything that doesn’t fit into that framework or deviates from it at all. • The sense of “belonging” that comes with fitting in. • Giving one or a few people a significant amount of power of influence over you and how you work with your horse. • Those in power never being held accountable for their actions… we just turn a blind eye or eventually forget. • Being pushed to cut ties with other equestrians that don’t conform. • “Us” vs “them” mentality. • Shame, guilt, and fear being used to manipulate people emotionally. • People who have left one training methodology for another being rejected, blamed, or slandered. It’s not all that way and all bad, but there certainly many signs in many areas of the horse world that lead to “cult”. And I believe the first steps to really healing here is understanding how words are used to manipulate, control, and mask. Being able to see clearly what’s ACTUALLY happening, vs what is being told to us is a big step towards understanding and not just following. Because you shouldn’t be “following” a trainer, especially off a cliff (in other words… into doing something with or to your horse that doesn’t feel right). You should be learning from them, questioning them, and then putting into practice what you take away. Not because “this is the only way” or because “I’ve found the light!”, but because deep down you know it to be right for you and your horse right now. And because it aligns with your world view, your ethics, and who you want to be for yourself and for your horse.