The “Waterhole Rituals” are the tea ceremony to develop a harmonious relationship with a horse and with life. It is a continual practice in awareness and being present to the moment.

The Waterhole Rituals create a deep friendship with a horse and a working bond that is the foundation for all equestrian pursuits. The Waterhole Rituals develop a horse that wants to learn and perform the task at hand while creating a feeling of well-being in a horse along with an optimistic attitude for what he does – the opposite of a trained bear.

What I find is that horses in general receive their well-being from sharing companionship with one another and enjoy this kind of relationship with humans too. However we do a lot to spoil this by not fulfilling their companionship need by the way we house them and the way we go about training them.

All the Waterhole Rituals are focused on developing a certain quality of connection that is present in a relationship where the bond is deep. I call these separate qualities of connection that each Ritual develops in a horse “the heart felt strings of connection” because they are the vibrations that exist when … Read more

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Eye exercises for your horse and how to develop the weaker side

Test your horse and see how your horse is using his eyes when traveling in a circle. If your horse is working well in both directions; when he is going to the left, he will use his left eye to guide him into the circle and when he is going to the right, he will use his right eye to guide him.  If your horse is not working well in one direction, it often times can be corrected by eye exercises.

Put down a bucket of food, walk your horse in hand around the bucket of food and then turn him towards the bucket, in a tight circle.  As you are approaching the bucket, make sure that you only let him see the bucket with the one eye, using the eye that is on the inside of the circle. How he goes up to a bucket reveals allot in how he responds when you ride him in left or right circles.  Does he try and turn around and face the opposite direction when he goes to put his head in the bucket?  If he does, it shows that … Read more

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Today’s post is in response to a letter I received recently from someone:

Dear Carolyn,

I am also incredibly excited about the reformation. It has been a question of mine for a long while, as to how can one influence herd behavior.

Actually, Joost helped me come up with the plan. He too is using the Waterhole Rituals to influence with all of the horses he works with.

He has a 2 year old filly in training who bites everything she can reach.

Last week while grooming her he stuffed a cookie in her mouth when she reached for his elbow.

Well! That totally interrupted the deal and then he asked her for several steps back.

She was very different all morning.

Thinking things through in this way is becoming 2nd nature, and we are doing everything possible to coax that along.

I do have something to report back to you about our mustang, Geronimo.

We have been doing the intimacy exercises with him for about 4 weeks. He can now eat out of a bucket, keeping his head inside the whole time, which is a huge improvement.

His normal behavior is to grab a mouthful and then move away

… Read more

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Communicating with a horse is like a courtship.

Try treating a horse like you would like to be courted, and then your horse will show you how he would like to be approached, this way you will discover a working partnership from a co-creative evolution that will grow into an amazing cross species bond built on love, affection, parenting and respect. Know that trial and error will, usually, have a positive result, because your heart is in the right place.

There as been several people a bit confused in how to communicate the fifth Ritual Eye Contact with their horse.

It is quite easy to put it into practice.

I thought I would break it down for those of you that would like more information.

What you are wanting to do is to develop your horse to have a habit of keeping an eye on you, not as a horse would on a predator but like you would do with a friend at a gathering of many people, where if you did not keep and eye on each other you could get separated.

The way you approach this ritual is the same way lead horses teach the younger ones to … Read more

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Little Known Precursors to Aggressive Behavior in Fearful Horses, and How to Deal with Them.

I was watching Animal Planet with Victory Stilwell. She mentioned something about a little known fact about dog behavior. I thought I heard her say that a dog that will roll over on his back as a submission gesture in the future will surely bite you.

I started thinking of the things that most horse professionals do not know about horses. One of them is if a horse tries to look at you with only one eye with a stiffness in his body, he does not trust you. It is a fearful as well as an aggressive stance, and it comes with strong threat in the future to the person the horse responds to in this way.

The horse that will look at you with one eye or will switch his head around back and forth looking at you from one eye to the other may follow this behavior with biting, charging, kicking or striking at a later time, when you might least expect it.

Years ago, I had to clean out stalls as an every day chore when I was apprenticing with Gladys Foster, … Read more

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I would like to invite everyone to send me a YouTube, if it would please you to do so, on the personal connection that you have developed and are enjoying with your horse using the Waterhole Rituals. This is an invitation to blog readers as well as the students in the Inner Circle Program. Just paste the link in the comments section below.

For the Inner Circle students: put together a YouTube that shows how far along you are in the Rituals. This information will help me to support you further. I am sure your YouTubes would also be helpful to people who are just starting out with my Method.

I want to give more information on the Eye Contact Ritual. This Ritual is to develop your horse’s habit in keeping and eye on you. Some people cannot tell if their horse is looking at them. It is easier to tell with some horses than others. The easy ones will get interested in looking somewhere beyond or left or right of where you are standing and will turn their heads to look. Try this exercise to see if your horse is really keeping an eye on you:

Allow your horse … Read more

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Hello again. Thank you so much for all your wonderful comments about my plans for a school. Of course, its early days and we need to find the funding to make it all happen but your kind words are very encouraging.

Today, I want to share a story with you that was sent in by Katie from northern California. Katie’s story just shows what can be done if you just go out and follow what’s in my book and in my DVD’s. You will see how much and how fast her relationship with her horse, Picasso, changed just by doing these simple Rituals. She also has a similar success with a couple of wild paint colts she was hired to gentle.

*** To read the rest of this post, get Carolyn’s Blog Collection Volume 1 ***
Click the image above for more details

 … Read more

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