Horsemanship Fun

These are my teachers. Purchasing all but one of my horses as youngsters forced me to up my game. I trained my first horse in 1999 and in 2005 I went on a search for solutions to some severe behavior problems that a new youngster was experiencing and found Pat Parelli's Natural Horsemanship.Since then I've devoted hundreds of hours gaining the knowledge I needed to develop healthy relationships with my horses by gaining an understanding of their behavior and communication and implementing respectful effective techniques in my training. The results have been fascinating!

GROWTH and FUN THROUGH
NATURAL HORSEMANSHIP

Relationship building is key to having a happy and safe farm, therefore Natural Horsemanship is a big part of horse training at Spring Brook Farms, as well as developing a person's horsemanship skills to help grow confidence, improve communication, and build relationship skills. Many of the foundational and present masters' work and books including Pat Parelli, John Lyons, Clinton Anderson, Ray Hunt, Mark Rashid, Buck Brannaman and Tom Dorrance to name a few have influenced my growth and philosophies of working with horses and people.
Our activities mainly focus on the groundwork techniques developed and taught by Pat Parelli known as
The Seven Games.
*Natural Horsemanship is a philosophy of working with horses based on the horse's natural instincts and methods of communication, with the understanding that horses do not learn through fear or pain, but rather from pressure and the release of pressure.

DEFINITION

Horsemanship Fun is a program that focuses on teaching on ground horsemanship skills through playing a variety of games with the horses.

GOALS

Teach and emphasize safety for the person and horse
Provide a fun and playful learning environment
Provide education / knowledge of horsemanship
Identify potential for learning unmounted skills
Goals may be developed by participant, parent, others
Offer a personalized and quality curriculum
Stay true to the Parelli method of teaching groundwork while playing The Seven Games
Develop lesson plans with measurable objectives
Provide understanding of the benefits of this service

BENEFITS

Having fun learning and playing while developing and raising horsemanship knowledge for the benefit of the horse and human
Use of safe horse handling techniques
Widen understanding of horse care
Building relationships with horses
Developing and/or enhancing communication skills
Broaden problem solving and thinking skills
Increased confidence
Enhanced physical coordination

THE PROGRAM

In our program clients are paired with a horse to learn techniques of unmounted Natural Horsemanship. The focus of life skills is secondary. The beauty is life skills will be enhanced in the process.

The program encourages clients to develop creative problem-solving and thinking skills while taking the non-verbal feedback and expression of the horse into consideration.

One session may be scheduled or a series of progressive sessions overtime may be necessary to more fully develop horsemanship skills in order to meet the client's needs and goals. Clients would show off their new horsemanship skills in the last session.

Individual or small group sessions are held at Spring Brook Farms. This program is open and appropriate to anyone age 5 and up that would like to gain horsemanship skills while developing confidence, having fun, and growing in multiple ways.