Daystar Ranch

05/16/2024

DayStar Ranch is a non profit, waiting to be put to work when a team is interested. Meantime, I am working through my friend's Foundation; Roughout Ranch Foundation to present my unique and powerful Authenticity Workshops.

04/30/2024

Good to know

05/27/2023

A great reason to learn this with practicing on the horses, is that it works so well with people in relationships with each other. This is so respectful that it counters the forces in our society that are coercive and punitive and frees each other to be authentic.

The 3 main ways to motivate your horse 💫 🐎💨⁣
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Living in the human world is completely unnatural for horses. If we want to ride, haul, or even do basic husbandry care with them… they’re gonna need a good reason *why* they should do any of it 🤷🏼‍♀️⁣
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1️⃣ The most common way that humans motivate horses is through pressure & release (scientifically referred to as negative reinforcement)⁣
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The *release* of pressure at the moment of a desired behavior will train the horse to do that behavior again. They are *motivated* by the desire to *avoid the discomfort of pressure*⁣
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Pressure & release has the potential to be used in a way that’s incredibly abusive 😣⁣ even when the human doesn’t intend for it to be.⁣
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However, it can also be done in a refined//ethical way, so the horse can feel relaxed & neutral about his work.⁣
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Maddy’s life work once revolved around making pressure/release training as ethical as possible. But when she looked into positive reinforcement training (R+)… her life changed completely 🤯⁣ she learned that:⁣
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2️⃣ Instead of motivating the horse with something he wants to avoid, we can motivate him with something he *desires*🥕⁣
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By adding an appetitive stimulus for a behavior, you can eventually teach him to offer that same behavior on-cue 🙌⁣
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Again, this sounds simple. It’s just a basic, foundational concept of training. But the reason it’s so life altering is the way it makes the horse FEEL.⁣
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Working toward something the horse wants puts a sparkle in his eye like we *never* see with ethical pressure/release✨⁣
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R+ opens the door to a third method of motivation, which is intrinsic motivation 💫⁣
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3️⃣ Instead of an external force causing the horse to move, we can strategically reward movements that FEEL good to the horse, encouraging him to move for the joy of it, instead of working to gain/avoid something externally.⁣
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When horses feel this good in training, connection and relationship thrives🌻⁣
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Maddy teaches these concepts in great detail in the Horse-Human Connection Academy (HCA)🌈⁣
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We are in the FINAL HOURS—enrollment closes TONIGHT, May 25th!⁣
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This is your last chance to enroll for the summer class ☀️⁣
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Click here for the deets and to enroll 🦋 https://www.mustangmaddy.com/the-hca/

11/30/2022

People project a lot onto horses, and it is all too common for it to be to the detriment of the mares.

DOES YOUR HORSE HATE MEN?

When I tell people what I do for a living a common response is, “Wow. You must see a lot of different types of horses in your work.”

That’s true. But what is equally true is that I see a lot of different types of people. The variety of horses I meet is matched by the variety of people.

At a guess, I think I meet 4 or 5 people a year who tell me that their horse hates men. Almost always the horse is a mare. They tell me how cranky their horse behaves when handled by men. They may even cite instances of aggression towards men. It’s very rare to hear reports of a horse hating women. I can’t think of anyone ever telling me they owned a horse that hated women.

When I first heard of this phenomenon I began to wonder how could a horse distinguish a human male from a female. Nothing seemed to fit. Mannerisms, voice, body shape, size, odour, physical energy and strength, dress, etc could all be discounted by the fact that there was no consistent difference between men and women. All the features I can think of that might distinguish men from women have a huge variability and I strongly doubt would give a horse a clear signal that “this person is a man and this person is a woman.” Besides, what would be so bothersome to a horse about the physical features of men as to turn them into men-haters?

Similarly, from the sample of people who tell me their horse hated men, most did not think their horse had issues with younger people. Was there a change in their horse’s behaviour when boys transitioned into men?

I recall at one clinic, the owner told me how her horse hated men. Whenever the farrier or the dentist or the vet came to visit the horse would become anxious. Her horse also did not get along with her instructor. They were all men. But her horse loved the female masseuse. She concluded that the problem was gender, not the horse’s experience and handling by these experts.

On another occasion, a woman came to her first clinic with a very nervous and worried horse. She told me the mare hated men. Even her husband upset her horse. I noted that the woman did not mention how anxious the horse was by being with her. Anyway, I asked if I could play with her horse. Fifteen minutes later the horse was following me around like a puppy. I remember thinking, “I guess I am not man enough for this mare because she doesn’t seem to hate me.”

I have yet to meet a horse that I am convinced its anxiety stems from a person's gender. I know certain people have a knack for triggering trouble inside a horse. But I have never witnessed a case where this could not be reversed by good work. I believe the problem is not chromosome-based, but handling based.

08/19/2022

Authenticity Workshops now registering for the fall at Roughout Ranch.

07/21/2022

Our programs at Roughout Ranch are growing and serving our community. We have qualified therapists, now offering help to kids and parents, and are working on our Authenticity Recovery Workshop as well. We are considering a Parenting Workshop that will be offered to both the parent and the child, who may want to come for a week end retreat. We would love to get feedback of interest in these. Of course, our foundation workshop is ready to be offered to Singles as well. We will probably launch a separate page for these sessions soon.

06/05/2022

We have found it fun to add Virtues to our Horse Encounters, and the program is called Twelve Horse-Powered Virtues! Very powerful, and horses too!

Talk given by Ms. Linda Kavelin-Popov on May 28, 2022.Bestselling author, Linda Kavelin-Popov is an international speaker on personal and global transformati...

06/05/2022

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch. Check out what is happening now to build healthy communities, at Roughout Ranch.

Artwork by Brenna Quinlan

05/29/2022

One way to promote this learning is what we are doing with our Horse Encounters and especially with our Authenticity Workshops. The foundation of our courses, "Conscious Connection and Encouraging Engagement" is a set of 12 sessions with a small group and the horses. Very affordable and customized to the group we have on each day. Registration is done by Roughout Ranch and soon, we can bring our sessions to other places too.

"The ancient Irish had a saying: 'You don't give a man a weapon until you've taught him how to dance.' In other words, a different kind of learning is required before someone can be truly trusted with social power and potent things like weapons. If a man does not know the wounds of his own soul, he can deny not just his own pain, but also be unmoved by the suffering of other people. More than that, he will tend to put his wound onto others. He may only be able to see the wound that secretly troubles him when he forcefully projects it into someone else, in forms of abuse or violence.

So in the old culture-making idea, in order to properly bear arms a person must first become disarmed, as in becoming vulnerable and connected to something meaningful and supportive of life. The idea of forging the temperament of young men took precedence over the idea of simply giving them weapons at a certain age. The tempering of the souls involved discovering what kind of anger each might carry and learning about the inner line where anger turned into blind rage. Becoming tempered also meant immersing in the sorrow of one's life and thereby being in touch with the grief of the world."

- Michael Meade