Training with Oxytocin

After reading the book Made For Each Other by Meg Daley Olmert, I should probably change the name of my blog. I brainstormed long and hard to come up with name “I Feel Good, My Horse Feels Good.” My other choices were “I’m Smiling, My Horse is Smiling” or “Training Horses the Way I’d Like to be Trained if I Were a Horse.”

All of my name choices revolved around how happy I am when I’m working with my horses. The reason I started my blog in the first place is that when I saw other folks working with their horses, neither they nor their horses seemed to smile as much as I would when I was working/playing with my horses.

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Why I Feel Good and My Dog, Cat or Horse Feels Good

Many, many thanks to Kimberly Cox Carneal from Enlightened Horsemanship Through Touch for information on Meg Daley Olmert. Meg is a documentary producer and the author of Made For Each Other, The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond.

Meg’s blog on Psychology Today called Made For Each Other: Exploring how people and animals bond–and why it makes you healthier and happier, is fantastic and very timely for me.

I’ve been reading a local dog  magazine called The New Barker. It has a very classy cover and resembles The New Yorker. The magazine features everything you can imagine about dogs. I was literally awestruck by the love emanating from it’s pages. It seemed every breed was celebrated and the community was united in their unconditional love for all dogs.

Then I was struck by how this energy is often missing in magazines about horses. I’ve been relentlessly questioning and discussing with my friends to see why there is such a difference between canine and equine literature.