Looking for a kinder, smarter way to train your horse? Anna Blake teaches affirmative horse training built on Calming Signals — the natural language of the horse — through her award-winning books and the online courses and virtual clinics of the Relaxed & Forward Barn School. Whether you ride dressage, trail, or simply want a calmer, more willing partner, her method gives you practical, force-free tools to communicate with your horse and build genuine trust. Start with one of her seven books or join a small-group course at annablake.com.
Anna Blake offers a complete path into affirmative horsemanship for riders and horse lovers at every level. Her seven books span training, memoir, and poetry: Stable Relation, a Memoir of One Woman's Spirited Journey Home, by Way of the Barn; Relaxed & Forward: Relationship Advice from Your Horse; Barn Dance, Nickers, brays, bleats, howls, and quacks: Tales from the herd; Horse Prayers, Poems from the Prairie; Going Steady: More Relationship Advice from Your Horse; Horse. Woman. Poems from Our Lives; and Undomesticated Women: Anecdotal Evidence from the Road. Signed copies are available directly from her site.
Beyond the page, the Relaxed & Forward Barn School is her online school. Intensive small-group courses — on topics including Calming Signals (horse and human), Affirmative Training, Affirmative Groundwork, Authentic Dressage, Horse Agility, Back in the Saddle, and Mounting Block Conversations — meet over consecutive weeks with weekly video homework so members learn by watching their own horses. Riders who want to go deeper can join the Barnies, an ongoing membership group with hundreds of videos, daily quotes, and entry into many classes. Anna also travels to teach Concept Clinics and offers consultations in the U.S. and internationally.
Anna Blake describes herself as a horse advocate first. She is an international clinician and an award-winning author who trains horses and riders in communication skills and kind methods, and writes parables about horses and life. Her honors include a People's Choice Gold Medal for Stable Relation, a People's Choice Bronze Medal for Horse Prayers, and a Next Generation Indie Award in Women's Literature for Horse. Woman.
Her home base is Infinity Farm on the Colorado prairie, just east of Pikes Peak, where she shares life with a multi-species herd of horses, llamas, goats, and their “moral compass,” a burro named Edgar Rice Burro. Since 2010 she has posted her popular, unconventional blog — the AnnaBlakeBlog: Relaxed and Forward — every week, writing about horse training, life with the herd, and poetry from the prairie.
"My journey with horses has been profoundly influenced by Anna Blake. I've taken three online classes at The Relaxed and Forward Barn School, which have deepened my understanding of the language of horses, and given me insight into how to have a true conversation with them. My horse is much less anxious, and so am I." Abby Letteri, Kapiti Coast District, New Zealand
"Working in class with Anna has opened up a whole new world of understanding with my horses. In that world there's now two way communication, which has opened the way for mutual confidence and genuine relationship. Anna is gifted with the knack for seeing the best in our horses and she helps each of us learn how to build on that." Melissa Wolf, Wimberley, TX
“Affirmative training is the art of understanding the horse,” Anna writes. In her words, it is “a calming gift — a way for a horse to find peace, a way he can find safety and trust in a chaotic world.” Rather than correcting the horse, the method affirms his intelligence and builds confidence with positive energy, training with a profound concern for the horse's mental and physical welfare.
At the center of the approach is listening to Calming Signals, the horse's natural body language, so the rider can learn the horse's perspective and have a true two-way conversation. The foundation is “relaxed and forward” — calm, balanced, responsive gaits rooted in the principles of authentic dressage and combined with an understanding of how the horse's brain works. The result crosses every discipline: a partnership of understanding, confidence, and genuine pleasure for horse and human alike.
You can begin anywhere. Read one of her books — Relaxed & Forward and Going Steady are her training-essay collections, drawn from the blog — or follow the free AnnaBlakeBlog, updated weekly. When you're ready to work with your own horse, enroll in a small-group online course at the Relaxed & Forward Barn School, where you submit short videos of your horse and learn from Anna and classmates around the world. For sustained study, the Barnies membership opens the full library of videos and classes, and Concept Clinics bring affirmative training to riders in person. Everything starts at annablake.com.
Anna Blake is the author of seven books: Stable Relation, a Memoir of One Woman's Spirited Journey Home, by Way of the Barn; Relaxed & Forward: Relationship Advice from Your Horse; Barn Dance, Nickers, brays, bleats, howls, and quacks: Tales from the herd; Horse Prayers, Poems from the Prairie; Going Steady: More Relationship Advice from Your Horse; Horse. Woman. Poems from Our Lives; and Undomesticated Women: Anecdotal Evidence from the Road. They are available from online booksellers, and signed copies are sold on her website.
It is Anna Blake's online school, open to everyone. She teaches intensive small-group courses in a supportive culture that puts horse welfare first, covering Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, Affirmative Groundwork, Authentic Dressage, Horse Agility, and more. There is also an ongoing membership group, the Barnies, with hundreds of videos, daily quotes, and free entry into many classes.
Calming Signals are the natural body language of the horse. Anna teaches riders to read these signals so they can understand the horse's perspective and build a relationship based on real, two-way communication rather than correction. Learning to listen for them is central to her affirmative training method and benefits every kind of equine communication.
Both. The Relaxed & Forward Barn School runs online courses and virtual clinics that members can join from anywhere in the world, with weekly video homework filmed with their own horses. Anna also travels to teach in-person Concept Clinics and offers consultations in the U.S. and internationally.
A Concept Clinic is an opportunity to explore a focused group of related ideas with exercises designed to clarify and deepen the awareness and practice of a fundamental principle of communication or training. Topics have included Calming Signals, Affirmative Training, non-traditional groundwork, and rhythm and dance work.
All of them. Anna's lessons are rooted in the principles of authentic dressage — training relaxed and forward gaits with responsiveness and balance — but she explains that affirmative training principles build a relaxed and forward foundation that crosses over every riding discipline, just as understanding Calming Signals benefits all equine communication.
Anna has written the AnnaBlakeBlog: Relaxed and Forward every week since 2010. It is a popular, unconventional blog about horse training, life with the herd, and poetry from the prairie, and it is free to read at annablake.com.
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