About Shawna and Jessie

Shawna Karrasch started using positive reinforcement (R+) when she worked at Sea World in San Diego, for ten years she was immersed in using R+ in a systematic way, teaching complex behaviors to many species. You cannot, after all, coerce a whale or sea lion to do anything they don't want to do! From there, she developed a love of horses and jumped into that world by working first with show jumping phenoms, John and Beezie Madden. 

Since then, Shawna has worked with other Olympians and top athletes as well as casual horse owners whose primary goal is having a loving companion. Shawna has been instrumental in sharing this applied learning theory with the horse world and was an original pioneer. 

R+ has taken off from the work she began back in the 90's and this method of training has grown a hundred fold thanks to what she started. She is a fun and highly engaging speaker with a gift for clearly explaining the science and theory. Not too many of us came to horses learning any other way except traditionally. 

Shawna's marine mammal background gives her a completely unique perspective on teaching both people and animals. Her expertise in the field of equine behavior is second to none. 

Jessie Hillegas started riding (traditionally) as a child and continued through adulthood learning from some of the top hunter and jumper trainers in the industry. She worked for large A show  hunter/jumper barns on the east coast where duties included training young horses from the ground up, coaching Bucknell University's Equestrian Team, teaching their regular lesson program beginner through advanced, riding/preparing the made show horses for competition, and catch riding. 

After 20 years of total immersion in the show world, Jessie started her own Warmblood breeding and training business out of her home in Pennsylvania. She has bred top hunters who have won prizes at venues such as Warrenton, Upperville and the Devon Horse Show. Jessie became disenchanted with the show world when one of the foals she bred was sold and went on to a program that showed the filly 60+ times in two seasons. 

Poor treatment of this young and talented filly caused great distress and created dangerous and unpredictable behavior. Being horse of the year for USEF showing on the line, was not worth what this did to her. The owners sent her back to Jessie and with Shawna's help, Jessie was able to take the filly who had PTSD-like behavior and change her neural pathways so that she is back to her pleasant and loving self again. After this, Jessie understood positive reinforcement was going to be a mainstay in her training.

From there, Shawna and Jessie formed a friendship which later grew into a partnership and it became their focus to spread the word of positive reinforcement to as many horse people as will listen… particularly the show world who are most hesitant to embrace it. Things have come a long way thanks to social media so that this training is growing exponentially now and we are thrilled to be able to share what we have learned coming from two very distinct, yet complimentary backgrounds with you!