When you have a problem with your horse(s), who are you going to call?

The film industry—aka Hollywood—is the home of the great, and sometimes not so great, story tellers of our times. Every day on the set represents a lot of money spent in an effort to capture some movie magic.

For that reason, working with animals on films is a risky, tricky, and increasingly high stakes business. Directors and producers don’t need to mess around with animals who can’t do their job. They have too much at stake. Rex Peterson has become the gold standard when it comes to horses in film. When Julia Roberts was portrayed galloping through the woods away from one of her weddings in “Runaway Bride,” she rode one of Rex’s horses (that is actually Julia on the horse). See Cari’s blog for many other examples of Rex’s film work, including of course the filming of “Hidalgo” with our own RJ, the star horse of that film.

Have you ever had a problem with your horse that you didn’t know how to handle? If you’ve ever had a horse we know the answer to that question and we are here with many new solutions—most of which are in fact very old and are passed down from generations that preceded ours.

This week and weekend in Massachusetts you will have the opportunity to meet the legendary Rex Peterson in the flesh at the Equine Affaire. Not only that, Swanson Peterson Productions is releasing a new series of training videos available on DVD. More details on that this week.

We look forward to seeing you at the Equine Affaire.

Jim Breitinger is an Arizona-based writer.