How to create a safe horse that wants to look after you (video/audio)

In this video, Katie shares her tips on creating a safe horse that wants to look after you.

Are you interested in learning what compassionate leadership looks like in practice?

Join the Connection Masterclass here:

How do I desensitise my horse?

Do you want to know the secret to training?

A horse that can't control it’s emotions, can’t control it’s behaviours!

If your horse doesn’t know how to emotionally self regulate, you have to model that emotional self regulation for them.

If you become emotionally engaged and spiral with them, you WILL feed of each other.

Cue training is easy. It’s managing and training their emotional self regulation that is hard.

And this is where we make the mistake with desensitisation.

Throwing a tarp over your horse doesn’t teach your horse to not be afraid of the tarp. It teaches the horse that the tarp goes away when they don’t react.

Waving a flag doesn’t teach a horse that it’s not dangerous, only that it goes away when the horse looks at it (or you).

What we DO need to do is to develop our horses confidence in us, themselves, and their surroundings, so they can face any scary situation. This means both you and your horse need to learn how to emotionally regulate.

There are ways you can develop these skills. But they can’t be learnt when you horse is losing the plot. The most successful method when using these skills is to regularly and consistently creating positve scenarios where the horse can build confidence - in you AND themselves.

So what resources are available to you to support you through this?

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The Trainability Coaching Program

takes you through developing mental relaxation, true willingness and consent with your horse, and teaches you some of the emotional regulation skills as well. This program also gives you access to Katie as your coach and personal cheer squad (and as some have mentioned, “horse marriage councillor)

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Curiosity + Communication Bundle Offer

For the owner of the shut down or spooking horse in particular, ways to work to create confidence in you and themselves, and to understand their cues faster.

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Building Connection Course

This free course and workshop recording gives you insight in the steps to build a deeper connection with your horse so you can start creating trust and confidence in each other.

Is licking and chewing a sign of relaxation?

Is licking and chewing a sign of relaxation? Watch the video and see for yourselves.

If you need a hand with this, why not have a look at the Opening Communications Course - it’s full of amazingly helpful hints and tips to help your horse relax and begin opening up their thoughts and emotions to you.

Creating A Safe Horse

Creating a safe horse that wants to look after you doesn’t happen by accident.

It happens by showing up consistently as a compassionate leader worth following.

Building a relationship and a connection with your horse is the most effective way to teach horses to be safe and to look after their humans.

ESPECIALLY if you are not a professional trainer!

If your horse likes you, trusts you and is confident in you, you won’t need to force your horse to look after you.

Teaching horses how to relax mentally (through compassionate leadership techniques), makes horses that enjoy the learning process, and amazing ASK and WANT to be ridden - all without trauma triggering training methods.

Compassionat leadership is about:

• Awareness of how the work you are doing with your horse makes them feel engaged, and adapting that work will make them feel engaged, but also enthusiastic and excited to work with us.

• Giving them permission to relax and communicate their needs creates a horse that trusts you and is confident that you will make good decisions on their behalf (what they really need from a leader)

• Being able to ask for your horses attention and permission to do things to and with them because of the strength of your relationship, trust and confidence in each other, creates horses that are empowered to ask for a break when they are overwhelmed or say “Yes, I’m ready for more”

Compassionate leadership is about creating safe, happy horses.

Want to see compassionate leadership in action?

The 2 session Connection Masterclass is now available for you to access. Learn more about what is inside the masterclass by clicking the button below.

The horse with no chill...

You love your horse but he or she finds it really difficult to relax around you - essentially, it seems like your horse has no chill!!

There are so many people that are willing to tell you what you need to get your horse to do - but most of this advice wont result in your horse developing their internal or external chill...

The chill factor doesn't come from moving your horses feet, being bigger, badder, stronger than what their scared of, lunging, 20m circles or laterals....

It comes from creating secure attachment to themselves, to us, to their environment and to their herd. It comes from getting quiet and still with our horses and letting them feel safe to let down, relax and fall asleep in our presence. It comes from finding how our horse best enjoys to be motivated and creating movements that feel good. Only once our horses feel safe to relax and it feels good, will they!

So many times my students will say oh but my horse is falling asleep.....

Well good!!!

It means they feel safe to do so.

The magic sauce is in the quiet times with our horses.

We don't want them walking on egg shells, worried about whats going to happen next. That isn't going to create relaxed focus or a productive learning environment.

Want more help? Sign up for our free course and coaching experience where we share with you our best tips for creating mental relaxation through compassionate leadership so that we have horses that enjoy learning and ask to be ridden without trauma triggering training methods.

Compassionate Leadership

Say hi to Sammy the Donkey in his very first appearance on camera (well, involved in the training, rather than a head over the arena fence or braying in the background, that is!)

But back to the training…

Compassionate Leadership.

It’s about allowing our Equus friends (that includes horses, donkeys, mules and even zebras) to tell us if they are uncomfortable, unsure, scared or in pain.

It’s about adjusting our goal posts to meet our Equus friends where they are at on that day.

It’s recognising our Equus friends may have a good reason for saying no - even if we are unaware of the reason.

It is putting our Equus friend first and prioritising them over our ego or goals.

Compassionate Leadership means recognising that submission isn’t consent, and that our actions can damage our Equus friend’s trust and confidence. In us and themselves.

Compassionate leadership is a whole damn lot of patience, and very little “get on with it” or “get over it”.

Do you want to be a compassionate leader?

Your first step is to run through the Opening Communication Starter Course.

Are you seeing these signs in your horse?

Is licking and chewing a sign of relaxation?

YES!

However, for our horses to be showing signs of active relaxation, they must first be tense or stressed…

Whether they don’t know the answer, are worried about our tools, or in pain, the signs of stress can be subtle:

• avoiding eye contact;

• ears tight;

• tail tight;

• body tight;

• mouth clamped shut.

Once our horses are taking themselves out of holding that tension, we see what we call “relaxation cues”:

• lowering the head;

• rubbing the nose on the leg;

• softening the ears;

• gentle tail swishes.

Licking and chewing are the BIG signs!

Want to know more?

Check out this Starter Course OPENING COMMUNICATIONS

Horses that spook...

If you are here watching this video, guarantee you've already watched a bunch of trainings on dealing with the spooky horse through densensitisation.

We want to show you something different.

The problem with desensitisation is that it only teaches the horse to not react to the thing it is scared of.

It doesn't show them how to relax, or what to do other than freeze when approached with something scary or when they get a fright.

This is still in that flight response (ie fight, flight or freeze) and they can still be tripped out of this freeze state into fight or flight. Because they haven't been shown how to process this fear and shift out of this flight state.

Instead what we teach our horses is confidence through curiousity.

We can show up for our horses as a good leader with well established communication, connection and consent and a well established cue to encourage relaxation and to ask us to back off if they need a break so that we can guide them emotionally through that fear response to a relaxed state.

Once in that relaxed state we can show them how to approach and investigate the scary object. What they learn is how to have the confidence and courage to investigate things that scare them, rather than run away from it…

And they get super chuffed with themselves in the process!!!

We have had student after student tell us that once this process was established with their horse their horse will literally drag them around to the scary objects in the new environments to investigate them and then say “Righto, I'm good to go now”!

If this kind of training tickles your fancy and you'd prefer a relaxed, curious and confident horse to a shut down but still scared horse, check out our starter course Teaching Curiosity.

Good horse training doesn't make exciting video...

Good horse training doesn’t make for particularly exciting video…

Good horse training is a lot of time spent on the basics.

to build trust

Good horse training is being able to get quiet and still

to encourage relaxation

Big secret?

A lot of the GOOD STUFF happens in horse training when we do NOTHING.

You wont see a video of me with a horse rearing, bucking or bolting.

When we address the reason for those behaviours, find our horses threshold for stress, and give them the skills and confidence to ask for their needs and manage themselves emotionally, we don’t need to push them to those extreme behaviours.

But it does makes for incredibly boring video ;P

Does your horse work with mental relaxation?

The key learning outcome for our groundwork training in Trainability Program is mental relaxation.

If our horses can't work without stress, they can't move without stress, and we will see the physical tension in their movement no matter how supple they are.

Working with our horses to encourage signs that they are relaxing in our presence is really important for their trainability and overall coping - but its an incredibly boring process to watch! And can quite often feel like you aren't getting anywhere.

The first time I did this with Fitty it took 30 minutes for me to get the most subtle cue that he was relaxing around me and that was while he was eating!!! That stress load builds and builds until they can no longer control themselves emotionally so they can't control their behaviour and that's where we see big, dangerous behaviours.

Working with our horses to be relaxed when learning also allows them to tell us if they don't understand, are getting stressed by the pressure or have pain that needs addressing before they just can't cope anymore.

Before I sit on a horses back I want to be sure they are relaxed and consenting every ask from catching to grooming to tacking up so that once I get in to the saddle, I know they want me there.

The Trainability Program is specifically tailored to work with individual horse personalities to create mental relaxation, consent and emotional stability - to create a true partnership.

If this sounds like something you want, check out the program inside the Arena Classroom, where we help you step through the process and support you along the way.

What does it mean to have your horse working over it's back?

In the video I show you a part of the process of taking a green horse and getting them working into self carriage.

Part of the process is what we call "over the back". What this means is the transition from the horse pulling with its chest and shoulders for forwardness to drive from behind, engaging its topline muscle and working with relaxation and swing to travel into contact and in a frame. We do this without see sawing on the horses mouth, holding, forcing or jamming our horses head into a frame or using tools to do the same.

Being able to "work over the back" is the end result of the musculoskeletal development that it takes the horse to go from pulling with their chest and shoulders and balancing with their underneck for forwardness to working with engagement, throughness, swing and relaxation.

This is a difficult journey.

It's one that often has pieces of the puzzle missing in the riders bid to be winning the dressage competitions, ribbons and trophies.

It also has to do with the fact that a lot of us learn to ride on educated horses that already know how to do this and so when you get a green horse you don't know the steps to getting every piece of the puzzle to come together.

It is why a lot of people get to novice and then can't progress to elementary because they get stuck trying to develop collection. If you have taught your horse to come into a frame by asking for submission to the bit, then when you get to the point where you're ready to ask for collection, there's nothing to collect because all your horse does is give you more submission to the bit.

The bit cue HAS to communicate

"sit more into your haunches, push up through the base of the whither and extend through the shoulder"

and as a result the horse comes into a frame.

The resistance that you get in getting to this point is not resistance to the aids but the horses bodies resistance to the movement. They physically cannot do it! So they cheat and tuck their nose behind the bit.

It's why our training plan has to be so thorough to develop the complementary strength and suppleness to actively lift into us and hold us.

If you want the exact process for this, the exact aids and then the lesson plans that bring the exercises and the aids together so that your horse can travel freely within self carriage plus online coaching from me check out the Self Carriage Program.

Saddle Fit & Pain

Saddle fit has a huge affect on how happily our horses work. Even a well fitted saddle that your horse is not happy in will affect their quality of work.

In this video Phoenix is working in a new saddle that has been fitted to him professionally a couple of weeks prior. I know Phoenix quite well and could feel him not wanting to work up over his back and into my seat. I wasn't sure what was wrong so kept riding wondering if he just needed more warming up.

Once we got into the canter however it was clear he was unhappy not wanting to pick up his left canter lead. So I jumped off him and swapped saddles to a different horses saddle that I knew he was comfortable working in even though it's not his saddle.

The improvement was huge!!

Trouble shooting training issues is complex. It takes time to work through it. It takes a mentality that isn't "just push them through it, they're just being naughty". It takes a complimentary approach from a wide range of other industry professionals. And most importantly, it takes listening to your horse and allowing them to communicate their needs with you.

Are you looking for a way to work with your horse so that they can communicate their needs to you, enjoy learning and ask to be ridden? Come join our ride with heart workshop

Why communication is so important - the subtle story of a saddle being uncomfortable

Our first main philosophy in Equestrian movement is first do no harm

But even for us it can be hard to pick if our horse is having a problem, and then if they are, what that problem is.

Saddle fit is a big issue to manage.

Here is an example of when a saddle has been professional fit by a saddle fitter and maker but the horse still doesn't like it and the difference it can make finding a saddle they like better.

It can leave us feeling really overwhelmed and unsure of what to do because saddles are so expensive and we don't have access to multiples to just keep trying over time, but it is so so so important for our horses that we ride them in something that at the very least doesn't cause pain.

On the 8th of April, we are going to be discussing saddle fitting issues with a professional on the First Do No Harm podcast. You can catch the podcast of on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or watch out for Sundays email when it is available on this website!

Acceptance of contact vs Submission to the Bit

For a lot of my riding career I was taught and rode with "submission to the bit" for a "light mouth"

ie. the horse was seeking the release of pressure and finding it behind the bit therefore working behind the bit.

This is completely detrimental to the horses physical development.

Now I aim to ride for and teach communication through the contact.

This means we need to feel the subtle nuances of what our horses are communicating through the different amount of weight in our hands. Once our horses are "in to" contact there is also a slight amount of resistance that is felt which is the horses balance.

Think about it like a dance partner. The resistance they put in to you isn't them pulling you in the opposite direction, it is their level of balance and agility and how it integrates with your level of balance and agility. You wouldn't get complete submission from a dance partner unless you picked them up and carried them around and even then they need to hold themselves with poise.

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The horse in the video below is the first horse I ever broke in, and he is the first horse I really felt put his mouth in my hands and ask for guidance.

And the feeling was just magic.

I definitely went on to ruin that with my coach- asking for submission to contact but the feeling really stuck with me and I think its something a lot of people don't know the feeling of.

So what is the difference?

Acceptance of contact is where our horses seek our hands to communicate to us through contact. We can feel through the weight they put in our hands what they are thinking and how they are balancing. Their mouth is soft and communicative and they can confidently describe their needs through the contact to us.

Submission to the bit is teaching our horses to seek the release of pressure by going behind the bit and working behind the vertical, and typically results in our horses not having any brakes and needing to get stronger bits and nose bands. It is done by see-sawing on their mouth, forcing or holding their head in a frame and does long term damage to the soft tissues of their mouth and back.

Horses that are taught to submit to the bit break down with severe musculoskeletal injuries.

In this video I share with you our 3 tricks for developing acceptance of the contact and communication through it without see-sawing or forcing our horses onto the bit or having to use artificial aids.

Posture, conformation & the Hoof

The lovely Lisa from the Glorious Hoof was kind enough to put together this training video on horse posture and conformation, and how hoof care plays a part in the overall management.

Be prepared for some really dramatic examples (no gore, but very fascinating!).

If you want to reach out to Lisa directly, you can do so via:

Facebook at The Glorious Hoof

Instagram at Theglorioushoofau

Or on her website www.theglorioushoof.com.au

Relaxation & Swing

In dressage, one of the movements required from our horses, particularly in the early stages is long and low.

Long and low is when our horses actively seek the contact out forward and down. They "open" their back and its used to develop relaxation and swing within the stride.

While it might seem like a basic exercise it can be a difficult movement to achieve for 4 reasons:

1. Letting go of the mouth can be damn scary!

If you're in the early stages of you or your horses riding career it can feel like letting go of the horses mouth and the bit is letting go of control. Even more so for a lot of riders in the early stages of their career who are using the horses mouth to balance (this is why I keep my beginners on the lunge until they can prove they have an independent seat and not using the reins to balance).

The goal is to have a horse that you can ride for not that you have to hold back but for some horses that seems impossible and every time you let go of their mouth it results in them speeding up or bucking.

Which leads us to point no. 2..

2. For physical relaxation we need mental relaxation

To develop a horse we can ride forward (not have to hold back), we need to have our horses understanding cue training to seek the release of pressure, manage their emotional responses to what is being asked of them and consenting, willing and engaging in the exercise (This is why our ridden membership includes the groundwork membership for free).

There is a lot of prework we need to do not just for accepting, listening to and following the bit but also in learning how to learn and how to self regulate emotionally. In the process we develop a level of communication with our horse where they can tell us their needs and if there is something wrong or if they are happy, willing and consenting.

When our horse is engaged in the exercises, knows how to learn, can self regulate emotional reactions to our asks and get into a deep state of relaxation when working with us and bring that relaxation up into a focused work ethic we have the mental relaxation required for the physical relaxation for long and low.

3. Musculoskeletal conditioning.

To be able to take their nose out, forward and down, they need to have a supple topline.

To be able to have a supple topline and carry us they need significant muscle development.

Our horses start their ridden career with forwardness that is established from pulling with their chest and shoulders. In the training process, we want to get our horses transferring weight in to their hindquarters, tracking up evenly from behind and using their topline to hold their balance. There is quite a lot of muscular development and exercises that goes in to that.

We can force our horses head done with side reins, shambons and other artificial aids but that isn't of benefit to our horses overall soundness and musculoskeletal health. The head coming down to stretch and back up into a frame should be the end result of good posture training, not force or tricks.

Which brings us to the final point…

4. Acceptance of contact

To get your horse to actively seek and communicate with your they need to be consenting and accepting of the piece of mental we use in their mouths.

We want to ride our horses for acceptance and communication, not force. See-sawing our horses head down (and yes, we see a number of professionals using this) or forcing their head down with equipment is detrimental to their soundness and musculoskeletal health.

Forcing our horse’s head into a position when their body isn’t ready for that movement is what will break your horse!

View this demonstration on long & low in a horse that is ready vs one that is incapable (for now)

Acceptance of contact requires a lot of balance and a strongly independent seat from us and a lot of trust from our horses and an understanding of cue training morphing into understand how to communicate through aids.

When we teach our horses to seek the release of pressure, there is no release of pressure when asking our horses to work in to contact so they need to actually be quite well educated in communication. We can teach them to find the release of pressure by holding their head above the bit or going behind it, but again both are detrimental to them physically.

We teach acceptance of the contact by using

• rein back over the pole (on the ground);

• in hand work;

• taking the hands wide to maintain consistency of the weight of the contact if the horse is trying to seek the release of pressure by going above the bit;

• using our arena movements to develop forwardness, straightness, balance, engagement, throughness and relaxation and swing and finally self carriage.

It is only then that we can feel confident that the long and low they give us is benfiting their development.

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So, does this all sound like the “too hard basket” to you?

Lucky we have this awesome membership for you to join that lays the process out for you!

Why you might be struggling with your canter leads, and what you can do to fix it.

If you've ever struggled with getting the correct canter lead with your horse you will know how frustrating it is and how nerve wracking it can be when you're at a competition!

Nail the correct canter lead EVERY TIME

Follow our YouTube Channel for more trainings!

If you've ever struggled with getting the correct canter lead with your horse, you will know how frustrating it is and how nerve wracking it can be when you're at a competition!

Over the last 20 years of riding hundreds of different horses and training hundreds of different students, I've learnt a thing or 2 about perfecting it and here are my best tips:

Your seat aid and riding the canter strike off from your seat isn't everything.

When it comes to refining the canter lead strike off we certainly focus a lot on how we use our seat so that we can keep balance, engagement and impulsion into the strike off, but if we have a problem with our canter leads this is not where we focus for 3 reasons:

• If you haven't established a light, soft seat you can be hollowing and disengaging your horses back away from you making it harder for them to get the correct canter lead and use their back

• The flick of your hip into the canter for the strike off doesn't clearly communicate to your horse what lead you want when you're teaching them. They have to figure it out for themselves.

• It is hard to use your seat exactly the same every time. Nailing that flick of the hip exactly the same way every single time you ride is nearly impossible and so also fudges your communication with your horse.

Bonus tip

• If someone else rides your horse you can GUARANTEE they won't use their seat the same way your horse will so your horse will be confused about canter leads all over again.

If you are a cuing genius and you still aren't getting the canter lead - in particular there is a lead your horse prefers - there's a good chance your horse is working with crookedness.

If your horse favours loading one shoulder over another or engaging one hind over another, you will have a horse that is developing crooked.

END RESULT: Your horse will favour one lead over the other!

This is part of our responsibility for our horse. Essentially we are our horses physical therapist and we need to ensure our horses muscle building happens evenly.

A common theme with a number of riders is that they also practice the lead that is easy because they don't want to do the work either!! Or the want the rewarding feeling of getting the correct strike off which leads to the horses muscle development becoming more and more uneven.

Aside from this creating issues in accuracy and quality in the way our horse works, it also has long term impacts on our horses soundness.

Working crooked results in behavioural problems and painful back problems that leads to bucking, rearing and bolting. But the tricky part is that it isn’t necessarily easy to identify if your horse is working crooked when you are riding.

If you are wondering if your horse is developing crooked but aren’t sure how to find out or how to correct it, check out our Virtual Gait Analysis service.

The Virtual Gait Analysis service provides you with Katie’s detailed overview of where your horse is “cheating” out of the effort required to develop their body correctly, and then provides you with 2 lesson plans as your next best steps in developing your horse for straightness and soundness.

How saddle fit can interfere with your canter lead

Do you have a spooky reactive horse?

Are you trying to find a way to get them less sensitive but recognise that you don't want them to be flooded by stimuli and shut down in the desensitisation process?

It is very rare for us at Equestrian Movement to use desensitisation with our horses - and when we do it is after we have opened the pathway for communication and established consent.

We will typically do this for a tool we want to use for our horses like a halter. We teach the cue of stand with relaxation first and then stand with relaxation while we touch you with the tool after we have asked for consent. We also then stay well tuned to the horse to allow them to tell us if they need us to back off or take a break.

Aside from tools that we need our horses to accept with relaxation our horses still need to know how to manage their flight response from scary things like bags.... water bottles.... balloons..... bubble machines..... all the scary things that can make our horses drop their lolly. And it is inevitable that we can't desensitise them to every experience. We also will hit that point where they can no longer cope when we're teaching them to just stand still. This is why we teach relaxation and consent first and combine it with the scary object.

Second to that, we teach them confidence through curiousity.

We teach them what to do with that fear. Ie. be confident in themselves and investigate the scary object.

It takes a little bit of time, especially depending on the horses unique character, but once we support them through this process a really magical thing happens. When our horses see something that's scary they literally drag us over to it to investigate it!!! We have had so much feedback from our students who have implemented confidence through curiousity telling us there once highly strung, spooky, kite on a string horse now takes them around new environments or changes in their environment to investigate and boop the scary things.

Far cry from what I got taught when I started out which was to be bigger, badder, stronger and scarier than the thing they are scared of so the are more scared of you than the thing they are scared of! It also is another great way to build relationships and establish yourself as a leader worth following.

Want to see it in action? Check out phoenix getting to know he's new paddock mate, Ella the pig.

Are you interested in working with your horse to create curiosity, confidence, connection and trust?

Connection training, hooking on and join up

This week I took a lesson with a student who hasn't worked with me for about 3 years.

Previously I had done around 1 years worth of handling work on the ground with her 2 year old arab mare.

And it was such a good reminder for me on why I don't like to do join up even though we do a version of it and asking our horses to hook on in our connection training.

My main problem with join up is that it doesn't clearly define to the horse what we want them to do.

So for horses who don't need connection training it is of no benefit other than as a free lunge but for horses that do need connection and relaxation training it doesn't adequately guide them through the process.

This is where it is important to be clear on your values and the purpose of the exercise you are implementing. The purpose of join up is ideally to help our horses self regulate and manage their emotions and stress and teach them how to approach us. Sending the horse around the round yard doesn't help them with this, they have to stumble across the answer themselves.

Now, I totally get all the building blocks are there for why this should work but at the same time, we're missing the real key.

Connection isn't forced, it's earnt.

And teaching a horse to learn how to self regulate and control emotions by running them only serves to get them more fit than you and dealing with high energy by running.

So we break it down and do relaxation exercises first, separate to, and before we do our send away and invite in exercises (ie free lunging). And we also teach them how to approach us separately by just giving them the invitation and rewarding them when they do. We also then do our hook on exercises by invitation and we think it's totally fine if they don't stay with us because that is an indication of the strength of connection and relationship we have with them and therefore we have to work on that more.

It does mean it can take a little longer to do it perfectly as a trick but it also means we focus on the connection first and the trick second so that the quality of the relationship and the horses ability to process their emotions is first and foremost and then we can challenge the strength of connection with how long they stay with us and introducing obstacles not the other way around.

Circling back around to my lesson…

I like to free lunge horses if I have the opportunity so they can have a run, stretch their back and have a buck if they want to, I don't force it of them if they don't want to. And what I saw as I sent her out on the free lunge was her energy come up and her body language became tight and tense so I quickly invited her back in - and because we had done this work previous to free lunging, I was able to do our relaxation and connection work to bring her energy back down and get her to focus and stay connected with me.

Instead of sending her around the round yard until she gave me relaxation and connection cues, I asked her to stay with me until she gave me relaxation and connection cues before I sent her back out.

And this is the real difference.

It is up to us to show our horses how to do this, not hope they stumble across the answer themselves. Because we are the ones that are creating the stress and the tension in the horse by driving them around a yard they cannot escape with a whip and no clear answer to what they are supposed to be doing.

If this sounds like the kind of way you want to do ground work, why not join us in our free Facebook community?

Reward for effort, don't drill for perfection

One of our often repeated mantras here at Equestrian Movement is to "Reward for Effort, Dont Drill for Perfection."

We've all seen and maybe had a giggle at that meme circulating with the horse on the couch of his therapists office saying, "I just go round and round in circles but the circles are never good enough".

Maybe you've even felt a little guilty identifying with it but not sure what else to do! We have some tips for you:

Cross train

We love cross training. Break your arena figures up with poles, grids or do your training out on a trail. You horse wants to be stimulated mentally and you will be rewarded with a more willing and enthusiastic horse

Stop, feeling like you could've done more

We've all be caught out on the "just one more time" only for it all to go pear shaped and you've had to work your horse harder and longer just to find a positive note to finish on. This one is hard for us because we often say this when it feels really good and we want to do it again.

But you have to remember that when it feels good your horse is giving you their best effort and if you want them to continue to put their best effort in, you need to reward them and finish up before they get tired. Otherwise we risk them going mentally sour and physically sore.

Reward effort.

Do you know what rewarding effort gets you? More effort!! Do you know what repeating until its perfect gets you? A grumpy, sour horse and an unsatisfied rider. Rewarding for effort means your horse learns to give you their best effort for each ask, which is where you truly see the progress and can keep your horse sensitised and tuned in.

Use the exercise to create the movement

Going hand in hand with our previous rules using the exercise to condition the horse to be able to do the exercise along with rewarding for effort, stopping feeling like you could've done more and cross training gets the best results from our horses long term. Y

ou don't need every ride to be better than your last. When you can see the road laid out in exercises to get your to your goal you can see the repeated effort + the time to build muscle and tone is where you will see progress with your horse.

Our horses learn from the release of pressure. They don't understand when you're repeating an exercise again and again because you're not happy with it that it's because they aren't doing it "good enough". By the time you're at that point they're just enduring the process to physically and mentally tired to think hoping sooner or later you'll quit, turn them out and feed them.

But you can use that to your advantage. If you take about the third effort from your horse as their best effort (loose rule but it does tend to deteriorate after the third ask) reward and change exercises they will start to put more effort in. If you hope off feeling like you could've done more, turn them out to their paddock mates and feed them they will more and more look forward to the process of succeeding and being rewarded for their effort.

Still confused about how to structure an exercise plan with your horse?

Join our wait list for the journey to self carriage where we've got it all laid out for you in easy to follow lesson plans and exercises with accompanying video of horses at different stages of development.