Groundwork with a young horse in training

How do I make my horse stand still for mounting? What is the purpose of the ground work? I don't want to do ground work, I just want to ride.

In this video I will share with you the number 1 secret professional riders and trainers are not teaching you about successfully working with your horse and its not what you think it might be!

Are you training unwanted behaviours into your horse?

In this video we are going to share with you why training for relaxation rather than submission is key to have a safe horse that knows how to look after you.

Are you being taught to read your horse wrong?

What if that online guru or that instructor you work with weekly is teaching you to read your horse wrong?

What if all the heart ache, disappointment, frustration and plateau is from entrusting your horses mental, emotional and physical health in a reputable coach that is teaching you the signals your horse is trying to communicate with us just them being naughty

I've had this happen many times. The one time I did advocate for my horses welfare I was told I was unteachable and fired as a student.

So I turned to online trainers. In particularly natural horsemanship and join up.

And while natural horsemanship was progress in an industry that forced the horse to relinquish their will to live, it was anything but natural.

It's not natural to chase a horse around an environment it can't escape. That is not what horses do to each other.

There has always been a horse in these turning points in my career that I was advocating for. The particular horse when I learnt how unnatural natural horsemanship was was a little stallion. We were at that sweet spot just where he was about to soften (submit) and instead of submitting he lunged at me picked me up by the throat and threw me to the ground.

I was shocked. I honestly thought we were about to connect. But he didn't feel safe to submit. He didn't feel safe to be vulnerable. He didn't feel safe to forfeit control to me. I very easily couldn't have been seriously injured. Thankfully I really feel the cold and had 3 jumpers on which is all he tore through.

I walked away without a scratch but I was seriously shook.

What about join up made him feel threatened?

This sounds like such an outrageous question now, but still a lot of people use join up without realising what it's doing to horses. The ones that don't need it, it "works" for, but there are far better exercises that build trust and connection and teach horses to seek the release of pressure for Cuing.

The horses that do need help with feeling safe and connected, it really doesn’t work for and makes them feel threatened.

That's why our ground work doesn't include join up. Our foundation of safe, secure and connected creates softness through relaxation - not submission. And this is where the true magic of softness lies. The mistake most riders are making. The special sauce that is the art of horsemanship.

The "give", the "softness" comes from relaxing in to you and feel safe, not feeling threatened and submitting to you.

Want to here more? Join the Stronger Bond Workshop this week!

Help! Why does my horse headbutt me and what should I do?

This was a question from one of our students. Sometimes I forget that we do things a little differently.

Quite often people are told that their horse is being naughty when they head butt and to punish the horse before it gets dangerous.

I’m gonna have to disagree here…

Check out this video about why horses head butt and how we manage it at Equestrian Movement.

Willingness, or submission in disguise?

Is willingness really the best when it comes to horses?

Hear me out, before you jump on one side of the fence or the other. When your horse follows your ask, it is labeled as willingness, right?

But what if the horse is only “willingly” following the request with its body, and not actually happy with the ask? Would you still call that willingness?

When I was younger, I used to just follow whatever my instructor told me to do, even if it didn't sit right internally. Do you think that I was willingly doing that? Or would you think that I was submitting to someone that I saw having some level of power over me. More importantly, how do you think that felt, the constant feeling of being wrong but being told I'm wrong?

When we are asking for something from our horse and they follow, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are actually willing. This term of willingness has been so often confused with actual submission that the lines are now blurry.

Going back to my old riding coach, it sure as heck wasn’t long before I began resenting those exercises, even though I did it as told. Right up to the day I begged her for a better way, and left when it wasn't offered.. How do you think a horse would tell us they need us to be better, to think differently? It's all those "nasty" or "scary" behaviours we label as naughty.

The word willingness has been used to mask submission for such a long time, that we have lost sight of what the word really means.

I’m going to introduce to you a new term now: CONGRUENCE.

Congruence is the alignment of internal and external state, of the physical response matching the emotional and mental engagement. Positive Congruence is when a horse shouts HECK YES off the rooftop (metaphorically speaking). This is what we should be striving for in most of our interactions with our horse, and why the four pillars of relaxation, compassionate leadership, communication and emotional agility inside the Holistic Horse Handling Methodology are so important – that absolute moment of congruence.

So before you label your horse as willing, have a deeper look. Is your horse congruent and eager? Or is your horse showing signs of incongruence and submission?

Willingness, or submission in disguise?

A lot of the time in the equestrian world willingness and submission are used interchangeably but they definitely do not mean the same thing.

The differentiating factor is: if you gave your horse permission to choose would they still say yes? Willingness would your horse saying yes to your ask or your cue even when we are using our tools for submission and control. Submission would be that our horse would say no and so the only reason why they are saying yes is because we are using our tools for control, even though you may feel like you aren't in the position of power.

Whether you feel it or not, the human is always in the position of power. We are in control of where our horse lives, how they live, who they live with, when they eat, what they eat, whether they get fed or not, who they eat with etc. Because we are responsible for their basic care survival needs we are in the position of power even if you're like, well of course I'm going to do that for my horse!!! I can't stand to see a horse suffer.

Either way this relationship dynamic puts us in the position of power to our horse. Our horses can struggle underneath it or thrive with us in a powerfully connected team. It is up to you though to strategically and intentionally plan how that relationship dynamic will play out in your training. If you don't we can quickly escalate our horse in to conflict behaviours - the end result of submission mistaken as willingness.

True willingness is an alignment, a congruence even, of emotion and behaviour. Yes, I am happy to do what you ask and engaged. Your ask is compatible with my desire. True willingness doesn't mean your horse can do whatever the heck it wants - it's about builing foundations to become a powerfully conntected team together. The Holistic Horse Handling Methodology of Relaxation, Compassionate Leadership, Communication and Emotional Agility work together to build true willingness.

Which pillar are you working on now?

How to improve as a rider

How do you define success as a rider?

I used to define it by percentages on test sheets and the difficulty of dressage and jumping skills I could ride. I used to define it by how well I could stay on a horse that was trying to get me off.

Today I define it by how much my horses like me and want to look after me. I prefer not to have the conversation around how well can I stay on when a horse is trying to get me off. I want to have the conversation instead of how could this be enjoyable for the horse and how could it be so enjoyable that they would choose it.

With that can come some deep reflection work and a big journey in to emotional agility.

Watch the video for more information.

If you are interested in the free connection training, click the button below.

Cuing is not communication!!!

Communication and cuing are not the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong – the horse industry has come a long way since I first started riding. The introduction of natural horsemanship was the starting place for change in the industry. But there is still a very big misconception – that by giving a cue, you are communicating with your horse.

Let’s imagine you are working on a project for a company. Boss A comes in, gives you a set of tools and instructions, a short time-frame to figure it out, and walks out before you can ask any questions. Each time you reach out to share your concern on the deadline, you are repeatedly given the instructions and left to your own devices.

Is that communicating? Or just giving a set of cues to follow?

Boss B, on the other hand, gives you the same set of tools, timeline and instructions, but noting the look of confusion on your face and your moment of pause, asks you about your concerns. You suggest maybe the timeline is a little tight, and B reciprocates and modifies the plans accordingly.

Cuing is giving your horse a set of instructions they have to figure out. Communication is understanding when your horse is asking for more information or support.

Communication is one of the 4 major pillars that have been ignored in historical horsemanship. Horses don’t have the ability to communicate with words, so therefore don’t need more than a set of instructions? I call boulderdash on that.

Horses communicate with emotion, body language and behavior. It is up to us, as horse woman that see our horse as more than a commodity and actually want a connected partnership with these majestic animals, to stop simply cuing and start listening to what our horse is saying.

Are you ready to make a start? Join our Stronger Bond Workshop, where we share more on communication as well as the other 3 pillars, and how you can be the woman of your horse’s dreams.

Emotional Agility

You may have heard Equestrian Movement referring to Emotional Agility often. But exactly what are we talking about?

When we are talking about emotional agility we are talking about the unique individuals biological response to their environment or outside world. Our internal environment or our inside world is shaped by our personality, who we are and our experiences and conditioning, how we have interpreted our outside world. There are a couple of key factors we pay attention to:

•  Our nervous system state (tension holding, tension releasing)

•  Our hormonal and neurotransmitter responses

•  Our internal dialogue. How we talk to ourselves and what we are thinking

How these factors play out in our internal environment is responsible for our body language which is our horses native or first language. The cuing and communication we teach them is for our benefit. We will find that our horses will be responding to this internal environmental state even if we aren’t consciously aware of it and becomes an integral part of how we are in relationship to our horses and how well we work together.

Emotional agility in action:

•  Body awareness, what are you feeling, are you holding tension in your body, where is the tension, why are you holding it, what are you thinking about

•  Emotional agility is recognising we have the potential to shape how we feel (even though it can feel incredibly hard) we can reshape our internal environment

•  Our horses like us in a place of relaxation and love (don’t we all)

•  How can you create an internal environment of relaxation and love

•  Being able to catch yourself when you are starting to get frustrated, anxious, angry, scared, overwhelmed, stressed etc., which will result in the horse becoming more emotional reactive to you and shifting back in to a place of relaxation and love with our relaxation and connection exercises.

Emotional Agility With Our Horses

When we are working with our horses they can have an emotional and nervous system reaction to our ask. They can be frustrated when learning something new and they don’t know the answer. Being flight animals, they have a strong fear and flight response and can be reactive to change of environment, changes in the environment, changes in herd dynamic, just change in general really. They can be stubborn and resistant if they don’t have trust or confidence in our ask. They can become mentally, physically and emotionally tired which leads to further emotional dysregulation and resistance.

We have identified some key emotional and behavioural responses we get from our horses and put together training and shaping plans to help navigate to positive outcome so that we can finish on a positive note feeling like we could have done more and will set us up for our next training session to further enthusiastic willingness.

• Confidence through Curiousity

• Positive Work Ethic

• Learning through Play

• Relaxation Cues

• Manners at Feed Time

When layered upon other pillars inside the Holistic Horse Handling Methodology, we continue to build out a rounded team of the horse and handler, where each can work together in a safe place of relaxation, trust and confidence.

Interested to learn more?

How to speak "horse"

Can you speak horse?

Clear is kind and clear is communication.

Do you have a clear, intentional and strategic way of not only communicating with your horse but also your horse communicating its needs with you? This is the challenge of training. Intentional shaping plans that create vocabulary with our horses that layer into the complex skills.

When you keep changing how you are going to teach that language you will never progress because your horse will keep getting confused about what you want and lose confidence in you. Communication and strategic layering of cues is the third pillar of Holistic Horse Handling Methodology.

Check out our free connection training:

Is your use of pressure and release antagonising conflict?

Are you training pressure/release, or are you having a power over conversation antagonising conflict?

We don't want every training session we are working on cuing to turn in to a power over, submission to conversation when it comes to negative reinforcement. This can really quickly result in conflict in your relationship with your horse and escalate you in to using positive punishment to "correct" the behaviours you triggered from your horse - the ones we label as “resistance”.

If we see every "resistance" as a naughty horse we miss their cues like, "I'm in pain, I don't understand, I can't do it, I need a break, I'm giving my best effort, I don't feel safe, I don't have trust and confidence in you as a leader".

If we take the idea of resistance to follow pressure means “my horse is being naughty and I have to get stronger” off the table, we can figure out what our horse really needs from us. Rarely is it that we need to be stronger and more powerful. Often it is that we need to be more sensitive and tuned in to how they want to asked and how we can more effectively motivate them. Often, they need us to be more compassionate leaders.

This is why the Holistic Horse Handling Methodology focuses on 3 key pillars: Compassionate Leadership, Willingness and Emotional Agility. If you are interesting in working in a way with your horse that takes the "because I told you to" conversation to a true partenership without conflict, register your interest here:

Connected leadership in horse training

Does your horse seek you for direction?

If you are a leader worth following, your horse will seek your direction and asks “what's next”

In a world of submission and dominance theory check out this training for some self ruling principles to show up for your horse as a compassionate leader.

Check out our free connection training:

Are sumbission and willingness the same thing?

Jump in on this theory training as we discuss where a lot of the equestrian industry is making a huge mistake by using submission and willingness interchangeably.

Ready to improve your relationship with your horse? Check out our free connection training

5 tips for getting your horses respect

Is your horse being naughty, pushing you around and being disrespectful?

Even though I grew up in a world of power battles and being taught to be scarier than the thing your horse is scared of, it is a conversation most people won't win, especially beginner to intermediate riders AND its not a very pleasant conversation to have to be continuously engaging in with your horse. We prefer to consider instead our compassionate leadership skills.

Respect isn't demanded of the horse.

It is a display of the quality of relationship that you and your horse have.

It is the result of developing psychological safety, looking for congruence, seeking team work to make the dream work.

Check this training out for my 5 top tips for why your horse may want to gift you the privilege of their respect.

Looking to work on your connection and quality of relationship with your horse? Check out our free training

The inevitable emotion of frustration...

The feeling of frustration is not necessary one of the fun emotions we want to deal with - in ourselves OR our horses.

But there are going to be situations where it inevitably crops up. But why?!?!

In psychology, frustration is a common emotional response to opposition, related to anger, annoyance and disappointment. Frustration arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of an individual's will or goal and is likely to increase when a will or goal is denied or blocked.

Therefore, a common example for ourselves becoming frustrated when working with our horse is we aren’t seeing the progression towards a goal. Maybe it’s practicing timing of a jump and being off consistently. Maybe it’s asking a simple task of our horse and it isn’t happening.

For our horses, who have much simpler desires, frustration tends to occur when we withhold something they want, such as a reward for getting the right answer, or movement when we ask for stand. Some horses are quicker to become frustrated than others, especially if they are in the Protector Personality Quadrant.

Managing frustration takes a combination of development of emotional agility and an understanding of shaping plans (did you know that the Holistic Horse Handling Program contains over 35 shaping plans alone?), so you both understand how to regulate the emotion when it appears.

Katie shared some of her experience managing her own frustrations in the latest First Do No Harm Podcast episode.

Share your own experience below!

Are you nagging your horse?

Transitioning from giving our green horse lots of direction to allowing them perform independently of our consistent instruction is challenging as a rider and often we get caught micromanaging and nagging our horses. Check out this theory training about learning how to "sensitise" or "tune your horse in" by getting quiet and doing less.

You can also learn more about connection building with Equestrian Movements free online training course Building Connection

The Importance of a Good Shaping Plan

There is no feeling better than the dopamine hit of task achievement.

You know the one - that feeling when all of our plans go TO PLAN when working with our horse.

But there’s a little secret to getting more and more of that success… a good shaping plan.

A shaping plan determines what your end goal is, helps identify what trying look like, and if things go wrong, can help you see where to pear back or identify gaps. This is why taking a moment to think about what it takes for both you and your horse to achieve a task is critical to your ongoing success as a holistic horse handler that doesn’t need to bully or punish a horse (and if you need assistance, the Holistic Horse Handling Program has over 30 unique foundational shaping plans PLUS a “build your own plan” guide for those moments of unique situations that will inevitably occur!)

Let’s take a quick look at what seems to be a very simple process - putting a halter on.

Your horse needs to:

• be able to relax

• be able to stand still

• be able to stand still near you

• be able to stand still near you and relax

• be able to consent to your touch

• be able to stand still with you touching their head and ears, still relaxed

• be able to stand near you touching their head, relaxed, with a halter

• be able to consent to being haltered

• be able to stand as you put the halter on, relaxed

• be able to stand as you adjust the halter, relaxed

• be comfortable with the halter on

You can see how such a simple process actually takes up a lot of small steps and at any one you could experience issues.

Before we even look at putting the halter on, there are a number of foundations that we need to have built - relaxation, stand with relaxation, consent to touch, consent to halter, and communication skills, so they can let us know if something is too much or uncomfortable.

Without a good shaping plan, it becomes really hard to identify the missing gaps when, for example, your horse starts tossing it’s head. Is it relaxed? Is it trying to tell us something? Is there frustration? Pain? You may be able to have a stab in the dark but you risk damaging that connection you have been trying to achieve. With a shaping plan, you have more insight into what might have gone wrong and work on re-evaulating your plan to suit your horses skills and emotional needs on that day, as opposed to fumbling in the dark.

The added bonus of a good shaping plan is you get to practice those foundation skills over and over until they are as automatic as breathing. You will see when your horse is relaxed, and know how to help them relax. You will see when your horse isn’t consenting, and know how to work towards a positive result.

So let’s break down the components of a good shaping plans:

1. Objective: what is the goal (and does it serve to benefit the horse)

2. Prerequisite: what does the horse need to know - and what do yiou need to know - to achieve this?

3. The What: what does it look like when successful?

4. The How: how will you guide the behaviour, mark the behaviour, reward the behaviour?

5. The Troubleshooting: what might happen instead? How can you change that behaviour?

6. The Reflection: what went right, what went wrong, what can we do better and what to we need to practice?

More often than not, we think about Step 1 & 3, but don’t always plan for the rest. But if you give some consideration to the Prerequisites, you will realise how easy the other steps fall into place.

So, given this information, what shaping plan are you going to put together? Tell us in the comments below or head to the Stronger Bond Facebook Community for inspiration!

Is your horse meeting it's KPI's?

How do we measure how well our horse is going?

What are our key performance metrics?

A lot of us rely on the feedback from our coaches, trainers or judges. But how do we know they value the same things in our horse we do?

Coaches, trainers and judges often don’t know the journey we’ve been through to get to where we are. And they can often be rewarding for things we don’t like in horses like a deep frame where the horse is behind the bit or high, explosive energy because it looks pretty and flamboyant. They often grade us on what we can make our horse do, but your horse will only do what they can within the parameters of how much pain it causes them, how much stress it causes them and how much confidence and trust they have in us as their humans to support them through the challenge.

Our horses aren’t naïve to what we are thinking and feeling. If anything, they are more tuned in to what we are feeling than we are. So if we are asking something of our horse and we are unsure of ourselves, or scared of what our horse will do our horse sees that in our body language and so they lose confidence in us.

This is where the resistance or “the no” starts.

If we are told to push them through it, be the boss, make them do it, while at the same time being worried, anxious or scared that we aren’t good enough or of what our horse is going to do then we escalate that resistance, that response of NO, in to a full blown argument.

How each horse responds to the push and pressure for more can be dependent on their breed, personality and previous experiences.

Horses that tend to be confident in themselves, self assured will push back. They’ll drop the shoulder in to us, go over the top of us and drag us around the paddock. They may start stomping and flicking their tail at us, pin their ears and escalate to biting, kicking or striking.

Horses that lack confidence in themselves might internalise and just do as their told until they can’t control their behaviour anymore and explode, seemingly out of nowhere. Or they might be super spooky and anxious around us, unable to stand still and relax. Just being the boss and getting stronger and more powerful with our horse, trying to be the boss and push them through it doesn’t set us up as a leader our horse seeks direction and support from.

So how do we show up for our horses as a leader?

• Do you feel comfortable giving your horse direction?

• How calm are you when you give your horse direction? Are you anticipating an argument or your horse to do something scary?

• How well does your horse take direction from you?

• Does your horse seek direction and support from you and how well do see the ask for support and interpret it so that your horse feels heard?

You will hear good trainers, riders and breakers talk about the horse being ready. When you ask something of your horse, is your horse not only staying under stress threshold, but also keeping them calm and relaxed? This is compassionate leadership. I see and hear your needs, how can I support you so that we can reach MY goal together. Acknowledge that your horse has no desire to meet your goals, you have to intentionally create that desire in your shaping plan by building steps on top of each other so that your horse feel an immense sense of accomplishment and task achievement. This builds their eagerness to please you because you are the source of that feeling.

If work is stressful, they can never get the answer right, when they try they aren’t rewarded - or even constantly getting punished (whether on purpose or by accident) - there is no motivation to work with you as a team towards your goals.

It is your responsibility to motivate your horse to work towards your goal.

And this is what our Powerfully Connected Equestrian Students are learning in our Holistic Horse Handling Program. How to work together as a team towards their big, audacious goals and recognise what their horse is communicating in the process.

If this feels like something you’re struggling with make sure you register for the waitlist for the holistic horse handling programs next round of enrolments

Why is my horse naughty?

Nipping, kicking, refusing to move, refusing to follow, ears back, running over or simply running away.

Yep, I’ve seen them all from horses I have worked with over the years. But what is the best way to work with a “naughty” horse?

Showing your horse “who’s the boss” is the least effective way to work with your horse so that it does what you ask, especially if you are an amateur or green rider. If you’ve been told to show your horse whos boss, make them do it and push them through it, you’re likely experiencing problems like:

• Your horse refusing to move

• Your horse walking or running away from you in the paddock when you go to catch them.

• Your horse nipping, biting or kicking at you when you do things with them on the ground

• Your horse randomly spooks and bolts seemingly out of nowhere

• Your horse doesn’t stand calmly at the mounting block but fusses and fidgets and moves away.

You may even be starting to feel nervous around your horse, questioning whether you are good enough for your horse and finding excuses for why you can’t ride today or work with your horse because you really can’t bring yourself to the dealing with the inevitable argument and difficult behaviour.

What you want to ask yourself is why would your horse agree to what you are asking of them? Just meeting their basics need for food and care is not a strong enough motivation for them to expend large amounts of energy in a high pressure/high stress environment AND look after you and stay calm and confident.

To get your horse to want to look after you and work with you as a team you need to ask:

• Does your horse feel safe to relax? Do they see you as a threat? How do you know they feel safe to relax? Do you know what your horses relaxation cues look like?

• Are you comfortable giving your horse direction? Does you horse comfortably take direction from you? Do they seek direction and support from you?

• Does your horse understand what you are asking of them? Do they know how to seek the release of pressure? Are you confidently marking and motivating your horse and getting your timing right?

• Is your horse having an emotional reaction to what you are asking them to do? Are they reacting with frustration, anxiety, stress, becoming stubborn or escalating in behaviours you don’t want? Do you know how to bring them back to a state of relaxation and shift them in to a more positive experience of what you are asking?

This is what our confident and connected equestrians are learning inside the Holistic Horse Handling Program BEFORE they go to work with their horse. How you horse is interpreting your cue emotionally and intellectually is first and foremost what we want to address to develop a confident horse that knows how to look after their rider, enjoys learning and movement feels good.

If you are aware of one or more of these gaps in your training make sure you register for the holistic horse handling waitlist to get access to when it is next open.

Removing the safety net

There is a time in every riders life when the training wheels come off, the safety net is rolled up, and you have to put on your big girl knickers. In fact, as a riding coach, this is my ultimate goal - for my riders not to have to rely on me anymore!

But how do you know when you are ready? Ready to work without a coach 100% of the time. Ready to move forward without someone to help you each time things DON'T go to plan. Ready to step up during every moment when you just want to hide in the corner because things just seem so hard? The confidence she has developed and Gunner has developed in her is astounding.

There is no specific date or time that a person should feel they are ready, because every journey is different. Every horse is different. But there is a specific tell for when someone is ready - and that is when they are confidentally navigating the foundation skills of holistic horse handling methodology, and can confidentally apply them to their individual horse.

I've watched Sarah in the last 12+ months find that independence and drop the safety net (we spoke about it in the latest podcast - link in the bio), and I can tell you that we are both chuffed with the results.

Do you want to start lowering your safety net too? Register for the Holistic Horse Handling Program waitlist!