There’s an emotionally manipulative trend of using the excuse of “saving” the horse to justify treating horses badly. As if the horse should be so grateful that we’ve decided to give them a chance rather than put them down. This is the defence of the people responsible for that horrific video of an extremely distressed horse left with their head tied to their chest and a dummy on their back for several hours, I think the video is still up on David Marlin’s page if you don’t k

I want you to imagine you’re really sore, you’ve perhaps got some hidden arthritis in your neck and the way you’ve had to compensate has made the muscles all down your neck and through your back really sensitive. I also want you to imagine that you’re surrounded by people who you cannot communicate with vocally. They keep touching you and putting things on your body that make it really hurt and making you run around while you’re in pain. You now feel snappy and defensive abou

I don’t really know where this post is going I just got upset and started writing. I am tired. I’ve been emotionally supporting a client this week who is really struggling with pressure and bullying on her yard over her decision to train her horse more gently and with positive reinforcement. She trains safely and out of the way of others, she bothers no-one and yet the passive aggressive comments just don’t stop, including from the yard owner. Despite her horse’s behaviour im

I used to solve training issues by simply applying enough pressure to get the horse to do the thing, I didn’t give much thought to how they were feeling, I just knew that if you applied more pressure, then removed that pressure only when the horse complied, that is how you fixed behavioural problems. Horse won’t load? Apply pressure on the head and only release when they step forward. Horse won’t catch? Apply pressure by making the horse move and only release when they stop a

We’re approaching (or already in?) clipping season and it can be so stressful when your horse really doesn’t like being clipped. There are several things we can do to help our horses feel better about the situation. Firstly we need to understand that this is not “rude” behaviour, the horse is either fearful, anticipating discomfort, or both. Clippers are loud and weird, it is logical for a horse to be frightened about them coming near their body. Something that very few peopl

Something several of my clients have been asked after our sessions together. When we start moving away from more conventional training methods we can be met with perhaps mockery or even animosity from the people around us. Other people may see it as harmless fun, but don’t see any point to it. They don’t see it as anything necessary or important like they see riding, lunging and groundwork exercises. When we limit ourselves to just taking our horses into a training space and

This phrase and similar are so often used to justify doing things with horses that are perhaps inappropriate or even harmful to the horse. It is a lazy defence to avoid having to look further into some uncomfortable truths. Here are three things my horses did today that they didn’t want to, but did without hassle because I have trained and conditioned them to do so: 🐴 Followed me in off the tasty long grass and back into their grass-free area knowing I would shut them in 🐴

Its definitely feeling very autumnal the last few weeks and this means there is soon to be a big change in routine for many. Autumn can be a challenging time for horse owners with the flush in grass and often being forced to change our management due to yard rules. Many people are having to take their horses from being out 24/7 to being stabled overnight, this can be a risky changeover as sometimes horses are going from just grass and movement 24/7 to much less movement and h

We expect so much of horses and treating them this way is so normalised that we don’t even realise it. This is most prevalent when a horse moves to a new home. We rip a horse away from everything they know, their friends, their home, their people, their routine, they have no idea where they’re going or if they’re ever coming back, no control over anything that happens to them. This sounds absolutely terrifying and yet we are encouraged to have very little empathy for their fe

When we get a new horse or perhaps want to start building a better relationship with a horse we’ve had for a while we can get caught up in doing things that we perceive to be “nice” for the horse but perhaps aren’t enjoyable for that individual horse at the moment. For example one of my horses absolutely loves and appreciates scratches and will stand and enjoy them for as long as you have the energy to keep scratching. But my other horse will occasionally enjoy a scratch in a

Gut health in horses is often not really talked about beyond ulcers or no ulcers and maybe a worm count. There is so much more to gut health than this and I suspect a huge percentage of the horses I see to have issues. Anyone who deals with their own gut issues will know how much it can affect your mood and quality of life, but, as with most things with horses, horses are often expected to just get on with it and perform. One of the biggest red flags for me that a horse is de

I know I talk about management a lot but I cannot understate how important appropriate forage is for your horse’s wellbeing. Some of the biggest, positive behavioural changes I see are simply from providing the horse with more appropriate forage. By appropriate forage I usually mean long stem fibre like hay, or, if you’re lucky enough and have a horse who isn’t grass sensitive, long, mature grass. This summer so many of my clients have been battling with parched fields with g

I’m always talking about how behaviour is never standalone and we should be looking at the whole picture including addressing any pain/discomfort. But we can also get lost here, becoming so focused on “fixing” the horse’s body that we lose sight of the rest of their needs. I often meet horses who are extremely averse to being touched by humans due to previous experiences and trauma, yet in our effort to help their bodies feel better its tempting to go all in with the bodywork

The phrase so many of my clients have had bleated at them when they’re having behavioural issues with their horse and have sought help. Usually the solution they’re given to make them a “good leader” is to flap a flag at their horse or yank on the rope to punish them when they perform any behaviour that is undesired, with no sensible thought as to why that behaviour is occurring in the first place. As the horse quickly figures out how to get the scary, horrible behaviour from

I would be as bold to say that training issues aren’t just training issues 99% of the time. It is common when I meet new clients that they have had various professionals out, perhaps the vet, a bodyworker, saddle fitter, usually a trainer or two. They often feel like they’ve tried everything simply because we are made to feel like that’s all there is available. We choose a yard to go to and the horse just has to live there and cope with the rules, we choose a bodyworker and t

No this post isn’t about animal communication/horse psychics. Something we often say, me included, is “oh I just wish horses could talk it would be so much easier”. And I absolutely stand by this when perhaps wanting to know where exactly my horse is feeling pain in his body or if he is feeling unwell. But when it comes to reading behaviour, we find our horses are talking to us all the time, or at least communicating with us, and we’re often told to ignore it. I sometimes thi

If we put 2 horses side by side showing the same stress behaviours, but one was a gelding and one was a mare, I guarantee being “hormonal” would be very high on the list of people’s explanation of the mare’s behaviour. While the gelding may have ulcers, kissing spine and other sources of pain thrown onto the table, its almost like mares are seen as a different species. I find the way we speak about mares can have a particularly nasty under-tone, no doubt stemming from the mis

I have had these comments on my posts enough to write about it. It will be something along the lines of “people should have to take a test before they’re allowed to buy a horse!” or “if these novice owners didn’t buy horses we wouldn’t have these problems”. They frustrate me for two reasons 1) It completely disregards the whole point of my posts which are always talking about the systemic issues that run through the entire horse industry from the top down 2) Novice/inexperien

One of the biggest contributing factors to poor welfare within the industry is this idea that horses are there to ride and that is their...

The more I learn about horse behaviour and their bodies, the stronger my ethics become. I know many of us are on a path to improving...