Karin Gracey Equine Success

28/07/2025

22/07/2025

A good explanation of some of the anatomy of the horse’s pelvis and where it is on a horse.

21/07/2025

After the 1970s, horse trainers in some sports—particularly dressage, eventing and jumping, but now also in reining—placed increasing emphasis on head position under-saddle.

This steady march toward a very arched neck has led to the controversial and detrimental welfare concern of hyperflexing the horse's head and neck position, known as 'röllkur' in German.

The rewarding of roundness in horse sports resulted in judges penalising mouth opening as a ‘resistance’ or ‘evasion’.

This led to riders opting for nosebands in order to mask the horse’s signs of discomfort.

As time went on, increasing hyperflexion was accompanied by increasing tightness of nosebands, culminating in ‘crank’ nosebands which can deploy forces of up to 1400 mmHg, far higher than humans can withstand by a tourniquet and sufficient to cause permanent damage to the horse’s nasal bones.

Dr Andrew Mclean - Modern Horse Training: Equitation Science Principles & Practice, Volume 2

21/07/2025

Spot on!😂🐎🐎🐎

20/07/2025

Some great words from Sandra Trott Equestrian

16/07/2025

Equitation Science International embodies the philosophy that horses are blameless participants in training, and that it is the responsibility of humans to provide clear, consistent, and informed guidance.

We strive to modernise horse training with the latest scientific data on the natural behaviour of horses, their learning processes, human and equine biomechanics, handler and rider effects, and attachment.

When horse training is aligned with these elements, it becomes optimally successful and safe, thus greatly improving horse welfare in the equestrian sport.

15/07/2025

This is why it is so important to learn the pain scale ethograms and pain scale facial expressions. Horses are so good at hiding pain and I do sometimes feel that positive reinforcement can help hide resistance and underlying signs of discomfort. I would be interested to see some research done on this as this is my own thought here. All in all while training our horses, I think it is really important to observe facial expressions, body language and subtle communication to really know how a horse is feeling, both in positive reinforcement training and negative reinforcement training.

He wasn’t naughty
He wasn’t an a**hole
He wasn’t “just being difficult”

He was however so skeletally compromised that a comfortable ridden life was never going to happen and time was against him. Not every horse is suitable to be ridden just the same as not every human is compatible with being an athlete. We need to normalise that behaviour is communication. We need to accept that there are many things in a horses body that make riding super hard for them.

This horse went through two breakers before his owner very diligently persisted with positive reinforcement training. He did make excellent progress, that is to be commended! But here’s my issue, positive reinforcement sometimes still masks these issues. It became obvious to his owner that he was becoming more internalised and less happy even in the paddock. Horses will try harder if you ask them nicely and there’s rewards for good behaviour. I’m not saying positive reinforcement is bad, it’s a great tool….im just saying it can mask serious issues. The biggest give away was how seriously assymetric he was. This is something I have felt many times while ridng these types. Asymmetry is normal but riding a horse that has wildly different left and right reins is not normal.

This is so complex on so many levels, so many.

Ever met a horse that was odd from birth? I believe inherited trauma is also a real factor, if you haven’t read the study on mice and how it took many generations to stop passing along, I suggest you do. It’s now well documented in humans too. Link below.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fearful-memories-passed-down/

This guys story is available on patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/collection/1606429in

13/07/2025

Found my song!🤦‍♀️..lol
Who can relate to this?😂