Dr Shelley Appleton Calm Willing Confident Horses

08/09/2025

HORSES ARE EASY – PEOPLE ARE… 🤯

When you work with people and horses long enough, two things hit you in the face like a wet saddle blanket:
Horses are, in fact, ridiculously gentle creatures. Even the “crazy” ones are usually holding back, politely not killing us despite ample reason.

People… well, they can - let me demonstrate with emojis - 🤯😱🫣🤬🫠

Let me tell you a story....

A woman brought me her horse, swearing it was dangerous. It charged people, wouldn’t lead, hated saddling, planted under saddle, threatened to buck.

Another trainer had already branded it “crazy” after strapping it in leg restraints, watching it panic, flip, and nearly spear itself on a fence.

I took it to the round yard. It didn’t charge. It didn’t buck. It relaxed, it learned, it was delightful...

The real “dangerous” bit showed up when I handed the woman the rope. She had about as much body awareness as a wind sock in a gale. Fifteen minutes to teach the horse. Ninety to teach her to stop spraying random pressure like a busted garden hose. 😫

This horse wasn’t dangerous. It was confused. Just trying to survive the chaos raining down from the end of the rope. 😞

We made a plan: groundwork, foundation, building skills, moving into under-saddle work. She nodded, it made sense, she was in. She came back for a few weeks, improvement was happening, horse was going well. All smiles. 😀

Then months of silence… until the phone call.

She’d been bucked off and broken her leg. A friend had been bucked off too, and hurt her back. She wanted to put the horse down, unless I’d take it.

Turns out, the “friend” had told her what I was teaching was "that slow rubbishy stuff" and offered to get on and “get the horse going” for her. And because learning new skills felt slow and uncomfortable, she chose the shortcut. Humans always do.

Did I feel sorry for the horse? Absolutely.
Did I want to scream at the woman? Hell, yes.
Did I? No. Because she wasn’t evil. She was just being human. And humans are wired to dodge discomfort like it’s lava.

Here’s the kicker: learning is hard. Self-awareness is hard. Most people will grab the first “easier” option waved under their nose. That’s why working with horses is often the easy part. The real puzzle, the proper Rubik’s Cube of chaos, is people. ☢️

Bottom line: when you work with humans and horses, you’re always up against beliefs, fears, shortcuts, and the eternal human allergy to effort and a heap of other fascinating stuff. The magic is in inspiring them to take the harder, slower path — because that’s the one that actually works. And that is an art and a science! And I’m pretty good at it - because I am so interested in how humans get good at things that I went and did a whole PhD on it.

THIS is why I created my Teaching People How to Work with Horses course (1 Nov to 13 Dec, 2025). It’s for anyone fascinated by the real game: us. The gloriously messy, frustrating, fascinating human side of horsemanship.

My life’s quest is to spark a movement in this industry - one where we stop blaming horses for everything and start having the guts to look in the mirror. That’s how we make horses safer, welfare stronger, and the whole bloody thing a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

More info in the comments.

Because horses are easy. People? They’re the real project.😎

And this is totally notebook challenge worthy, this is entry 17/365. Collect them all by saving and sharing ❤

08/09/2025

Confessions of a Reluctant Merch Peddler😎

You know that moment when you realise you’ve become that person… the one with “merchandise”?🫠

Yeah. That’s me. Nothing burns impostor syndrome deeper into your soul than standing there, holding your own merch in your hand and thinking, how did it come to this?😱

Somehow my garage has turned into a boutique (or, if I’m honest, I don't go to shops anymore, I just go to my garage and open a box😬). It caters exclusively to people who like horses, hoodies, hats, mugs, tote bags, and training sticks. Most of the colours are deliberate - the kind you can cover in hair, dust, and hay, then walk into Woolies looking vaguely acceptable. Equestrian camouflage at its finest.

Now before you panic: I did not plaster my name across your chest like some equestrian Kanye. Instead, I worked with Korean graphic artist Raquel Kim, who asked me so many questions I thought she might invoice me for therapy. Out of it came one perfect design: a single flowing line, horse to human. No gimmicks, no tragic hoofprints. Just one line that somehow captures what we’re all chasing - that seamless transfer of thought between horse and rider. I call it my "connection" logo and I have owned it for 6 years. It’s not merch. It's has deep symbolic meanings of my ultimate quest.

The only words I could stomach putting on it are the best advice I’ll ever give you:

👉 Look up and ride somewhere.

Because while you’re micromanaging your horse or marinating in your own fears or frustrations, the horse is quietly asking, “Yes, but where the hell are we going, human?!”

And yes, the training sticks are real. I designed them to be the exact size and weight I wanted, then wired money overseas and spent six weeks convinced I’d bought 500 cocktail umbrellas. Miraculously, they arrived. Correct size, decent quality, even the right colour. I’m still recovering.

Meanwhile, my garage floor has vanished, so things are leaving at what we’ll call “mathematically improved prices.” You can do the sums - somewhere between a quarter and half off, depending on the item.

I have a link in the comments to what you will find in my garage 👕🧢👜🛒‼

👉 Important note: this is for Australian residents only. I’d love to ship overseas, but the postage is so brutal it would require mortgaging your house.

IMAGE📸: This is me in one of my hoodies (strategically chosen in a colour that hides grass stains, horse hair, and probably regret). You could call this “modelling”… but really, it’s just what I wear every day.🙃

🎙Oh, and for Canter Therapy Podcast fans: yes, there are t-shirts, hoodies, and caps. Because nothing says “serious listener” like listening to the podcast whilst wearing the comfy hoodie😆

Equi Threads Shop Categories: Drinkware | Tote Bag | LOGO | Book | Cap | Hoodie | Look Up & Ride Somewhere | Canter Therapy | T-Shirt | Merchandise | Clothing | Quick View Pink T-shirt & Freedom Rider with LU&RS print $39.95 Size: Add To Cart Added! Quick View Black LOGO Heavy Hoodie 400GSM $79.95 S...

07/09/2025

Load Transfer: The Invisible System That Keeps Horses Sound (Until We Break It)

(This is probably the most significant blog I have written to date...and I am deadly serious.)

1️⃣ Why We Miss the Point

Most riders and owners look at legs, joints, or hooves when a horse goes lame. We obsess over hock injections, tendon scans, or shoeing tweaks.

But here’s the blind spot: horses aren’t Lego sets where you can just swap out a dodgy block and keep stacking. They’re whole systems where forces - rider weight, ground impact, propulsion - have to be absorbed, stabilised, and passed on like the world’s most complicated game of pass-the-parcel. That process is called load transfer.

If load transfer works, the horse moves fluidly, distributes force safely, and stays sound. If it doesn’t, the wrong bit cops the pressure - joints, tendons, ligaments - until it breaks. Cue “mystery lameness” and your savings account crying into a feed bucket.

2️⃣ What Load Transfer Actually Is

Load transfer is the art of sharing forces across the horse’s whole body:
- Hooves = shock absorbers (your horse’s Nike Airs).
- Tendons and ligaments = springs (boing, boing).
- Core and spine = suspension bridge (though honestly, comparing a living, moving horse to a bridge bolted to the ground is a bit crap - sorry Tami, I’ll get to you in a second and anyone else having a fit over my analogies :P ).
- Hindquarters = the engine room.
- Trunk = the bridge deck, carrying weight forward.
- Nervous system = Wi-Fi (sometimes 5G, sometimes “buffering…”).

It’s not one joint or one leg doing the work - it’s a team effort. And when one player drops the ball, the others cover… until they tear something.

3️⃣ How It Gets Compromised in Domestication

Here’s the catch: our horses don’t live or move the way evolution intended. Instead, we’ve gifted them the equine version of late-stage capitalism:
- Sedentary living → Wild horses walk 20 km a day. Ours do laps of a 20 x 60 and then slouch around on the couch bingeing Netflix. Fascia weakens, cores collapse, proprioception clocks off.
- Gut health issues → Ulcers, acidosis, restricted forage. Imagine doing Pilates with chronic indigestion. Goodbye stabilisers, hello bracing.
- Rider influence → Saddles, weight, wobbly balance. A hollow back under a rider = hocks and forelimbs eating all the force. “Congratulations, you’re now a wheelbarrow.”

And then we act shocked when the “bridge” collapses and the legs file for workers’ comp.

4️⃣ Why This Explains Early Breakdowns

A horse with poor load transfer isn’t just inefficient - it’s a ticking time bomb.
- Hock arthritis by six.
- Suspensory tears that never heal.
- Kissing spine in a horse that never learned to lift.

This isn’t bad luck. It’s physics. And yes, physics is painful. But so is paying vet bills the size of your mortgage repayments.

Once you see it, the endless cycle of injections and rehab isn’t fate — it’s the logical result of pretending your horse is four pogo sticks with ears instead of a system that has to share the damn load.

5️⃣ Why Talking About This Will Probably Annoy You

Here’s the thing: people who really understand the sheer magnitude of load transfer will most likely confuse you… or offend you.

My good friend Tami Elkayam is the one responsible for hammering this into my thick skull. And I’ll be honest: it took four clinics and two years of friendship before the penny really dropped. She will read this and her hair will stand on end, because load transfer and how the body works is far more interconnected and complex than I’ve made it here.

Because here’s the reality: there is a reason your six-year-old has the joints of a 27-year-old, or why your horse developed kissing spine. And while I’m pretty good at spotting when dysfunctional load transfer has already chewed through a part of the horse… my bigger mission now is to spread the word before more horses — and bank accounts — get wrecked.😎

It may sound like physics, and physics isn’t sexy. But this is physics that explains your vet bills, your training plateaus, your horse’s “difficult” behaviour, and that nagging sense of “not quite right.”

6️⃣ What We Need to Do About It

Instead of obsessing over the parts, we need to step back and care for the system:
- Movement lifestyle → Turnout, hills, hacking, grazing posture. (Not “arena prison with cardio punishment.”)
- Gut health → Forage first, low starch, fewer ulcers. (Because no one engages their core mid-stomach cramp...and that's not even mentioning how digestion impacts the whole things - that blog is for another day)
- Training for posture → Lift the back, wake up the core, balance the bridge. (“More forward” and "rounder" isn’t a strategy, in fact saying those things can be part of the problem...)
Rider responsibility → Balanced seat, good saddle fit, some self-awareness. (Yes, because we have a massive impact on load transfer and how dysfunctional we make it...but let's get the idea in our heads before we beat ourselves up.)
Preventive care → Conditioning, fascia release, thoughtful management. (“Wait for it to break, then panic” is not a plan.)

7️⃣. Closing

Load transfer is the invisible system that keeps horses sound. When it fails, the legs, joints, and tendons take the hit - and horses “mysteriously” break down.

The tragedy isn’t that we can’t prevent it. It’s that we’re too busy staring at hooves or arguing on social media about everything from bits to barefoot to notice the actual system collapsing under our noses.

Once you understand load transfer, you can’t unsee it. And once you can’t unsee it, you’ll never settle for patching symptoms again. You’ll start caring for the whole horse - because that’s the only way to keep the bridge standing, the system working, and your horse sound.

This is Collectable Advice 17/365 of my notebook challenge.

❤Please share this if it made you think. But don’t copy-paste it and slap your name on it - that’s the intellectual equivalent of turning up to an office party with a packet of Tim Tams and calling it “homemade.” This is my work, my study, my sweat, and my own years of training horses (and myself) before figuring this out (well with Tami Elkayam's patience too). Share it, spread it, argue with it - but don’t steal it.

06/09/2025

06/09/2025

Balanced by Nature: Reactivity and Learning

Mother Nature didn’t bother with horns, claws, or sabre fangs when she built the horse. She went minimalist: legs for speed, nerves wired for overreaction, and - just in case - a spring-loaded arse capable of rearranging the facial bones of predators. 🐎

That’s the bit most people obsess over - the spook, the bolt, the sideways “Oh-my-god-it’s-a-plastic-bag” leap. Which is why we talk about horses as if they’re doomed to live forever as fearful “prey animals.”

But here’s the balance: if that was all they had, they’d be extinct. You can’t spend every minute flinching at shadows. Nature’s smarter than that - she designed horses to learn fast. They figure out they’re safe, solve the terrifying wheelbarrow puzzle, and learn to follow the signals we give - on their faces, in their mouths, on their sides, on their backs and more...

This is why we can do what we do with them.

Why they sometimes succeed in spite of our clumsy teaching.

And yes - I get it. People do need to become aware of the signs of stress. That’s important. But here’s where I draw the line: some gurus out there encourage you to fixate on every flicker of an eyelid as if staring harder will solve it. I’m not squinting at a horse like some half-baked art critic announcing, “Notice the subtle triangulation of the eye… ah, the delicate tightening of the chin… observe the nostrils, flaring.....”

Because honestly - how about we just fix it instead of fixating on it? It’s like standing beside a child panicking at a busy road while you take notes on their facial expressions instead of, you know, teaching them how to cross.

So here’s the reminder: reactivity isn’t madness or malice. It’s just a neon sign flashing, “I need to learn this bit” or “I need proof I’m safe.”

And your job? Not to treat their nervous system like a personal insult, but to set them up to figure it out.

Sometimes, the only real lesson is that you need to learn how.

📓Notebook Challenge Note: This is part of my 365-day notebook challenge - collectable advice 16/365 you might want to save or share. If you found it useful, hit the share button (copy-pasting is not cool 😉).

👉 And if you want to see how I teach people to do this in practice, check out the comments.

IMAGE📸: The beautiful young kids at Almazaan Stud demonstrating what horses really are when they are well balance and feel safe - brave and curious - because that is what horses really are...and probably why that human all those thousands of years ago had that harebrained idea to climb on their backs!

05/09/2025

Not Naughty. Not Stubborn. Just Threatened.

The way I like to explain horse behaviour is simple: most of the “difficulties” people face with horses don’t come from some deep equine conspiracy against you. They come from one thing: the horse feels threatened.

I found this image of an ape riding a horse. The horse looks horrified - as if Godzilla just mounted up. And the tragic punchline? That’s often exactly what your horse sees when you climb aboard.

We humans love to overcomplicate things. We write essays about "stress releases" and "calming herbs", we argue over whether our horse is "sensitive" or just a "chestnut", and we spend small fortunes on gadgets designed by people with more marketing flair than horsemanship. But when you strip it all back, horses are embarrassingly simple: if they feel safe, they’ll try. If they feel threatened, they’ll try to survive.

Let me explain - and yes, I’ll use this image to do it.

This is the hardest thing for people to swallow: we can make the horse feel threatened.

The behaviour you call “naughty,” “stubborn,” or “difficult” is just your horse reacting to the primate clamped on its back like a panicked cat on a rollercoaster.

- Sit like a sack of potatoes and grip like a crab? Threatening.
- Move in the saddle like you’re auditioning for Riverdance? Threatening.
- Sn**ch, pull, or hang on the reins? Threatening.
- Force their neck into a yoga pose they didn’t sign up for? Threatening.
- Strap on tack that pinches, rubs, or restricts? Threatening.
- Demand pirouettes while they’re already internally screaming? Very threatening.

Before long, your horse isn’t just threatened under saddle - they’re threatened at the mounting block, when the saddle appears, or when you walk into the paddock with that “today’s the day we nail it!” look in your eye.

When horses feel threatened…
- They become hypervigilant, nervous, spooky.
- They turn resistant, anxious, reactive.
- They buck, rear, pig-root, strike, or charge—because when you’re a prey animal and someone feels like a predator, the natural solution is to make them regret that life choice.
- And the chronic fallout of being regularly threatened? That’s a story for another day—but let’s just say it isn’t solved with a new bit and a tub of magnesium powder.

So what can we do?

It’s not rocket science. (Or pseudoscience, for that matter. 😎)
- We teach.
- We train.
- We manage their health.

Above all, we help the horse understand, feel comfortable, and feel secure. That’s it.

Horses are ridiculously easy to train. We love to say they’re “prey animals” as if that excuses everything, but really, so are we. Their gift is being wired to notice threats - and their brilliance is that they learn faster than you can scroll through Facebook. Honestly, they’re easier to train than dogs. You just have to know how.

And that’s why I’m here. Not because horses are complicated mystical unicorns - but because they’re simple, and humans are the ones who make it complicated. Once you learn how not to feel like Godzilla on their back, you unlock the part where they are brave, trusting, and extraordinary.

We’re all just primates doing our best. The shift comes when you learn how not to be the monster in the saddle. And that’s easier than you think.

👉 Check the first comment - I’ll point you toward some resources that actually work.

This is totally counting as Day 15/365 of my notebook challenge—where I spill good ideas straight from my obsessive notebook collection. Collect them, share them, scribble them in the margins of your own life. Just don’t copy-paste (plagiarism is so last season).

⚠️And if the satire stings a little—don’t be offended. It’s meant to both sting and be funny. That’s how we crack things open enough to actually see them. ❤

04/09/2025

Simplicity: The Secret Weapon for Riders Who Feel Stuck

Roger keeps Kathryn honest. He’s a horse with some mild arthritic changes, which means he needs regular work to stay fit and comfortable. Without it? He starts spooking at shadows, leaves, or blades of grass ...and sometimes....nothing.😎

Now, spooky Roger isn’t fun to ride. But avoiding riding him only makes him less fit and more stiff, which makes the spooking worse, which makes him even less fun to ride. It’s the kind of vicious cycle that ends in a potential trip to hospital and Kathryn is a farrier and getting injured is not good for business.

So Kathryn, my Canter Therapy co-host, did what clever horse people do: she made it simple. She invented the Yes Ladder.

Her only rule? Each day she must catch Roger and tie him up. That’s it. If that’s all she does, it’s a win. Roger’s handled, the streak continues, no guilt. But once he’s tied up, she asks herself: “Do I have the time and energy to brush him?” And usually - yes. From there, the ladder unfolds:
- Catch and tie.
- Groom/handle.
- Groundwork.
- Short ride.
- Longer ride.

Most days she climbs to rung five, some rare days she stops at one. Either way, she wins - and Roger gets what he needs and is kept in regular work.

That’s the genius: it lowers the bar so far you can’t wriggle out. Motivation doesn’t fall from the sky - it sneaks in once you’ve started.

When I blogged about this in a post recently, Moira commented on it as she had been inspired:
“Since reading this, I have applied it to me and my horse, just the simple decision of just going out and putting a halter on daily, leading him into the saddle up area, going into the arena, quietly lunging, putting saddle on, getting on for a sit, getting on next day for a walk, to getting on yesterday and trotting. Small steps but this has helped me more than so many other things, just showing up every day is working.”

That’s it. That’s the whole game: just showing up every day is working.

So I thought: let’s make it official. In my Society Members group, we don’t just talk about change - we experiment with it. We laugh, we share, we stumble, we learn. We’re on a quest to change the equestrian world by first changing ourselves - by being good humans to each other, and good humans to horses. Without fluff. Without crap.

And so we launched the Great Procrastination Experiment: a 12-day Yes Ladder Challenge.
The results? Very cool!

- 76% showed up most days or every day.
- Nearly half happily pitched their tent in the groundwork zone...and that was admirable considering what the weather has been like here in Australia lately ⛈.
- Nobody got stuck at “only once or twice.”

But the stats were just the start. The stories were better:
- “Biggest shift for me is if I catch, I always do more!”
- “Thanks for this challenge - it kept the momentum on when the weather was rubbish. Still got out there when it would’ve been easy to say nah 🤣.”
- “These 12 days have made me realise I have a unicorn and anything is possible 🦄.”
- “Thank you for this challenge. You don't know how much it has meant to me....I am riding again, I have been so stuck.”
- "The biggest shift for me was giving myself permission to spend time with the horses, and planning a bit better what I want to achieve and what steps I need to take to do that."

Here’s the point: complexity is procrastination in fancy pants. We tell ourselves we’re too busy, not motivated, not ready yet. Who do I listen to with so much conflicting advice? I am not good enough etc...But the truth? It’s not about motivation - it’s about momentum. And simplicity is the secret weapon.

As da Vinci said: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” (He didn’t have horses, but if he did, he’d definitely have owned a spooky mildly arthritic gelding named Roger.😆)

So I have taken what I know and what the community revealed and created the Starting Point Program - to give riders a way to take that first rung, plug into a Society that experiments instead of procrastinates, and finally turn “I should” into “I did.”

Because the truth is, you don’t need another theory. You don’t need another excuse. You don’t need the perfect day, perfect weather, or perfect confidence.

You just need a halter, a horse, and the audacity to say “yes” to the first rung.

The rest will take care of itself...because when you got momentum and you can see some progress it is easier to tackle harder stuff to make the big breakthroughs ❤

Starting Point Program details in the comments.🗣

IMAGE📸: Kat and Roger at the clinic when I first met them in 2018❤

PS. I am totally counting this as an entry to my Notebook Challenge. So this is collectable advice 14/365😃

Please SHARE so that someone who is trapped down a rabbit hole of stuckness or lack of progress needs to hear that really they just need to try something simple ❤

03/09/2025

⚠️ Warning: Contains satire. Side effects: chuckles, awkward self-reflection, and potential offence if you happen to be a guru.

Eat Bitterness

📝Collectable Advice - Entry 13/365

In many Asian cultures, there’s a concept called “eat bitterness.”

It’s the art of swallowing struggle whole - failure, sweat, frustration, the lot… and calling it a virtue. Because it is. Growth tastes less like chocolate 🍫 and more like kale 🥬 that’s been boiled by your least talented relative.

Meanwhile, in the West, we act like if you don’t get something instantly, you’re defective. We want hacks, quick fixes, and pills for every ill. We want the horse to “just know,” like it downloaded the latest training app overnight.
But here’s the truth: horses are master chefs of bitterness. They’ll serve you a tasting plate of your own flaws:

- “Oh, you thought you had balance? Here’s gravity.”
- “Thought your aids were clear? Here’s confusion on the rocks.”
- “Wanted to look elegant? Here’s you eating dirt in front of your friends.”

And the universe laughs, because this is the deal. You don’t get resilience without chewing on the tough bits.

You don’t get mastery without the aftertaste of failure.

So next time your horse plants itself like a toddler refusing broccoli 🥦 don’t spiral into shame. Don’t reach for another guru selling emotional kale smoothies. Just… eat bitterness. You have got some work to do.

But this is important. Don’t keep gnawing on the same old dried turd of advice hoping it’ll somehow turn into steak. Sometimes the horse gods are sending you a message: what you’ve been swallowing isn’t wisdom at all, it’s recycled nonsense. And let’s be honest, there’s plenty of fake horsemanship “news” floating around social media.🙄

That moment of struggle might be telling you it’s time to learn more, rebuild your basics, improve your riding fitness, or simply seek out better guidance.😎

Chew, swallow, repeat. That’s how you get good.

📓 Remember: this is part of my 365-day notebook challenge - sharing collectable ideas to save and share. But this one’s satire. Share it at your own risk… because there’s always that one friend who’ll get twitchy, clutch their pearls, and decide it’s aimed at them. It’s not. You just thought it was funny 😆

IMAGE 📸: My good friend Anne-Maree with dearest Maxy Moo. Oh boy, did Anne-Maree eat some bitterness - but she swallowed it, learnt the lessons Max had to teach, and came out the other side with such skill and standard that she now supports others learning my approach.❤

02/09/2025

⚠️ Warning: If your horse relationship feels like a bad marriage, it probably is.

📝 Collectable Advice — Entry 12/365

Relationship researcher John Gottman cracked the code on why some couples are happy and others implode in a cloud of hate and massive legal bills. And as the great Australian philosopher Kenny (from the movie "Kenny") once said: “Don’t get married, just find someone you hate and buy them a house.”😂

Gottman discovered the Magic Ratio: happy couples bank 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative. Dip below that and suddenly the quirks you once found endearing (“he leaves his socks everywhere”😆) become intolerable (“I could strangle him with those socks”🤬).

Now swap “spouse” for “horse.”

They may not have socks or stack the dishwasher (another common point of contention in relationships), but they absolutely come with their own worldview (evolutionary entirely different to yours, a bit like living with a man😎) - and, yes, they’re definitely more expensive.

When your ratio is off-balance:
- Every spook feels like the apocalypse
- Every ride feels like an argument
- Every thought becomes “maybe I need a new horse… or maybe I should sell the lot, the property, and take up knitting.” 🧶

That’s when the labels creep in: difficult, sensitive, stubborn, dangerous. Not because the horse is those things, but because your lens has tilted negative.

Here’s the key: when something goes wrong, you have to be ruthless about stacking positives back up. Not magic - maths. 🤓

Positive encounters - count. Every calm catch, smooth tie-up, relaxed walk to the mounting block is a deposit in the trust bank. (I even wrote a whole book on this.) That’s why I always get people to start on the ground. Because if you’ve already had 10 fights just to get to the mounting block, the ride was doomed before your foot hit the stirrup.

The Magic Ratio is the line between:
- “eh, just a spook” vs “I can’t ride this horse anymore.”
- quirks that you can brush off vs things that fill you with dread.
- confidence that grows vs confidence that shatters.

👉 Ask yourself: are you at 5:1… or are you running a relationship deficit with your horse? (or just in your marriage for that matter 😜)

📓 Remember: this is part of my 365-day notebook challenge - collectable, keepable, sharable advice to improve your horsemanship (and to keep you out of the divorce courts).

🙏Go on, hit the share button. It’s free, it makes you look generous, and it saves me from seeing my words pop up later under someone else’s name.

01/09/2025

Stop Calling Her Mare-ish: It’s Not Attitude, It’s Endocrinology (and You Could Be Messing With It)

📝Collectable Advice - Entry 12/365

When a mare is stressed, her body doesn’t just tense up in the moment - stress hormones ripple through every system. And when that stress is day in, day out, cortisol stays high, oestrogen and progesterone wobble, and the fallout isn’t just hormonal imbalance. It’s stiff muscles, sore joints, gut discomfort, broken sleep, low resilience, poor learning… the list goes on. You can’t see the biology, but you can see the behaviour.

So we slap on the label “mare-ish” and joke we should’ve bought a gelding. But that behaviour isn’t attitude - it’s her body telling the truth about stress.

And it’s rarely one big drama. More often it’s death by a thousand paper cuts: a saddle that pinches, training that confuses, a gut that’s sore, turnout that’s too short, broken sleep, paddock politics, sore feet or handling that changes with the weather.

On their own, they look small, or worse - invisible. But together they stack up until her hormones, body, and mood are carrying more than they can cope with. And then? Doing anything with you becomes a battle - she either reacts or she resists.

This is why exercise matters. Consistent, thoughtful work lowers cortisol, teaches the body to recover, and rebuilds muscles, joints, structures of suspension through her body and more all impacted by chronic stress.

Diet matters too - the gut is the foundation of comfort, immunity, and hormonal balance, and what you choose to feed makes all the difference. Add in comfort feet, routine, proper rest, and interactions free from poison and conflict, and suddenly you’re chipping away at stress from every side.

And here’s the bit most people miss: you. Nothing drives stress higher than insecure interactions. Horses crave clarity. Clear rules of engagement and consistent communication mean she doesn’t have to live in conflict and defensiveness every time you show up.

So if your mare is showing “mare-ish” behaviour, it’s not her personality. It’s feedback. It’s your checklist. Go through her life and reduce the stress points one by one: feet, soundness, tack, training, diet, rest, routine - and yes, your own interactions. That’s how you build harmony. Not by blaming the mare, but by setting her up to feel good in her body and secure in her world.

👉 Have you got a "mare-ish" mare? See if you can see this as feedback because if you reduce the stress, you can change the story!

📓Remember: this is part of my 365-day notebook challenge - short, sharp advice you can collect and keep. Hit save or share or add it to your "interesting horse stuff" folder.

IMAGE📸: My mighty golden mare - Aureo ❤

Share for the mares! Many people have only met "mare-ish" mares and that can be changed ❤