Catherine Latham Equestrian Coaching

08/08/2025

I couldn’t have said this better. No really, I couldn’t 😂 But I agree with every word. Let’s be careful we’re not kidding ourselves when our horses learn to tolerate things we show them, no matter how good our intentions are ❤️

Are we really helping the horse? 🐴

I’ve been struggling to put this into words that will make a coherent post for a while, I’m not sure I’ve been successful.

The more horses I meet and the more I learn about their bodies and behaviour the more I realise so much of the training we’re doing is inappropriate for them in that moment.

Today I’m not going to talk about the rough stuff, I want to talk about the gentle training, the slow stuff that appears to be putting the horse first, no explosions just quietly coaxing the horse along. Even when training like this, it can still be inappropriate.

The problem is, most behavioural issues are rooted in chronic stress and/or pain/discomfort.

When we simply train with pressure and release and keep repeating until the horse does the thing, most horses will give up and comply despite being uncomfortable or sore, even if that pressure is seemingly quiet and gentle. If we are persistent enough, even pressure we deem to be “soft” can be enough to make a horse comply to make it stop.

I have a client horse who started exploding under saddle and the rider fell badly. The horse was “cleared” by a vet after a generic lameness work up and they had a trainer out to help them re-back the horse. In the video they shared with me the saddlecloth was introduced rubbed along the horse’s back, the horse tried to walk away and was kept close to the trainer by a lead rope, the horse eventually stopped with a very tense face and tolerated the saddlecloth going on. This process was repeated with the saddle and then the girth. When they went to girth up the horse visibly flinched, so they did it over and over again and explained “he needs to learn its not going to hurt”. The problem is it was hurting and he was desperately trying to communicate this.

I went out to see this horse after he had thrown 2 further riders and referred him straight back to a vet because of all of the very blatant signs of pain he was showing, he was diagnosed with arthritis in his neck and grade 3 stomach ulcers. This horse also had extremely poor muscling over his whole body so regardless of his behaviour no professional should’ve been encouraging sitting on his back.

A lack of explosive behaviour is not a green flag to keep going. We are not listening well enough if we only listen once the horse is screaming at us. Its also no good recognising more subtle signs of stress if you choose to repeatedly ignore them and keep going because you can “show the horse its fine”.

So you're saying its always pain? Yes, no, maybe 🥲. I try to use the word discomfort. Which can mean the obvious kinds of pain in the body we think of, but that can also mean emotional discomfort from training the horse is finding too stressful or physical discomfort from being ridden in uncomfortable postures or asked to do inappropriate levels of work for where their body is at right now. Sometimes all of the above.

This isn’t meant to be a doom and gloom post, perhaps just planting a seed to really look at what we’re doing with our horses when trying to “fix” behavioural issues.

I just wonder how these horses may improve if, instead of going straight to behavioural modification, we just backed off, prioritised their emotional state by getting their daily living situation as stable and low-stress as we can giving them chance to down-regulate, then re-introduced the training scenario in a completely different way to build new, positive associations. Then we would have a base to work from and see what's really going on underneath. Maybe with some time like this and some gentle movement to improve their posture some of those chronic tension/soreness patterns in the body would go away.

We need to be looking at everything, management, social life, nutrition, posture, hoof balance, emotional health, previous history etc, instead we are “problem-solving” behavioural issues by taking a horse into a training space and teaching them to be obedient when pressure is applied, everything else is an after-thought.

Horse doesn’t like the saddle? Keep putting the saddle on and off until they give up and stand still
Horse won’t go forward? Keep nagging with legs/stick until they take a step forward
Horse won’t stand at the mounting block? Make him park there and just put him back every time he moves until he stops bothering.
Horse won’t load on the trailer? Keep applying pressure and only release when he steps forward.

My whole approach now is to get the horse into the absolute best place I can emotionally by reducing the overall stress levels in their life so we can perhaps get them into a trainable state. Sometimes the horse is so stressed that the first session looks like tweaking management and teaching the horse to eat out of some buckets in an appropriate training space, then leaving the owner to do that until the horse is relaxed about it, then the next session we can introduce some training.

When dealing with behavioural issues that can be caused by pain/fear like aversions to tack/being mounted/loading, I’m always going to bring choice to the table, using pressure/release to do this isn’t giving them a real choice. Its quietly shutting down their communication as there’s really only one answer we will accept. When we give horses choices, they can communicate with us more effectively. Sometimes we aren’t going to like the answer, which is why people push against this sort of training as being “ineffective”. But I am more interested in finding out how the horse actual feels so I can then hopefully find out why and help them.

I’m not interested in nagging horses into doing things they do not want to do, and probably cannot do comfortably, for my own interests. Unfortunately it makes for a terrible business model.

This is an industry-wide problem, extreme stress behaviour is so normalised that we’re mistaking less-explosive stress behaviour for calm relaxation. It is also normalised that horses are there for us to use and they should do exactly what we want them to do at all times or else. I don’t know how else to elicit change except to constantly blab on about it, then hopefully those among us who genuinely want to put our horse’s first can start to see through the narratives and see a different way forward. 🐴

02/08/2025

01/08/2025

Good morning friends☺️!

Just to let you know if I haven’t already that I will be on holiday from next Wednesday August 6th until 22nd, enjoying ALL the cheese, wine and pastries France has to offer 😂

I’m fully booked until I leave but happy to book in for a few spaces last week of August and then going into September (already?!) Bisous xx

24/07/2025

Chilling with this beautiful soul today. Time was that anyone on a mounting block used to terrify him. Today he came over with no tack on, just to hang out and let me rest a little while together 🥰

20/07/2025

Hi lovely people - I have availability on Thursday morning this week due to a cancellation if anyone would like to book in - fairly local please!
I’ll also be on holiday from 5th - 22nd August, 🇫🇷 🧀 🍷😁 so this is prior warning to get booked in before then if you’ve been planning to do so!
Limited slots available xx

12/07/2025

So lovely to receive feedback like this 🥰 Gentle giant Jake (17hh at least and almost as wide!) has been experiencing huge anxiety about going out into the world, especially solo. A few sessions in and he’s feeling significantly better about the world and everything in it ☺️

28/06/2025

Mounting issues 🐴

Most mounting issues are not training issues.

If we think about it logically, presumably the horse presenting mounting issues has been ridden before. He is aware of what the mounting block means and what happens next. He is not confused or misunderstanding, he is communicating clearly that he doesn’t want you to get on. If we care about our horse’s wellbeing it is up to us to figure out why that is.

Most of the time the answer is either pain/discomfort or negative associations with being ridden, often both. So until we address those things, our horse is not going to feel good about being mounted, even if we can get them to give up and comply.

Client story shared with permission. I have been working with a lovely client, who I’ll call Lisa, for the last few months who initially contacted me about mounting issues. She was very conscientious and had been to the vet who declared the horse sound, had the tack checked and had regular appointments with a bodyworker who raised no concerns about this horse being ridden. Her horse Barney would become anxious when presented at the block, shifting backwards or swinging his quarters out sideways.

Lisa booked a session with a recommended “behavioural trainer” who’s opinion was that he just needed to learn to trust the rider and build confidence. They spent time making Barney disengage his quarters and back up, they then spent time tapping him on the side with a stick until he lined up with the mounting block. Barney become extremely stressed and started trying to pull away but they persisted until eventually he stood still and allowed them to mount. The trainer explained this as Barney feeling more relaxed and building confidence. Lisa showed me the “after” video and Barney was stood still heavily resting a back leg with very prominent triangle-shaped upper eyelids. He barely reacted as the rider got on. To me this horse was still extremely anxious and had shut down. They had achieved compliance but Barney still felt really unhappy and stressed.

Lisa found she was back at square one with Barney within a week and reached out to me. Upon meeting Barney we discussed the signs of stress in the videos and I also explained that, in my opinion, it was inappropriate to be trying to ride Barney with his current musculature. He had very little muscle over his back and a sunken neck. I had strong reasons to suspect Barney was experiencing pain given how he was presenting and referred on to a recommended physio and subsequently a different vet. Barney was found to have issues in his spine and neck which we are now very carefully rehabbing from the ground with appropriate supportive treatment.

I see so many horses being pushed into shut down like this, if we can learn about behaviour ourselves we can recognise when this is happening and advocate for our horses, no matter who the professional is. I wish I could share the video of him shutting down with you as an educational tool but it doesn’t feel right to.

Please understand that any training method that makes it uncomfortable for a horse to not line up at the mounting block and only takes the pressure off when they stand still, whether that be whip taps or flags or spinning ropes, can easily coerce a horse who is in pain into compliance.

I meet so many horses who have been seen by numerous professionals who haven’t flagged what, to me, are really obvious signs of discomfort and weakness. The industry has normalised stressed, dysfunctional horses so much that it feels like we can’t see the wood for the trees. We need to hold professionals to higher standards and by educating ourselves we can absolutely do that and make better choices for our horses.

Please don’t wait for your horse to be shouting before you listen, happy to support anyone who wants to message me if you’re concerned about your horse, I’ll hopefully be able to nudge you in the right direction to someone who can help you.

23/06/2025

In human physiotherapy, rehabilitation could be percieved to be fairly straightforward.

You're given a plan over a number of weeks or months, with a review to check your progress.

You get your shopping list of rehab exercises; you get told to regress them if it hurts, stop if you fatigue, progress them after a week or two or if it's becoming too easy, or to take a rest day if you have too much muscle soreness.

You can get verbal coaching on your form, you can look in the mirror and observe and replicate yourself.

And you also understand why you're doing it and why it might be uncomfortable, because you also know the outcome far outweighs the short term discomfort.

Success is the expectation, and you as the individual have a great deal of autonomy when undertaking the exercises and curating your experience.

But I struggle with this model from an equine rehabilitation perspective.

I don't disagree with the model of progressive overload and increasing the intensity of the exercise for musculoskeletal adaptation,

Nor do I disagree with the need to empower and inform patients to care for themselves to achieve their goal without the need for over reliance on professional support,

But I cannot get behind the idea that it's encouraged to blindly follow a plan when the only metric for success is compliance.

If the horse "does the thing" and has repetitively "done the thing" for a specified period of time, then success is supposed to be guaranteed.

At no point, do we attempt to educate on recognising pain, recognising fatigue, understanding posture and postural adaptations, or how horses learn, let alone how long it takes for tissues to adapt.

And yet here we are, with horses who perhaps have complex pathology, or complex behavioural presentations;

Who may have never moved well in their entire life(!) so it's not about restoring to original function, it's about teaching the horse to do something they've never done before.

And that same horse has probably never been allowed an opinion on their experience, and if their behaviour has been acknowledged, it's likely been passed off as an expression of disobedience.

We then combine that with an owner who has never been taught about behaviour, learning theory, posture and biomechanics...
..And we're think all of this can be resolved in a simple rehab plan?

I dont know about you, but that doesn't feel like an appropriate answer to me.

📸 Rose Photography

27/05/2025

19/05/2025

😍

A few years ago, I had a conversation with Warwick Schiller about relaxation- what it is, how we recognise it, and how it shows up in both our horses and ourselves.

At the time, I had just bought Nadia, my big warmblood mare, and let’s just say the dream of us riding off into the sunset was quickly replaced with something much more humble: taking off all the gear and going right back to the beginning.

Her anxiety told me riding towards sunsets were off the table for now.

🧘‍♀️ The only thing I was doing? Helping her relax.

Not long after, a bodyworker came to see Nadia and was shocked at how much her shape had changed over a relatively small window.

"What have you been doing with her?" she asked.

And my honest answer was:

“I’ve just been playing with how to help her relax.”

At the time, my understanding of the nervous system was fairly surface-level. I knew that when we’re anxious, scared, or depressed, we carry ourselves differently—that was obvious, even intuitive. We all know what it looks like to see (or feel) posture reflect mood.

But what I thought I was observing in Nadia—muscles softening, tension releasing—was actually something much deeper.

🫁 What we often miss: The organs’ role in posture

In all the conversations we have around body and behaviour, what rarely gets mentioned is the role of organ placement and internal pressure systems in shaping posture.

Just like every other part of us, our organs- and our horse’s organs- aren’t static. They’re constantly moving, shifting, responding. And their position is directly influenced by the state of the nervous system.

Each of the major survival responses- fight, flight, freeze, and collapse- has a specific motor reflex pattern. The body rearranges itself to serve that response.

For example:

🔹 In fight, it prioritizes force.
🔹 In flight, it prioritizes acceleration.

When the nervous system chooses one of these, the body- organs included- shifts to match.

Think of the size and mass of structures like the lungs, diaphragm, and liver. Where they sit in the body dramatically affects outward form.

To illustrate this, what I've come to understand is:

🫁 In a parasympathetic state, the lungs sit higher in the neck tube, helping stabilize the deep front line and neck.

🫁 In a fight-or-flight state, the lungs drop lower, often creating that rounded “hunchback” posture we associate with stress.

🎗️Support from the inside out

In the parasympathetic system, the body functions differently. Each internal “chamber” is pressurized. The fascia is responsive and alive. The organs are not just in place—they’re vibrant, spinning, and vital.

And this creates a body that is supported from the inside out.

Posture becomes full without force.

Muscles soften, not because they’re “letting go,” but because they no longer need to brace.

The skin has vitality. The body, ease.

🐎 That’s what I was seeing in Nadia.

Not just muscles releasing.

Her entire system was reorganising—physically, mentally, emotionally.

And here’s the most important part:

This wasn’t something I did to her.

It was something her nervous system chose- a different operating system, a different postural template. One that created change from the inside out.

One that affects things from the top down and inside out: physically, mentally and emotionally.

It's changed my understandings about posture, and what we are truly observing when we see physical and structural changes in our horses.

As ever, I'd love to hear your thoughts,

xx Jane