17/07/2025
Join us on this journey of building a better bond with your horse by attending our Horse Agility and R+ clinic on 16th & 17th August
You know when you scroll through social media and see the ones where horses look “perfectly” trained? Often, it appears that the trainer or rider is in complete control. The horse's subservience is often celebrated as respectful and well-mannered and yet they have a far-off look in their eye or their mouth is gaped open in pain.
It's SO easy to fall into that trap of feeling like you must follow what other's say is best for your horse, isn't it? We think that if we aren't doing it the way the trainer or our imperious friend down the road is doing it, we are wrong. But then again, there is often this unsettled feeling in your gut that makes you wonder if it's time to reevaluate the choices that are being made for your horse. If this is you, humor us and go with that feeling for a moment.
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲?
We feel it should prioritize what's best for the horse AND develop a brilliant partnership between you and your horse. But this is a hard thing to picture, isn't it? It almost sounds ethereal and vague.
Yet there are a lot of people out there building businesses on promises of these things while simultaneously demanding compliance from horses in such a way that often leaves them frantic and worried much of the time. How can we have true connection with anyone who acts like a dictator over us? We believe that true growth can only happen when we approach our horses with kindness and empathy.
What does real progress look like? We feel it is developed in those quiet little moments – like when your horse is feeling overwhelmed by something in the environment and he stops, takes a breath, and checks in with you instead of his usual big reaction.
This self-regulation is something that we have to practice when tension is low, so that it becomes automatic when stress is high. Some training methods will tell you to show them who's boss, move their feet, drive them toward the spooky object, or to tire them out. Instead, you can implement a set of tools we use that don't require anything at all that pressures horses. And it works.
With correctly and systematically done positive reinforcement, we give horses the skills and emotional tools they need to feel safe and confident in the world. One by one, we create new and better neural pathways for settled, calm, and focused behavior. This is science. We didn't make any of this up.
We help our horses learn to trust us and they in-turn, want to participate in all we have to teach them. Did you know that our arena is adjacent to a large lush grass field? They work at liberty so they can choose to leave and graze if they want to and yet, this never happens. You see, if it was all about the food, they would leave. That lush grass is better than what we are feeding them. But when positive reinforcement training is done correctly, it is about playing the game.
Chemicals in the brain are released when we use positive reinforcement that make our horses feel good. Overtime the neuralpathway rewiring involved in the process tends to leads to more deeply rooted trust between horse and human.
Step by step, we exchange fear for curiosity and confidence. It might not look like much at first from the outside, but these incredibly important steps ARE the foundation that you're building everything else from. Once these building blocks are in place, the sky is the limit for what is possible in our relationship with horses.
