20/09/2025
☕ Sunday Musings
When someone reacts strongly to a post, it often comes from their own story—their background, their experiences, even their old wounds. I’m learning that lesson daily as I share more of my work online.
Horse training is deeply polarising, and comments can get heated fast. I’ve been told I “should only ride bitless,” or that “real riders don’t need reins.” Meanwhile, I know that in the hunting field for example, where the horse jumping right in front of you may stop or dislodge its rider and I need to take evasive action to prevent landing on them - relying on sitting up and squeezing your seatbones to halt could end in catastrophe. Different contexts demand different skills—and that doesn’t make anyone wrong or bad.
Yes, the seat is vitally important. But here’s the truth: the seat is built on foundations. And those foundations are the rein and leg aids, taught through pressure and release. If your seat fails—and it will—you need a backup. That backup is the signals trained in through reins and legs. Without them, horses end up confused, resistant, and showing conflict behaviours: tail swishing, ears pinned, running through the bridle. Not because the rider isn’t “sitting deep enough,” but because the basics were never programmed in properly. That isn’t just poor training—it’s a welfare issue.
Your seat can only do so much. It’s the refined product, not the starting point. Across disciplines—jumping, hunting, racing, polo, eventing, dressage—the demands are different. A Shetland pony led around in-hand needs one skill set. A big warmblood galloping down a beach needs another. And when your horse trips at the water at Burghley and you’ve got to steer back to a skinny fence on the way out, your seat alone won’t save you.
To solve real problems—whether it’s pulling up a horse in a hunting field, steering after tripping at Burghley’s water jump, loading into the starting barriers at the races, or turning sharply in polo—you need more than your seat. You need the science. You need to understand how horses learn, and how to layer the aids so the horse can make sense of them.
Horses are different. People are different. And our backgrounds shape what we believe. It’s no different in life. If you are a person of faith, it may be hard to understand someone from another religion—or no religion at all. But I’ve come to value the debating itself: listening, questioning, seeing through someone else’s lens. That’s where growth lives.
What worries me is how quick we humans are to polarise, to divide into camps, to sit in our ivory towers and declare one “right” way. Not everyone has the same time, resources, or knowledge. That doesn’t mean they love their horses any less, or that they aren’t trying.
So here’s where I land this week: the middle ground is not glamorous, but it’s where understanding—and compassion—live. My job is to meet riders where they are, whether they’re struggling, learning, or just beginning, and help their horses find clarity and kindness.
Because at the end of the day, horses don’t care about our debates. They just care that we make sense.
