Un-Natural Horsemanship

11/07/2026

Conversation around this circulates our dinner table often- the horse gets one start.

There is no “re-starting” a horse.

I hear the term a lot.

A horse had a poor or traumatic start under saddle, so someone decides to turn them out for six months or a year, give them some time to decompress, and then “restart” them.

And to be clear, I often think that is an excellent idea.

I just think “restart” is the wrong word.

You only get one start.

No amount of time standing in a field can make a horse unknow what happened during their first rides. We can give them time. We can change their expectations. We can build new associations and teach them that the experience can be different now. Horses can heal tremendously from poor training and frightening experiences.

But we cannot go back in time and give them a different first experience.

I think that distinction matters because it speaks to the seriousness of starting young horses.

And seriousness does NOT mean perfection.

A horse’s first rides do not need to be some magical sequence where nothing goes wrong. Young horses are going to misunderstand things. Riders are going to make mistakes. There may be awkward moments, spooks, confusion, days when things don’t go according to plan…

A good start isn’t a perfect start.

It’s one that respects how formative those early experiences are.

We should be thoughtful about who gets on them, what we ask of them, how prepared they are before we climb aboard, and what they learn when they don’t understand the question.

Because if it goes badly, yes, someone can absolutely help that horse later.

We can train past bad experiences.

We can build new confidence.

We can layer hundreds of better experiences over frightening ones until the horse has an entirely different understanding of ridden work.

But I think calling that a “restart” accidentally minimizes both how important the original start was and how much work goes into repairing one that went wrong.

The goal of good training after trauma isn’t to erase the horse’s history.

It’s to give them enough good experiences that their history no longer has to dictate their future.

You can train a traumatized horse.

You can rehabilitate their confidence.

You can give them a completely different relationship with being ridden.

But you cannot restart them.

You only get one start.

Treat it like it matters.

11/06/2026

Lovely little sequence of ‘Zadi leading by between me and the fence 💕 **tstarting

11/05/2026

Accompanying the joy that I find in my work is a deep-felt seriousness. These first ten days on the halter with ‘Zadi mean everything to me. Everything is connected and how we do the small things is how we will do all things.

This was the first time she was asked to lower her head all the way to a neutral position for me to remove the halter. Within me is an ocean of reverence for just how big of an ask this is, to guide her into such a physically vulnerable position through direct + influencing contact on different parts of her body at once while she experiences the confinement it entails.

‘Zadi has been delivering absolute prime examples of “How is more important than What” and every day she has challenged me to be more honest, flexible and brave.

She’s an odd one and I’m clearly quite taken with her 💕

11/04/2026

Waking up this morning feeling profoundly grateful that ‘Zadi has come into my life at precisely this time. It’s easy to say that each horse is a unique individual but in the thousands of horses I’ve worked with, there’s never been one quite like her. I wonder… a year ago, would I have had the confidence to work with such a horse? This confidence in myself has nothing to do with skill set or anything physical, it’s the emotional confidence of inner knowing, of listening to body over brain.

I have strong opinions about how I like to work with horses- the order of things, how the work Should look and feel, and can be pretty attached to doctrine, experiencing discomfort when a horse challenges it. This isn’t unusual, it’s just my human showing. Us humans have a tendency to attach ourselves to
doctrine, sometimes to the point of becoming dogmatic. Lucky for me, a horse like ‘Zadi simply won’t stand for it and is pushing me to dismantle the areas where I might fall into the trap of Shoulding all over us.

As it were, I am immensely proud of not wasting a second arguing with reality with or about her. ‘Zadi and I went out of order, did things I prefer not to do and I had to reach very deep to find a place of worthiness to avoid giving precious time and energy to a partner who wasn’t showing up.

She is showing up now, in the bold confidence that is her own, with curiosity about me and is the one asking all the questions. She likes chest scratches, the smell of balsam fir and is looking forward to having her frogs trimmed!
Now the real fun begins… the beautiful journey of being in relationship- coming in and out of contact, developing our own unique language and navigating the world together 💫

11/02/2026

The journey with ‘Zadi has been a trip thus far. She has a very unique vibe, I’ve not experienced anything quite like it.

By the end of day 3, we were proficient in our loose work. The only thing we were missing was hooking on in movement. A week ago, I might have said that what ‘Zadi and I were doing wouldn’t be possible unless she were hooked on but there we were doing it, while I listened to her dial tone message as though she had pocket dialed me and then left my response on read. Her behaviour was confident, curious of her environment, bold. She wasn’t afraid of me. That’s weird. I’m no mustang master guru but I’ve been around and typically, these beasties are terrified of humans until they’re not and then they’re often easier to get along with than are some domestics. But ‘Zadi? Toward me, she was at best indifferent and at worst indignant. This was the aforementioned vibe. Very Lord of the Flies.

Fascinatingly, a friend of ours also adopted a 2yr old filly born in holding (different origin HMA ) and reports similar findings. While I don’t have a big enough sample size to draw any meaningful conclusion, I am raising a hairy eyeball around this holding born situation. There are definitely some pros, like 24/7 access to forage and friends with decent quality hay. Zadi’s body condition shows that her nutritional requirements have been met throughout her life which is important to me. A common misconception is that mustangs are hardy and have fewer soundness issues than domestic horses. This has not been my experience- I’ve seen a staggering amount of juvenile arthritis and ocd in young, unstarted mustangs and plenty of other bone issues developing early midlife in pleasure and performance mustangs. I’ve even begun linking common genetic issues to specific HMA’s. My theory on this is has a lot to do with nutrition, or lack there of, available to the young, developing feral horse in a certain environment on western BLM land. Anyway, it’s a big plus that ‘Zadi grew up with food and friends. The flip side…

She has had severely limited novel experience. She’s never had to find to find food, water or shelter. She’s never had to navigate varied terrain. She’s had almost no interspecies interaction. She’s never had to solve a problem. She’d also never had anyone say No to her.

When foals are born in holding, as weanlings they are all placed in a pen together and this is how they grow up.

YIKES!

Every day when I look out our kitchen window, I thank Uncle Solano and Uncle Takoda for their efforts in raising Torin, Zak’s 1.5yr old stud c**t. They tolerate his antics remarkably well and play for hours, but when Torin blows past their “No’s”, they’ll roll his ass. Éowyn’s upbringing was fantastic- born into a herd of mares and foals. Weaned into a pasture with two middle aged cool uncles. Graduated into a pasture of young mares. She always had older horses to guide her. ‘Zadi’s very un-horselike behaviour I believe, could certainly be attributed to her unusual upbringing. I found her indifference frustrating and had began to feel that I may need to change my approach and get her on the lariat rope before she was hooking on at liberty. It’s not my preferred order of things, but as our relational contact was nonexistent, I know from experience that some horses require physical contact to bring us into the relational.

On the morning of day 4, we had a cool experience. Her neck tag was very tight and clearly bothered her. I entered her pen and proceeded into some approach and retreat. Once close enough to touch her, I sent her pictures of me taking off the neck tag- showing her what I planned to do and how I planned to do it. She turned her head away and as she began to move away from me, from the pen next to her, Solano reached through the fence and took the dangling ends of the neck tag in his mouth and stopped her. She turned back toward me and I was able, with both hands, to loosen and remove her tag. Surely, I thought, this demonstrates to her that I may have something of value to offer!

Not so. She behaved exactly the same on the lariat rope as she did loose. Between Zak and I, neither of us got a change that day. We tried again the next day. Nothing.

On Day six, I had words with her. I marched into her pen and told her, out loud, “You are magnificent and I would love to be your human but I meet a lot of horses who want to be my friend and I don’t have time or energy to put into one who doesn’t. If you aren’t interested, that’s no problem, I’ll take you back to holding, which is boring. But first, try showing the f**k up once because at this point, I think you need to demonstrate to me why you deserve to be my horse before I will consider letting you stay”.

Then I picked a fight with her. I’m laughing about it now but at the time it was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve made with a horse in a long time. Ultimately, I decided that we had enough experience together honouring one another’s small no’s, it was safe for both of us to place her in a situation where she would have to face a hard, strong NO from me. I was curious what she might do with that. Well, she sure as s**t came into relational contact. She threw an immense temper tantrum- snarling and squealing, lunging, striking and double barrelling. That sucked but well… she showed up t the party. We closed the loop on this and finished about where we started, except this time, the dial tone had been replaced by faint static and bursts of gentle charge.

The next morning, Zak roped her and put in a session. Sometimes my ego gets a bit, DO BY SELF but it would be illogical to live with Zak and not avail myself of his skill and experience.

She was a different horse from the start! Top of the class! The next day was the same with me- she hooked on at liberty and continued progressing from the lariat to the halter! She is approaching me softly in her pen and is overall more settled in her feet. Fascinating.

Yesterday I taught lessons all day and today I’m taking a Me day, but tomorrow, I look forward to seeing where we’re at!

10/30/2026

A couple days after Chiara’s filly, the neck tag is off for Zak’s 4yo Clan Alpine HMA gelding. This guy is pretty wild but he’s making steady progress!

10/29/2026

In the Round Pen With Palladin 💫

One of the best parts of my 2026 clinic season was getting to spend so much time working with horses loose/at liberty. While not always appropriate or even possible, when it is, my preference is to begin working with any new-to-me horse in the round pen or even loose in a full size arena if that’s what is available to us. There’s something profound that happens for me when the horse and I are able to come into relational contact before making physical contact through the halter rope or under saddle. Working loose allows the horse and I to establish and enforce our boundaries, navigate conflict, begin to develop our unique language of communication and find peace together in stillness and in movement, all while each party has the ability to “leave”- to come in and out of relational contact as we choose without being physically tethered to one another.

Under ideal circumstances, I do not begin working on a lariat or halter rope until the horse at liberty can: change eyes behind smoothly and evenly both directions; walk, trot and canter on the rail with punctual, smooth transitions without falling in or looking out; give to lateral pressure through both drive and draw without speeding up or slowing down; yield the hindquarters and front quarters; be directed from multiple orientations but particularly from behind (picture ground driving without the lines)- walk, halt, left, right, small circles, big circles, figure 8’s, serpentines; hook on from behind and in front with the inside front hoof reaching to me.

For me, this extensive list is the preliminary or “See Spot Run” level of training accomplished before moving into physical contact. There is a saying in Gestalt Coaching- “We Lead From Behind”. In the psychological context, this is speaking figuratively but in work with horses, it becomes deeply literal. When we sit on our horse’s backs, arranged behind their head, we are indeed “leading them from behind”. For me, beginning this conversation right away is important because it is my desire that everything (and I mean everything!) we do on the ground translates as smoothly as possible to our work under saddle.

For the horse to come to trust this, to allow me the ability to influence them (Power Over vs overpower) and to choose to participate is so beautifully honouring. Generally speaking, I’ve found that cultivating a container for relational contact can make the transition into physical contact almost seamless. The physical contact comes softly and easily. However, there are cases (my new filly I believe being one), where physical contact is a necessary avenue to relational contact. In her case, our round pen work is exceptional, in every way except for hooking on… which is kinda the whole point. Going forward, I’ll be exploring with her which direction she needs us to go in- to stay working loose or move on to the lariat to help her find me 💕