Reverence Equine

10/22/2026

If there were ever a topic where I wish I could snap my fingers and reframe it for anyone who is struggling, it's the herdbound horse.

In my world, that's just a horse. We label it because the natural instinct to be with one's friends is inconvenient for us in many ways, and it can lead to what we then call "behavioral problems."

In my world, that's just a horse being a horse.

When we understand what makes a horse a horse and not a dog or a cat or a ladybug or a flying squirrel, it becomes a lot easier to address the things about the horse that can be issues if we don't teach them another way of being. This didn't get talked about when I was a kid in 4-H or Pony Club: we learned the anatomy of the horse, we learned about different types of bits, we learned how to groom and pick a hoof and post on the correct diagonal. But no one ever taught me what actually makes a horse what they are and how to help them feel better in the world we create for them. I had to go figure that out later.

A horse is first and foremost a prey animal, and as a prey animal they are constantly adjusting to the pressures of the world around them in order to return to a state of inner peace. A prey animal has an innate fear response because they know they are a prey animal in the same way a wolf or a grizzly bear knows it's a predator. If something is suspicious or concerning, a horse isn't going to wait around to figure out if it's going to be a problem: they are going to do what comes naturally to them, and that is move their feet and leave, creating distance between themselves and the thing of concern until they feel more secure. At that point they might turn around and have a look at the thing and decide if it's still a problem or not, but safety comes first, always.

The other way the horse maintains safety is in numbers. Many eyes in many heads can watch the environment better than an individual can, and the whole herd can act as an emotional barometer for danger. If one individual senses a problem, the group can respond together.

So if you have a horse who exhibits anxiety when removed from other horses, you have a horse who is acting like a normal horse acts.

If you don't do anything to address the anxiety so the horse learns he can be safe without being in the direct presence of other horses, you're asking the horse over and over and over to entertain situations in which he lacks security. Labeling what the horse does in these situations as "behavioral problems" is convenient for us because it puts the onus on the horse instead of us.

The default suggestion given when one has a horse that expresses what we typically refer to as "herdbound" or "buddy sour" behaviors is to work them, and work them hard. Make them move their feet. Don't let them rest by their friends. Work them hard enough that they ask for a break, and then only let them do so away from the other horses. I'm not going to tell you this can't work. I will argue it is far more nuanced than repeated sweaty saddle pads, that it is often applied incorrectly, and that without proper understanding this is pretty miserable and cruel to the horse. A horse that is anxious and feeling insecure ALREADY feels miserable - he doesn't need help feeling worse. He needs help feeling better.

You can harness the power of allowing the anxious horse to move his feet in such a way that you begin to engage his mind. When you begin to engage his mind, the horse starts to become more present in his own body. When he becomes more present in his own body, his thoughts come to where he is and not where he would prefer to be. When his thoughts come to where he is, you now have a chance to show him he can be safe when he is settled and here, with you.

If I were a pageant queen - and it’s a good bet I’m not, given how many of my "nice" clothes have seen the inside of a barn - this would be my “world peace”: no horse labeled a problem for doing exactly what horses do, and every one of them shown how to feel safe where they stand.

Pictured: Lewis being a very good student after helping Carl Bledsoe demo some groundwork.

10/20/2026

“How do YOU do this?” is not an uncommon question. It has a cousin, “what is the RIGHT way?” that is just as frequently asked.

Recently, someone handed me their horse’s lead rope and asked where I want the horse when I’m leading. They described how everyone seems to want something different and how one person had told them one way but another trainer had said something totally different. This person wanted to know how I did it.

I paused, which is something I find myself doing a lot. A few years ago I would have jumped right in with my perceived “correct” answer. The question wouldn’t have had any time to hang in the air because I would be too busy demonstrating why I did what I did and why it was somehow an improvement or better-informed. It’s been a long time since I did that. In this instance, I did take the rope, but the first thing I said was “well, it’s not going to be a satisfying answer,” followed by my two (relatively new) favorite words: “it depends.”

A lot of the things I’ve historically been pretty convinced about have changed the more horses I’ve worked with. “Right” finds its way far less often into my vocabulary, and “it depends” pops up a lot more. The more I experience, the more nuance I recognize and the harder it becomes to feel absolute about any of it.

When it comes to leading a horse, I don’t think one can ever get too good at it, and I don’t think it’s a skill that is practiced intentionally enough. Every time I go to lead my horse I am teaching him something about how to track me (or not), how to turn loose his feet to me (or not) and how to follow the subtle communication of the halter and the rope (...or not). My expectations for a horse that someone says “leads” are high. It’s not just about getting from Point A to Point B, it’s HOW we get there.

Does my horse notice when I stop and stop with me? Does my horse slow when I slow and speed up when I speed up without me having to beg him?

Can my horse lead a little bit ahead of me without pulling me forward? Can he lead a little bit behind me without dragging? Can he stay right at my shoulder if I ask? Can he alternate between any of these places if the situation calls for it?

Can I send my horse through a tight space? Can I send him around something? Over something?

Can I ask my horse to look in a direction and have him wait for me to tell him to go? Can I ask him to look and then go with some energy? Can I change my mind partway through and say “sorry, I need you here instead” and have my horse kindly oblige?

Does my horse wait on me when I ask him to wait? Does he stay focused on me without getting sucked into what is happening around us?

Can I lead him with another horse and have him know he does not need to worry about that horse?

Can I ask my horse to shape his body how I need it, when I need it, without hesitation or brace on his part?

Do I have equal access to all four feet when I need them?

None of those questions is about one right place. They’re about whether the horse can be wherever I need him next.

If your horse stayed on the same property for his entire life, and you only ever had to move between specific, fixed points, and you never had to deviate in any way from those points…then I suppose you could lead a horse one way all the time and it would work out just fine.

I just don’t know anyone who lives that reality, and so “it depends” feels a bit more realistic.

10/18/2026

I had occasion recently to bring our shepherd Dante to the vet for a routine blood draw. We arrived, unloaded from my truck and as I opened the door to the clinic, we were immediately greeted by a very large, very boisterous Golden Retriever straining at the end of his lead in the waiting room - choking himself out to try and say hello - and an owner who responded with a kind but oblivious smile and an exasperated “he’s friendly!”

For a long time this was a nightmare scenario for Dante. He’s an intense, overflowing personality from a high-drive working line and for an eternity and a half his biggest issue was seeing other dogs, especially if he was surprised by them. He has never been aggressive in the slightest, just completely incapable of greeting appropriately in addition to struggling to regulate his emotions while he was on lead. He’s five and a half now, and we’ve quite literally worked at this ongoing since the day we brought him home as a ten week old pup. This is a dog who (prior to an ACL injury, at least) could scale six foot walls, jump through rings of fire and work an agility course with the best…but would fail miserably at politely greeting just about anything that was sentient.

On this occasion, he managed to not only walk through a door to a high-stimulation environment and get lambasted by an overly-friendly dog, but he did it without barking, without whining, without pulling, and kept his cool the entire time we were there. As I stood waiting to check in and then seated waiting for the tech to come get him, the owners of the retriever passed comments back and forth about how well-behaved and aware of me he was. I just smiled while thinking to myself “yup, and you have NO idea how long it’s taken to get here.”

It’s not all that infrequently that, when I watch back my rides or videotaped lessons or sit for a moment in the space after I ask a horse something they’ve been struggling with, I hear myself say words to the effect of “hey, that wasn’t all that bad”...as if I’m EXPECTING it is going to be. As if I have forgotten about the real change that navigating something many, many times over long periods can effect. As if - despite all that effort I know I’ve put in - nothing has shifted.

I know I’m not the only one that struggles with this. Our brains love patterns, and our nervous systems try their best to anticipate what is going to happen. It’s as if we desperately grasp at some ability to predict the future, but the only evidence we have of what might come to pass is what has already happened. That is helpful - in some circumstances - but it isn’t the best playbook when we’re actively looking to grow or affect change.

When we’re working with animals, it’s not a very good playbook at all. Animals are constantly learning things from us, whether we are aware of it or intend it. A horse that becomes aware of our lack of awareness of him can turn into an anxious mess because he knows we aren’t present, and if we’re not present we can’t possibly look out for him. A more self-assured horse in that situation may just become dull to our requests because there isn’t enough reason for HIM to show up if he knows we aren’t putting in the same effort. Both situations grow out of patterns we set. The common thread tends to be: were we aware of the state of the animal, and did we do something to address it every single time we noticed it?

The answer to that question accumulates in both directions. Every time we notice and respond, it’s a repetition toward the horse who trusts us to show up and shows up in return. Every time we notice and let it slide (or fail to notice at all), it’s a repetition toward something else. Both versions of that animal are going to be a net result of what we put in: years of small moments, answered - or not - and finally adding up where someone can see them. The animal is keeping that count whether or not we are. They are the proof of our work, and sometimes they do “tell on us” for the better.

10/16/2026

It's been a moment since I last posted: between wrapping up training horses, getting ready for winter and some exciting possibilities that are too early in development to share just yet, I've been a touch busy. Coming back from Lewis' and my last clinic of the year, I've been thinking a lot about the importance of the things WE place importance on, and how those things influence our horses' progress.

I met Dr. Deb Bennett back in college, when our major took a trip to the University of Vermont Morgan Horse Farm for a “Form to Function” seminar. Dr. Deb was the main presenter, and it was my first introduction into the world of functional biomechanics and how the way the horse moves impacts long-term soundness and under-saddle capabilities.

In short, it opened my eyes, and it opened them wide.

I stayed in touch with Dr. Deb after that, and spent quite a bit of time frequenting the chat board on her website (which has sadly since been taken down). It was a plethora of information with responses to user questions directly from Dr. Deb, often with images, sketches and markups. I have a folder of packets, each one a printed version of the correspondence thread on a particular topic. I refer back to them often and discover something new each time.

One of my favorite threads involves a story about a clinic she attended under Tom Dorrance. He was well into his 80s at that point and didn’t ride much anymore, but at this event he did get on a horse that presented with some crookedness. Despite the physical imperfection of his riding at that point, the horse was eventually going beautifully straight, supple and engaged, as if none of the equitation or balance of the rider mattered. It was a moment that defined just how much the feeling we present a horse impacts how they go.

There are numerous people I know, both in real life as well as in the online world, who are open about their physical issues (which are sometimes numerous and complex). None of us are perfectly symmetrical and balanced and while the reasons behind that vary, the experience of crookedness is something we all share. Sometimes it isn’t particularly named: just a tightness here, trouble there. Sometimes we know exactly what the diagnosis is, how it shows up and what it means for our riding.

I’ve written about my own struggles with pelvic floor dysfunction and pain, and over the last few years I’ve started having to be careful about what kinds of horses I sit on. Super wide horses with big, apple-shaped barrels are particularly difficult for me, as are horses with hard, jarring trots. The latter is often fixable and so I can work with those horses by doing a lot more at the walk and only taking the trot if the horse can stay soft and lifted. I also struggle with sitting in the saddle for long periods of time without dismounting: clinic settings where sessions are several hours often have me finding ways to stretch while mounted or getting off for short spurts.

In experimenting with all of this, I’ve learned to work quite hard at making sure the feeling I present to the horse is one that allows them to - as much as is possible - move forward freely and evenly, unencumbered by my limitations. I’ve spent years focusing on directing the horse’s thoughts instead of simply moving the body, and being very aware of how much the horse’s mind draws his body in a direction, and this has helped immensely. It’s only quite recently that I’ve come back to playing more with refining and engaging with the physical form. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how little tweaks here and there - the subtle shift of my seatbone, the activation of my quad, bringing awareness to which direction my ribcage is pointing - are all that have been needed to help the horse go to the next level of engagement or softness.

Dr. Deb taught me to see where the horse’s body departs from what naturally serves him, and I’m grateful for that every time I swing a leg over. Her story about Tom Dorrance showed me what the sketches and marked-up photos can’t: the physical isn’t the whole of what the horse is answering. He’s also listening to what we ask of his mind, and that part is available to every one of us, crooked or not.

09/18/2026

Is correct movement really correct if its foundation is in tension?

It takes time to learn to see where a horse is carrying tension and how they might be employing it in movement. There are plenty of landmarks we can use, but even those aren't always entirely reliable: a particular horse might be working towards better movement that isn't quite entirely free of tension yet, but it's improving. Or, a horse might be compensating in ways that look rather brilliant but lack a solid foundation and will eventually lead to breakdown. The first is not a failing but a part of the journey, while the second is something that often gets awarded in competition rings but will end up costing later on.

I should probably clarify what tension I'm referring to, because like pressure, tension is part of life and not always negative. A muscle group under load is under tension: the fibers are contracted and engaged in order to participate appropriately. When a horse is really, truly engaged mentally, especially when being asked for something with a degree of difficulty, there is tension because there is a high degree of focus and concentration on what is being asked and then offering it. Tension isn't the opposite of relaxation in the way that good is the opposite of bad: it is engagement and load on a spectrum, and the spectrum needs to be understood and respected as we work with any particular horse and identify what they need in order to move towards more correct movement.

Tension becomes a problem when it:

1. Blocks correct engagement of muscle groups that are supposed to work synergistically, or
2. Forces the horse to engage soft tissue in a way that promotes irregular movement, or
3. Creates compensatory patterns that lead to degeneration instead of improved soundness over time, or
4. Puts the horse in a frame of mind where they can no longer think their way through a question and instead become reactive or dull.

The PRESENCE of tension is not the problem, because tension exists on a spectrum. It's the kind of tension and the way it affects the horse and his response to us that can become problematic.

So - is correct movement really correct if its foundation is in tension? It depends entirely on which tension is doing the founding. Engagement can be a foundation. Compensation never is, it just might look pretty until the bill comes due down the road. Correct movement doesn't require an absence of tension, it requires tension that's working for the horse instead of against him.

09/10/2026

There is a saying, “don’t put eggs in your pocket.”

Okay, I don’t actually know if this is a bona-fide saying or not, but if it isn’t it sure should be.

We sell - on average - 80-90 dozen eggs a month out of our roadside stand. With all of that egg gathering you will inevitably come across some wayward ones, and the easy solution if you don’t have the egg basket with you is to put them in your pocket. It’s just a few minutes, until you make it back to the house, right?

But if you’ve ever put an egg in your pocket, then you’ve inevitably done it a few times…until the day you finally break the egg in your pocket and have a slimy mess to clean up. The next time you find a wayward huevo, you think twice about tucking it in your coat.

The thing about putting an egg in your coat pocket is you truly do feel like you can control the outcome better than you can. You don’t consider the hen you might trip over or the grain bin you’ll lean up against. You certainly don’t conceive of the fact that you might damn well forget the thing is in there at all.

There are a few moments in my time with horses that were, as it turns out, moments where I put the proverbial egg in my pocket. I knew I shouldn’t have, even if I’d gotten away with it before, but I got cocky and did it anyway. Both of the times that quickly come to mind were in the round pen with a horse who had gotten lost and worried out on the rail.

In its correct usage, the round pen is a place where horses can learn to keep track of mentally and stay present and engaged with the person directing them without needing to be tethered physically to that person. It also gives the person a reasonably confined space within which to practice staying connected to the horse. Unfortunately, a lot of horses get taught that the round pen is a place where they get run around, and so they learn to flee around the edge of the pen instead of moving about with confidence, composure and connection. Because it is the horse’s natural response - and his first choice - to flee from something that bothers him, it’s not hard to get a horse convinced that the round pen is a place for fleeing, whether or not they have been “taught” this.

About ten years ago now, maybe more, I was working a mare in a round pen. She was pretty decent at keeping track of you in hand but got lost quickly when she wasn’t connected physically. I took off the halter with the thought to request her attention so she’d turn towards me, and she instead opted to leave. I flipped the flag a few times to see if I could disrupt that idea of leaving, not really conceiving she’d just leave harder. She did, right through the fence, crashing through the wooden boards. I’d driven her right out of the pen. I’d broken the egg. On that day I learned just how powerful the thoughts of a horse could be, and how absolutely oafishly I’d handled hers.

I have worked with many, many horses in many, many round pens since that mare and managed not to make that mistake again…until recently. Fast forward to this past spring and I had another horse, a gelding, at my farm. Like the mare over a decade ago, this horse also got quite lost when loose in a space with a human and some poor experiences with people prior made it very hard not to flee when he felt any pressure whatsoever. We’d been working on this - bit by bit - for a few weeks and he’d made good progress. At that point he’d be able to make short trips out on the rail at the walk before he’d start to get worried and I’d need to draw him back, let him settle and reassure him he wasn’t in trouble. That thread connecting us was very tenuous indeed, but it was getting stronger over time.

One day, I turned him loose after some in-hand work to continue to play with moving about the pen at liberty, developing that thread. Within a few moments something on the road, far across the pasture, caught his attention as well as that of my two geldings. Quickly everyone began to stir and this gelding got sucked into that frenzy: within seconds he was trotting swiftly around the outside of the pen. I flipped the flag to see if I could disrupt that thought, and he broke into a fast canter. In a brief moment I saw his inside ear flick to me. It seemed like a window of opportunity to draw him in and so I took my energy back a bit, but he couldn’t hear that invitation and continued to careen around the pen. I knew at that moment that if I did the slightest bit too much, there was a distinct possibility he’d try to exit stage left, especially with the energy of my horses running around the outside of the pen. I saw it, I felt it, and I pocketed the egg anyway.

Most fortunately for me, he opted to launch into the gate, and the panel popped off the hinges. He looked like those road signs you see warning of the potential for deer leaping out in front of your moving vehicle. He crashed through the gate, nary a scratch, and proceeded to tear around with my two geldings. After a few minutes everyone calmed down, he approached me to be caught, and we resumed our session as if nothing had happened. The gate, remarkably, was unblemished and looked exactly as it had before I picked it up off the ground.

I got lucky in both of these scenarios, but the lesson doesn’t feel like it’s about luck. There are plenty of instances where we are just ignorant to the possibilities and fail to accurately read what feels like a harmless situation. It is another thing entirely to accurately read a situation and make a decision that counters what that situation called for. Call it overconfidence, call it ego, call it arrogance. Call it all three. When you know better, you do better: that’s a saying I have always known to be bona-fide.

Turns out, sometimes it has a footnote.

09/06/2026

I just posted a video to my Patreon of myself and Lewis. In it, I went through some things I often play with in our sessions together and talked through some of the struggles I’ve had in feeling like I know what I’m doing with him, especially around the topic of motivation in an otherwise pretty okay horse.

And then I did something that I often do with videos of my own riding: I watched it back without the audio.

I’ll be darned…my horse looked pretty motivated. I’m not sitting on a horse who acts like his rider doesn’t know what she’s doing. I saw the changes in my horse when I asked him to show up. I saw his moments of real effort and I saw myself reward him for those efforts. I noticed the moments where he didn’t really offer much try and I watched myself firm up in those moments appropriately (and I saw him respond with change!) I regarded a horse who - at the end of our session - looked softer, more responsive, more balanced and more “together” than he had when I first swung my leg over his back.

Did I see things I could improve upon? Of course I did. Plenty. The day I stop improving is the day I can no longer sit astride a horse.

So why do I continue to regard my effectiveness in our work as so mediocre? Why is it so hard to acknowledge when something is actually going pretty darn well? Why do I have such difficulty seeing the improvements and instead can only seem to see the vast chasm I feel between where I am and where I “should” be?

Quite recently, I realized my tendency towards high achievement, productivity and drive was actually a trauma response that was protecting something much deeper and more vulnerable. It’s not that I’m not a hard worker, it’s that ingrained in me is an obligation to succeed and anything short of that is unacceptable. I know that is part of this puzzle, but that doesn’t feel even remotely like the whole story, because I hear this same sentiment echoed all the time from other female riders, especially professionals. It’s almost a rite of passage at this point.

I have a hypothesis about this, and it is the fact that unlike so many other professional pursuits, horsemanship lacks an objective scoreboard. There is no box score, no win/loss record. Sure, there is the competitive world and several variations of scoring systems within it - dressage, eventing, reining and the like, but they are often false scoreboards, which might be worse than no scoreboard at all. A percentage on a dressage test or a placing in the ring looks objective, but these systems can reward things that don't track with the actual quality of the horsemanship - a judge rewarding forced frame over genuine throughness, or flash over soundness of foundation. We also run the risk of these kinds of scoring systems creating traps for people who genuinely know better: the better you get, the less valuable these scoreboards become. YOU know if the ride was sh*te, even if the score was high. You also know when your horse gives you the most he’s ever offered even if the scoreboard doesn’t reinforce this reality. Knowing better usually leads to doing better, but if the scoring system doesn’t reward what you know is really, truly better, otherwise good horsepeople have decisions to make about participating in those systems. The more you know, the more alone you end up.

In most other skilled professions we have this external feedback that tells us whether we’re on the right track, whether we’ve done the right thing, whether we succeeded. In horsemanship, the feedback is almost entirely self-administered and self-interpreted. We simultaneously become the practitioner and the judge as well as the one who has to live with the verdict.

I mentioned that I hear this from other female professionals more and more the longer I am a part of the industry, and I think this is because playing fields without scoreboards specifically punish - albeit unintentionally - those whose internal sense of “enough” is skewed. I actually don’t think many of the amazing horsewomen I know lack self-confidence, it’s just that we’ve been gifted this sense of doubt via our upbringing that without some external indicator of achievement, we can’t possibly have done anything worth feeling good about. That punishment goes doubly for those with intense attunement, awareness and feeling - all things that attract many of us to horses in the first place and yet it becomes a razor thin line to walk when we’re trying to decide whether we deserve to be a bit chuffed with ourselves.

This is why watching my own work back in silence was so contrary and powerful: I'd built a private scoreboard by accident not because I fully trusted it, but because I knew from experience I couldn’t trust the narrative in my head either.

And it worked, AND I still couldn’t fully put my faith in it. What that tells me is that no amount of evidence - no matter the source - can fix an issue of worthiness. That worthiness can come in different flavors and be sourced from different recipes, but a hole is a hole. You either fill it, or keep stepping in it.

09/04/2026

I am very, very grateful to have found and met Carl. He is a first rate human, horseman and advocate for the horse in a sector of the equine industry that desperately needs reform. Lewis and I will be visiting with him in October to continue out own gaited journey. If you own a gaited horse, there is no one better out there go see.

Yes, I am hitting this nail on the head once again. I don’t mean to be redundant, but several of my posts this week have been leading up to this one. This is a topic that continues to weigh heavily on my heart, and I simply cannot stay silent about it.

Behind the glittering trophies, pristine outfits, and roaring crowds at the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration in Shelbyville, Tennessee, it is easy to get swept up in the incredible pageantry. There was once a time in Carl’s life when this week, and the frantic week of preparation leading up to it, felt like pure magic. Raised in that world, the anticipation, the lights, and the energy of the Celebration made it the most exciting time of the year. It is incredibly easy to become a product of your environment when everyone around you normalizes the status quo. But as the saying goes: when you know better, you do better. Carl eventually saw past the illusion. He turned his back on his training career to become a fierce advocate for the horses. He learned that beneath all the glitz lies a devastating reality that can no longer be ignored. The exaggerated, high-stepping movement known as the "Big Lick" is completely artificial, forcing these majestic animals into an unnatural posture through systemic physical pain and heavy stacks that alter their alignment.

Beyond the physical damage, it is a form of deep psychological abuse that breaks the horse's spirit. Compounding this trauma, new equine brain science proves the severe neurological and developmental ramifications of starting horses in this high-stress, intensive training at such a vulnerable, young age, permanently altering their stress-response pathways. Shockingly, the industry hides behind statistics, boasting a "96% to 99% compliance rate" during inspections to shield themselves and justify their actions. But this is a manipulation of the word "compliance"—these numbers lump in thousands of sound, flat-shod horses to intentionally dilute the data and mask the systemic violations still occurring in the Big Lick world.

One must ask the question, has the USDA succumbed to the industry’s relentless justification continually delaying federal crackdowns and essentially trying to determine an “acceptable level of sore” rather than enforcing a total ban? Make no mistake, abuse happens across all horse competitions, and it absolutely happens in flat-shod horse competitions as well. You can try to justify these practices in all the ways you want, but you can put lipstick on a pig and it’s still a pig. True pageantry does not require cruelty, and political stagnation should never be used to mask abuse as tradition. Carl's journey proves that change from within is possible, and it is time for all of us to stand up, peel back the glamour, and take a firm stance against this celebrated abuse. Please raise your voice, contact your legislators to support horse protection laws like the PAST Act, and help us demand an end to the Big Lick.

A note to anyone in the Big Lick community who wants to chime in, attack us, or bring up Carl's past as a trainer to discredit this post: Carl has already openly admitted his wrongdoings, taken accountability, and chosen a path of active reform. If you choose to lash out by highlighting the very practices he used to do, you are simply validating the exact abuse we are exposing and admitting to your own ongoing wrongdoing. We welcome the conversation, but defensive deflections only prove our point.