Anke Hawke Balanced Dressage

14/09/2025

Little wins build big trust 💛

Today was an outstanding day. Katie MK Lipizzaners had my little boy with her for quite a while—the one she bred—so really he’s her little boy. She did a fantastic job helping him find more confidence around flappy things (my special request!)

Seeing how calmly he handled it doesn’t magically make me Katie—but it does let me trust that he’s truly okay with it. Now I can work on being okay too, without second-guessing: first me, then him… or first him, then me.

Trust goes both ways. You have to earn it, and it’s tied to confidence. If you’re not sure something feels like a good idea, don’t push it. But keep nudging yourself a little further each day—just not so far you scare yourself silly.

Small, steady steps. That’s how confidence grows—for horses and humans. ✨

10/09/2025

The obstacle is the path

So often we think learning is about “getting it right.” But the truth is, the struggles are the path.

I’ve seen this with so many horses in training. When they can’t quite find balance, or when the rider feels clumsy with the timing — that’s where the growth begins.

And I’ve seen it in myself too. Sometimes you hit a plateau and you just wish it would go away, because you don’t know what you don’t know. You keep bumping into the same old block, until finally something shifts and you find your way past it.

Riding is always a three-way conversation: between you and your horse, between how the horse feels that day, and where you are on that day. Obstacles don’t just test us — they shape us, both horse and rider, into who we need to become.

🖤🤍⚜️

07/09/2025

Great explanation!

Load Transfer: The Invisible System That Keeps Horses Sound (Until We Break It)

(This is probably the most significant blog I have written to date...and I am deadly serious.)

1️⃣ Why We Miss the Point

Most riders and owners look at legs, joints, or hooves when a horse goes lame. We obsess over hock injections, tendon scans, or shoeing tweaks.

But here’s the blind spot: horses aren’t Lego sets where you can just swap out a dodgy block and keep stacking. They’re whole systems where forces - rider weight, ground impact, propulsion - have to be absorbed, stabilised, and passed on like the world’s most complicated game of pass-the-parcel. That process is called load transfer.

If load transfer works, the horse moves fluidly, distributes force safely, and stays sound. If it doesn’t, the wrong bit cops the pressure - joints, tendons, ligaments - until it breaks. Cue “mystery lameness” and your savings account crying into a feed bucket.

2️⃣ What Load Transfer Actually Is

Load transfer is the art of sharing forces across the horse’s whole body:
- Hooves = shock absorbers (your horse’s Nike Airs).
- Tendons and ligaments = springs (boing, boing).
- Core and spine = suspension bridge (though honestly, comparing a living, moving horse to a bridge bolted to the ground is a bit crap - sorry Tami, I’ll get to you in a second and anyone else having a fit over my analogies :P ).
- Hindquarters = the engine room.
- Trunk = the bridge deck, carrying weight forward.
- Nervous system = Wi-Fi (sometimes 5G, sometimes “buffering…”).

It’s not one joint or one leg doing the work - it’s a team effort. And when one player drops the ball, the others cover… until they tear something.

3️⃣ How It Gets Compromised in Domestication

Here’s the catch: our horses don’t live or move the way evolution intended. Instead, we’ve gifted them the equine version of late-stage capitalism:
- Sedentary living → Wild horses walk 20 km a day. Ours do laps of a 20 x 60 and then slouch around on the couch bingeing Netflix. Fascia weakens, cores collapse, proprioception clocks off.
- Gut health issues → Ulcers, acidosis, restricted forage. Imagine doing Pilates with chronic indigestion. Goodbye stabilisers, hello bracing.
- Rider influence → Saddles, weight, wobbly balance. A hollow back under a rider = hocks and forelimbs eating all the force. “Congratulations, you’re now a wheelbarrow.”

And then we act shocked when the “bridge” collapses and the legs file for workers’ comp.

4️⃣ Why This Explains Early Breakdowns

A horse with poor load transfer isn’t just inefficient - it’s a ticking time bomb.
- Hock arthritis by six.
- Suspensory tears that never heal.
- Kissing spine in a horse that never learned to lift.

This isn’t bad luck. It’s physics. And yes, physics is painful. But so is paying vet bills the size of your mortgage repayments.

Once you see it, the endless cycle of injections and rehab isn’t fate — it’s the logical result of pretending your horse is four pogo sticks with ears instead of a system that has to share the damn load.

5️⃣ Why Talking About This Will Probably Annoy You

Here’s the thing: people who really understand the sheer magnitude of load transfer will most likely confuse you… or offend you.

My good friend Tami Elkayam is the one responsible for hammering this into my thick skull. And I’ll be honest: it took four clinics and two years of friendship before the penny really dropped. She will read this and her hair will stand on end, because load transfer and how the body works is far more interconnected and complex than I’ve made it here.

Because here’s the reality: there is a reason your six-year-old has the joints of a 27-year-old, or why your horse developed kissing spine. And while I’m pretty good at spotting when dysfunctional load transfer has already chewed through a part of the horse… my bigger mission now is to spread the word before more horses — and bank accounts — get wrecked.😎

It may sound like physics, and physics isn’t sexy. But this is physics that explains your vet bills, your training plateaus, your horse’s “difficult” behaviour, and that nagging sense of “not quite right.”

6️⃣ What We Need to Do About It

Instead of obsessing over the parts, we need to step back and care for the system:
- Movement lifestyle → Turnout, hills, hacking, grazing posture. (Not “arena prison with cardio punishment.”)
- Gut health → Forage first, low starch, fewer ulcers. (Because no one engages their core mid-stomach cramp...and that's not even mentioning how digestion impacts the whole things - that blog is for another day)
- Training for posture → Lift the back, wake up the core, balance the bridge. (“More forward” and "rounder" isn’t a strategy, in fact saying those things can be part of the problem...)
Rider responsibility → Balanced seat, good saddle fit, some self-awareness. (Yes, because we have a massive impact on load transfer and how dysfunctional we make it...but let's get the idea in our heads before we beat ourselves up.)
Preventive care → Conditioning, fascia release, thoughtful management. (“Wait for it to break, then panic” is not a plan.)

7️⃣. Closing

Load transfer is the invisible system that keeps horses sound. When it fails, the legs, joints, and tendons take the hit - and horses “mysteriously” break down.

The tragedy isn’t that we can’t prevent it. It’s that we’re too busy staring at hooves or arguing on social media about everything from bits to barefoot to notice the actual system collapsing under our noses.

Once you understand load transfer, you can’t unsee it. And once you can’t unsee it, you’ll never settle for patching symptoms again. You’ll start caring for the whole horse - because that’s the only way to keep the bridge standing, the system working, and your horse sound.

This is Collectable Advice 17/365 of my notebook challenge.

❤Please share this if it made you think. But don’t copy-paste it and slap your name on it - that’s the intellectual equivalent of turning up to an office party with a packet of Tim Tams and calling it “homemade.” This is my work, my study, my sweat, and my own years of training horses (and myself) before figuring this out (well with Tami Elkayam's patience too). Share it, spread it, argue with it - but don’t steal it.

06/09/2025

Learning how to learn

Being a student isn’t just about showing up for a lesson.
We often think it’s about ticking off the “what” — shoulder-in, canter, half pass. But really, the bigger part is learning how to learn.
• Some of us can see the picture clearly.
• Some of us feel the movement in our body.
• Some of us need the words that click and make meaning.

For me, I know I learn best when I can see it, feel it, and then find the words to describe it. In riding, sound is just as important — hearing how the horse travels on the ground, noticing the beat, rhythm, and evenness of tempo.

We all have our own way of putting the pieces together. And often the hardest part is forgiving ourselves for being messy in the middle — but that’s exactly where the real learning happens.

💛🫶🎠✨

04/09/2025

🫶 Ohhh it feels sooo good to have the sun out again! Finally walking without your boots getting stolen by the ground.

The paddocks are drying, the horses have a real spring in their step, and they’re meeting you at the gate with bright eyes.

With everyone sounder, lessons are picking up again 💛 And what better way to celebrate than a trail ride with a good friend, soaking up the sunshine and the company of our horses. ✨
Thank you Katie MK Lipizzaners

01/09/2025

When riding changes after a fall…

Most of us have ridden our whole lives. We’ve sat on all sorts of horses, found our rhythm, felt comfortable, and trusted our bodies to just handle it.

And then—bang—one day you have a fall. Maybe your first in years. And suddenly you’re not in your 20s (or 30s, or 40s) anymore. You don’t bounce back up, dust yourself off, and carry on like nothing happened. Instead, something new creeps in—the thought in the back of your mind that maybe it could happen again.

When you’re younger, you move towards challenges without hesitation. As you get older, the body doesn’t feel as fluent or elastic, and trust in yourself can wobble a bit.

So I’d love to ask my fellow riders—especially those who’ve had big falls (the kind where it took weeks or months to walk again):
👉 How did you deal with it?
👉 What was your strategy to rebuild trust in your body?
👉 How did you get comfortable in the saddle again?

Please share your story—your experience might help someone else who is going through the same thing. 💛

30/08/2025

It feels so good to finally have sunny, windy days—the place is drying up beautifully. I’m reminded of all those Asterix & Obelix comics I read as a kid, where every time it rained, they’d panic that the sky was falling on their heads. But it never did. They always came back out, and the sky was always clearer afterwards. Some storms just last longer than others.

It’s been absolutely delightful to work with the horses again—and just as wonderful to spend time with good friends. Huge shout-out to Katie Tullia, MK Lipizzaners who bred my beautiful Lipizzaner boy and has been helping him find his courage in the big wide world. She’s been playing ball with him, waving tarps, trying jackets on and off—showing him that not everything is scary. He’s thriving under her wing, and I’m so grateful.

Katie’s energy and infectious grin make everything lighter. You walk away from her farm knowing that you’re not broken, your horse isn’t broken, and the sun really does come out again. 🌞✨

26/08/2025

So good to finally have a couple of dry days and be back doing what I love—working with horses, riding, training, and seeing people. 💛 It feels absolutely fantastic to have a bit of normality returning to life.

Yes, I still walk through paddocks with ankle-deep mud clinging to my boots, but at least things are starting to dry out. Little steps in the right direction. 🐴✨

22/08/2025

Good Morning ☀️😌

20/08/2025

The Glamorous Equestrian Life…
Big ideas of what I could be doing… and then the heavens open up again.

Some days it’s a real challenge to stay motivated. Still, I pull the horses out of the paddock—because they love seeing me—and we do something small that they actually enjoy. It might just be a quiet walk in the arena (if it’s dry enough), a grooming session, or practicing some bodywork moves I’ve learned. At least it gives me time to refine things.

But honestly? Half the time it’s just gumboots on, shovel in hand, digging yet another channel to send the water somewhere else so it doesn’t flood what shouldn’t be flooded… again.

If you’re feeling the same, I’d love to hear how you keep yourself and your ponies motivated through the never-ending rain here on the Mid North Coast. What’s your go-to to keep the spark alive?

💛

18/08/2025

I always start the day with big ideas about what I’ll do with the horses… then I get to them and they’re already exhausted. Paddocks are still slippery, two are still perched on the hill, and Lucy decided this morning to show me exactly what she thought of my “brilliant training plan.”

Let’s just say her contribution involved falling over and going straight back to sleep. Clearly, she’s the brains of this operation. 😅🐴💤