TradiE-Questrian

27/11/2024

I heard two things that stuck with me recently. I forgot what the first one was 😂 but I was recently at a master-class with a highly talented horsewoman who attended the master-class with me.
All she said was 'it's sad to not see other horse people at my level here'. She's well within her skill set to say that.

I also saw another post about a recent clinician who is also an exceptional horseman where people (including myself) said they'd absolubtly fence sit but not necessarily participate with a horse. Not because they're 'too good' but because we have enough skill and knowledge to put things into practice at home.

So at what point are you 'too good' to go to clinics as a participant or fence sitter and attend master classes? When you design a program that let's you and the horse speak a human language and write the 'how to frolic into the sunset on horseback tackless for dummies' book.

You get to a point where you decide which method of training you align your values with, whether it be science based or not and this can alter your methods at any point of your training. How much you explore change is determined by your humility.

Does this mean your incapable? Absolutely not. Does this mean you're not as knowledgeable as you thought you were, not necessarily. Quite often is just a different perspective, seeing something much deeper than you originally thought or hearing something differently.

So, at what point did you become 'too cool' to fence sit?

23/11/2024

The power of reading good books is enough to make you restructure your approach to training. Maybe a little, maybe a lot.
Words might not mean a lot to you at one point in your training, but you will have met a horse or two in-between reading books only to find more subtlety or profundity messages.
Obedient horses may win you blue ribbons, but the memory of a horse with spirit will last longer 🧡

04/11/2024

These two beauties are currently in training to find their special humans. 💖

18/10/2024

Testing out the sand for our Liberty demo at Wandering Camp Out Weekend!
This is my second year back and I've been so excited 😁
Can't wait for tomorrow 🦄

05/10/2024

Not my farrier giving me the side eye why I don't practice what I preach on my own horses 🫣

Spice is a rescue horse at Butterfly Haven Ranch. With the owner who is a bit short on time at the moment, I've been given the privilege of working with one of the rescues.

Spice needs a bit of assistance with feeling ok about her back feet being picked up. There are many approaches I have but this is my most common and used approach.

Teaching the horse to pick up the back feet up with ropes keeps you safe, out of the kick zone and provides sufficient clarity to the horse.

After the horse has become comfortable with the idea of rope on its legs, we back the horse up with the rope still around the legs.
The purpose is for the horse to understand that the rope is not for restricting movement and that they are still free to move about normally.

Once the horse is less reactive to the idea of a rope around its leg, we start applying pressure by pulling on the rope to lift the leg and set it down, increasing the time we hold the leg up. I don't let the leg down while the horse is snatching and kicking, I let the leg down when that reaction is gone and can be placed down. This teaches the horse that snatching, kicking and jumping over the place is not the answer.

Why do we want to place the leg down? Think of it similar to a cue. When we place the hoof on the ground, we're telling the horse that we are done with it. The horse is free to stomp, lift, step or whatever it wants to do with its leg. When we go back to picking the leg up, the horse starts to learn to standing and waiting means release instead of pulling and fighting.

We build on this by introducing our hand cue of running our hands down the horses back, firming out grip down the leg, indicating we want them to lift the leg while pulling on the rope.

Eventually we remove the rope as the horse builds confidence, trust and and understanding.

I never advocate for tying the leg up before exhausting every avenue first.
Tying up a leg teaches your horse learnt helplessness and not to think through situations.

22/09/2024

How long does it take to become a good horse trainer?

1 year? 10 years? 50?

What even is a 'good trainer'?

The saying 'quality, not quantity' is true in many respects and horse training is the same. It's not the quantity of time you've spent learning to train horses, but rather the quality of what you learn and apply.

I see people who have been working horses for decades, and don't seem to be able to differentiate between a 'naughty horse' and a horse that simply does not understand.

I see people who have spent 6 months working with horses and have developed the ability to read a horse exceptionally well and produce a more willing and confident horse through their understanding of clarity and feel.

It's important to remember that it's also the quality and influence of our mentors and trainers that have an impact on the quality of the training also.

It's not just the training alone however. It's understanding all aspects of a horse. The biomechanics, the confirmation, the feet and everything in between that can have an influence on the horse overall.

So how long does it take to become a good trainer?
About as long and a piece of string.

13/09/2024

Part 2, same session.

Curiosity is undoubtedly something people are sick of hearing from me 🤣

Curiosity=searching=confidence=trust=Curiosity=searching=confidence=trust.

Following a feel can happen without Curiosity, search, confidence and trust.
That's obedience.

This filly has a good foundation on her, she's just having trouble adjusting from a truck to a float so to help with that transition, we introduce searching.

To help with this particular case, I find her areas of comfort and watch her show curiosity inside the float. What I also look for is a decrease on thinking outside of the float.
After she's quite confident in this area of try, we move up to the next area of try (first video), rinse and repeat.

With enough listening and rewarding that search, she'll let go of her thoughts outside of the float and think inside of the float, feeling confident.

12/09/2024

The answer is at 1:18.

The question? When does this horses thought change?

We need a horse to change their thoughts to build confidence in searching and letting go of thoughts, especially hard thoughts.

When a horse let's go of a hard thought, they feel safe ans curious enough to explore and search their surroundings and they become far more pliable in doing what you ask of them.

When a horse struggles to let go of a hard thought, they'll do what they can to fullfill their thoughts within their means. A bolting horse is a perfect example. A bolting horse has been thinking about going back home since you tacked up and with every rabbit that pops out, the horse is more drawn to the stables until it's had 1 too many rabbits pop out in front of him.

The tricky part is figuring out if the horse is bouncing off the environment, ping ponging off everything or if they are processing as they change their thought pattern. The big give-aways is in the horses body language, time spent fixating on things and where their minds wonder.

This beautiful girl loads up just fine, but the deeper she goes in the float, the harder her thoughts get outside of the float. The homework here is to help her let go of hard thoughts, take her off the float or back her half way off after she's searched in the float to reassure her that there is still a back door in her endeavours to search.

27/08/2024

Marketing 101 😂

534 likes, 48 comments. “The accomodating trainer”

26/08/2024

How many times do you need to prepare yourself to do something?
Do you still need to psych yourself up to do your 50th dressage test?
Do you need to work up the motivation or discipline to go to the gym for the 100th time?
Are there daily tasks that stress you out even though it's routine?

Your horse may have been saddled hundreds of times without the consideration of mentally preparing them. It's not just the saddling, it's the association and anticipation with the work after saddling they need to prepare for too.

It takes an extra 30 seconds to let them sniff the saddle pad if they choose to smell it and this is one small thing that can reduce a few drops from the worry cup. If your horse takes the time to sniff the pad, they probably needed that time to prepare themselves, even if it's routine.

25/08/2024

Excited to return for another demo this year 😁

With only a few campsites still available, now is the time to book your site for the big weekend, before they're all gone.

Tickets:
https://www.trybooking.com/CPFBG

Tickets are non-refundable.
This event is not pet friendly, due to it being held on a working farm.

12/08/2024

Pre ride gut sound check.
If it sounds like gas, you're good to go.
If it sounds like the ocean, it's time to clear the sand.

If anyone has a catchy phrase, write it in the comments!

09/08/2024

If I could change anything in the equine world, it's wilful ignorance.

Human Ignorance⚠️

There is no doubt that horses suffer because of the ignorance and stupidity of people.

It is very easy to be frustrated by people and have no patience for them. When you see horses suffer at the hands of someone being ignorant, it can be infuriating.

This discomfort can escalate when you see these people refuse to listen to good advice, blame others instead of taking responsibility, and repeat their mistakes, all to the detriment of some poor horse. Wilful ignorance is an ugly thing, and you can find it at all levels of the equestrian world.

Back in the day, I was one hell of an equestrian vigilante. I raged battles against every stupid horse person on the internet. My favourite quote at the height of my equestrian vigilantism was by Martin Luther King Jr.:

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Therefore, believe me, I absolutely understand when you say you have zero tolerance for ignorant humans. However, I am about to present a case as to why you may wish to reconsider this.

My case will make a claim that giving up on people effectively means you give up on their horse as well.

The only way to help any horse is through the human connected to them. If you care about horses, you need to influence the human. The worst way to influence a human is for them to perceive criticism or feel that you are being contemptuous towards them. That just makes people defensive and hold even tighter onto their bad ideas.

We like to think our human superpower is our intelligence. Well, guess what... it is not. Our superpower, and the reason we are still here and haven’t gone extinct, is that we have this tremendous ability to adapt to our environments. We work stuff out. But to work stuff out, we need to fail a lot. Therefore, we are hardwired to be overconfident because if we weren’t, we would have been too overcautious and too scared to leave a cave each time we perceived danger, and our species would have died out millions of years ago.

It is why we suffer from distorted thinking such as cognitive dissonance, hold onto beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence, and can do very stupid things.

We are also wired for connection with other people and are heavily influenced by those around us and what they do and think. If you are surrounded by ignorance, it is hard to be different!

We are not born wise; we need life experience to teach us that, and here is where we really get interesting...

When we learn something and our perspective changes, a really intriguing thing happens—we completely forget what it was like before we changed. So, once you learn to know something or see something, you cannot un-see it or un-know it… it is all part of that same superpower of adapting to our environments, but unfortunately, it makes us extremely intolerant and impatient towards people who have not yet crossed this learning threshold to see or know things differently. It seems so obvious that you get incredulous!

We also tend to learn things in layers of different levels of understanding and depth.

Therefore, not only are we prone to being overconfident, we are prone to being arrogant. Unfortunately, it takes many cycles of being overconfident, failing, learning something new, transforming, becoming arrogant, then overconfident, then failing again before we have a chance of learning the right thing and developing some self-awareness and humility! Many times we never make it past the first failing stage, and we just keep repeating the same mistakes!

So, how do we influence overconfident, ignorant people?

You make them curious and treat them like a cat!

A cat😺?! Yes, a cat… let me explain…

Because we have this burning sense of autonomy, or free will. It is why unsolicited advice is so ineffective at helping anyone. Humans are best when they feel like they have control of what they decide to engage in and who they listen to.

If you lead by example and ride and manage your horses in a way that allows them to flourish, people who are struggling with their horse due to their ignorance and incompetence will look to you with curiosity. Just like a cat that is ignored, they will eventually get curious and come and check you out!

Now, please do not think I am saying there is no place for outrage, challenge, laws, and rules. These are essential and important. But these can be made a hell of a lot easier if we influence from a community and individual level.

Therefore, remember—overconfidence, connection, arrogance, curiosity, free will, and treat like a cat😺! Understand these things about our species, and we have a chance of getting to the horses that we can only help if we influence their owner first✊

05/08/2024

So there wasn't really a hay shortage, they just made the rolls bigger 🤪

04/08/2024

What is a 5 star agistment to you?

Is it the fancy fences?
The Olympic sized arena with river sand?
A horse walker?
A swimming pool for horses?
Pristine and manicured gardens?
WIWO stables with washed white sand?
Individual grass paddocks?

Is it all the fancy amenities for you to use or is it harmony for your horses?

This is my friends agistment and a 6 star one at that. It doesn't have all the fancy stuff but it has everything your horse needs to be safe and happy, with attentive daily care throughout the day.

Is the agistment 5 star for your horse, or is it 5 star for you?

01/08/2024

Something that divided the equine community. Hard truths in here but none the less, still funny!