Hawkesbury Junior Saddle Stars

08/02/2025

Grace working on her contact, following Sunny’s head, and rounding. ✨⭐️
These were great exercises to work on ba****ck, allowing Grace to feel the difference in Sunny’s back when he was hollow/inverting his neck, and when he was lifted and round.

06/02/2025

👣One step at a time👣

Something I’ve learned to appreciate over the last few months is the impact of getting just one step.

In horse training people often expect to see profound and immediate improvement, and when they can’t achieve that they resort to force and restriction, they fake it. Instead it takes time, consistency and dedication from both you and your horse, it takes training that respects the horse and their natural biomechanics, it also takes patience. That doesn’t mean you need to be working your horse every day for hours, quality of work will always trump quantity of work.

It can be frustrating at times, especially when you’re putting so much into the training and feeling like you’re not getting anywhere or not doing right for your horse because “you just can’t get it”.
But then you start to get just one step. And then maybe the next week you get two steps. And then all of a sudden that one step has turned into a whole circle. Your horses body is changing, they are stronger, more flexible, and mobile, and now you can see all the hard work coming together.

So now I can appreciate the one steps. I can appreciate how hard horses try to do these things even though it’s hard for them. I can appreciate myself and everyone else’s dedication whether they’re working towards just one step or 100.

Pictured is my mare Anna who has been teaching me this lesson over the last few months. At times I doubted we would ever get just one step, and this week we got a whole circle ✨
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28/01/2025

Sydney, NSW - we are starting a level one for you very soon!

EMMETT4 Horses - Level 1

🗓 Date: 15/16 March 2025 (Saturday, Sunday)
⏰ Time: 8:30am to 4:30pm each day
💰Cost: $500
🗺 Location: South Windsor, one hr from SYD airport
✅ Prerequisite: None
‼️ Registration Closes: 1 March
💻Registration: rebeccacoopermelb@gmail,com

🐴 EMMETT 4 Horses Level 1 is the first step to becoming an EMMETT 4 Horses practitioner!
🦄 Level 1 & 2 are the horse care training modules and 3, 4 & 5 are the Practitioner training modules. After level 3 you can further assist your own horse or even begin a new career path!

Symptoms which may be relieved using EMMETT Technique:
⭐️ Injuries from sport or accidents
⭐️ Unbalanced head carriage
⭐️ Saddle soreness/girthing issues
⭐️ Tension in back and lumbar area
⭐️ Restricted forward movement
⭐️ Standing short or uneven
⭐️ Stiff through legs / dragging feet
⭐️ Poor performance / behavior

For further details on the technique and courses offered https://www.emmett-technique-hq.com/

Emmett Technique International
EMMETT Technique Australia

28/01/2025

Grace’s trot is coming along nicely!
Well done! 😊✨🐴

26/01/2025

We are so happy to announce that we will be hosting the 2025 Ecole de Légèreté Teacher Clinics on our Property in Sydney.

There is also a new page for the Sydney School to help keep you posted about upcoming teacher clinic dates, as well as lots of useful informative posts from some wonderful masters and teachers from all around the world to learn from.

Please share, like and follow the Sydney Légèreté page…… We sure would appreciate spreading the wonderful news.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1F4qKrzT6M/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Horse & Soul

Neighmaste 🙏🏽

25/01/2025

If you’re exposed to something extremely often, you often become desensitized to it.

This is a particularly powerful likelihood when the stimulus you’re exposed to often is shrugged off as benign, harmless and non-concerning.

This is why it is often so much easier for people outside of the horse world to notice welfare concerns in horse sports, even with little education.

Many of these “outsider” opinions are often fairly closely aligned with that of welfare experts that have been conducting study on horse sports and the ethicality of them.

There are a number of echo chambers that exist within the horse world.

Many of such chambers are enforced by the belief that the number of years spent in sport equates to having an all encompassing knowledge that doesn’t need to grow and adjust with the time.

This is one of the most dangerous mindsets that plagues the horse world: the belief that years of experience and years spent in tradition means that those years were spent without fault.

Years of experience are irrelevant if those years are not spent with a consistent curiosity and desire to learn. Or an openness to being wrong.

The fact of the matter is this:

When new information threatens our comfort zones, it’s a lot more likely to be rejected. Even when it’s highly credible.

People outside of the horse industry don’t have the same comfort zones because they are not as attached to the idea of things staying the same.

They also don’t run the risk of new information forcing the realization that they may have harmed a horse.

Horse people have both of these risks when new information exposes holes in the ethics of our sport.

And they will often vehemently fight against accepting the validity of new information when it threatens the comfort of the environment they grew up in.

So, honestly, we have more to learn from people who haven’t grown up immersed in horse industry bias than we may think we do.

That doesn’t mean everything they say is right, but it’s definitely interesting to see how closely aligned to science a lot of their initial responses to stres behaviour in horses often are.

The knee jerk reaction when horses express stress behaviour is often to view it as stress.

Horse people are just conditioned out of it throughout years spent having these moments normalized so they stop seeing it for what it is.

And unlearning is an awful lot harder than learning from a blank slate.

25/01/2025

☘️🐴⚖️ 🌈🤩
Sophie and Cricket practicing their leading over and through poles!
Slow, steady, and precise steps are required the narrower the poles get, helping build Crickets balance and straightness, and requiring Sophie to be precise about her aids for him.
☘️🐴⚖️ 🌈🤩

13/01/2025

23/12/2024

Christmas matchy matchy with Sophie and Cricket! ✨❤️🎄🎅🏼🎁

22/12/2024

Grace and Sunny enjoying some Christmas games in this weeks lesson! 🎅🏼🎄✨

20/12/2024

The ponies are getting into the Christmas spirit this week! ❤️🎄🎅🏼✨🎁

11/12/2024

Dante and Petal working on their in-hand work! ✨🐴🤩
In-hand work is not only great for the horse to learn rein aids, balance, flexibility and mobility on the ground, but also gives the rider an opportunity to develop their aids and understanding of the horses body before transferring that knowledge under saddle!

22/11/2024

Mr Cricket loves his pre ride grooming and post ride carrots! 🥕🌈✨

17/11/2024

"Advanced training is just the basics done really well." - Ken Ramirez
+
"Training often fails because people expect way too much of the animal and way too little of themselves." - Bob Bailey
=
"Please just do your homework." - Fred

15/11/2024

15/11/2024

Grace and Sunny getting the beginnings of counterbend!! 🙌🏼🤩

12/11/2024

Before training any horse, it can be very useful to gather a training history, informally or formally.

It might take the form of a simple question and answer or a written document.

This may reveal that one or some of the horse's hard-wired needs are not being fulfilled.

Isolated, confined or under/over fed horses are likely to be compromised in their ability to engage in training.

Another often unconsidered or 'unseen' factor may be that the routinely isolated horses will not be properly rested as they are lacking companions to stand sentry while they sleep, and the security that group housing provides.

Recent research into sleep in horses shows that they will have less REM sleep if they cannot see other horses. Further evidence shows that REM sleep is important for learning and laying down long term memories.

Therefore, it is an advantage to trainers to provide optimal sleep conditions for horses, including social housing.

This is a sneak preview from MODERN HORSE TRAINING, Equitation Science - In Practice, Volume 2, Training In-Hand and Under-Saddle, by Andrew N McLean which will be available at Equitana later this month.