Gippy Equine Assistant

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Gippy Equine Assistant For when only a horse girl’s help will do 🐴
Honest, Aussie horsemanship, working in harmony with horses 💖
Fluent in thoroughbred 🏇🏼
Putting the horse first 🥇

24/12/2025

MERRY CHRISTMAS 🎄🎅🏻

23/12/2025

This has been a big, challenging year for me in all facets of my life.

There was total upheaval, reckonings in my horsemanship, shedding of people who weren’t true friends and believing in myself when I didn’t think I had anymore to give.

April me would not believe that I am glad this year happened. But I am. Thank f**k all this happened.

I am exactly where I need to be on the cusp of 2026

21/12/2025

Speaking of summer and all its joys… who the f**k let the bots out 😫

18/12/2025

With Central Gippsland experiencing its first extreme weather day of the season today, it seems like a good opportunity to recap some hot weather horse care ☀️

15/12/2025

I am so lucky to have had a front row seat to my aunt’s endeavours in showing and now breeding fjord horses in Australia. She has invested time and money into ensuring a genetically diverse future for the breed through her stud Sunny Creek Fjord Horses. And even more than that, it is an experience beyond words to watch all her dreams come true.

Neral himself is no slouch, triple registered in Europe and lifetime approved. He is just the second of three red duns in Australia (two of which call Sunny Creek home) and will leave a legacy of athleticism, beautiful temperaments and colour here in Australia for years to come.

12/12/2025

I find a key part of training is being your horse’s cheersquad 📣 Or am I the only loony 🪿

10/12/2025

Yesterday was Tourn’s proper 11th birthday.

It’s crazy to me that he’s ELEVEN. I’ve known him since he was 3, and while he was states away for a few years racing, he’s always been a solid fixture in my life.

He came home on the cusp of 7 years old. He knew me before my head injury and after. He in fact, helped me make it to today. Without him I would have been too far gone in trying to find who I was after the head injury. Trying to understand a life without equine companionship. His first career ended and he came home at the right moment to shine a light and I was able to find my way back to myself and life.

There’s a constant undercurrent of gratefulness and appreciation that I get to be his person every day. A lot of people have said to me verbatim “that he’s lucky he has you, no one else would put up with his sh*t.” Which I always tended to agree with. He “gets away” with a lot; but his “getting away” with things is down to your own interpretations of horsemanship. And it’s well documented now that I don’t subscribe to anything traditional.

But lately I think it says more about the kind of horse people they are.

That Tourn shows up as himself, without apology and pretence, is a gift. He is intolerant of receiving pretence in return. You are simply unable to develop a working relationship (or any relationship) with him if you haven’t faced your own truth. And in that way he is a great teacher and mentor.

He is lucky to have me because I have grown and changed and matured in response to him. I am luckier to have a horse who has challenged me to be better. To ask questions. To try new things. To sit with uncomfortable truths about myself and life and find some peace.

This is a journey that never ends, as it should be with horses. But I am just so f**king amazed that this horse is in my life and allows me to share in his.

We butt heads plenty. I ask him his permission, but it’s hard to negotiate that and rehab his pain without a few arguments.

I could talk all day about what I got to learn because he allowed me to make mistakes, trusting I would improve. But today as the sun rises on another year of his life, I’m just wrapped up in the magic of rides like this where he reaches out to the hand I’ve extended.

That’s harmony. That’s the only kind of horsemanship I’m interested in.

06/12/2025

If you live in a place where access to meaningful turnout isn’t possible?

If your only option is to have your horse stalled 24/7?

You don’t need a horse.

Having a horse means meeting their basic needs. And freedom, forage and friends? Those aren’t optional.

06/12/2025

We’re so reticent to show our horses grace. We’re in a hurry to achieve our own goals, we rush them, we can get angry, communication breaks down.

But like us, it their first time here too.

27/11/2025

Sometimes I do like to lean into dogma. I’m a blunt, black and white kinda girl.

Dogma is divisive. It commands attention. It gets reactions. And sometimes, social media is just performance art.

Lately I’ve started picking at the threads of why we continue to use the rope halter, why it’s a stable staple, and what it can tell us about our relationships with horses.

A lot of people don’t like it. Which I expected.

But the comments on this video from an alternate platform last weekend were an interesting read.

They varied from “rope halters are easier to have about”

To “I couldn’t find a colour I liked in a weber”

To “rope halters don’t break”

To “I don’t like it when the metal bits jingle”

To “my horse is unmanageable without it”

To “it’s a training aid”

To “any tack is severe in the wrong hands”

And finally, my favourite: “let’s not tack shame”

What a fascinating capture of the community. Because even though it’s 2025, we still train horses and treat them like it’s 1925, or even 1825. We build tools that are effective because of their abrasiveness or restraint action and call it training. We are both cognisant of the reasons why we choose these tools and unable to see them.

In essence, we choose to make things easier for ourselves. It’s not about mutual comfort or even the horse’s comfort. And it never has been.

If you’re still stuck on “all tack is aggressive in harsh hands” and “let’s not tack shame”, don’t worry. I’m coming back for that one 😉

21/11/2025

It takes a lot to be willing to change. To see something inside yourself, in what you’re doing, in what you’ve been taught. To hold it, see it and and then… let it go.

I learned about horses in racing stables. I internalised so much aggression and dominance in my handling. I was quick to be confrontational. I didn’t see - or know honestly - the basics of how to read a horse, or how a horse should be.

Simply loving them as horses, I was intuitive about some aspects. I bonded easily with the horses that weren’t liked. Giving them the love and patience and kindness that built them up a little.

I missed the indoctrination of a pony club upbringing. Being told that we do things in certain ways because we always have.

I learned in tertiary study, in my own life and other areas and interests of mine that it is seldom good to maintain the status quo.

So when Tourn came home to me and I was faced with truly learning what it meant to own a horse?

When Tourn came home to me and I did little else but chew on whether he liked a given discipline, pursuit or style?

When Tourn came home to me and I had to unwind his body and learn about horses and redevelop his entire system?

When Tourn came home to me and openly and without hesitation shared every thought he ever had?

I changed. I grew. I found the pieces of what I thought was good practice, thanked them for teaching me and then let them go. Or I’m trying to anyway.

And Tourn has thrived.

So when you meet inevitably meet the horse that asks you take a step back and review yourself? Let them.

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