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 🥇

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 fu***ng 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.

19/11/2025

It’s actually been a long while since Tourn said ‘no’ to being caught.

When I started giving him the choice to engage with me on any given day, he said ‘no’ a lot. But that led to a lot more ‘yes’ when he realised he had that autonomy.

People laughed, they said it was dangerous and dumb. I’m fine with that critique. It’s difficult to truly appreciate an individual and a reality through a screen. Sometimes I think we must appear as characters in a tv show. That’s a different chat, for a different day 😂

Offline, my horse is happy to see me. He meets me at the gate. He puts his nose through his halter. We have more mutual respect than ever.

Where he once saw me with a halter and reacted on a spectrum of “catch me if you can” to “I’m walking away and making a face to make a point while I ultimately allow this”. He now engages with me much more positively and actively chooses to be in my space. And to allow me into his.

This ‘no’ caught me off guard though. I did have an enormous urge to follow him and catch him. I swallowed that. That’s my discomfort to work through as I continue on this path. It’s his boundary, my role is to respect it.

The next day? We did go for our walk 🥰

17/11/2025

What happened to Harry at the crossroads of his career is one of those racing industry outcomes that leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

As a 6yo, Harry was recommended retired by his trainer. The stable foreperson had a home for him. But his connections saw dollar signs, not the welfare of their horse as the number one priority.

I know not all participants are in it for the money alone. I know not all participants cheat. I know not all participants subject the horses in their care to abuse.

But many do.

Just look at how many people think Darren Weir deserves to be relicensed. And how participants continued to support him. Even after that footage with the jigger was released. Even with a 20 year long rap sheet of offences.

And he’s far from the only one.

Harry’s owners chose to continue on with a horse who should have been retired at age 6. In April of 2022, Harry snapped his leg at his fist start for the new trainer.

And I cried for that horse. Who didn’t deserve that ending. Greed. It was greed that ended his life.

It’s these parts of the racing industry that the industry refuses to reckon with that continue to harm it. Social licence is real. Treating the public like idiots, rather than educating is a constant mistake. Failing to acknowledge the harm its own echo chamber creates will end this sport.

Is there a place in society for racing? Yeah. If it’s willing to change in big ways that actually demonstrate the “love” the industry claims to have for horses.

Harry’s fate was so intertwined with my own. He altered the trajectory of my life, in a single moment so irreversibly that I can never forget him.

And just as I mourn for the version of myself whose life he interrupted, I mourn for him. And what could have been for us both.

16/11/2025

No other animal, aside from Homo sapiens of course, has contributed more to modern society than the horse.

They’ve transported us, they’ve facilitated agricultural practice for us, they’ve run blindly into battle for us.

And how do we repay Equus caballus ?

By treating them in the same, sh*tty and gross ways we always have. Most of the equine industry is stuck in a mindset that is at least 50 years old.

Dominance and compliance doesn’t mean your horse is well trained. It doesn’t mean your horse is happy. We’ve been trained to see their pain and distress as normal. Something to strive for. Success at the highest levels of sport.

Pretty bloody shameful.

We ask, they give. To their own detriment. And we remain ungrateful.

It’s past time this sport changed.

11/11/2025

Content creation doesn’t just demand of me; and it’s a choice I make.

It demands of my horses. And I always let them guide me on any given day as to their willingness and capacity. Because we’re not performing. We are showing up as ourselves, exactly as we are in that moment. There’s no character built for this platform. It’s not a performance.

Tourn and I had been free lungeing. We are trying to find the sweet spot between being forward, but not so forward he works entirely on his forehand. All part of teaching him to use his butt more effectively to prevent dysfunction.

As we finished I had a thought;

‘I wonder if he’ll let me on?’

Because he doesn’t often, ba****ck. Even if he’s let me tack up, he will still say ‘no’ when it comes time to mount up.

So his ‘yes’ was very special to me.

But the way he told me he was done filming? Bloody priceless 😂

10/11/2025

Every time I see a sales ad citing that the horse is ‘wasted’ in the paddock.

Every time I see a post saying ‘I don’t have the time to ride so I’m moving my horse on.’

It’s not really about the horse is it?

I can say with certainty that Tourn and Lissi would still be my horses, even if they could never be ridden again.

The difference between people who love horses and people who ride horses is more apparent every day.

And perhaps we need to reckon with that.

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