The Masterful & Confident Equine

08/09/2023

Here is a lovely schematic depicting the three arms of the polyvagal theory - this is the process we use to help horses become masterful and confident through our workshop - the diagram is taken from https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org/whatispolyvagaltheory

22/03/2023

Our new home for our workshops is now live. Changing platforms has allowed us to keep the overheads to a minimum. If there is anyone who was enrolled and did not see the advice regarding the change, please contact us. Meanwhile the link is here for all who may be interested.

This workshop teaches us to socially engage with our horse with movement work such as core work and panther walking to develop confidence and mastery for our

05/10/2022

A new workshop has been added on Polyvagal Theory for Horses for anyone who is interested. We have been having a number of inquiries to provide information, rather than viewing the Polyvagal Information has part of a larger workshop. For those who are already enrolled in any of our Mastery and Confidence workshops or CAT H, please don't purchase this as you have most of the information in your workshop. There is a little updated information though so if you want to be added that's not a problem just message us. Here is the link for those who are interested

Julie is a clicker trainer with some 40 years experience. Julie constantly updates her knowledge through the published literature, course work, and opportunities to work with horses and their humans both in the real and the virtual world. Julie also has a Certificate in Equine Body Worker (Pre-Cours...

22/04/2022

HI all, I had shared this little snip to a group to demonstrate the start button we use AFTER our horse has gone through CAT H and does not need distance for familiar people lifting her feet. This is an extract from our CAT H new DVD series but we are past CAT H now and it is always a good idea to think of a unique start button to help our horse help us understand that they are ready - can you see what start button is being trained here? Can you see why? Can you see why the lead is on? AND that there is a second person? all these antecedents are important to consider - it is a shame it takes longer to train hoof professionals than it does our horses though

20/03/2022

Our current online workshops are now all accessible in one place - https://www.equilog.com.au/online-workshops/

Please click on the relevant picture to access more information about our online workshops. For most of the workshops access does not expire while we are

28/02/2022

Eastern Australia is getting a deluge of rain, and I understand many other countries are getting their share of poor weather that prevents us being out and about with our horses. If you have shelter this is the best time to begin your journey with your horse with our movement exercises that create masterful and confident equines. A little practice each day will help with any distal limb swelling that may be arising from your horse being inactive for periods of time. We have both a full workshop and a smaller workshop (just on core posture). Go to our school and scroll down to find our current mastery and confidence workshop ('group F' ) and the Core activation workshop (or message us and we can send you an individual link) https://the-australian-clicker-connection.teachable.com/courses

We aim for our horses have the confidence & mastery to navigate through stressors, the capacity and functional awareness to explore their bodies & the autonomy to communicate their emotions.

25/02/2022

Here is the new confidence and mastery workshop - just opened https://the-australian-clicker-connection.teachable.com/p/building-confidence-and-mastery-through-movement311/?preview=logged_out

09/02/2022

We have now opened our core activation workshop if anyone is interested here is the link, and the list of workshop topics is at the bottom of the link. Be sure to look at the short promo video https://the-australian-clicker-connection.teachable.com/p/core-activation_for_horses?preview=logged_out

Help motivate your horses to engage their core

09/12/2021

Deb Danna’s new book called ‘anchored’ is on the shelves in some countries and it promises to be a good one. Deb is well known for explaining the Polyvagal Theory is simple terms and she never disappoints. We use allot of her mapping suggestions in our confidence and mastery course. We follow the ANS process of the Polyvagal Theory in CAT H and in fact in every interaction we have with our horses. She has been doing the rounds speaking about what we can anticipate in ‘anchored’. There is a great interview she recently did, and she does not disappoint – even if you listen to the first 15 minutes you will see just how relevant the Polyvagal Theory is to horses (especially how we can ‘share’ our ventral vagal tone with our horse and visa versa).
https://resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/becoming-an-active-operator-of-your-nervous-system/?utm_source=Customer%20Service&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=N211114-Dana%20%28WcLzQ2%29&_kx=mkgXhmkrT0n67Q-Xfem7lYpy5OuYI87GKabAzqTswLM%3D.JMDgaq

Deb Dana, LCSW, is a clinician and consultant specializing in using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma and create ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system. Her clinical publications include The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging....

13/08/2021

this is a neat little study - the findings seem to show that horses understand the 'intent' behind some hand signals that their human gives them. How is this relevant to us? well first it is more information that supports our horses are cognitive beings but also the core activation work we do with our horses involves the use of hand signals (and +R) - now if we are unsure of where we need to suggest that our horse lifts perhaps our horse also is uncertain. We do provide allot of instruction in our workshops as to what parts of our horses body need to 'lift' and in what order - maybe this is part of the reason we have allot of success once the horses human 'gets' the idea - just a thought but a great study on additional modes of communication https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95727-8

When interacting with humans, domesticated species may respond to communicative gestures, such as pointing. However, it is currently unknown, except for in dogs, if species comprehend the communicative nature of such cues. Here, we investigated whether horses could follow the pointing of a human inf...

02/08/2021

I am seeing a few posts where people are using -R to build resilience in horses who are in fear or have anxiety about approaching something. I find this sad to hear but also see the expressions in their horses when they show pics and videos. We use the polyvagal theory to tap into our horses mastery and confidence and only use +R in these cases. We first though need to be connected with our horse and the polyvagal theory has a strong neurobiological basis where connection is obtained by growing healthy relationships. It is healthy to notice that our horse has anxiety because our horse trusts us to show that he he or she is feeling unsafe and trusts we will do what we can to improve the facilitation when approaching something that creates anxiety. So please think about this next time your horse shows you anxiety. We cannot push our horse through it - conditioned suppression occurs when we do this and our relationship suffers because soon our horse just wont tell us that he or she is worried because they know what happens if they do. This is not of course the same when horses are in fear and we stand by CAT H for this - so funny that CAT H has been around for decades - but that's not the purpose of this post. What we want to try and do is engage the ventral vagal nerve and this is the part of the autonomic nervous system that promotes social engagement. We use a series of movement exercises that promote this for our horses (and our relationship with our horses). So we teach these movements during times when our horse is happy and alert and not having any anxiety and then when we come across something scary we work on these - in a safe way. I don't personally object to resilience work BUT not in times when our horse has feelings of anxiety AND not when our horse does not know how to tap into their own super powers to feel confident and masterful. I wish people would not use words such as masterful and confident to take their horse over the threshold and basically tell their horse to suck it up that wont kill you. Just my rant for the day

22/07/2021

Here is a great example of what our horses get up to when they are confident and masterful. Here Nott was waiting her turn for a session but decided to start without her human, using skills we teach in the workshop.

22/07/2021

this is a nice study on routine habitual behaviour in humans and horses. The behaviour chosen for the study was scratching their horse routinely and it became a "two-way action between the human and the equine, with each acting as a contextual cue for the other" ...pretty nice and we do allot of activities in our workshops that provide this same two way action - great to see this study and how the horses humans related to it https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/11/8/2156/htm

11/06/2021

This is not a new article but is it very relevant when we consider what happens to our horses in times of fear. There are recent comments made by some over facebook of late that suggest that we should not be calling horses a flight animal - as humans flee too. I am not sure where this takes us - flight is an adaptive behaviour that can get us out of trouble and yep we flee too. It is more accurate to describe the behaviour rather than label our horse as a mammal of flight or fight - but indeed they are prey animals and we can see this most clearly thought their physical and physiological adaptations that enable them to sense danger long before their two legged humans can. So what we aim to do in our work with confidence and mastery is to help our horse recognise their own early warning signs and help change their own nervous system response AFTER assessing whether what is worrying them is indeed something to worry about. So if our horse would usually worry or flee at the sight of a bunny, (and we know that it wont bite him) then we want to help our horse first relate to the bunny as friendly and we do this through CAT H and then we want to help our horse reduce his or her own heightened arousal to become more strong and confident - this helps change the amygdala - which indeed can be changed and we demonstrate how this occurs in our workshops. What we find is that our horses generally become less jumpy and spooky - and if they are worried they turn to us and let us know in time for us to help them through whatever is worrying them (because remember they will sense the problem long before we do). The reason they turn to us is because we develop a social connection with them and they come to see us as their secure base - just like the old psychological studies in the 'strange situation tests'. https://ethology.eu/fearful-behavior-genetics-and-the-environment/?fbclid=IwAR05VZzJoh1ew6LWLYKWzaUItfSiGuSv3YBXe1HEFczPYVY4AQCeSo0KVhY

(1) Fearful behavior has genetic and learned components, and (2) our pets may show fearful behavior because we have taught them that without being aware.

03/06/2021

The paper regarding the use of pet directed speech is now published. The abstract explains the experiment and this is one of the assets we bring to our training when we want to help our horses become empowered and confident. The authors propose three possible reasons for their findings; 1. that pet directed speech helps focus our horses attention and they say that the in other literature, animals show a clear preference for pet directed speech than for adult directed speech, with increased gazes toward the person using the former speech; 2. Pet directed speech could induce a form of emotional contagion from the human to the horse so the horses reacted more positively. The authors go on to say that it is reported that horses react to joyful intonations
with a drop in heart rate and relaxing their posture—signs
of positive emotion and 3. The horses could have understood from pet directed speech that the human's intention toward them was positive. All three explanations have merit and our results show a similar pattern. We see our speech pattern as also contributing to a high ventral vagal tone (ala polyvagal theory) and this empowers our horse and us. Think about it - even communicating to an adult how do we feel about those conversations where the other person was engaged in monotone - not inflecting their voice in any fashion whatsoever - they say to provide a neutral tone - why? how does this make us feel? it will usually increase our dorsal vagal tone because we have no idea how to interpret that persons intentions - this does not make us confident or safe - better still have that person send you a voice message in that tone - not only do we feel unsafe but we now have lost the opportunity to experience their facial language. So when you communicate to your horse (or others) your speech tone means something - it means more to our horses than we think https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33738670/

Pet-directed speech (PDS) is a type of speech humans spontaneously use with their companion animals. It is very similar to speech commonly used when talking to babies. A survey on social media showed that 92.7% of the respondents used PDS with their horse, but only 44.4% thought that their horse was...

02/06/2021

Here is the link to join our workshop - scroll down the list to see the topics covered. Video coaching is included https://the-australian-clicker-connection.teachable.com/p/building-confidence-and-mastery-through-movement31?fbclid=IwAR3TnER5D0vwj9DXM23yMpFCwdV5LDie0RUODjtnCC8XIokjkhmdOkb3MNo

02/06/2021

This is where you can find out information about our confidence and mastery workshops. We incorporate the Polyvagal theory (aka nervous system) with the clicker and empowerment exercises in our horses training. The combination help our horses become confident and masterful. This is the process we use after CAT H has done its job. Ever felt your horse feels the way that the horse depicted in the table above was feeling? Here is the full table and the top row (green) is what we work to