Art Under Saddle - Training, Lessons, Corrections, Horsemanship

06/28/2025

This this thisss!

06/27/2025

What a fantastic approach to asking the horse to embody their own mind-muscle connection and work on finding their own strength!

- No doing it for them / restraint / making it happen / we need to help them -

Only how we can help show them how to do things themselves off a cue - not doing it for them.

06/18/2025

CLASSICAL REHAB VS TRENDING REHAB…

Love seeing these changes continue when a horse goes home.

Lots of hard work from the owner keeping this horse from falling back into old flight patterns, and going above and beyond the work I began.

The horse in the before picture couldn’t back up or canter transition without panicking, because she would get locked down in the shoulders.

The horse in the after picture can do both… and counter canter, and halfpass, and soft passage, and piaffe.

Advanced movements and advanced balance shouldn’t be about us and our wants, but about restoring the horse to their birthright balance and power.

That was accomplished by rehabbing this horse through classical work that focuses on the WHOLE horse, back to front.

As much as it’s evolved, much of our modern fixation on the thoracic sling falls short because we fail to rehab the very base of the horse’s balance… the hindquarters.

Shoulder dysfunction has to be addressed by engagement of the sling muscles and equilibrium of the lower sling adductors, yes, but we can only do that if the hindquarter can RECEIVE that work, if the hind is equally ‘on-line’ and strengthened.

Lateral work is often viewed as unnecessary or unattainable by the everyday horse and rider, or is overdone in angle and speed as a performative trick, or a training drill that does more mental and physical harm than good.

But true classical lateral work is powerful medicine.

The difference in muscle, movement, and power in this horse’s hindquarters is testament to that, especially the development over her glutes into her longissimus, the butt-to-back bridge that allows the pelvis to lift the forehand.

There are several modalities that lower the head and neck and overload the forehand, and bodybuild the thoracic sling and topline accordingly.

Then, the hindquarters are either driven forward into that balance, developing only horizontal thrust, or ignored and disempowered completely.

Make sure your gains are in the right places.

(Yes, it’s the same horse, I just have the before picture flipped because I didn’t have a same side set of photos.

Here’s part one of this rehab story. This horse and owner are awesome. I’m really proud of them.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1YnsR4zNaB/?mibextid=wwXIfr)

06/17/2025

It’s common and can exist right under our noses

06/17/2025

Food for thought in a world quite heavily populated with only the polar opposites

WHEN SCIENCE HURTS OUR HORSEMANSHIP, PART 1

SNS VS PNS
The risk of delving into any scientific theory in relation to our horsemanship is that, if we aren’t careful, a lot can get lost in translation, and the resulting misinterpretation can skew and stunt our horsemanship away from what we know from experience to be true.

We have a tendency to fall into dualistic thinking... we want to simplify things into black and white and absolutes, and this has definitely been done when applying different lenses of scientific theory to our horsemanship.

For instance, I see a lot of trainers giving the impression that the mobilizing sympathetic nervous system, most commonly associated with fight or flight, is always a ‘bad’ thing, and idealizing and over-prioritizing the parasympathetic nervous system, most commonly associated with rest and digest.

But we forget that mobilization via the sympathetic nervous system can also be a good thing... play, migration, etc.

Why does this matter?
Because if we put too much emphasis on keeping a horse in a parasympathetic rest and digest state, we can miss out on utilizing mobilization to foster confidence and relaxation, as well.

The result can be a horse who stays calm when they are still, but cannot retain confidence and relaxation forward into motion.

The ability to move effortlessly between parasympathetic and sympathetic states, while retaining confidence and relaxation, is the hallmark of a happy, well-adjusted horse.

It helps to think of this as the sympathetic nervous system being like a gas pedal, and the parasympathetic nervous system being like a brake.

If we’re trying to get somewhere, we need to be able to smoothly use both gas and brake together, although, when we’re first learning, the transitions might be a little jerky.

In the wild, horses transition between these states effortlessly and instantly, from mobilizing with migrating or playing, or temporary flight when assessing threat, to slowing down to orient and assess threat and getting back to grazing and resting.

In a future post, I’d like to touch on how I often see trainers, when applying the lens of polyvagal theory to horsemanship, idealizing and over-prioritizing the ‘social engagement’ ventral vagal brake, and giving the impression that the flight inhibition of the dorsal vagal brake is always ‘bad,’ and always results in a freeze response or tonic immobility.
Even trainers who are very well-known are incorrectly labeling the dorsal vagal brake under the ‘bad’ SNS, alongside fight or flight, when it is actually part of the parasympathetic nervous system.

These things are important to discuss, because they affect our intention, and therefore affect our ability to help the horse be empowered and equiniminous in the human world.

Until then... 🙏

PART 2
https://www.facebook.com/140309626025238/posts/4279732692082890/?d=n

PART 3
https://www.facebook.com/140309626025238/posts/4279845375404955/?d=n

https://horsehead.info/introducing-polyvagal-theory/

06/11/2025

No change without fear

06/10/2025

One of the best things I heard the other day, I think it was on a podcast, is the idea of us trying to establish ‘moral dominance.’

That describes so well what I ran into in parts of the clicker training community, as well as parts of the overlapping consent-focused/non-escalating communities…

This isn’t even necessarily something that is extrinsically taught or overtly modeled, as much as it is something that intrinsically pops up, rooted mostly in the projection cast from our own guilt and shame.

So it can exist within an individual who isn’t even connected to any particular community.

What’s fascinating, is we can use behavioral science to understand why people get stuck in certain behavioral science subsets.

In some of these communities, the main motivator and reinforcer can become the back-and-forth validation between people, rather than any objective observation of positive change for the horse.

The back-and-forth validation of moral superiority within a group, or within ourselves, becomes addictive, because the dopamine we receive from that gives a respite from the negative emotions we feel about training outside of that scope, whether that’s extrinsically or intrinsically rooted.

Maybe someone made us feel shame, or we’ve made ourselves feel shame, and we don’t want to face that.

I’ve seen so many people get stuck in their own past trauma around boundaries and communication, project that onto their horse, and keep themselves stuck in a loop of having their avoidance around those issues validated.

Within a community, it can be that much more difficult to get out of that loop.

Things can get so emotionally charged when any of that gets challenged, and I choose not to engage with anyone actively struggling with that, because they need to do their own internal work, separately from their horsemanship.

I know that, because I’ve been there.

It’s difficult to have a conversation with someone who’s stuck there, because if people aren’t doing things their way, it’s always chalked up to moral inferiority, not being enlightened enough or evolved enough yet.

Coming out the other side of strict clicker training, consent-focused, and non-escalating modalities, I can say that it is absolutely possible to be able to understand those things really well, be able to implement those things really well, and still choose to work outside of them when it’s what’s best for the horse.

Not because it’s a shortcut, not because of some moral or ethical failure, but because we’re able to discern when it serves the horse, and when it doesn’t.

Again, and again, horses ask us to transcend our human baggage and meet them where they are.

That is why horsemanship is the journey of a lifetime.

05/20/2025

“…I used far too much pressure and there was really no real thoughts about the horses feelings about it.”

Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, that really does make all the difference in your horse; training, skill, demeanour, predictability, physical health, “correctness”/suppleness, and longevity.

Embrace this as your ally to truly work and engage with horses on a relational level to excel in sport/pleasure/experience (isn’t this the whole idea of equestrian??), or you’ll forever be forced to fight it. And the horse will forever be your prides inhibitor, and to them, you will always be the dictator to fear, despise, or avoid.

BTW Definition of dictator:
“A ruler with total power over a population, typically one who has obtained power through control and force.”

…Sounds like a healthy relationship…🙄

Tolerating is not the same as being fine 🐴

There is a real lack of understanding of what behaviour actually means in the horse industry. More frustratingly, its not just lack of knowledge, its misinformation being presented as fact, in a very confident manner, which makes it very believable. We often notice “loud” behaviours such as biting, rearing and bucking but there is very little education on recognising subtler signs and what they might mean. We now have so much evidence-based research on behaviour that there is no excuse to go along with dated, unethical horsemanship practices that were cutting-edge 30 years ago.

The elephant in the room for me is that so many of these stress behaviours are actually being caused by the people involved putting the horse into situations they clearly aren't ready for. The behaviour is presented as something the horse would be choosing to do regardless and the trainer is just trying to help. Its not listening to the horse if we only listen after they've had to repeatedly scream at us and display extreme behaviours. If training feels dramatic we've already gone too far, we do not need to try and ride the horse through it before decide to listen. It is not ethical horsemanship to continue putting horses into situations they're finding extremely stressful under the guise of "helping" them.

I used to be so focused on how I could shape behaviour I didn’t really look deeply into why a behaviour was happening. I would do the groundwork on people’s “tricky” horses and things would improve, and sometimes the horse would then be okay to ride and sometimes they wouldn’t. I didn’t really understand what was happening. It was very much “do this or I’ll make life difficult for you”. I got horses to be obedient and react quickly to my cues, I was really good at pressure and release, but I used far too much pressure and there was no real thought of the horse’s feelings about it. Physical issues aside, I now realise that getting the horse to do something isn’t enough, what matters is how the horse feels about doing it.

You can see good examples of tolerance being mistaken for being for "being fine" in the many videos of people backing or re-backing horses. The horse may be standing still but they are often extremely tense, showing the whites of their eyes, their necks braced up, chomping anxiously on the bit which is being held with short reins, sometimes even sweating after being worked hard to make them "tired" so they're less likely to react. These signs of high-stress are ignored and people will continue to mount the horse, pat them and praise them. The horse's compliance taken as success and a positive session, not realising they're actually creating a negative association.

You see this frequently come out during the backing process. The amount of videos I’ve seen of a horse being mounted for the first time in a total freeze response, who then explodes as soon as they take a step, the video is often captioned “that came out of nowhere” or the horse labelled "sensitive", when actually you could see it was about to happen before the rider even touched the saddle. Not only is this dangerous for people, it creates worried, frightened horses and sets them up for a difficult life as they will develop extremely negative associations with being ridden.

I could make 100 posts about this with 100 different scenarios but here’s some food for thought for today. 🐴

Photo of my old horse Lucy showing a lot of tension at the mounting block. She stood still and was "fine once I was on", just "quirky". I look back now and I know she wasn't fine.

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

05/17/2025

No one wants a horse they can’t ride.

This simple fact promotes a lot of harm within the horse world.

Saddle fitters feel pressured to fit saddles to underdeveloped and atrophied top lines because owners don’t want to hear that the saddle cannot be fit and that the horse should not be ridden until they have more back muscle.

People feel entitled to riding — they don’t want to have to be “sidelined” on the ground, especially if there are other professionals who will give them the answer that they are looking for, the one that tells them they can continue on riding without issue.

Trainers experience something similar.

Client horses who are not completely physically sound, or are mentally struggling, owned by clients who don’t want to hear that they need to slow things down and not ride or take things way slower under saddle.

Humans are creatures that often seek instant gratification, and when this involves another animal like a horse, that desire to seek out the more fun destination often comes at the expense of the Horse.

It also pressures professionals to take shortcuts and enable things that they know deep down are not the best for the horse.

This is so insidious in our industry.

It is the pressure behind a lot of bad decisions that end up permanently damaging horses or dooming horses to lives where they are forced to work through pain.

Riding should not be viewed as a right.

It should be seen as a privilege.

And, when owning a horse, it should be seen as a given that that doesn’t mean that you are perpetually entitled to riding them.

It means that part of your duty as their caretaker and advocate may involve not always having your desire to ride come first.

It may involve taking breaks as needed for the betterment of their physical and mental well-being.

This should be the standard, but it isn’t.

It is so incredibly common to see people putting off their permanently lame horses onto other people because they are not willing to pay for them when they are not rideable.

This is so normalized that people will even say that they don’t want to pay for a horse that they cannot ride.

And while I understand, that horses are expensive, we can’t really skirt around the fact that, for far too many people, horses lose all value to them when they are not rideable.

People no longer want to keep their horse safe or pay to care for them if they cannot sit on their back.

This fact inevitably results in a lot of unwanted horses.

And there simply are not enough homes that want to take on the unrideable horse.

This is an uncomfortable conversation that needs to be had.

How many professionals can think back to a situation where they felt pressured to keep a horse in work when they knew it wasn’t the best option?

How many of them bit their tongue and didn’t tell the owners what they wanted to say because they knew it wouldn’t be listened to?

How many of us have had to sacrifice our morals at some point in order to get a paycheque to pay the bills?

I know that I have. It was necessary to do so in order to further my career, because no one wants to be told not to ride, especially when they are paying you to solve their problems.

But, sometimes it is necessary to forgo riding to solve the root of the problem.

Yet, very few people are open to hearing that.

Has anyone else experienced this?

05/15/2025

It’s such a brainwashed culture …this dear industry of ours …

Lately, I’ve been taking images of horses in the media and sending them to people with no horse experience to ask what emotions they see.

Overwhelmingly, when the horse is showing signs of stress, they immediately pick up on it.

But, interestingly, when I share the same photos amongst crowds of horse people, many lifelong horse people do NOT see it.

They get incredibly defensive and they personally attack me simply for remarking on the fact that the horse looks stressed.

Excuses are made almost immediately — that the horse is treated like royalty, that they just have a focus face, that they’re making a face from the effort just like an Olympic athlete would.

Seldom do they ever pause to consider if perhaps their perspective of what a happy horse looks like could be skewed.

Seldom do they ever ponder the idea that maybe they have just been around a lot of stressed horses and become desensitized as a result.

So, what do YOU see in this face?

I’ll tell you what I see.

A very tense and strained eye.

A “whale eye” is present where the eye is widened and oriented so that sclera is visible.

The eye lid is drawn up into a peak, this is from tension around the eyelid, causing the muscles to pull up and create a wrinkled peak.

Jaw is clenched, chewing muscles are strained. The whole neck also appears tense.

Nostrils are flared and blowing, no doubt from the effort of running a race but I would also suspect you would see muzzle tension once the horse was cooled out.

All of these traits are on the Equine Grimace Scale, an ethogram for measuring pain (and stress is a type of emotional pain).

As behavioural research expands, the signs of tension and stress that are present in the face just become more clear.

Equine scientists and behaviourists have confirmed that there are behavioural tells for stress.

Yet, our industry still very much rejects this idea.

“It’s just a moment in time.”

But, apparently EVERY moment, even when repeated again and again, is just a moment in time and not indicative of a greater picture.

The only moments that can be accepted as accurate, apparently, are pleasant ones.

Where do you think this resistance comes from?

If it’s really about truth seeking, why is there so much resistance towards modern behavioural research if it questions the way things currently are in the horse industry?