Art Under Saddle - Training, Lessons, Corrections, Horsemanship

07/11/2025

Less is more 😉

Mel Robbin’s viral ‘Let Them’ theory works with horses, too.

Leaking toward the gate?

LET THEM.

Distracted and wanting to look to the outside of the circle?

LET THEM.

And then LET US…

Set up better patterns of anticipation around the gate. And better associations with being with us.

Work on counterbending…

“First you go with the horse, then the horse goes with you, then you go together.”

… Until our idea becomes their idea, and the ‘right’ thing becomes easy.

Pic of Tait and Relic, because they fit the aesthetic. 😁

(This is all just modernized Stoicism, of course, but ‘Let Them’ sounds so much cooler!)

07/08/2025

Bitless - not an impossible fallacy.

Just requires you to take the time, as the risks can be a lot higher with the generic ways of corner cutting.

Transitioning horses to bitless is not as big of a deal as many people think.

Take racehorses, for example.

Many are started under saddle in a bit and then proceed to do their entire racing career bitted.

Racehorses are also trained to run into the bridle and take a “hold.”

This can make them more likely to run off, particularly with riders who pull back and take a hold back instead of giving and taking with the reins.

They also tend to retire as high strung horses in need of let down time and retraining.

That said — I’ve transitioned every single OTTB I’ve retrained off of the racetrack to bitless with ease.

Many within their first ride or first couple of rides.

Take the pictured mare, for example.

Harlow finished racing as a very sensitive and hot headed horse. She was quite reactive and difficult to handle.

When she was actively training as a racehorse, she often trained in an elevator gag bit.

This left her with poll sensitivity and a relatively dull mouth due to how much pressure she was experiencing.

She also had a head tossing issue because of her poll sensitivity.

Bringing her back into work after time off was a process because she was so flighty and explosive.

A lot of it was groundwork and, to be honest, that is what made the most of a difference in her behaviour.

If I had just gone with the “ride her through it” mentality, I would likely still have a very stressed horse.

The slow and steady work where the priority was to help her regulate and relax — not to get exercise — was what changed her the most.

Now, she goes way better bitless than she does in a bit.

While she can go nicely in a bit, she is obviously more tense in one and will occasionally teeth grind, a habit she has had from the racetrack that manifests when she is very stressed.

There is a clear difference in her behaviour bitless, at least in part due to never having negative experiences with bitless to associate with.

All of this is to say the following:

Virtually any horse can go bitless if you put the time in and if you provide species appropriate care like adequate turnout to reduce baseline level of stress.

You don’t have to go bitless, but you also don’t have to make excuses that imply that it is some sort of training impossibility for some horses.

It is the same as teaching them anything else and all of that takes time.

For a lot of horses, it can result in an immediate reduction in anxiety and I’ve found this especially true with ex-racehorses.

Even if I transition them back to a bit again, restarting them bitless is often my preference because it almost always immediately relaxes them and creates a new association with rides.

Bits don’t have to be the go to for every horse.

Let’s normalize having more options than immediately diverting to use of bits just because they’re more popularized.

Options are a great thing.

Moving away from the fear based mindset that perpetuate the idea that we need coercive control with horses is important.

People should not be making equipment choices based on fear.

Ultimately, equipment is not what keeps us safe, what keeps us safe is handling horses in a manner that allows them to be emotionally regulated and not perpetually in fight or flight mode .

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