Leslie's Force Free Horsemanship

08/17/2024

Yes!! All of this!
As I always say: every time your horse says “No” it is an opportunity for us to prove to them that we are truly listening, and that we respect their “no”. The more we do this, the more our horses will be happy to work with us and say “yes”

The difference between a trusting horse, and a horse who doesn't trust us yet, is that they will be quiet in their discontent.

This is a double edged sword. Because if we are not also quiet, still, selfless and adaptable, the trusting horse will not make it easy for us to hear their concerns.

How do we measure consent? How do we measure motivation? I do not think it is accurately measured by how quickly a horse says yes. Because we now understand, that manipulative training can easily talk a horse into giving us what we want, and that it can look really good. It can look like consent. But the horse actually, had no recourse to effect change over their life. We know that powerfully harsh training steamrolls a horses ability to say No, sure. But so does quiet, manipulative, covertly dominating training.

So I have found, that the only way we can accurately measure, if a horse remains fully in consent to our activities for them, is if we regularly receive quiet No's. Disobedience is a data point, ostensibly that might be used to actually measure consent.

A horse feels they have a choice, when they regularly exercise that choice to contradict us and what we want them to do. When that happens, we can be confident they felt that they could.

But we confuse this easily. We believe that disobedience is dysregulation. That the horse said No, and it was MY FAULT, because I wasn't correct enough... good enough... or worthy. As if the horse doesn't have their own life going on. As if they are a pure reflection of our own skill, and not bringing their own self to the activities. Sometimes, a horse can say No Thank You, and it has nothing to do with you, your skill, your technical abilities or talent. In fact, talented and technical handlers can manipulate a horse out of anything. It takes a lot of reserve, gumption and bravery, for talented and technical handlers to know that they can make it happen, and make that look good, and decide not to.

To pick up the horse with soft and simple techniques only, use the techniques lightly, and believe the next thing the horse does as genuine. Every time. Always. So far, for me this is the best formula I have to be absolutely certain when I say;

"My horses love to train with me. AND they regularly disagree with me."

But when they disagree, they do it calmly. Gently. Safely. Lovingly. With a huge amount of respect and rapport for me. And even, (I am discovering this summer) for my students too.

My job is to listen. Let go of the Latestagecapitalisthellscape that tells me to Make It Happen. Prevent my personal wounds of my inner child that wants the horse to fill their void, from running my horses life as a long-form therapy. Leave that behind. And focus solely on horsemanship through the lense of an authentic life long partnership with these incredible creatures we are blessed to care for, and know.

08/15/2024

And period👏🏻

And here we are.

A world in which at the one hand, horses can think strategically, plan ahead, be cunning and false to get out of work and mocking their owner, a fully humanised approach, people just waiting for such arguments to base their unfair treatment and training approaches on, like a lost wanderer in a desert finding an oasis.

And at the other, defending these unfair treatments with complete lack of compassion because horses 'feel different' and denying them any kind of emotion and experience that could be similar to a humans.

Do you see the hypocrisy?

It's okay to hit a horse because they are big and have thick skin and this is how you have to downgrade them into something less, while also granting them the human traits of deceiving, lying and plotting.

The study says nothing more than that horses can make a cost-benefit analyse, which of course they can, this is literally how mammals survive.

And a video showing up of an upper level rider hitting her horse hard to press into some form of collection and impulsion is plain abuse, because they do have basic emotions and nerve endings to feel pain and fear like all mammals do.

There's no hidden agenda, no missing message.
We are all made of the same substance, heck we have such similar brains.

It's just our ego tripping frontal cortex they lack.
Good for them!

We should get out there once in a while and realise what this life is about. You'd be amazed.

Thanks for coming to my Thursday rant.

Read the study, not the articles. And get yourself acquainted with scientific language before making assumptions.
In fact, why not get acquainted with brain anatomy, ethology and psychology, like real knowledge about horses first.

Even my daughter understands that better than most of those 'upper riders'.

08/13/2024

Something so important to understand! It’s a hard line to walk, to advocate, without making people feel attacked. A line I try to navigate on a daily basis and one I try to improve on all the time.

07/31/2024

07/30/2024

07/30/2024

George got a bit confused with walking forward in this particular session and because i tried to help him with my hand pointing towards the cone..Well my thoughts tend to immediatly cross my lips, hence this hilarious moment! Normally "walk on" is my cue. Hey, if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong!

07/28/2024

How we can apply flyspray while still being Force Free!

Start-Buttons are our friend in this case.

Start buttons (sometimes called consent cues) are behaviours the horse is taught that always follow with the same consequences.
In this example, the start button is touching the nose to the flyspray bottle, which always follows with a series of sprays to the horses body.
This connection of behaviour and consequences allows us to gauge how our horses feel about the activity.
It’s important to still pay attention to your horses body language, and work under threshold, but start buttons add an extra layer of choice and feedback to your daily routine!

07/27/2024

How this force-free trainer, takes her force-free trained horse to the training area 🤭

Many people think that giving your horse the ability to say no, they will never get anything done.
I fully disagree with that thought.
George is a shining example of how giving your horse the freedom to choose increases their willingness to work!
No halter required to take him out of the paddock, walking down to the training arena, or to work with him.

07/10/2024

The only metric that we have to gauge a horses consent, is some form of disobedience.

Woops!

Yep. If we want to take the guesswork out of consent-based training, we need to find a way to formulate training where the horse feels their exit is open. This does not mean a total departure. A horse can benefit hugely from feeling comfortable to interpret our requests slightly or totally differently to our intention.

Pure obedience is powerful. It can certainly be an end goal of consent based horsemanship. But the process towards that total compliance should be littered with thousands of micro-departures from what you expected them to do.

The foundation of obedience needs to paradoxically be built on intermittent success/failure at obedience. If we want obedience at all.

For me, for my safety and for my horses safety, I am very happy with an end result being categorized as "Very Co-operative" rather than "Totally Compliant". I have more confidence that two brains are then contributing towards the safety, soundness and quality of the end result, rather than one brain, when I am regularly challenged by my horses who do not do exactly what I thought they might or could do.

Because if the horse is totally compliant, and only compliant, giving only what you wanted and expected... from the beginning... how can they have space to communicate what they want, what they think and what they need?

We can guess and hope and make a smoke and mirror show about it. But total obedience is not a sign, automatically, that the horse is emotionally constructed via consent. In fact, it can be the opposite sometimes.

So next time the horse disobeys you, or gives you a variation off-centre from what you expect... celebrate. Rather than shame spiral, say to yourself "Ah good. Consent is still on the table."

photo: Kaike Tappe

07/03/2024

Grass in the Training Arena!

Recently I realized something. Since I started working with force free horsemanship I have a very different relationship with grass in my training space.
And it’s a perfect example of the change of perspective that occurs when transitioning from NH to FFH.

Back when I was starting my work with horses, and while I was still using natural horsemanship methods, I remember always being envious of people with their grass free riding arenas. Our riding/training space was always full of grasses and weeds, and of course that meant you had horses who were often more interested in the grass than what you were trying to do with them
(Who can blame them) plus the many many advices people give you to stop your horse from wanting to eat grass.
I remember catching myself thinking “if only there was no grass, this would be so much easier”

Nowadays I love the grass in my training space!

What a perfect way to give them an alternative source of food while working!
And nowadays i no longer have an issue with horses eating while working for two reasons.
1. If my horses chooses to go to eat the grass instead of working, I will happily allow this, and take it as a communication that whatever it is we are doing is not as interesting/fun as to them as the grass (which means I will change something about my training) or they simply needed a break.
2. Because my FF horses know that the grass is always available to them, they actually do not care much for it in the first place. And thus, I have horses who prefer training over eating grass.

So the lesson about grass in the training space this:
-make training fun and enjoyable for the horses.
-denying a horse a resource is going to make that resource only more valuable.
-giving a horse the choice to say “no” means they are more willing to say “yes”

06/20/2024

Last session I hopped on George’s back a couple times. This session I wanted to see if we could take a couple steps forward!

He’a already getting more comfortable with mounting and me sitting on his back. He’s making fast progress, especially considering I’ve only sat on him 6 times total stretched out over several weeks!

We also found out that I can reach his favourite scratching spot from his back. Bonus! That could come in handy!

Using the physical, verbal and visual cues he’s been taught on the ground using cones, I asked him to walk forward. He was a bit confused at first, probably because so far I always just asked him to stand still while on his back. But he’s used to figuring out the answers to the questions I ask him, so he very quickly understood what I meant.

For now I am just happy with forward movement, no matter the direction. Soon we’ll start our work on turning too.

Now could I have done this all in one session? Theoretically, yes. But I believe keeping it short and sweet, without any pressure builds a more positive feeling with the mounting and riding process for the horse. If we added all of it in one session, the chance for trigger stacking to occur and him getting more and more stressed is high. Stretching the process over several session means he starts each step with a fresh and positive energy!

06/13/2024

Well it’s only been like 1.5 months since I worked with George😭
But hey! We got our first sit on within 2 session despite the hiatus in training!!🎉

04/22/2024

More progress from George’s start under saddle!

He’s making leaps each day!

Today we did:
•combining saddle and pad on the back
•adding girth pressure
•desensitizing to strange saddle movements and sounds
•practically full rider weight on his back
•jumping off from a height to ensure he won’t spook if i slide off his back.
•improving the responsiveness to neck rope cue within the cone square.

04/18/2024

Today’s progress with George :)
We worked on mounting, saddling, “woah”, “walk on”, and turns, where I introduced the neckrope for the first time for him.

04/17/2024

Our new XXL mounting block is finally done!!
And this means it’s time to work on it with George!🎉🤩

04/11/2024

Love this!! This is why I don’t believe it “a horse shouldn’t say no” whether from a force-free perspective or a traditional perspective. To believe that your horse should choose you above all else, is egotistical.

I think we have to take this one out of the realm of and start a new category, let's call it . Here we go:

It doesn't matter if your horse likes you.

Let me rephrase: your first priority shouldn't be, "Am I my horse's favorite thing? Do they enjoy training more than anything else they're doing that day?" That is an unrealistic, and frankly self-centered approach.

Your top priorities should be: 1. is my horse healthy and happy 2. is the training I'm doing with my horse improving their health and wellbeing, and increasing their longevity?

Notice, you don't factor in. It's wonderful to have a relationship with a horse, to build trust, to treat them with kindness and respect is absolutely essential. And who doesn't feel joy when their horse interacts with them, of their own free will? There are few better feelings in the world.

But you know what, you can do all of this, and they still might rather eat grass or enjoy their grain than go for a ride with you. And that's not a moral failing on your part. Your horse may enjoy your company from time to time, but as hardwired by nature, prefer the company of other equines most of the time. That's normal. You haven't failed your horse if your relationship with them is not their primary focus.

In fact, when you put your horse's perception and relationship to you above how they live naturally, with their herd and forage, you're actually centering your own ego. This can be really problematic, because if in your kind and ethical training you reach a roadblock, you may take it personally: "I thought my horse liked me! What have I done to deserve this? "

And, more often than not, people perceive this as a personal betrayal. They anthropomorphize the horse's rejection as they would that of a friend. I've seen people switch over to truly aversive/abusive training methods when they feel personally betrayed. There is a level of fear, conscious or subconscious that resonates with bully trainers, whose need to control and belittlr animals of course also comes from fear. And they could avoid this pitfall completely, simply by centering the needs of the horse, rather than the horse's relationship to them.

After all, we're with the horse 1 hour a day - what happens in the other 23 hours? If we had a horse that longed to be with us for their only sense of security and joy, we could create a horse that was totally neurotic and non-functional most of the time.

Our goal should always be to add to our horse's lives, and not center our own needs and wants, or worse our egos, above what's best for them. When our horse presents an unwanted behavior, it's not a personal affront or a betrayal. It's a communication that there's a problem, or that the horse has a different priority in that moment. This is normal. Address the need. Don't blame the animal. They don't owe us anything, and we owe them everything. How we center our approach matters.

03/10/2024

Can anyone guess what this is all about?😉

Hint: it’s got something to do with Blanketing🤔

03/07/2024

This is something I warn all of my new clients to expect when they begin using force free horsemanship practices.

When we start giving horses the ability and freedom to say “no” during their interactions with us, especially when this horse has not had this freedom before in their life, they often start exercising this freedom rather frequently and very strongly at the beginning. You may see a horse that was previously perfectly compliant in their tasks, to start walking away from you and showing disinterest in the task. In some cases even pinning their ears, nip or even threatening to kick can occur (though often these are a sign of some underlying trauma or physical discomforts/pain).

These behaviours occur because previously the horse was always either inhibited from expressing them, corrected for expressing them or they were completely ignored.
Once they no longer are inhibited from expressing their opinion, and/or experience corrections for doing so, they will utilize this newfound power.

It can feel distressing to us, as their handlers when we suddenly see what our horses truly feel about us, our interactions with them, or certain tasks we ask of them.
That the compliance we had, was just that.. compliance. Not willingness, not enjoyment, not genuine desire to do the task or to be with us.

However, the beauty of this is, when we start to recognize those behaviours as communication for a deeper issue, and we allow the horse to express them, and respond with understanding, empathy and compassion, and solve the underlying issues,
suddenly there starts to be a shift.
Our horse starts showing interest in what we’re doing.
And despite being able to say “no” they’ll start saying “yes” and as long as we continue to allow them to choose, they will continue to join us and work with us more and more frequently. This time though, because they are genuinely willing, to do so and find enjoyment in our presence and our work together.
This process teaches us so much about us and our horses. It’s not an easy process for many, but oh so worth it!

03/07/2024

Jaak Pankseep, an Affective Neuroscientist, has provided for us a great model for looking at and understanding emotions in all beings with a brain and nervous system. I'll go into each system individually, but there are some things we should consider about the whole, before we look at the individuals. Because the truth is, we are never experiencing just 1 emotion.

Each emotional/affective system is triggered by the internal or external environment and is expressed through a certain combinations of hormones, neurotransmitters, that tell us how this makes us feel. So natural hormone cycles can change our feelings internally, or external aspects of our environment can elicit different emotional responses. Common examples are oxytocin with the CARE system, Adrenaline with FEAR, etc... different combinations can be widely varied, like mixing paint, a drop of this, a splash of that, you get different colors. Lots of one emotion may overshadow or overwhelm the others, while low level mixes of many colors balance out into more neutral tones.

So each emotional systen has both levels and blended combinations. Some contrast and neutralize, some polarize, some compliment and amplify... these hormonal levels can be fast to elicit, a split second in some cases, and can be slow to disperse.

Each variation comes paired with behaviors, some are reflexive responses to the emotion, triggered directly by the hormone. Like sweating, blushing, breathing faster, startling, flinching, etc... while other behaviors are operant, under the control of the learner, but learned through experience. If they were fearful and running relieved the fear, running will become stronger. If snuggling close created comforting feelings, they will do that more. And so on.

Each emotion is felt as either aversive (something to avoid) or appetitive (something to seek out) and some can flip both ways depending on the context. With that understanding, we realize how these emotions become an impactful part of our training and our relationship. Why do we want to avoid the use of aversives in training? They are paired with unhappy emotions, hormones and reflexes we don't want as part of our relatioship

02/28/2024

Aah! This is so incredibly relevant to horses!!
Over half of the work I do with horses involves bringing these horses who internalize their stress back to a space where they can relearn to express themselves and their feelings.
Way way too many horses have become emotionally shut off(aka just internalizing everything) and are labeled as “well behaved” “bombproof” “kids safe” “perfect citizens” when the reality is they just faced a bunch of negative consequences whenever they DID express their stress, fear, anxiety, worries, etc.
Emotionally healthy horses express their feelings! Not just the positive feelings! But the negative ones too🙌🏻

The opposite of “demonstrating ‘behaviors’” (i.e., a euphemism for ‘misbehavior’) isn’t “behaving well”.

The opposite of “demonstrating behaviors” is “internalizing distress”.

Another way to say “demonstrating behaviors” could be “externalizing distress”.

If a child is “demonstrating behaviors” and you implement a plan to get them to stop “demonstrating behaviors” that focuses entirely on changing the child, all you are doing is getting them to internalize, rather than externalize, their distress.

(P.S. This post is made to be super short and to-the-point, but if you’re reading it and feeling like, “So what do I do, then?” I’ll throw a bunch of resources in the comments. :))

[Image description:
A black marble background with words overlaid on it that read, “The opposite of ‘demonstrating behaviors’ isn’t ‘behaving well’, it’s internalizing distress.” End description.]

02/28/2024

Yep!!! This is why the dominance theory is so damaging. To all animals!

“Why do people cling so hard to the idea that their horse is being naughty, deceptive and bad on purpose?”

This is a question I’ve asked myself for a while after watching so many people get enraged when the idea that dominance theory holds no scientific merit is suggested.

When people dare say that horses don’t plot against us to plan out ways to be bad during rides on purpose.

Then, it hit me. This mindset is necessary if you’re going to justify using things like physical punishment, working horses to the point of exhaustion and harsh equipment on a repeated basis.

If the horse is your adversary who knows right from wrong and chooses to be naughty on purpose anyways, you don’t feel bad for smacking them in the way you would if you admitted their behaviour stemmed from pain, fear or confusion…

The very fabric of the belief of needing to dominate the horse and show them who is boss is reliant on the idea that horses will deliberately defy humans and try to be difficult on purpose.

If you admit to yourself that you’re just dealing with a frightened flight animal, suddenly it doesn’t seem so cool or nice to be getting more aggressive with them when they display flight behaviours.

If you admit that your lame horse isn’t actually faking their lameness, suddenly it seems cruel to be pushing them to work through intermittent lameness.

This belief enables so many quick fixes in training and a lack of compassion that allows for people to continue pushing on even when their horse is clearly upset.

It allows them to blame their horse for the “bad” behaviour and accept no real accountability for the role they play as the rider, because the assumption is that the horse knows right from wrong and is choosing to be wrong anyways.

So much of the training that is incredibly common in the horse world relies on the belief that horses are naughty on purpose because if it didn’t exist, people wouldn’t feel comfortable doing the things that they do to horses.

If you admit you’re dealing with a flight animal reacting to pain, anxiety, fear, frustration or confusion; suddenly you feel like the villain in the story when you’ve been getting mad at them for this.

02/27/2024

A horse who’s voice is continually shut down via corrections or negative consequences will become emotionally closed off.
Those horses often then are labeled as “well trained”, “bomb proof” and “kids safe”.

But the reality is that the very moment those horses come into contact with handlers that no longer punish their expressions, all of those suppressed feelings will bubble up.
And you end up with a horse that “suddenly” started biting, kicking, striking etc.

Owners are then told they need to “stop allowing bad behaviour” and to “make” their horse “respect them”
The cycle either then repeats,
Or,
the owners instead learn to listen to their horse, learn to understand what they are trying to say, and respond with empathy.
In the latter case, the outcome can be a horse who feels understood, who is able to build a line of communication with their human, and who becomes safer for all people who handle said horse because the horse now has a safe, alternative way to express themselves.

02/26/2024

Allowing, or even encouraging the horse to leave/exit a training session is surprisingly controversial in both traditional training circles and force-free training circles.
For different reasons though!

In traditional training, horses are usually discouraged to leave. A horse walking away from training is often seen as being disrespectful, a bad habit, or as permissive by the trainer.
In Force-Free circles, it is often seen as a sign of bad training, as aversive training, or an unhappy horse and thus undesirable.

I personally both encourage and reward my horses for leaving a training session.

While it certainly can be true that the horse is leaving the training session because the training is becoming aversive, it rarely is as simple as that.

First off all, it depends on the horse you’re working with. A young horse with a history of Primary Force-Free training is very different than a horse with a history of a lack of choice for example.

Of course, if the horse is leaving the session, the first question we should always be asking outside is “why?”

Is the horse leaving because they are bored? Because they’re feeling overwhelmed? Frustrated?
Did they want to check in with their friends? Did they want to go for a roll? Grab some water? Get some energy out? Do a different activity?

Horses may leave a training session for many different reasons, some good and some not so good.

BUT, here’s the thing..

It doesn’t actually matter the reason why the horse is leaving, to me it is still a cause for celebration!

Now hold up before you get your pitchforks out

IF, the horse is leaving because they’re uncomfortable, frustrated, tired etc. it is absolutely the trainers fault, correct, and we should change something in our approach. (And If this happens frequently, then this means something needs to change immediately and never should it be accepted as it is.)

BUT, even then, I still celebrate that moment because. especially with my horses that carry trauma, the fact that they feel safe enough to do so is cause for celebration.

So many horses struggle with expressing their discomfort because it was previously punished, and especially once you start giving them a choice, you can expect your horse to exercise that choice frequently. But the more you allow them to say no, the more they will say YES!
It’s incredibly empowering for them.

So, Anytime the horse says no and walks away, It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to prove to them that YES indeed we are listening and we are allowing them that choice.

And on the other side, anytime my horse feels safe enough express to me they have a better idea, or are showing me a different game they want to play. This is even more so a cause for celebration!

02/24/2024

I seriously cannot stop raving about how wonderful the forest paddocks are.
The colts have joined the trailride horses in their paddock, to help them get some movement and build some muscles.

Best part, despite the recent rainfall, it’s been dry! Considering we’re on the westcoast, and our horses are outside 24/7, and are walking around a lot in these paddocks, that’s just amazing!

02/21/2024

Protected Contact is an under-utilized and under valued tool in the horse world. Many times people's ego, the desire to be close to the horse, or that added sense of control we feel by being in with them, makes us hesitate to use this gift. But this tool is not just for us, its just as important for the horse.

Working in protected contact with our horses provides us both a sense of safety, which is empowering to us both. It gives the horse the freedom to try anything, do anything, explore all options, express their emotions fully, there's not need to stifle or smother anything while they learn and problem solve. We never need to use even the smallest hint of punishment to keep ourselves safe, no corrections or focused strict manners for safety. The horse can learn freely without risk of "making a mistake" which requires us to do something for safety.

Using protected contact can put your training to the test! Can you guide your horse to your goal behaviors with only their brain and positive reinforcement? Protected contact can also allow us to do things that aren't always safe in full contact, like playing with fast and exuberant, fun behaviors. The use of this tool can open so many doors of fun, freedom, play, and can really enhance your training skills and your horses understanding of the training game and goal behaviors.

02/19/2024

I love being able to catch these moments on camera!
The Sympathetic and Parasympathetic nervous system in action.

I’m a big believer in allowing the horse to process through these moments. Don’t try to distract them with food, don’t try and pull them away from it. Just be with them in the moment, and allow them to go settle down, and then connect with them, once they do!

You can see here the physical response of a horses nervous system switching from the sympathetic nervous system (tension, worry, stress/ fight or flight etc. -The frozen, staring into the distance)
to the parasympathetic nervous system (relaxing, grazing, sleeping, resting/rest and digest - moment that she settles down.)
The licking and chewing, and the blinking are also known as calming signals, and they occur when tension in the horse increases, or when it decreases. They can be to self soothe, to appease others, but also In this case, it’s a physical reaction to the nervous system switching over from sympathetic to parasympathetic.