Happy Horse Training

10/11/2020

If you call a cage a stall, it sounds better but it is still a cage. So many physical and mental health problems are a result of these nomadic herd animals living in isolation and confinement. When you know better, do better!

Posted • Stables were first invented to keep working horses close at hand. Confining horses to a stable is now unfortunately part of our tradition and every human has their reasons for doing so. 'My horse is too fat; My horse likes his stable; It’s's the yard rules; I'm afraid my horse will get cold at night'

In the wild horses don't have stables and they have lived for thousands of years without human interference. It's up to each individual owner to help their domesticated horses live a naturally healthy lifestyle and start treating horses like horses. Remember there's always a solution to your problem. Your horse will thank! If you get their living conditions right everything else will fall into place. Happy horses means healthy horses with healthy hooves.

Artwork .

23/02/2020

An insight into a truly great master of riding.

“You are as part of the horse’s system as his kidney, his liver and intestines. You are him, and he knows that once you are sucked into his system you can balance with him with precision.
[...]
The horse’s most precious need is precision of balance. That’s all a horse wants from you. “

💜

Dressage icon, Charles de Kunffy, saw his aristocratic life in Hungary crumble under Soviet oppression following World War II. Here he shares the story of ho...

28/01/2020

Barefoot heels look nothing like this! 😬 Although it can take many years for the contraction to go away once the shoes are off.

🧐 CONTRACTION - CAUSED BY SHOES!

Look at the back of the hooves on these pictures - what do you see?

The soft tissues, including the frog, have become SQUEEZED together and have started to atrophy - literally waste away!

Gradually the back of the foot begins to collapse in on itself due to the continual contraction caused by applying and reapplying the metal shoes.

The central sulcus of the frog often becomes so deep and infected that the pain at the back of the foot with EVERY stride makes the horse begin to TOE WALK.

Horses CANNOT escape this pain.

It is VERY REAL….VERY COMMON….and VERY SERIOUS!

This contraction, often coupled with infection, causes loss of use of the back of the foot, loss of flexion at the back of the foot, loss of support and shock absorption at the back of the foot.

And is DISASTROUS for the horse. 🙇‍♀️

Tendons become pulled, abscesses can be rife, the horse toe walks straining the DDFT and inflaming the NAVICULAR bursar - life becomes very difficult for the horse.

And guess what?

It is often NOT NOTICED by the owner who has no clue that their horse is in so much pain and THINKS the horse is SOUND.

Horses try really hard to mask this pain….
..until such time as they finally obviously go lame and a diagnosis such as navicular is given.

Then more often than not…remedial shoes are applied, continuing to make the whole problem WORSE! 😱

And so it goes on.

Going BAREFOOT is the ONLY way to stop this kind of PAIN in the back of the foot.

Because the foot can finally begin to de-contract.

But for some horses this can take a very, VERY long time!

Read what holistic vet Renee Tucker, DVM, has to say about the link between the stay apparatus and contracted heels, in the latest issue 25 of The Barefoot Horse Magazine.

It really gave us some food for thought 🤔

If you haven't got your copy of Issue 25 yet ORDER NOW!!

👉ORDER ISSUE 25 IN PRINT👉http://bit.ly/BHMIssue25

Out in digital format on the official release date of Feb 1st.

👉or SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue👉http://bit.ly/ANNUALsub

Please don’t let CONTRACTION continue to happen to horse’s hooves.

YOU CAN HELP YOUR HORSE and we are here to help YOU!

The BHM Team ❤️

23/01/2017

Breaking the ice

How do you react to tension when it arises between you and your horse?

The work I had done with him last year was focused on gymnastic lunging to address some major issues that needed to be resolved before starting riding work. These included a basic distrust of people, a strong crookedness pattern including difficulty bending and a pelvic unlevelness, a hollow posture...

09/01/2017

There are so many things to keep aware of when we're riding that it can be easy to get lost. If you think of focusing your attention in a more directional way - on everything that's happening underneath and behind you and how that's affecting your body - then it will help clarify things and make sure you're really riding from back to front.

Where Is Your Focus When You Ride?

As humans, our natural focus on our environment is, in general, highly concentrated on what we can see, and on what we can feel and do with our hands.
When we ride, this means that we are drawn to focusing on the part of the horse we can see in front of us, what we feel in our hands through the reins, and how we can influence the horse with the rein contact.
We tend to neglect our awareness of what is happening in the rest of the horse's body, and how that influences our own posture and balance.

Focusing on the front end of the horse alone gives us the wrong feedback for straightening and balancing the movement. It makes us want to compensate for imbalances rather than correcting them at the source.

Because of this imbalance in our perception, we need to make a continuous effort to focus on what's happening underneath and behind us, especially as this is where the powerhouse of the horse's movement resides.
If we really want to ride from back to front, then we have to stop focusing on the horse's head, neck and mouth, and start really feeling what the hindlegs are doing, their action and alignment, and how this is relayed through the horse's pelvis and back, and into our seat, and then how our seat is interacting with that movement, both longitudinally and laterally.

Our legs need to become highly tactile and dexterous in order to feel and interact with the horse's sides, and to continuously monitor the alignment of the ribcage in relation to the spine and pelvis.
We must become highly away of our whole-body alignment in relation to that of the horse, so that we can start to feel and makes sense of the entire dynamic biomechanism.

Once we have corrected our habitual focus in this way, we should of course join it up with our perception of the front end. Once we are riding from front to back, connected posturally and engaged with the source of the movement's energy in the haunches, then there is a lot of valuable feedback to be had in the receptive rein contact to inform us of the horse's alignment and how successfully we have facilitated the transmission of energy from the haunches through to the contact.
In turn, once we have learned how to influence the hind-leg trajectory, we can start giving more attention to the horse's direction.
We should always be careful, however, not to lose the whole picture and let our perception get drawn back to the front end by our hands and eyes, ever hungry for stimulus.

For a clear and comprehensive guide to riding in postural balance:
http://www.happy-horse-training.com/how-to-ride-a-horse.html

07/11/2016

In the last year we have had some wonderful changes at HHT. Gabrielle has a gorgeous baby girl, and I got married :)
My husband and I are moving to Limoges soon to start a new project, and I am therefore starting a new group called HappyHorseHappyHuman that will be documenting my journey.

Happy Horse Training will be continuing to grow and share the principles we have learned from our horses, specializing in gymnastic riding technique and HappyHorseHappyHuman will be going deeper into the connection between human and horse.

04/10/2016

Herd Listening

During one of our herd listening sessions in the Holiday for Hope, Emma and Totti

04/10/2016

Timeline Photos

04/10/2016

The barriers really are coming down now, Marie is right in the middle of this strong group of mares (plus Rafi) with Oumia. She's right beside Vestale too! Marie lacked so much confidence when she came here, she was more used to living on her own, and she tended to latch on to one horse and want to stay with them ALL the time. She would wait on the borders of the herd society with her chosen friend and not be able to participate.
She has been letting go of so much anxiety in her life because she knows she is secure and safe here, and she is allowed to make choices. Now she will come out of the field on her own and is happy to be ridden in the arena on her own, when before she would climb over you to get back to the other horses if you tried to take her away from them.
Her true personality which is emerging now is actually very strong willed and opinionated, so it is not easy to understand why she was so fearful before. Maybe it was just that she had not been able to fit in with people's expectations of her, so it was a bit like forcing a round peg into a square hole that created so much tension in her. She can have whatever shaped hole she wants here, and we love her for being herself :D

01/10/2016

Presence Training

I have never been interested in 'liberty work' because whenever I study the videos of it, there always seems to be something disconnected about them. I have thought about it a lot, and I came to conclusions that I have written about in this group before. It seemed that either the 'liberty' aspect was false because the horse was still imprisoned in an arena or a round pen, and under the command of someone with a whip. I don't think that working with a horse with a whip is 'bad' or good, what interests me is whether tension is being created and what is the intention in the interaction between human and horse. A whip can be a friendly tool which allows you to reach a moving horse because of it's length, it can be used to awaken and stimulate and re-balance and integrate in ways that are therapeutic to the horse... and that has nothing to do with whether there is a line attached to the horse or not.
Other 'liberty work' that put me off was when a person seemed to have replaced food in the eyes of the horse with themselves - so the horse would obey them because they knew that was the only gateway to food. Whether it was that approach, or feeding treats as a result of a behaviour, the same switched-off attitude in the horse seemed to result. It was like the horse was doing - doing - doing because they had to, like a goldfish swimming round a bowl, and their individual personality was difficult to feel. There was always mention of how quickly the horse can 'do' this, and how many wonderful things the horse can 'do'. The how and the why were not so carefully addressed.
Recently I have been looking at some different approaches with liberty which seem more spiritual, more about mirroring oneself in the horse and I found that more inspiring. I still saw some tension in some of the horses, and although it wasn't created by the work, it was there as a result of the horse's lifestyle or situation. So it seemed to me that often tension is being used as the source of the motivation for the horse's movement.
This has been in my mind a lot recently. It is one thing when you are working with horses to calm them down and channel them and become the source of their release, but what do you do when your horse is already fully released and calm and sees no point in wasting their energy!?
I am familiar with motivating such horses through unblocking their crookedness and helping them find balance and move with more grace and quality... harmonising them essentially, and I am used to using certain equipment. The equipment is comfortable and non-threatening and helps to develop the physical connection first which is gradually replaced by the energetic one. The idea of doing 'liberty work' was only uninspiring with the perspective of motivating it with tension, but experimenting with an entirely energetic connection is a whole different ball game.
Our horses are often at liberty, when they come in to be groomed or if they just want to come out of the herd environment and do what they like, in a way this work is just an extension of that, but there is something deeper and more powerful. It feels like walking close by a river and hearing the noise but not being able to see it and touch it yet. I am investigating with Quaramba because she is still a baby, she hasn't even had a saddle on yet. She is confident and tension-free, and she also knows that if she wants to leave she just climbs out! In fact she did that the first day. She had been following me, and when I turned away to remove a dropping, she then spotted a new hay bale was in so she exited the arena, went off up the track and climbed back into the field XD
So far I feel like I want to create our connection purely from hand and body contact, and no whip. Then when there is a space we are both in, the energy connection is enough. So far we have discussed (in sense-language) why the sugar lumps under the mounting block aren't the main focus of our attention, and I have done some yielding with 'comfort aiding' touch. I feel like I want to make us one body somehow, and touching is important to initiate that. When we connect i.e when we are both in that *now* moment of awareness of each other - that is when I get that river feeling. That we are close to something powerful. I think she feels it too.
I have no idea how it will evolve, and what the structure/results will be, if any at all. At the moment we are (just!) practicing mindfulness, and it seems like Quaramba is releasing some things because she does a lot of TMJ stretching.
In the greater picture, it seems like this process is melting the practical separation there has always been between 'giving healing/taking healing with a horse' and 'training with a horse' and bringing everything to more wholeness, so it feels like the right path to be on :)

22/09/2016

Latest pics of Quaramba's self maintenance 😊 she seems to prefer it that way, and she moves very comfortably with plenty of agility.
Her diet is entirely forage, mostly hay with some alfalfa hay when she feels she needs it. She also has the mineral supplement 'green horse power' which is fed in small amounts (a handful daily).
Her weight is perfect and she is still growing - at least an inch up behind at five years old and definitely not ready for riding yet. Her bones are still in full development.
I am very happy with the relatively new shift we made to forage-only feeding. All the horses are very comfortable and healthy in their digestion ☺

16/09/2016

The Soft Path

Today I had a bit of a realisation moment, although putting it into words is proving to be more difficult that I thought! Quaramba performed the most beautiful trot today, and it seemed to come from nowhere. When we went to the arena it was spitting rain a bit, and she was a bit reluctant in general. When she feels like that we focus on doing very small things with a lot of attention. Things like stopping and starting just with the energy connection, making square shapes with very straight lines and tight corners thinking about connecting her legs with her body and then some gentle steps sideways with a shallow angle. It is all based on being in that mindful place where there isn't a push for particular responses but just a staying with what it feels like then in that moment.
It often feels like she is giving me instruction, like be in this place and have that perspective. I know that I don't get a fraction of it! but it feels good to be in that place at that time with her. Our time together always feels good when we stay with that flow of consciousness - meaning: just being together and not getting into achieving something. That is not always an easy place for me to be, but with Quaramba it is my number one goal, primarily because it feels right and it aligned like that for us and secondly because she is the icon, or the prototype for the new way I want to work with horses. It is new for me, and new to everything else I see because it is not rooted in results. The focus is not on the performance, but on the performers, and the connection between them. That is not always a straightforward distinction to know how to make, but in practice it is a very clear one.
So in talking about results, although we concentrate on not seeking them in our partnership, part of me is certainly observing them. I want to learn and understand, and if I think if it has value I want to share it. Today after some of those exercises which were about finding an energetic alignment between us, we stopped during a heavier shower for a while, hiding in the pavilion, and I helped Ben who was riding happily in the rain. Quaramba definitely wasn't happy in the rain, so she had a good ten minutes picking at weeds in the lee of the shelter.
Normally, if we had continued (without rain) she would have 'clicked in' more and more, becoming physically straighter, and her energy would become less blocked, she would begin to channel more and she would be able to carry on into some trot work. She still considers that to be quite a serious effort, and I am not going to try and dissuade her. I am accepting her own knowledge of her body, no matter how unlikely it seems. Today we went from the rest back to our connection, and her previous reluctance had melted away on its own, she flowed into the most beautiful trot she has ever performed in the arena. She didn't do it 'without' me either, we were engaged in it together. She did it balanced and straight and gorgeous :) on both reins, only a circle or two still!! and she was very happy about how she felt afterwards.
That was when I had this realisation. It isn't about hacking away at something and repeating and forcing until it comes out like you think you want it. Maybe it is about that for some people with some things, but Quaramba showed me today that it is about gently, carefully teasing things out. The more sensitive and aware you can be, the more life and beauty will be in the work you create. Quaramba might not go on for a long time yet, but what she can do is magnificent. She is in a truer alignment, with a better physical integration with greater harmony than any Grand Prix horse I have seen. It is still so new, like a newly hatched butterfly, but it is so clean and right. In my opinion most horses are broken down to build up to what they are, and maybe to make them do the things they do that is necessary. Maybe it is also possible to get there without breaking anything down, to have faith in the process itself and not even looking for the results until they come. I don't know that it is possible yet, but we are going to keep gently and carefully stepping the soft path and we'll see :D

04/09/2016

I think that everything we need to know is in this statement, and that it applies to everything. Resisting what is closes all the doors, and most of us are so deeply in that habit we can't even see that we do it. Follow the horses, they know how :)

30/08/2016

Who Is Your Horse?

One of the main things that I find gives me pleasure in being around horses is experiencing their personality. This is an important subject for horse owners because lack of personality in a horse is still so common, and therefore acceptable. When you begin to be aware of how it expresses itself, and how you can influence it, you begin to make changes in your own behaviour and consequently in your approach to training. In addition you start to see more clearly how the environment you provide for your horse affects their personality.
At HHT we have stopped keeping horses in small groups, stopped keeping them in stables and stopped training them through tension all because we began to be aware of who they really are. Other changes we made, like barefoot, rug-free and forage-only were partly for physiological reasons, but we found that they also had quite an influence on the horses' personalities.
So how does a horse's personality express itself? It can be subtle, but it can also be quite blatant when a horse has always been encouraged to be themselves. My young horse Quaramba is five years old now and as far as I have been able to be aware of it, she has not been induced to work because of tension, either in anticipation of treats or discomfort, nor worked from tension because she was tense from other influences. Any time tension has come up we have focused on it and how to release it. As a result she will do a lot of things that 'ordinary' horses don't do. The other day she climbed out of one of the lanes and sauntered over to the arena where I was giving a lesson. We've been having a heat-wave so the lessons and working of horses have to be early, and she had not done any work with me for a week. That doesn't mean that we hadn't seen each other, only that she hadn't been training. The first day she came over and said Hi and was happy to go and graze after that. The next day she came over and wanted to cuddle for a bit over the fence. The next day she climbed out, came over, broke into the arena and came up to the horse being ridden in the arena. She demanded to know why she wasn't being attended to would only be appeased when Jacqui (who was watching the lesson) would groom her and spend quality time with her. When I did finally have time to work with her we had a lovely session, but when sugar lump time came she pressed her teeth into my hand as if to say 'think of all the lumps I've missed because you've been neglecting me' :D
Sadly I think there are people who want to squash that personality down in a horse because it can be inconvenient or because they are frightened. In Quaramba's case I have to keep fixing the fences and work out how to give her enough time, but it always works out, because she doesn't demand attention like that every day as her behaviour is spontaneous.
The real difference between big personality and lack of personality isn't so much in the behaviour of the horses but in their state of being. When they have a healthy and liberated personality they are 'there' when you look in their eyes. They 'see' you, and you can see them. That can only happen when they are calm enough to be engaging with the moment with you. Of course if you are not present then you won't be able to appreciate whether they are or not, and you will tend to switch them off too. So the first step is to be *there* yourself, what people mean by 'listening'. Be prepared to let things be as they are and wait until you can sense who your horse really is. It is hard to feel a shut-down horse, so many people aren't aware how real a horse can be. How alive and expressive they can be, and how much they can tell you. They aren't silent or quiet at all really. Most horses are quite outspoken when they have the chance! That isn't the same as being rude or insensitive either, they will only be like that when they have not been chronically ignored .
Sometimes we imprint our own personality on to a horse, so we think we love them but we are really loving an extension of ourselves. I think we always do that to some extent, it's part of how we connect, but when it stifles the horse themselves too much it becomes self serving and self defeating.
The main thing to realise perhaps is that horses are all individuals as much as we are... we can try and squash them into boxes and label them with this and that 'type' or 'horsenality' o.O but if you want to really know your horse, only they can tell you, and only you can hear :)

12/07/2016

Elise Terry photography

10/07/2016

Thank You Elise!!

Elise came all the way from New Zealand to help us for the last three months. I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank her for everything she did and for connecting so sweetly with horses and humans (and dogs, although she doesn't like being licked lol)
She is developing into a very nice rider, and most importantly she has a way of being gentle and effective at the same time, which we all know is the hardest thing to master!
So we hope everything works out amazingly for her, in fact we are sure it will - she is an accomplished photographer already, with a real feel for the colours and composition. And please come back and visit us next year

07/07/2016

Shifting Relations

Marie and Zouzou were such sweethearts for the last year or so, with Marie always knowing exactly where Zouzou was and making sure she was there with him. She replaced her previous close friend Dex with Zouzou, and once she had decided they were together that was it for him, there was no choice in the matter!! :D He did come to rely on her though, and he would wait for her and show her the first affections he was beginning to be able to express with another horse, so he needed her in a way to bring him out of himself.
Recently though Marie has been moving into a different place in herself, less needy and more self confident. As she has been changing Zouzou has also been becoming more expressive and more awake to possibilities in his own way. It is so interesting to see how when they make these shifts they come into new relationships without any fuss or resentments the way people can be, and if they want to return to an old flame that is ok too.
Now Zouzou is spending a lot of time with Vestale, a mare with a very different temperament than Marie, and Marie has been hanging out in the company of her Spanish compatriot Habanero. She is not attaching on to him in the same way as she did with Zouzou and often they are not together. Habanero and Oumia still have a close bond because they came here together, and in a way it seems like a healthier relationship for Marie because she was only so profoundly dependent as a result of her insecurity about herself.
In her work we are at a kind of threshold point too. She is working nicely and loosely on the ground, and she is much more accepting of allowing a rider on her back (since she went right back into expressing her boundary and telling me it was unacceptable to go near her back) ... but she asks for me to get off after too short a time for her to enjoy being ridden. The question is whether to try and gently push her through or to continue to back off when she asks. Her 'ask' is not a subtle thing either btw :D she whickers loudly then waits, and if I don't get off she will scream and kick out! She feels quite strong in her physical structure now, and her movement is supple and relaxed, so intuitively it feels like we just have to make some new memory in our mutual central nervous systems. We will still keep taking it day by day though and staying with what is :)