Affinity Horsemanship North Wales

21/09/2024

Another gem from wikihow 🤣

19/09/2024

Behavioural diversity is what keeps animals mentally healthy. It refers to all the species specific natural behaviours they display in the wild.

The problem with domestic and zoo environments is that it massively reduces behavioural diversity. The confined set up restricts available behaviours, leading to no other option but to repeat a limited repertoire.

Horses are designed to roam freely together, engaging in social activities like mutual grooming, sharing space, helping each other with insects, communicating with each other whenever the need arises. They’re designed to explore, forage and graze open areas, seek out new tastes, mineral sources and travel at distance sometimes to a water source. They need to eat small amounts constantly and sleep whenever they feel the need within the safety of their herd.

Domestic environments restrict their ability to do so many of their natural behaviours, forcing them to simply repeat the limited behaviours available to them. Its why so many struggle and adopt maladaptive ‘stable vices’ in order to cope. It’s unnatural for horses (or any animal) to repeat the same limited behaviours over and over. Having a limited repertoire of being confined to a stable or pen and standing still eating from a hay-net only to be exercised is unethical. Sooner rather than later, they suffer mentally and physically.

Its shocking that people genuinely think horses don’t need much turnout, when being in a field is the thing they need the most in life. Its how they should live. Its more important than hard feed, stables, being shod, groomed or training and is the ONLY way to provide them with a life worth living.

Behavioural diversity can only be achieved in a field with friends. If we cannot offer our horses all year round turn out for the majority of the day at the least, we should do right by them and find them a home with someone who can actually meet their needs.

A life of captivity for a horse is hell, it’s no quality of life, and it takes an exceptionally selfish person to keep a horse this way, all in the name of their own enjoyment.

09/09/2024

The “problem horse” 🐴

There is such a recurring theme in the clients I’m seeing that I really feel the need to talk about this more. Time and time again I am seeing horses displaying significant signs of pain, who have been to the vet to have some diagnostics and been told there is nothing wrong, the horse definitely isn’t in pain and they need to send the horse to a trainer. It is incredibly frustrating and upsetting as an owner when you really feel something isn’t right but are being told by professionals that the issue is you and you’re overthinking it or being soft.

The idea that a problem is purely behavioural is a fallacy in and of itself. Behaviour is a manifestation of how the horse is experiencing life, whether that be pain/discomfort in the body, the environment, the people, the training, the diet, trauma, past experiences etc. It is unfortunately not packed into two neat little boxes of either pain or behaviour and, even if it was, the idea that we could easily rule out pain with the limited diagnostics available is unrealistic.

When we have a horse that is displaying concerning behaviour, beyond the usual joint, back x-rays and scoping for ulcers, we need to consider hind gut issues, liver issues, hormonal issues, muscle myopathies, congenital defects, old injuries, compensatory patterns, the list goes on. Often we do find pathology, medicate it and declare the horse pain-free and ready to crack on without considering the other factors at play.

I cannot emphasise enough the role of environmental factors. Sometimes we are chasing pathology, buying expensive supplements, paying every professional under the sun to fit our horse’s tack, train them, give them bodywork and hoof care while entirely missing the fact the horse’s basic needs are not being met. If your horse is stressed in his living environment you are setting yourselves up to fail. Horses that are living in a chronic state of stress and have very little ability to down-regulate their nervous system are unable to thrive and develop healthy bodies.

So many horses have poor posture which is causing tension and soreness in their bodies, it is so normalised that it seems to be rarely recognised as an issue as horses can still perform at high levels even when their bodies are compromised, we’re used to seeing horses with poor muscle development. Winning trophies does not necessarily mean the horse is comfortable, it means the horse is compliant. A lot of training views compliance as the main measure of success without really seeing how the horse is feeling both emotionally and physically, with the training itself often contributing to more tension, stress and strain on the body.

All of these things together create the “problem horse”.

I feel really strongly that we need to start looking at things differently if we want to train ethically and also increase longevity for our horses. What if instead of just medicating the horse then sending the horse to the trainer to be “fixed”, we took a step back and really looked at the whole horse and maybe why this happened in the first place.

I genuinely think we’d have much more long term success if we took the pressure off, made sure their living environment was the best we could get it, learned to help our horses down-regulate their nervous system and train at the horse’s pace in an environment they’re comfortable in. In doing so we can really help their bodies and support them as best we can with their issues.

Watching horses find relaxation in their bodies, find peace around people and start to find joy in movement through slow, low-pressure training doesn’t make very exciting videos but it does transform horse’s (and people’s) lives.

If you take anything away from this just know that you absolutely CAN train pain, people are doing it every day and getting 100k views on their reels, so don’t disregard your horse’s voice just because he is somewhat compliant or someone told you to. Behaviour is communication, not something to be fixed. There are people out here who will help you and your horse and not dismiss your concerns. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

08/09/2024

That moment the animal your sat on is orienting and you pray their reaction is going to be a rational one 😜🤣

07/09/2024

04/09/2024

28/08/2024

Love this guy.

CONNECTION VERSUS PROXIMITY

Something I hear from people a lot when they are asking about their horses is "We have a good connection, he's kind of a pocket horse, he follows me everywhere, but..." and they then go on to describe a problem that usually is a result from a lack of connection.

Proximity is not connection.

Clinginess is not connection.

Try not to get connection and physical closeness confused.

Connection is rooted in attunement, which is (as Sarah Schlote of Equusoma: Horse-Human Trauma Recovery puts it) 'the sense of being seen, being heard, feeling felt and getting gotten". It's about them trusting you, trusting you have their best interest at heart, and the feeling of safety you give them when you have proven that you are as aware as the rest of their heard members.

Clinginess is a juvenile behaviour that the mother (and other herd members) allows up until the age of weaning, then they start to work on collision avoidance (a term I picked up reading the works of British ethologist Lucy Rees). Installing collision avoidance is what allows a herd of horses to move safely together at speed like a school of fish or a flock of birds. It's also part of the mental maturation process, and if that process doesn't happen horses tend to retain a that and a lot of other juvenile behaviours.

So beware of the trap of thinking that you have connection because you have constant proximity. It may just be a juvenile behaviour in disguise.

16/08/2024

‘He’s fine with it’
‘He happy’
‘He enjoys it’

I hear statements like this a lot from ‘horse people’ and it now falls on deaf ears because the truth is usually the opposite.

Anthropomorphism in the horse world is rife. This term means to attribute human behaviours and responses to non human animals. For example, a horse that’s animated or forward going is referred to as ‘excited’. A horse that tries to bite us is ‘nasty’, or a horse that stands still for bathing is ‘happy’. None of these are likely the case. When horses display behaviours that resemble one of ours, people jump to the conclusion that the horse is behaving that way for the same reason we do and that’s where it all goes wrong.

When it comes to a completely different species, especially a prey animal, their behaviour and body language WILL be different to ours. They will have completely different reasons to us for behaving in ways that resemble ours.

Being anthropomorphic actually stems from a good place, it shows we have some ability to empathise, but more often than not it causes us to behave inappropriately in response to their behaviours, because we read it wrongly, we punish fear responses, and believe they are happy when they are in fact stressed.

We should absolutely be using empathy in our training, but we can only get it right when we are more ‘theriomorphic’ and apply ANIMAL species specific reasons to their behaviours. This is only possible however if we actually learn about the species. Simply assigning human characteristics to them means we don’t actually know the species at all.

Believing that our horses are ok with what we are ‘doing’ to them is just that, a belief, it is not a fact. For example, tying a prey animal up so that they can’t escape and them standing still whilst being bathed by predators doesn’t in any way mean they enjoy it. They merely tolerate it, most likely having learnt that if they fidget or show concern, the situation only gets worse for them, hence why they now stand still. The simple fact they stand still for it now means the human genuinely believes that the horse is ‘fine’ with it. If the horse was genuinely ok with it, we wouldn’t need to tie them up to do it, they would happily stand there of their own accord.

If we genuinely believe our horse is just fine with having something ‘done’ to them, then we can prove it, just don’t tie them up.

Even when we have a background in animal behaviour science and a deep understanding for the species, observable behaviour does not always reflect let alone guarantee their internal emotional state. Do we ‘look’ afraid when we are in the dentist’s chair?

Most horses have a learning history of realising they have no choice, which often looks like ‘happiness’ or cooperation to the untrained eye, when it is in fact compliance… doing something they don’t like to simply avoid more unpleasantness.

What does a ‘happy’ horse even look like when escape isn’t an option? A happy horse is when they’re in the field grazing with friends, enjoying their freedom and forage, not being our conduits for pleasure. A happy horse is one that has a choice.

When our horses are tied up, restrained, or wearing ridiculous equipment so that a human can feel in control, stating that they are ‘fine with it’ is garbage, it’s denial, we are simply seeing what we want to see to justify getting our own way.

The ONLY way we can accurately state whether our horses are genuinely ‘fine’ with something, is to take away the restraints, take away the equipment, and see if they still behave in the same way, otherwise, we are simply kidding ourselves from a serious lack of understanding for the animal we profess to ‘know’, just because we’ve mastered forcing them to bend to our will during our 30 odd years of ‘experience’.

13/08/2024

Just wow 😮

12/08/2024

When a horse behaves in a way that’s ‘undesirable’ to us, it’s almost always because they feel that OUR behaviour is ‘undesirable’ or fearful to them…

12/08/2024

Mares simply speak the truth, their only flaw is not being able to say the words “YOU are the problem”.

07/08/2024

If Olympic riders are supposedly the ‘best of the best’, why do they need harsh equipment to achieve it? If they really were the best, they wouldn’t need it in the first place.

06/08/2024

Love this!!

05/08/2024

Love this

02/08/2024

😂👌 its a genuine thing 🙈

01/08/2024

👌

Stimuli appropriate response.

Does your horse seemingly over react to negative stimuli? Violent spooking with no good reason, hyper-vigilance, over sensitive to noise or disturbances? What is a stimuli appropriate response?

To understand the world as our horses see it, we need to think about where they came from and how they evolved and compare it to the individual circumstances of your horse today.

Stimuli appropriate response is just what it says. It means the horse notices something and reacts in manner appropriate to the level of threat of the stimuli. So when your horse has a complete breakdown because someone sneezes in the gallery during your dressage test, that is absolutely not an appropriate response.

In a natural environment, a hyper-vigilant horse would not be tolerated by the herd. If a horse was constantly jumping and spooking at shadows, the rest of the herd would reject that energy as it’s dangerous. If a prey animal wastes energy jumping at shadows, when a real threat appears, they may have used up too much energy to be able to get away effectively. A wild horse can’t afford to waste energy in that way. This is a basic survival trait that should still exist in the domestic horse.

For a horse to be excessively “sharp”, “hot”, “spooky”, is not a natural state. It’s not a breed trait, it is stress, tension, anxiety. Yes, some horses have been bred to have a higher flight response but they still shouldn’t “waste” energy, it doesn’t make sense from the most primitive level of simple survival.

What happens in our domestic horses is the same that happens to people. Stresses of life build up. Some human therapists talk of “stress buckets”. These are your safety net. As soon as they overflow, you are in trouble. People who are struggling in life, for whatever reason, tend to have their stress buckets filled close to the top just to get through day to day life. It doesn’t take much added stimulation to tip them over the edge.

Our horses are no different. Many horses are highly stressed due to living environment, training methods, inappropriate feed, various levels of pain or injury or any number of underlying reasons. Their stress buckets are close to full so when an added stress situation occurs, they “over react”.

If you have a very sharp, spooky, hyper-vigilant, over reactive horse, you may want to stop, step back and take a good, long look at why the horse is behaving this way. It’s goes against rational survival concerns, in fact it increases the risk of accidents or injuries so it’s not “normal” behaviour.

We need to stop ignoring behaviours that serve no healthy purpose to the horse. We have ignored so many of our horses cries for help, preferring to think “it’s just the way he/she is”. We are conditioned to think that the horse is behaving poorly “just because”. If a horses behaviour makes no sense, we owe it to the horse to figure out what it is trying to communicate rather than brush it off as “normal”.

30/07/2024

U.S competitor eliminated due to blood on rear fetlock, which occurred when the horse was freaking out moments before competing.

Two things about this utterly ridiculous statement from the apparent professional…

SHES NOT WONDERING ANYTHING! she’s relieved to be left alone again! Horses are NEVER disappointed to get out of work, even if they actually enjoy it.

Its physiologically impossible for any mammalian species to enjoy something that causes such immense stress that it puts them OVER THRESHOLD in a job. If Jane genuinely enjoyed her job, she would have felt safe and wouldnt have been so stressed that she had a freak out even before doing it, leading to her kicking herself causing bleeding in the first place. This is the opposite of LOVING a job. A horse that genuinely loves its job and is trained properly is relaxed and takes it in their stride.

The lack of understanding on a ‘professional’ level is astounding!! People simply see what they want to see. Not one horse actually wants to be there, they simply have no choice.

28/07/2024

Just more proof on the subject of my post a few weeks back, how professional riders and trainers, even at the Olympic level do not have adequate knowledge to be in this industry. This level of cruelty is simply a shortcut for talentless, inadequate training. EVERY horse is capable of performing in just a snaffle if the the trainers actually knew what they were doing. This is just abuse. Seems the revolution is starting to take hold though. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll be thanking Charlotte for her grotesque behaviour because its the shock factor this industry needed to get the ball rolling.

The FEI also needs investigating for allowing this.

Is there justification to tighten flashes to this extent just so we can compete horses at an international level?

Is it fair to them to disable their ability to relieve pressure in the mouth, particularly with a gag bit?

Where do we draw the line in terms of how much discomfort is acceptable to cause horses just in the name of competition?

Do horse sports deserve to remain in the Olympics if it often results in causing our equine companions much discomfort in order to have them perform at that level?

24/07/2024

Wow, I completely agree 😞

Some further context on the Charlotte Dujardin situation to further illustrate power dynamics and why people wait to report.

Quoted from The Guardian:

“One of Team GB’s biggest stars, Charlotte Dujardin, has been banned from the Paris Olympics over allegations that she whipped a horse “24 times … like an elephant in a circus”.

[Charlotte] has been suspended after a video emerged of the incident that occurred when she conducted a coaching session to a young rider in a private stable several years ago.

The Dutch lawyer Stephan Wensing is representing the 19-year-old who filed the official complaint against Dujardin.”

I’m sure you can all do math but if the person who filed the complaint is 19 years old, it means they were 15 at the time of the incident.

FIFTEEN.

A minor.

Please go and look at how many people are deflecting from what Dujardin is accused of on the basis that it’s vindictive and not about welfare to wait 4 years to report.

The person who reported was a CHILD during the incident.

A child within the presence of an Olympian who was likely their idol.

Now, horse industry, please pause for a moment and reflect on how quick our industry is to victim blame and try to deflect accountability away from powerful and well known top riders.

At the expense of minors, oftentimes.

If they are 19 now at the time of reporting, it means they have only been a legal adult for a year. With far less life experience than Dujardin, who was 35 years old when this all would’ve happened.

A whole 20 years older than the FIFTEEN YEAR OLD who witnessed and documented this.

Every single person who went to blame the person who reported while entirely ignoring or glossing over Charlotte’s behaviour has contributed to the type of mentality that makes people less likely to report.

They often aren’t taken seriously when they report right away, are exposed to heavy criticism and risk losing a lot of what they’ve worked to earn.

But, if they wait, people discredit them as well.

We protect abusers by fixating on the victims and why they might hesitate to report.

If a 15 year old is expected to have the foresight to report an incident relating to one of the most highly regarded dressage riders in the world and do so without fear of repercussion, we certainly should be holding the mid-to-late-thirties Olympian, who was a role model and teacher in that moment, to a higher standard.

This is why people hesitate to report.

Our industry is toxic and has a lot of dynamics at play that silence those who speak out against abuse of all types.

It doesn’t stop at just horses, I watched this same thing happen with Rich Fellers years ago and people still attacked the minor-aged victim despite the fact that Fellers was a sexual predator.

23/07/2024

‘Out of character’ my a**. Im not surprised as im very aware of what happens on GB olympic yards, let alone all the others. When we have the right mindset, we NEVER resort to actions that lead to situations like this in the first place. It doesnt matter whats going on with us, it will never be ok to take our temper out on a horse.

Team GB's joint-most decorated female Olympian Charlotte Dujardin has pulled out of Paris 2024 amid the emergence of a video showing an "error of judgement" that has seen her placed under investigation by competition organisers.

23/07/2024

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