Stepney Bank Stables

02/11/2024

This! 🧡

"Just a girl and her horses… 💪 In the barn, she's learning lessons that go beyond just caring for animals. Hard work, resilience, and the courage to be strong. Every day spent here is a day she grows braver, kinder, and filled with love for these beautiful creatures. 🐴💚

May she continue to grow up surrounded by the values of dedication and compassion that only time with horses can teach."

02/11/2024

How brilliant are these?! 🎃👻💀

01/11/2024

🙌

Every now and then, one of my students comes to me with the wish to make faster progress or with questions about how to make faster progress. While I understand the sentiment, and I do try to give them the best advise I can give, these kinds of talks often leave me contemplating the nature of horsemanship.
I truly believe that when it comes to our horsemanship journey, we are exactly at the point we’re supposed to be at. If we feel like our progress has stalled, it’s for a good reason. And until we haven’t learned what we had to learn, we are not going to make progress.
Besides, progress might not be what we envision it to be. For us, progress could mean being able to show more fancy exercises. But maybe what we are supposed to learn right now is a totally different topic, and that’s why we feel “it’s so slow”.
When we feel the urge for progress, be it because of our personal ambitions or because we want to grow our business, we might visit lots of different clinics and do lots of different online programs. The problem with that is, that all those might have a slightly different approach and we just end up being confused. We might still not close the gaps that we have to close before we can come to a deeper understanding of something.
Going deep with one thing will develop us a lot more quickly than doing everything a little bit.
When we have a genuine wish to develop and to help others, we will be exactly where we should be, work on what we are supposed to work on, gain the isights we are supposed to gain right now, and as teachers, we’ll have the exact amount of student we should have, and our business will be exactly where it’s supposed to be.
When we loose our patience with the learning process and with our organic growth process, I do believe we will experience setbacks and frustration, because we strive to be somewhere where we are not ready to be, or where we’re not even supposed to be.
I do believe that we have to give ourselves fully to this process and have a deep trust that everything turns out the way it should. As the saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And when we are ready, progress will come. It might not be what we have envisioned. It will be what we needed.
I’m writing this as someone who was frustrated about the lack of progress with my horse Nazir for quite a while. Progress in my mind was piaffe and passage. Something that would impress others. Today I know that’s not what I had to learn from Nazir. At some point, I just gave up wanting to do anything with him. I just let it be. I accepted that I didn’t know enough to be able to train him. That’s when progress came, the moment I let go of the idea of making progress. And it didn’t come in the form of learning fancy dressage exercises. It came as an understanding of the horse’s nature and clarifying what kind of horse trainer I would like to be.
If we are open for what the horses have to teach us, we’ll be amazed at the insights we’ll gather and that they will come seemingly out of nowhere. Suddenly it’s there, a very clear message. Or a learning opportunity that helps us understand what we have to understand.
Heartfelt greetings from Eumundi, Australia.

01/11/2024

Ring feeder needed!

Does anyone have a ring feeder for sale? Please get in touch 😊

01/11/2024

Yesterday we waved off lovely Big Millie who’s heading home to retire with her owner. Millie has been with us for over a year and in that time has helped countless people take their first steps as riders.

As with all our horses, Millie has had expert farriery, vet checks, regular physio, massage, dentistry and saddle fit checks. However, recently Millie’s looked uncomfortable in her work. We’ve noticed changes to her facial expression, body language and behaviour. Physically she passes all the checks but she’s telling us she’s not enjoying her work and we need to listen. So it’s Happy Retirement for Millie! Thank you Millie and enjoy putting your hooves up!

31/10/2024

A busy day of fun and games for horses and humans 🎃🧡 Nit struggled with apple bobbing (we did change the water before the humans had a go!), Ginny tried to eat the face of our ‘body’ 🤦‍♀️

31/10/2024

Look who’s back 👀

For one day only… Paul Anderson!

You can check out but you can never leave Stepney! 😃

31/10/2024

Our biggest fear! Happy Halloween! 🎃

31/10/2024

Super proud of the team selected to represent Stepney yesterday at the BHS riding school regional qualifiers. 4 riders qualified for the National Championships held in Leicestershire in April. More importantly, all riders took excellent care of their horses before and after the competition, supported one another, cheered on other competitors and made us incredibly proud. Well done to Leanne for pulling out all the stops to get them there and thank you to murton_equestrian_centre for being fabulous hosts! Larry, Iona and Ollie were, of course, superstars 🌟

30/10/2024

Well done to all of this morning’s dressage competitors! Lots of beautiful tests thoughtfully and softly ridden👏

30/10/2024

Pony Dress to Impress produced some incredible outfits and poses! 👗👔🐴

30/10/2024

🐴 Level 2 spaces🐴

We have availability for level 2 riders tomorrow (Thursday) at 4.30pm. Please go online or ring to book.

Level 2 riders are:
Developing balance in the saddle
Learning the aids to communicate with the horses so that they can work towards riding independently.
Gaining confidence in walk and trot.
Developing an understanding of horse behaviour and psychology.
Having fun!

29/10/2024

Today’s Pony Day gang practiced some horse agility using positive reinforcement techniques to help Ginny understand what was being asked 🖤

29/10/2024

Henry availability on bonfire night 🧨

We’re not running our usual evening lessons on Tuesday 5th November BUT we do have Henry lessons available. He absolutely will not spook if the bangs get loud.

You can book via ECPRO. 15 minutes for £12. See what new insights you can gain 💡

29/10/2024

Well done to these Pony Clubbers for successfully passing their E test yesterday 👏👏👏

28/10/2024

Theo’s joined the Pony Barn gang!

We’ve been worried about Theo getting distressed by fireworks. He has anxious tendencies and this can be a difficult time of year for lots of horses, even those who are normally laid back. We’re hoping that being able to hang out with his mates in the Pony Barn helps him to feel more relaxed.

25/10/2024

We’re feeling super proud of our Changing Lives Through Horses students who completed their BHS Achieve Award yesterday! We finished the Autumn half term off with a competition in which every young person shone in different areas. We can’t wait to see what next half term brings for them. Well done guys!

24/10/2024

Introducing…. Pony Barn!!!

We’ve long held an ambition to create space to the ponies to live communally. And now we have! Pony Barn provides a space for the ponies to live in small groups with more freedom to move and socialise together. Pony Barn also creates an area for our Changing Lives Through Horses students to learn about horse behaviour through observation. Sid and Sam have been testing it out and seem pretty happy 🧡

23/10/2024

Huge thanks to Kelly from Horse Weighbridge North East for sharing her expertise and donating two trickle nets for us to try. Colorado has wasted no time in giving hers a try. Kelly has been supporting us to manage stress around feed times and one strategy is to reduce the amount of time the horses are without forage. The trickle nets should slow down those that guzzle their forage so that it lasts longer. 🧡

23/10/2024

📣BHS Qualifier Announcement📣

Thank you to all those who sent in an application for the BHS Riding School qualifiers. We have taken them all into account and have decided on 6 young people to represent us. Congratulations to Phoebe, Alexus, Brooke, Sarah, Lucy and Freya!! 🥳 There will be opportunities next year for those who weren’t successful this time round🤍

23/10/2024

🗓️ save the date!

Reminder that our Annual General Meeting takes place on Monday 11th November at 6pm in the Jackson room at the indoor arena. This is a chance to meet our Board of Trustees, reflect on the past 12 months, discuss ambitions for the next 12 months and ask questions.
Absolutely everyone is welcome!

22/10/2024

👇👏

Stress at feed times 🐴

I travel around to a lot of different yards and being around at feed time can be chaotic, stressful and very loud. Horses kicking the door, lunging at each other through the bars, people screaming at the horses for expressing their frustration, which in turn adds to their stress. I’m not a horse nor am I even involved and it makes me feel edgy.

When we are keeping horses in an environment where they are anticipating high value feed, they are going to find that stressful and frustrating, but there are ways we can make things better through management and potentially a little training.

Instead of just being irritated by behaviour we find inconvenient, we need to think about why it is happening. Resource guarding is a perfectly justified response for a horse who is feeling anxious around food, as is kicking the door, trying to barge etc. I would not try to fix this behaviour through punishment for several reasons. Firstly the behaviour is an emotional response, if you shut down the behaviour by punishing the horse, they still feel that emotion, you’ve just stopped them expressing it which will cause even more anxiety. Secondly if you use punishment, your horse is going to develop negative associations with you. Your presence will cause negative emotions.

What we actually want to do is reduce stress at feeding times so the horse doesn’t feel frustrated in the first place. This is going to look different depending on your individual circumstances.
🐴 Are they hungry? Horses are trickle feeders. If your horse is running out of food overnight, he is going to be stressed, that’s his genetic make-up. If your horse needs to be on rationed forage you can find different slow feeding options to make sure he doesn’t run out before morning.
🐴 Are they chronically stressed in their living environment? We need to make sure the horse is getting adequate turnout and socialisation, doesn’t have any underlying pain issues and isn’t finding their training unpleasant and stressful. A chronically stressed horse will behave like a chronically stressed horse.
🐴 Are they comfortable in their stable? Having bars between stables so they can see other horses is great, unless they feel threatened by the horse next to them. Sometimes boarding up maybe half of the bars can help horses feel less anxious about other horses being close while they’re eating. Sometimes we need to play around and choose more appropriate neighbours. Another thing to note is whether the horse feels safe enough to lie down and sleep in there. Having a window at the back of the stable can seem nice to us, but for some horses it can make them feel that they need to be hyper-vigilant and “check both sides” all of the time.
🐴 Is their diet appropriate? If you’re feeding your horse extremely high-value sugary feed maybe think about feeding something more fibre-based and natural and see if their intense behaviour at feed times calms down.

If we’d like to train our horses to step back as we come in with the feed, waiting until they are hungry and stressed is not the time to do it. Start after they’ve had their feed, ask them to back up as you enter the stable then reward them with a handful of feed, then do it with a bucket in your hand and eventually you can translate it to feed time now you’ve established the behaviour.

If you can’t change any management for whatever reason, I would genuinely just throw the feed over the door as quickly as you can and reduce their stress instead of having unrealistic expectations of a horse that is actually displaying completely justifiable behaviour.

I have recently collaborated with my good friend Kelly from Horse Weighbridge North East to help Stepney Bank Stables with their feeding time stress. They were struggling to dish the feeds out fast enough and really wanted to create a better system for the horse’s sake. A lot of these horses are on a weight-management diet so giving completely ad-lib forage isn’t an option. We suggested changing to slow feeder haynets so the horses didn’t run out of hay overnight. We then suggested filling a wheelbarrow with loose hay and just throwing piles of hay over each door in the mornings, much quicker than dishing out hard feeds and not as high-value. This then gives them time to give out the bucket feeds without all of the stress and the horses will stop anticipating so much. 🐴

I will be doing a free Facebook live with Kelly talking about management practices and their effect on behaviour on Monday 28th October at 7pm, sign up here https://facebook.com/events/s/behaviour-and-management-with-/1094450835575571/?

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk