Complete Equestrian Services

Complete Equestrian Services Complete Equestrian Services offers a professional, friendly and individual approach to you and your horse. Breaking, schooling, tuition etc
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Nicola Shipp and John Brown have over 45 years of managing horses between them. Nicola holds her BHSAI Int SM, BA (Hons) Equine Studies and a PGCE. She also is Pony Club certified, has the ESFAC and Child Protection training

Come on down to CES and grab a bargain...and cake!
02/11/2024

Come on down to CES and grab a bargain...and cake!

01/11/2024

Here is the very sweet Rolo (see what i did there) who is on his last few days of his stay with us. As you would expect with such a baby, he can be a little apprehensive at times, but throughout his stay he has been completely genuine without a nasty bone in his body.
Shown here is his first outing over pole patterns and his first canters. He really is a poppet; even if he doesn't understand, he tries to come up with the right answer.
Ideally, his owners would love to find someone to share the ride with their grand daughter who for the foreseeable future will be on the lead rein.
He is based by West Felton and would stay at home there. There would be no expectation of any financial contribution. So if you are calm and experienced with youngsters and fancy having some gentle fun on an approx 13.2/3 coblet let me know in the first instance and i'll pass your details on.

Next up, Mandy and Jane on Ben and Lofty. Love the Bat ears on Ben and Lofty's LED halloween tinsel was something else. ...
28/10/2024

Next up, Mandy and Jane on Ben and Lofty. Love the Bat ears on Ben and Lofty's LED halloween tinsel was something else.
They both did well at the pole work too!
I am doing pole work for ORC next Sunday. There will be a few spaces afterwards for those of you interested. Message to book

Just wanted to show some appreciation for the effort people put into their Halloween fancy dress yesterday! Interestingl...
27/10/2024

Just wanted to show some appreciation for the effort people put into their Halloween fancy dress yesterday! Interestingly anyone under 35, including a 5yo did not engage with the theme...however, the over 50's totally embraced and bossed it, even sharing Halloween tinsel purchasing tips🤣 (there is such a thing).
First up, Alice with her horse affectionately known as 'The Beast'.

All set for Halloween pole work...apart from the poles🙈😆  .
26/10/2024

All set for Halloween pole work...apart from the poles🙈😆 .

25/10/2024
School ready for a jump lesson today. Available to hire.🙂
01/10/2024

School ready for a jump lesson today. Available to hire.🙂

23/09/2024

69 years old...what a ride! Bringing it home for Team GB

19/09/2024

So, on Sunday afternoon, Mouse had two very special visitors...her first child riders! Many thanks to Alice Trevor-Jones for lending them to me😘.
Although a little uncertain at first, Mouse soon adapted to her little people and behaved beautifully. I was so proud of her as i was of the girls who followed my instructions so well (i probably scared them a bit with my pre ride lecture!)
Her owner is thrilled and will be offering Mouse for loan to a very special family for up to 2 years. Please get in touch if you are interested.

All set up for today's pole work clinic🙂. Spaces available this afternoon. Message to book..
14/09/2024

All set up for today's pole work clinic🙂. Spaces available this afternoon. Message to book..

12/09/2024

We love getting updates (hopefully positive!) about our equine students.
Featured here is recent graduate Blaze who came to be started.
The first pic was during his stay at CES on his first hack in company (i do mini hacks on their own first to build independence).
The vid and final pic are at home totally bossing the hacking out game. He needs mental stimulation and is outward looking, so i was confident he would handle it well.
Thrilled for his owners.
Feel free to message for a chat about starting/schooling/coaching🙂

This response to a question from a lady asking about taking her youngster to BD for the first time (on BD forum page), i...
10/09/2024

This response to a question from a lady asking about taking her youngster to BD for the first time (on BD forum page), is absolute gold! (Click on image to view whole reply)

03/09/2024

Who recognises this little girl? It was lovely to have the gorgeous Pixie pony back at CES for a refresher course. I was thrilled how quickly she tuned in to what i was asking despite having mainly hacked for a while. What a little super⭐.
Feel free to message for your schooling/starting/coaching requirements 🙂

02/09/2024

Gorgeous little Section A, Mouse has been with us for starting off, but her breeder/owner would love for her to find a loan home with a loving knowledgeable family for the winter.
She has been easy to do, hacks out alone or in company, but obviously she is a baby Welshie so whilst she is a good girl she isn't dope on a rope. Drop us a message if you think you would like a 'Mouse' on loan! Also please message if you need your horse/pony starting/schooling 🙂

12/08/2024

Random, but why not?🙂

Clients Amanda and Jo enjoying a jump lesson at CES on grass yesterday. Message to book yours!
06/08/2024

Clients Amanda and Jo enjoying a jump lesson at CES on grass yesterday. Message to book yours!

So i have thought a lot before posting anything on the 'Charlotte' situation.  I am sharing this post because i feel it ...
24/07/2024

So i have thought a lot before posting anything on the 'Charlotte' situation. I am sharing this post because i feel it has something constructive to offer from this mess.
It is a long post but if you have the time, stick with it.
I have watched the video and it is not comfortable viewing.
John made an interesting point (reflected in this post) that it isn't just a Charlotte issue, it is an industry issue where huge amounts of money can be involved and thus high levels of pressure to get results from a horse and trainer perspective. Clients (not mine😉) can be fickle which may affect how some trainers may deal with things. In so many aspects of life we have lost sight of principles, ethics and playing the long game.

Now, more than ever, i am looking forward to my training session with Andrew Murphy on Friday, where horses leave with a smile on their face. Over and out.

So, when Charlotte (Dujardin) was in London 2012 Olympics with Valegro, she got my attention. Because Valegro was the first competitive dressage horse I personally saw in recent memory, in recent records, compete and win without an abundance of overtly obvious calming signals and signs of stress. Valegro did show stress, lots and lots of it. But in an environment to his left and right, horses showed stressx100000, and he showed stressx100, he appeared relaxed by comparison. Not relaxed according to what I prefer and try to practice. Putting myself in the shoes of an other, I saw an exception in Charlotte then. I do not see an exception in her now.

So she got my attention.

In subsequent years, when Valegro (Blueberry) retired and I saw her riding of other horses, it became clear to me that Valegro might have been an exceptional animal and an anomaly, and then digging a little deeper into personal research, I tried to find quotes from Charlotte herself talking about her champion horse.

A person always tells you exactly who they are, if we believe them.

I heard a rumor, that Charlotte described Valegro as "Hard Mouthed". I am not sure if that is true. Because much of their press is glossy and idolised. Like this article, still on the FEI website, attributing Charlotte and Valegro to inspiring a whole new generation of dressage riders. https://www.fei.org/stories/sport/dressage/5-things-learn-charlotte-dujardin-valegro

So if a Gold Medallist is describing her champion horse as Hard Mouthed, what does this mean for the training process that horse went through when nobody was watching? I guessed, wildly speculated for myself, that Valegro might be a horse who tolerated more pressure, than perhaps other horses would. Perhaps a horse who was predisposed to working under an enormous amount of compression, without feeling emotionally off-kilter about it. And was therefore able to demonstrate high level competitive riding with her, without an abundance of signs of stress (not no stress at all, just drastically less than is typically seen in those contexts). And actually win. Valegro actually looked... sort of happy... with her. By comparison to the horses around them.

But in subsequent years watching her ride Pumpkin and others, I personally did not like what I saw. I saw too much of the modern, Continental Euro-Dressage culture in the horses body. I felt quietly she needed to listen more to Carl Hester, and less to the Continental Hyper-Mobile style that is so rewarded now across the board.

So in recent years I waned my interest in Charlotte, after initially feeling pleasantly surprised at how much I found an affiliate image in her public body of work that I felt I could... maybe, just maybe, enjoy watching and supporting.

Charlotte is currently under-going the effects of Cancel Culture. Cancel Culture is something I would like to cancel. Let us not throw the baby out with the bath water. Here is a competitor who demonstrated at the Olympics that once in a blue moon, 1 horse in a million could compete -and win-with a drastically minimised output of overt signs of stress. Charlotte showed that to us. She also popularised and brought into fashion the era of helmets in competitive riding. Before that, it was all tuxedo's and top hats. And now helmets are popular and normalised at upper levels. She was the first to really popularise that. She, together with Carl, also used her enormous platform to advocate for the ample turn out of their horses. They even hack their top horses on country roads. At a time when some competitors horses never saw light of day, or had a chance to roll in a field, or play with their buddies, this person was returning from world championships, and instead of posting a photo of her ribbons and trophies, would post of video of turning the champion horse out in a field with their buddies.

And then we see a video of her abusing a horse with a whip. In my opinion, the video is egregious. Her actions in the video are horrific. They appear well practiced. They appear to be perfunctory, like she had done them before. There is NO EXCUSE for what she did. It is bonafide abuse.

But there are explanations why. And understanding WHY is crucial for us right now if we are to avoid the pitfall before us. The pitfall of making camps on the left and right, while we hurl abuse at each other. Let us have enough self restraint to pump the breaks on our outrage, and understand why. We must, if we are to use this moment as a crucial turning point in the development of horse welfare.

I have made mistakes with horses. So have you, yes you. I have done things with horses out of frustration. So have you. Nobody is immune to that. All of us have sinned. But I have never whipped a horse like was shown in the surfaced video. I have never done that. To the laughter of those filming? Sickening. And the inaction of the rider. And the entitlement of Charlotte.

And yet, I do not agree that now is the time to cancel Charlotte.

It would not occur to me to blame the victim. The timing is perhaps suspect to speculation. But perhaps the timing has nothing to do with it. I know what it is like to wait years, 10 years in fact, to blow the whistle on my abusers. I have abusers who I am still waiting for the right time to blow my whistle on them. Now is not the time. I waited for a time when the groundswell of support was such that I could blow the whistle and not stand alone. Perhaps Charlottes whistle blower waited until they had enough support around them, so they COULD be brave. I do not know. But we must not make this about the whistleblower that is the lowest hanging fruit here today.

Let us make this about WHY the top competitor in our industry, so completely failed. Why we cannot sanction almost any competitive riding in 2024 through an ethics lens? And why we need to stop cancelling peoples mistakes, and instead learn from them. So we never-ever- repeat them.

Two things can be true at the same time.

Someone can be abusing horses. And in the same breathe, make great choices for them. It is the human-problem. We have a heavy, clever, abstract brain that needs another 50 millions years of evolution to refine this new bio-computer and de-bug some of its glitches. The human brains most common glitch in my opinion, is the glitch of incongruence. Say one thing. Do one thing. Next minute contradict that entirely. It is almost like somebody left the paddock gate open in the human psyche and all the horses got out. Running chaos across the road. It is the reason why we so wholly engage in acts of abuse, torture, murder and systematic annihilation of others. Just like cancel culture is the annihilation of others we abhor, the same way abusive horse training is the annihilation of the horses well-being in real time. Be careful, outraged or not we may be, be careful to track the threads of aggression and hostility through our bodies, lest we make hypocrites of ourselves.

To use hostility and aggression and lack of listening to others and lack of compassion of others to cancel another, is the same human trait of lack of listening, hostility, aggression and lack of compassion shown to the horse in Charlotte's scandal. To weaponise the same weapons of the person we cancel... is by definition incongruent. The best way to no longer sanction the sort of abuse Charlotte engaged in, is to eliminate those same urgings from ourselves... wherever they show up. Yes- even when directed at Charlotte.

The human brains most common glitch in my opinion, is the glitch of incongruence. Our brains have not fully re-connected recent complex brain developments into our body, our ancient wisdoms, our empathy and our kindness.

I mean, we can. But it takes a Herculean effort to do so. In order to live a congruent life, one must be actively anti-social to the mainstream. Because mainstream living requires incongruence to fit in, survive and be successful.

Charlotte, like tens of thousands of top equine professionals, is part of this problem. Stuck in a system where she must force performance, force compliance, by any egregious means necessary, so that she can maintain her safety, her success, her image and her acceptance. Imagine being an Olympic Gold Medallist, training someone elses "lesser" horse, and the horse is not doing it the way your Valegro did it for you. Imagine doing that in front of an audience.

"I saw Charlotte at a clinic and actually, she couldn't get the results. It must be Valegro, not her"

Such nasty phrases are common place and directed everyday to all trainers, everywhere. Trainers are under enormous pressures to prove not only competency, but competency RIGHT NOW, and the means necessary are not important. This is a dynamic I work hard everyday to counter. It is so hard to do.

If we cancel Charlotte now we risk the following
1. Not learning from this. WHY did the TOP COMPETITOR in that industry still fail at horse ethics 101. If she is failing, we all are.
2. We risk covering up the positive impact she did make towards helmet culture, turn out culture and showcasing, 12 years ago, a relaxed horse. Even if he was one in a million. She still showcased that.
3. We lose an opportunity to understand the popular culture of training and how we need to double our efforts to reform it.

We actually need new parameters of competency. New parameters of success. We don't need to cancel Charlotte. She will get what is coming for her.

Cancel Culture in my opinion is the epitome of a diversion tactic. It is also hostile, and aggressive. And eye for an eye and we are all blind. Someone grappling with their own conscience in what they did or are currently doing to horses, can redirect their internal turmoil onto another and heap their own self loathing onto a scapegoat. They get an adrenal hit out of it. They feel better about themselves. The Germans call it "Schadenfreude" direct translation is Crappyfriend, or happiness at the misfortune of others. It is a toxic trait in my opinion to cancel an other.

We cannot talk a storyline of holding space for misbehaving horses, for troubled horses, if we cannot hold space for misbehaving and troubled people.

I see someone like Charlotte whipping a horse the way she did and I want to throw up, but I also acknowledge how troubled she must be. Troubled and damaged, before, during and after the abuse. not an excuse, I hold no sympathy for her. But damn, how damaged must someone be, to do what she did. How damaged must someone be to believe they can cancel another. Deny their existence, like a death. The same way horses are denied their existence.

Be careful, outraged or not, to track aggression patterns through our bodies and stop them in their tracks.

I have been saying for months:
"S**t is going to hit the fan this Olympics. We need to be ready to catch the people who are abandoning ship"

Olympics hasn't even started yet, and here we are. S**t-fan-ship.

Excitement for today's pole work clinic has overwhelmed our Zip. He has gone for (yet another) lie down indoors .
21/07/2024

Excitement for today's pole work clinic has overwhelmed our Zip. He has gone for (yet another) lie down indoors .

Clients that bake for me have been shown to accelerate up the CES client rankings.  This time it is flame raisin and pis...
15/07/2024

Clients that bake for me have been shown to accelerate up the CES client rankings. This time it is flame raisin and pistachio rocky road, last time it was lemon drizzle. Already looking forward to Honey's next stay in September. Thank you Mary 😊 😋

10/07/2024

Finty (Deniro x Fürst Heinrich) x Belissimo Vita (Bellissimo M x Sir Chamberlain) have got something cooking!

A full car park at CES  today for the North and Mid Wales Shetland Pony show😍
06/07/2024

A full car park at CES today for the North and Mid Wales Shetland Pony show😍

Sad news. She made the world a better place for mares and foals
18/06/2024

Sad news. She made the world a better place for mares and foals

RIP
Johanna Vardon MBE
A truly miraculous lady and long time breeder who led the way and selflessly set up the National Foaling Bank at her Shropshire based Meretown Stud in 1965 supporting so many breeders through difficult times. Johanna’s knowledge was appreciated by everyone who both used her service and who gained from her expertise which she readily shared. Johanna deservedly won the coveted BEVA welfare award in 2015. So many horses owe their lives and careers to her.

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Complete Equestrian Services, Maes Ceffyl, Llwyn Y Go, Maesbrook
Oswestry
SY108QN

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