Cheshire Racehorse Retraining

An update on Luckys progress. Lucky is such an honest genuine mare, and she's come so far in the last 2 weeks compared to the weeks previous. As you know we've had to unpick her previous pain memory through guess work, trial and error and she's had a few tack changes along the way before we found the right combination that worked for her. Now we have established that, we are now giving her consistency in her ridden work - this means keeping absolutely everything the same - same tack, same rider, same time of day for her schooling - anything that we can keep the same we will. The reason to keep everything the same is for her trust to grow and not introduce anything that could potentially set her back. All new introductions can come further down the line. Lucky is now 99% unreactive in the walk. We are still getting reactivity in trot, but this is 70% better than it was. Given more time, she will also be 99% unreactive in the trot. Then we can start working on her canter. Little by little, we are chipping away at her insecurities and showing her a way that doesn't involve any pain memory. She so badly wants to get things right, and she tries so hard to please. It's so lovely to see her more relaxed with her posture lower now that she isn't holding all the tension through her whole body. Onwards and upwards dear Lucky.

Morgan - back in the saddle for the 1st time since breaking her pelvis 3 months ago. And of course Jonni took great care of her x

This is what I've waited all winter to see x

Swiss what a star you are. Crossing the busy motorway bridge like a pro. Accompanied of course by my hacking pro Aidy x

Lucky's progress! So as promised we tried Lucky in the Liquid Titanium mask and the difference in her was incredible. She was so much more relaxed and managed to let go of any tension she was carrying through her body. Yes we had some sticky points and she's hollow and not riding into the contact but that's not what we want at this stage - afterall Rome wasn't built in a day. All we want is for her to be relaxed and confident to move forwards and listen to her rider. She has built up such a lovely trustful bond with Shauna so she tries her absolute best. You can see everytime Shauna gives her a scratch or a pat she instantly relaxes and drops her head. Thats exactly what we want at this stage. Slowly but surely we will chip away at her anticipations of pain but I think things are now moving in the right direction.

The Lucky saga continues! We were absolutely positive that bitless was the way to go with Lucky. Unfortunately, today's ridden session didn't go to plan. Sometimes with horses, especially those that have been through a few homes, its a case of trial and error and a process of elimination. Not only that, we also have to unpick and guess what has happened to them in the past that has caused such issue's. We know that Lucky did at some point team chase and hunt. What we don't know is how she was ridden and in what sort of tack. So today we planned to try the side pull bitless bridle but 1st we wanted to give the hackamore another go. She was super reactive and was solely focused on her mouth. So after a couple of minutes we put her in the side pull which she categorically hated to the point that she had zero brakes and was just running away from any sort of pressure. These 2 findings led us to believe that actually its not her mouth that bothers her but her nose. We don't know whether she's had her nose cranked shut with a super tight noseband, flash or grackle. We can only go on what Lucky was trying to tell us. So back to the drawing board we go. We then selected a nice soft bit and took the noseband off her bridle. Straight away she was much more comfortable and was able to start focusing on her rider. Yes we had sticky points when pain memory kicked in and we'll probably have sticky points for a while until we are erase the anticipation of pain. But overall she seemed much more comfortable. I guess the next few rides will tell us if this works for her or if its back to the drawing board again. It's a mystery whats happened to Lucky in the past but it's definitely left it's imprint on her. I took a short video when she was in the bit with no noseband and you can see how she starts to soften and then the anticipation kicks in for a few strides. Please note that Lucky had her bodywork session prior to the ride and she had no discomfort anywhere around her head or

After taking very small baby steps over the last few weeks, Riff decided today that he felt confident enough to take some bigger steps in his retraining. We started with a few trots on the lunge, and then he progressed to working in the arena independently. Please note that for the first few minutes, he was ridden with the assistance of an elastic bungee to encourage a posture that was less hollow as he does like to impersonate a llama! The bungee just works on pressure and release, so he's not fixed in place in any way - when he softens, the bungee softens. In fact, he was softer and more fluid with the bungee on than when we took it off (as we removed the bungee after a few minutes). The video clips have not been edited down, so you get to see exactly what we saw. He can be quite clingy to his humans who he sees as his security blanket, so when asked to move further away from us to the opposite end of the arena he did have a couple of schoolboy tantrums. This was just him doubting his own confidence and moving a bit further away from what he felt safe with. I'm sure as his retraining continues, we will have a few stumbling blocks, but the important thing is knowing how to iron them out and move forward.

Lucky had her 2nd ride in a bitless bridle today. She was settled in it at a walk but she was showing us some reactivity in trot. After observing her for a while and noting when her reactive moments were we came to realise that the reactions were when the hackamore bars touched the corners of her mouth. This slight touch obviously caused a trigger in her pain memory from being bitted. At this stage it is all trial and error to see what works best for her. So tomorrow we will try her in a simple side pull bridle to see if we can get her to soften more and be less reactive to her pain memory. Onwards and upwards sweet girl.

Lucky 1, Chainsaw and woodchipper 0!

1st hack out for Swiss and he didn't disappoint. Aidy on the other hand.......

As we know, sometimes, with horses, it's a process of elimination to get to the root of any issues they present us with. It's our job to listen to what they are trying to tell us and for us to understand their language. Here is a video of Lucky being ridden last week and again today. These are the only 2 times she's been ridden since being with us. The 1st 50 seconds of the video show Lucky being ridden last week. She was ridden just in a snaffle with a cavesson noseband. I've not published this video on our page until now, but I think its important to show you how a horse can respond and change so quickly if we listen to them. As you can see, Lucky was extremely reactive in her mouth. She felt like she was going to go off like a bottle of pop but at the same time was unable to move forward properly because all of her attention was on her mouth. She was tense through her body, swishing her tail and just generally not happy. Obviously, when a horse displays this type of reaction, the 1st port of call is for us to get their teeth checked. So yesterday, our vet came to do Lucky's dental, but this didn't throw up any issues other than she has some old scar tissue on the inside of her cheeks. So we eliminated it being a problem with her teeth, but there is still a pain response relating to her mouth, but this could quite simply be pain memory. Where this originates from, we don't know. Unfortunately, pain memory is one of the hardest things for a horse to let go of. Anyway, fast forward to today - we decided to put Lucky into a bitless bridle to see what response we get, and she shocked all of us. She was polar opposite to how she was last week. She was soft and relaxed through her body. She was able to move freely forward whilst listening and responding to her rider. But most of all, she was happy. It's hard to believe this is the same horse. Occasionally, we had a twitch of her head when she expected pain but this was only sporadic. Overall though, she was perf

We drew our winner for the raffle! Katie Louise is our winner!