http://www.lshorsemanship.co.uk/

LS Horsemanship, Stokesley (2025)

05/05/2025

You can’t know what you don’t know 🐴

I want to talk about something all of us experience when we start to really learn about horse behaviour and start to explore kinder training methods. Guilt.

This is something I come across with most of my clients as they obviously want to do the best for their horse and end up berating themselves for not knowing better in the past, when in reality, they were doing what they thought was best. They sought professional advice and followed it, how were they to know the advice might not necessarily be in the horse’s best interests? It has been completely normalised to keep horses stabled 20+ hours a day, to keep them isolated, to rig them up in contraptions when they’re too “fresh” and to be rough with them to make them “safe” to handle. Much of the horse industry is still very stuck in the past, it’s hard to find the right people to learn from as all of it can sound so convincing, especially if everyone is doing it.

I look back at how I trained my horses and things that I used to do and I feel tremendous guilt, I wasn’t great at controlling my temper and I pushed too hard, it took me a long time to realise I had to train myself to regulate my emotions too. I was also surrounded by professionals who I was taking advice from and trying to emulate. It starts from being a child at the riding school where I was taught to kick and pull and smack and growl to get the pony to do what I want with no thought to how the pony was feeling or why they were being “stubborn”. This carried through as I got older, there was always a strong undercurrent that I was “being too soft” and it was just because I was nervous, horses need to be told. When I tentatively started to query whether a horse was in pain eyes would be rolled and I was made to feel stupid, so I carried on trying to fit in with and impress these professionals, after all who was I to question them?

I didn’t understand horse behaviour and nobody around me did either, my head was filled with so much misinformation. But the more I started to read, the more I started to question what was going on in front of me. I started getting into more “natural” horsemanship training as I was able to buy my first horse and I don’t want to take anything away from that because, at the time, this training was life changing to me. It helped me view horses in a completely different light and it sent me off down the path I’m now on all these years later. The best horse people are always keeping an open mind, seeking new information and evolving. It is not about flitting from one “method” to another, there are things I learned ten years ago that I still use today in one way or another, I have just modified things in a way that fits with the knowledge I have now.

In the last few years I have really started to understand what healthy posture and movement is and how incorrect and damaging so much of what we have been taught is. We are so used to seeing dysfunctional horses, even at high levels of competition, that we don’t see it for what it is 😕. It feels like the missing link for me, I cringe at the way I was working horses because of the effect I now know it was having on their bodies, but you can’t know what you don’t know!

Sometimes people aren’t ready to address this, it is natural to be defensive over things we’ve done because nobody wants to feel like they’ve done something to cause their horse stress, discomfort or health issues. We also really, really don’t like to be wrong as we somehow see this as a moral failing. It is much more comfortable to find justification to carry on as you were and surround yourself with people who will enable this.

Unfortunately not wanting to acknowledge it doesn’t change things for the horse.

It’s a very emotional topic and one to navigate with care but don’t let what you’ve done in the past hold you back from changing things now just because it feels difficult and uncomfortable. There is so much information available online now about the detrimental effects of many management and training practices, the support is out there if you want it.

I still struggle with this all the time, I am constantly learning and spend a huge amount of my spare time studying as much as I can to find the best way forward. I have brilliant friends and colleagues around me who are an unending source of support and have also been through similar experiences to get where they are today. It is a work in progress to try and forgive myself for not knowing better for my horses before they were damaged by it, but I know dwelling there will not help them.

Once we know better we can, and must, do better for our horses. That’s the best gift we could ever give them. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

05/05/2025

Little track improvement finished today, the horses come tearing around this corner so we’ve pulled it out a bit to make the angle more forgiving. Took us several hours, and by us I mean mostly my dad while I “helped”.

First photo was taken a month ago when we first attempted and quickly realised we needed other tools. 🥲

04/05/2025

Pain during training 🐴

Today’s food for thought. I’ve just watched a video of a trainer reassuring an owner they don’t ever use pain during training and that they think using any pain during training is wrong, a sentiment I very much agree with. They were giving the example of never striking a horse with a whip or hitting them to cause pain, yet they had just spent the last thirty minutes using their entire bodyweight to yank a horse up onto a lorry ramp while the horse desperately tried to get away. Do you not think that has the capacity to be painful?

The cognitive dissonance that occurs within the horse industry is really interesting, I think it is largely to do with the fact that they do not vocalise pain like a dog or a cat would. We all know that whips and spurs can hurt, but what about other things that we see day to day and have perhaps become desensitised to?

Horses have a lot of sensitive areas on their face, yet various rope halters and training halters are literally designed to apply extra pressure and make things very uncomfortable for the horse. They are marketed as if they’re a kinder option, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are more capable of causing pain than a normal, padded headcollar. Even with the plain rope halters the knots are designed to dig in when pressure is applied. I am not saying they can’t be used lightly, but I am saying they often aren’t.

You might be thinking its fine because the horse chooses to pull and if that causes him pain then so be it. I personally believe that we owe it to our horses to develop a skillset which means we can train them without putting them into situations where they feel stressed enough to yank backwards to get away from us. I also don’t want a horse to comply with what I’m asking because if he doesn’t it means pain, what a horrible relationship.

Another big one that was initially uncomfortable for me to acknowledge is how easy it is to cause pain with the bit. Everyone talks about soft hands but not many people actually have soft hands. It is difficult to have these discussions when so many horses at top level are being ridden with excessive pressure on their mouths and winning, but we must have them if we want to improve welfare.

It still shocks me how casually we talk about horses “pulling our arms out”, if your arms are tired how do you think his mouth feels? There is a pretty eye-opening study from 2021 where they found 50% of the horses at an event had bit-related lesions after the cross country phase, you can read the study here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8044447/ this is not okay.

I know people love to debate how bitless is just as bad in the wrong hands, but I will say this. Firstly, just like with a bit, we shouldn’t be putting our horses in situations where we need to haul on them to control them. That is a rider failure, not an equipment failure. There is also a big difference between the action of a soft side pull and a hackamore with 12 inch shanks. I have seen the immediate relief in so many horses who have bad associations with the bit from being pulled in and yanked on when we swap to a bitless bridle.

A couple of years ago I rode regularly with someone who was always tight with her hands over a fence and her horse would always jump with a short, hollow neck and looked awkward. One day we were messing around in head collars and she jumped her horse, nothing changed about her riding but he was suddenly stretching and using his neck like he never had before. Even with her hands putting the same pressure on the headcollar, he felt he could actually stretch and use himself, whereas with the bit he was afraid to. It really showed me how much we can be hindering our horses and it is just seen as normal, lots of people share photos regularly of them pulling their horses in the mouth over fences and it seems to go unnoticed. So many horses are performing well despite us, not because of us.

Other things to think about are overly-tight girths, badly fitting saddles, training aids, tight nosebands and bridles, basically any equipment you put on your horse has the ability to cause discomfort yet we expect the horse to just get on with it. Not to mention the fact that many horses are already uncomfortable in their bodies and being asked to do things they aren’t capable of doing without potentially hurting themselves yet. So many horses being ridden with atrophied back muscles and expected to carry riders up hills and over raised poles to “strengthen them”. We need to be creating strength from the ground first.

Is it okay to cause pain just because its unintentional or because we don’t know another way to achieve what we want? Or should we be striving for better? 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

03/05/2025

The horses love their “new” enrichment balls that have actually been sat unopened in my car for a year 😅.

Today we had meadow hay, dandelions, plantain and carrots 🥕

02/05/2025

How do you deal with a horse that bites? 🐴

I saw this question come up on a popular horse forum and most replies were describing different ways to punish the horse and how it is a completely unacceptable and dangerous behaviour that cannot be tolerated. How often do we completely miss the cause and go straight to trying to get rid of the symptom? A horse that is biting is not okay and we need to figure out why if we want to actually solve the issue instead of just shutting the horse up.

Now I am not saying you should stand there and let your horse bite you, however it is a communication and it is never as simple as “he’s biting to dominate you and you need to show him who’s boss”. We need to figure out what the cause is so we can help the horse to not feel the need to bite anymore.

Firstly what sort of biting is it? A frustrated horse quickly nipping at you when you’re leading them is very different to a horse lunging at you with their teeth bared.

Truly aggressive horses are very rare and will not be cured by you whacking them when they bite. If a horse is at a point where they are genuinely lunging at people, this is extremely dangerous and needs to be assessed by a qualified clinical animal behaviourist alongside a vet. This is usually chronic pain, trauma or a neurological issue and will not be solved by training alone.

There are two kinds of biting behaviour I come across most commonly. The first one is situation-related, usually when trying to protect their body/space or being rugged, saddled, groomed, mounted etc. This is a really clear communication from the horse that they are uncomfortable with what you are doing and is usually a pain/discomfort issue. I don’t care how many checks the horse has supposedly had I am always going to keep looking for pain in these scenarios as horses do not lie. If we have ruled out the obvious I would see if we can change the horse’s associations with these tasks using positive reinforcement training.

The second type of behaviour I see is the sort of nibbly/nippy/biting the lead rope type frustration behaviours. This is again a stress/anxiety response and a horse trying to communicate they aren’t feeling okay. If it is not pain-related this behaviour tends to dissipate with quiet, low-key training, stressing the horse as little as possible, creating clear boundaries and asking easy questions.

In none of these scenarios would I advise punishing the horse by slapping, hitting or shouting at them. I will absolutely protect myself, that mostly looks like quietly pushing their face away with my hand on the headcollar or just getting out of their space. There is no backing the horse up as punishment or making them move their feet. I just want them to know “yes I heard you but you cannot take it out on me”, rather than “Don’t you dare!”.

A horse that is biting is already a stressed horse, and a horse that is smacked or chased for biting, will often still bite and then panic because they think they’re going to be smacked, causing more stress and the cycle repeats. The other thing that can happen when we punish the horse, is we may stop the biting behaviour, but the horse is still in pain/discomfort but too scared to show it as he knows he’ll be punished for it.

Horses that are feeling okay and relaxed do not bite, they are not aggressive creatures. It is also worth noting that hand feeding does not cause aggression unless you reinforce aggressive behaviour by rewarding the horse when they bite or you frustrate the horse with poor training. I have dealt with several fear-based aggression cases by using food in training with great success.

If you take anything away from this please understand that biting is not the behaviour of a happy horse, it is not a quirky personality trait or just a sassy mare and it is not something we should be ignoring. Horses communicate with us so often and so clearly and we as an industry have become numb to it, we just need to open our eyes and listen instead of trying to fix what we perceive to be the problem. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

02/05/2025

Availability on Whitby/Scarborough route 🐴

I’m currently booking for some days in May.

Equine behavioural consultant - kind, horse-centred training and support

Behaviour/ground work/ridden work/postural rehab/obstacle sessions

Please see my page/website for further information.

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

01/05/2025

Are you really listening to your horse? 🐴

A large proportion of my clients contact me because they’re having behavioural problems under saddle. More often than not the problem people think they have is just a symptom of a horse that is struggling and the earlier signs have been missed or seen as irrelevant. I always send out a booking form that includes questions about how the horse is to tack up and mount, and every time there is something of note.

Maybe its “he goes to the back of the box when I come in with his tack” or “I can only get the bridle on if I leave his head collar on underneath otherwise he throws his head too high” or “he swings his quarters out at the mounting block unless he’s against the wall”. We have been taught that as long as we can get on the horse then he is fine to ride, I used to think this too and think things like this were just issues to be trained out of the horse. We talk about partnership but only when its convenient to us, when the horse is saying no the thought of not riding doesn’t even enter our heads. All of these scenarios are pretty clear nos.

These days I see all of these issues as loud communication that the horse is not okay with being ridden. If the horse isn’t okay with being tacked up then we don’t tack up the horse that day, if the horse isn’t okay with being mounted then we don’t ride the horse that day. I am not saying we simply stop and never ride the horse again, but I am saying we don’t just ignore this behaviour because we can get away with it and its inconvenient for us not to ride. We need to find out why the horse is saying no and figure out how we can make them feel better about the situation. There are usually elements of both discomfort/pain within the body and negative associations with being ridden to address.

If we ignore these behaviours or try to train them out of the horse by hassling them until they comply, backing horses up, chasing them with flags, driving them in circles until they stand still etc. We are just shutting down their only line of communication and letting them know we will not listen. That is no partnership.

If you’re reading this thinking pfft my horse is fine he’s just trying to get out of work, maybe think about why he finds working with you so unpleasant. Horses are very amicable creatures, if he’s saying no he has good reason to.

If your horse has been ridden before and won't stand at the mounting block, it is because he doesn't want you to get on his back not because he needs to be trained to stand there, he knows what is about to happen and he's communicating he's not comfortable with it. The same if you have tacked up your horse before and he turns away when you arrive with your tack, he doesn't need to be taught to stand, if he was comfortable about having his tack on he wouldn't move away. We need to figure out the why before we can understand how to improve things.

There is so much talk around listening to your horse, but its not listening if you hear his no and then carry on anyway. When trying to improve issues like this with your horse, really think about whether you are improving his associations or just teaching him that unpleasant things happen if he doesn't comply. As always it comes back around to “just because we can doesn’t mean we should”. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

30/04/2025

Going live to do a free Q and A on my patreon around 7pm, come join 😊

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

29/04/2025

Such a hot day out teaching 🥵 me and the horses are so sluggish in the heat. The ongoing problem of too hot for fly rugs but too flyey for no fly rugs 🥲. Has everyone had the same?

27/04/2025

Obstacle Sessions 🐴

After 6 months of saying I was going to do it I am finally offering obstacle sessions from 5th May.😎

Small groups of 2 or 3. Private sessions possible.

Learn about reading signs of stress in your horse, how to avoid pushing them over their stress threshold and how to use positive reinforcement to help them build confidence with the obstacles.

Every obstacle can be made as easy and small as we need to in order to not frighten your horse and these sessions hugely focus on learning to read behaviour and make good choices to support your horse. This isn't about just getting through the obstacles no matter what.

Building these skills and learning when to apply them will help you hugely out in the "real world". Its also really fun for horses and people alike. 😊

We have tarpaulin, bunting, gates, archways, mats and even a bunch of farmyard animals 🐄🐖🐑.

These sessions are suitable for all horses who are able to do gentle in hand work, there is no pressure and we will work at your horse's pace. These are not sessions to solve behavioural issues so please message me to check suitability. Your horse must be safe to lead in their normal headcollar in an arena with others.

Can be done in an arena, paddock or even on your yard hardstanding.

Please message for more information, I will travel further afield for enough horses. 😊

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

26/04/2025

Using movement as punishment (and why you shouldn't do it if you value your relationship with your horse) 🐴

The idea behind most training we’re exposed to with horses is “make it unpleasant for the horse to do the wrong thing”. Very rarely do people use the word punishment to describe what they’re doing, in fact they often use words and phrases like connection, kind, communication, teaching respect, speaking the horse’s language, making it their idea, but nevertheless what they’re doing to the horse is perceived as punishment by the horse.

When you’re encountering a training issue, instead of thinking of the why, it is usually simplified to “here’s how to make the horse do what you want”, with no thought as to why its happening and what the horse might be trying to communicate. Horses are always trying to communicate with us, to ignore that, make a horse move their feet and only let them rest when they do what you want, is going to destroy our relationship with them.

Please bear in mind that most behavioural issues have some level of physical discomfort behind them so forcing a horse to work hard when they don’t comply is going to give them really negative associations with us and the training scenario.

I’m going to talk about a few scenarios that I have seen recently.

1) The horse won’t load into the trailer, so you present the horse at the ramp and if he doesn’t come forward you take him away and work him hard on a circle for a few minutes. You then represent to the ramp, you teach the horse that the only place he gets to rest is facing the trailer. Does this get compliance? Sure. But when you have a horse who is scared of loading, potentially travelling aggravates hidden physical issues and they already clearly have really negative associations with the trailer. How do you think punishing them for their fear response is going to make them feel? Not good. Calling this sort of training “confidence-building” is ridiculous.

2) The horse pulls a face or nips when you go to groom him, you immediately back him up harshly by jerking the rope clip up into his face all the way across the yard. You then lead him back and attempt to groom him again, if he pulls a face you repeat the punishment. Eventually the horse shuts down and stops communicating his discomfort. He is still really uncomfortable with being groomed but he is scared of being punished again and he has learned you won’t listen.

3) Your horse will not catch in the stable so you go in and chase them around with a flag, only stopping when they face you. If your horse won't catch they are really clearly communicating they are scared and uncomfortable with either the catching itself or what they expect to come afterwards. Their associations with you are already negative, scaring and bullying them with a flag and not allowing them to get away from you is going to create even more negative associations. You may get compliance but at what cost?

Behavioural issues are rarely stand-alone problems to be fixed, it is always more nuanced than that. There are always emotions behind these behaviours, usually coupled with physical discomfort. All you’re teaching them is if you don’t comply I will punish you and I don’t care how you feel about it, this shuts down any communication the horse tries to offer. This is how you create a shut down horse, not a good relationship.

If we want to develop good relationships with our horses, have horses who enjoy working with us and can find joy in movement, we have to learn to look at the whole picture and stop trying to “fix” behaviours like they’re not attached to a whole sentient being.

When we start to focus on building positive experiences and associations with us and the environment instead of trying to make the behaviour we don't want unpleasant, we will start to have a horse who feels safe around us and can start to enjoy those interactions rather than avoid them. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

Photo showing lovely Abbie doing some positive reinforcement training to change her negative and anxious associations with the mounting block. She is only on the leadrope as the yard rules don't allow loose horses in the arena. If she were to choose to walk away I would leave with her without pulling on the rope.

25/04/2025

Just because a horse lets you sit on their back doesn't mean they're ready to be ridden 🐴

There’s a misconception that horses are designed to be ridden. We think as long as they’re not lame or sick then they’re capable of carrying a rider. Maybe once a horse turns a certain age they’re good to go or a that a horse that’s been in work for years must be strong enough to be ridden without issue right? As long as they’re compliant then they must be ready to do the thing we’re asking them to do? Unfortunately this is not the case.

This is not a post about the appropriate age to back your horse, there are plenty of resources and thoughts on that, I want to talk about the other factors we need to consider before we continue sitting on our horse’s backs and expecting them to perform.

The backing process for most horses seems to be heavily focussed on having the horse accept tack, learn how to respond to cues, move with tack on and eventually accept a rider. I don’t want to go off on a huge tangent here about the backing process but usually this will look like lunging or long reining with tack on, then legging the rider up and doing that desensitising process, then great off we go, we start riding the horse and getting him to hack and do poles and circles etc.

It is great to have a horse calmly get used to tack and a rider, but here’s the issue, there is usually very little time spent developing that horse’s posture and musculature without a rider. Lunging an unbalanced horse around in side reins isn’t going to do it, neither is long reining about the place for a few weeks. We are talking slow, progressive in hand work that just takes the time it takes depending on the individual horse, you can’t run them to a schedule.

We might talk about just doing lots of hacking but it doesn’t really matter if its “just” hacking if carrying a rider at all is causing a horse to develop compensatory movement patterns because his body just isn’t capable of carrying a rider without doing so yet. We might talk about turning a horse away for a season, but again it doesn’t really matter if we then just crack on like before. A horse isn’t suddenly strong enough to carry a rider in a healthy way at 4 years old or 6 years old or 10 years old if we don’t do anything to develop that strength from the ground first.

Often the older horses are worse off, because they’ve spent years developing their compensatory way of going, and by the time I see them the wheels have really started to fall off. They’ve been playing whack-a-mole with the vet and their horse still just isn’t right, because we keep trying to stick a plaster on then carry on as we were. You’re never going to fix the foundation if you keep damaging it every time you ride. We need to stop doing the things that are contributing to the damage and start doing the gentle work to help it, only then can we start to see real progress.

It is extremely frustrating as an owner to be doing all of the supposedly right things and seeking professional help and not be told any of this. Doubly frustrating that many of the ways we're taught to ride and train are damaging to horse's bodies. Unfortunately the industry is still very behind and its taking a while to catch up with the information we have access to now.

We are in such a quick-fix industry and this kind of thing is a really inconvenient truth, so I get why people push it away. Why listen to this idiot if the vet/bodyworker/instructor are telling you there’s nothing wrong and to crack on? I get it, but just because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t make it right, and maybe we should reflect a little on why the majority of horses are “broken” in some way by the age of 10. Isn’t it great that there might be something we can do to help our horses?

This is a huge reason why I don’t take horses in on training livery, I find it much more useful for the horse to stay at home, in their comfortable environment and work away slowly with all the time they need. I do not envy people who’s career depends on taking horses in for a few weeks training or selling them on, it is not a business model that works very easily when you want to centre the horse.

I find myself scrolling the sales ads and just seeing horse after horse with sunken necks and backs out jumping and doing dressage describing how great and willing they are, and they will be bought by a new owner and this will continue until they start to break down, as these horses pass 5 stage vettings all the time. I know because I meet them a few months down the line. We have to start looking at things differently if we want our horses to last. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

LS Horsemanship

05/05/2025

05/05/2025

04/05/2025

03/05/2025

02/05/2025

02/05/2025

01/05/2025

30/04/2025

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25/04/2025

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