LS Horsemanship

02/04/2025

This looks so good for anyone looking for a kind, supportive summer camp with their horse 😎

Summer Camp in Chelmsford, Essex! ☀️

Treat yourself and your horse to a holiday! You will be surrounded by like-minded people in a supportive, no-pressure environment. It’s all about confidence building for horses and humans, making lasting memories with your horses and HAVING FUN.

You can spend all your time on the ground (unridden horses welcome) or you can do a mixture of groundwork and ridden work - it’s up to you. The camp will be very flexible with options to fit everyone.

The facility has a large indoor arena, a minimus cross country course, hacking available and a gallop track. All goals big or small will be supported and celebrated.

Have a go at liberty, trick-training, big and small obstacles, minimus cross country jumps (on the ground or ridden) and ride around the gallop track at any pace.

Limited to 10 spaces. Most activities will be done in groups of 5 to ensure everyone gets enough support. Liberty or trick training sessions will be 1:1 and you can watch and learn from each other.

Price includes all food except Saturday night where we will order in pizza. Horses have stabling and can be hand-grazed around the venue and will be kept busy with sessions during the day so hopefully won’t spend too much time in there!

Camp in your lorry or trailer or bring a tent! Lucy and Millie will be staying on site. There are toilet and shower facilities and a club house we can use for activities and talks.

Register your interest by commenting and messaging me your email address. More detailed information (including itinerary and booking form) will be sent out W/C 14th April.

£100 deposit required to secure space. Payment in instalments available.

Please tag or share with anyone who might be looking for a camp like this! 🥕

Equus with Millie - Accredited Equine Behaviourist and myself hope to see you there x

02/04/2025

Short notice availability 🐴

This Saturday 5th Northumberland/Tyne and Wear area, could possibly do Durham on the way up/down.

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

Behaviour/ground work/ridden work/postural rehab

Please see my page/website for further information.

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

28/03/2025

How do you come across to your horse? 🐴

There is a lot of focus on obedience in training horses and not much discussion around how they feel about it. Many training videos use escalating pressure that the horse is finding scary or horrible with compliance being the only goal. There is more nuance to training than whether you can get a horse to “do the thing” or not.

A horse that is standing still because if he doesn’t he gets yanked on or has a flag flapped in his face is having a very different emotional experience to a horse that is standing still because he feels comfortable doing so. How you get the result matters.

I used to be very strict when training my horse, I did a lot of natural horsemanship moving his feet and he was extremely obedient. On the surface he seemed calm and willing, I wasn’t aware how shut down he was and how unpleasant he found me to be around. If he didn’t do as I asked I would get on his case, so he just always did as I asked regardless of how he felt about it.

As I’ve moved over into more ethical training, our relationship has completely changed and I realised how much the other day. I was feeling stressed and he was a bit anxious and spooky. I unfairly tried to chase him forward with more pressure and he exploded for a few seconds then stopped and looked at me. He found it so offensive and it almost felt as if he was saying “you don’t treat me like this anymore, what the hell?” It made me realise just how shut down I had made him in the past.

It made me pause, get over myself, stop making my stress his problem and go back to working on having him feel safe in that environment. He then did what I was asking him to do no problem with nice flow instead of braced against me and anxious.

What are your daily interactions like with your horse? Do you think they find you pleasant to be around?

Here are a few things I would recommend trying if you’d like your horse to feel better around you.

🐴 Be aware of how you’re handling the rope. I see so many people leading their horses around with constant pressure on the rope, we cannot expect our horses to be soft if we’re not even aware of what we’re communicating to them. Make sure there is always slack in your rope unless you are actively trying to communicate something to your horse.

🐴 Don’t use equipment that is designed to cause pain. When our horse only behaves when we use pressure halters, chains and chifneys they are only doing so to avoid pain. They are not feeling comfortable.

🐴 Let your horse look. If your horse wants to look at something allow them and look with them. Then when it feels appropriate quietly and smoothly ask them to bring their attention back to you. I see people being taught to yank on their horses for daring to not focus on them for a second. That’s a pretty horrible way to treat someone.

🐴 Do things your horse enjoys. Think about what your horse might choose to do left to his own devices and do them together. Hand grazing walks, treat scatters, no-pressure enrichment games and just hanging out together in the same space.

🐴 Don’t do things your horse doesn’t enjoy. This sounds so obvious and yet we are conditioned to ignore their communication every day. For example I come across so many horses who really do not like being touched or groomed, and yet we continue to do it every day because we’re “supposed” to. If your horse has an aversion to touch, keep touch to a minimum while we address the underlying issues there. Continuing to groom a horse who is telling you they hate it is just flooding and is not going to make them feel safe with you.

🐴 Set your horse up to succeed. This is probably the most important one. Learn to make better choices so we aren’t putting our horses into situations that are going to cause them distress in the first place.

It takes time but if we can become a consistently pleasant and predictable person to be around, our horses will start to feel safer and happier around us. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

27/03/2025

Backing young horses with Connie Colfox

25/03/2025

“Its just normal young horse behaviour” 🐴

I hear this phrase used so much to excuse a horse struggling or stop any further thinking into their behaviour. As long as you just keep plugging away the horse will turn 7 years old and suddenly be relaxed and balanced in their work and it is purely just a young horse “trying it on” because that’s what young horses do, right? Nope. We need to change the narrative that battling through is just something you have to do with a young horse.

I have recently started working with someone who has been really struggling with their young horse, they sought help from a highly recommended professional and have been doing the best they could with the advice they’ve been given. This horse is constantly snatching, tail swishing, hu***ng their back and grinding to a halt going into canter, stopping at tiny fences and doesn’t look sound behind. What is the advice being given? “You just need to keep her head up and ride forward, she’s taking the mick out of you, she knows how to get out of work, you’re ruining her by letting her get away with it.” This horse couldn’t shout any louder, their lovely owner has been trying to listen and that is the professional advice being given to someone seeking help.

What’s even sadder is none of the experienced people around this horse recognised any discomfort, it has been insinuated that the horse just needs a “better/stronger” rider and its somehow the rider’s fault, or they just need to hang in there and ride through this rough patch. If this is what has been normalised how can people learn to be better? I would’ve thought the same in the past, thought the rider was brave for kicking on and the horse just needed to learn. But once you learn how to recognise conflict behaviour you can’t unsee it.

When we’re asking horses to do things they’re physically not strong enough to do in a healthy way, its going to cause soreness, possible injury and stress. Imagine you were working out and you have been pushed to your limit, you’re really sore and fatigued but someone forced you to keep going and called you lazy and stubborn. Then they make you do it again the next day when you’re still so sore that you physically can’t keep good form. People are doing this to horses every day. Horses cannot speak but they can communicate, we need to learn to listen.

There is such a lack of education regarding healthy movement and posture that it is common for horses to have a terrible start. Horses out jumping courses when they can’t even reliably walk in a straight line? I used to think that as long as the horse lets a rider on their back then they’re strong enough to carry one. I see things through a very different lense now. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

If your horse is spending most of your session going around hollow, tense and crooked, then you are strengthening those movement patterns and training them to be hollow, tense and crooked. Adding more pressure and battling on through until the horse gives in is not the education you’re being told it is. We need to stay within what the horse is capable of doing and quit when they’re fatigued.

This topic hits very close to home for me. When my own horse Lenny was 6 (he’s now 20), he was explosive and would deck me seemingly without cause almost every time I rode him. I got a vet out who watched him trot up once and used the phrase “I think he’s just a normal bolshy 6yo who knows he can get away with it because you’re too soft”, 2 weeks later I got a different vet and he was actually bi-laterally lame in front and behind, had issues with his spine and had stomach ulcers.

Unfortunately in the equine industry many professionals seem to have no knowledge or education on equine behaviour at all. It baffles me. This is so damaging as well-meaning owners are being misled.

If we take the time to learn about behaviour and what healthy movement looks like, we can advocate for our own horses and enable ourselves to choose better professionals to help us. If we have patience, learn to regulate our own emotions and stop listening to people who think our horses are deliberately working against us we’ll all be better off and our horses will be too. 🐴

Here’s a photo of me trying to “work Lenny through it” on the vet’s advice, note the tail swishing, braced neck, falling in and strengthening nothing but his compensatory movement patterns and negative associations with training. ☹️

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

25/03/2025

Lenny enjoying bodywork with his godmother Yasmin Stuart Equine Physio this morning 🥰

Lenny used to not tolerate bodywork at all and would slam people into walls even with hay. By giving him autonomy during sessions and slowly building up trust he now actually seems to enjoy it. 🐴

24/03/2025

FREE LIVE SERIES

Backing Young Horses with Connie Colfox Young Horse Specialist. "How does your horse Really feel"

Thursday 27th March 7pm

Not sure whether to send your horse away or get help at home?
Want to know how to prepare your horse?
Feeling conflicted about which methods are kindest and safest?

Join me and Connie for a free live where we'll be discussing our own thoughts and experiences on backing horses and everything that entails.

I'm really looking forward to this one, please leave any questions you'd like answered in the comments and we'll hopefully see you there!

Sign up here: https://facebook.com/events/s/backing-young-horses-with-conn/1559965254688657/?

24/03/2025

Update 🐴

Doing a little update post as the algorithm gods have decided to stop showing my posts to a large percentage of you for some reason. If you enjoy reading my posts please drop a like or comment so they will hopefully show up for you again.

I have some really exciting guests for my free live series coming up over the next few weeks/months. This week's will be announced later today and its going to be a really good one that I think will be useful for a lot of people. 😎

My patreon page now has 99 of you subscribed which is very cool, so thank you for that and I have lots of videos planned to record to make it a useful resource. www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

As always I am still out teaching/consulting around the North East and Yorkshire every week. 🐴

I hope everyone is enjoying the start of spring, I've had a lovely morning in the sunshine hanging out with my boys and transferring Dan's winter coat into my eyeballs. 😅❤️

23/03/2025

I wrote this post in May 2022—almost three years ago—and here I am, still repeating the same message. On one hand, I’m proud to have remained steadfast in my mission. On the other, I sometimes feel like a voice calling into the void, wondering if anyone truly cares about the horse’s welfare.

The original post, May 12, 2022:

A little while back, I wrote a blog on the relationship between bodywork and horsemanship. This importance cannot be highlighted enough. No amount of bodywork can undo training styles that create physiological distress in the system or encourage poor biomechanics.

What this means is that I cannot help you if your horse is consistently being trained in inverted or imbalanced postures. It can become a vicious cycle of working on the physiological structures, only to have it all undone the same week by reverting back to old movement patterns—or worse yet, training that encourages poor biomechanics. How your horse feels about your training will be the ultimate determining factor in how well (or not) their body will be able to hold the work accomplished.

The horse always has the final say on whether what we are doing is working or not, and their physical body never lies. Sadly, I have treated many horses whose owners have reported “excellent” training, but when I assess their bodies, that is not the story that is found to be true.

This is why I stand firm in my values around assessment, as many of the measures—such as active and passive range of motion—leave less room for interpretation. The tissues will present, move, and feel as they do. A healthy, vital body will feel as such, and the same is true for dysfunction.

So, the next time you wonder why your horse seems to keep reverting back to old patterns or just never seems to get better, it’s time to take a look at the ways in which you and others are handling your horse—right down to basic haltering and leading. These skills set the foundation and tone for healthy, functional movement.

To see the full blog, head over to my website.

23/03/2025

Confidence around horses 🐴

Being nervous around horses and riding is very common, they are large animals that can potentially hurt us. The trap we fall into is believing there is something wrong with us and we just need to be braver and learn to push through and then all will be well.

I’ve got really good news for you, you do not need to be brave to be confident and safe around horses. What you do need to develop is patience, the ability to regulate your own emotions and good observational skills.

It is entirely logical to feel nervous around horses when you’ve had frightening experiences. There is nothing wrong with you. We are told very early on that “horses are unpredictable”. I disagree, horses are very predictable once you learn to read and understand behaviour. I see so many falls and explosions that would have been completely preventable if it had been recognised that the horse wasn’t feeling okay and the situation had been de-escalated before it got to that point.

There is a sort of stoic “just get on with it” mentality that seeps throughout the equine world which is rarely good for us or our horses. Working in opposition with a horse is very unlikely to build your confidence and is in fact more likely to result in scary behaviour.

I had been working with a client of mine to steadily build their confidence jumping, they were jumping grids and small, simple jumps within their ability happily and decided to try a fun clinic advertised for all levels. It was all going well until the trainer encouraged them to jump something bigger with a substantial filler underneath, my client repeatedly said they weren’t comfortable but they were pressured with “it’ll be fine! You’ll feel great once you do it!”. So they attempted the jump despite really not wanting to, the horse backed off because he could feel the tension, he almost stopped then jumped awkwardly getting yanked in the mouth then the rider slamming down on his back and falling off as they didn’t have the balance or strength to stay on an awkward jump like that yet.

They were both set up to fail by the trainer’s misjudgement and their confidence took a huge knock, it just shouldn’t have happened, yet we’re pushed into scenarios like this all the time and left feeling like we’re just not good enough.

It can be extremely hard to navigate when you’re feeling so anxious and everyone has their well-meaning advice. I would recommend to find someone to help you who doesn’t make you feel scared, the trust will be built over time if they keep setting you and your horse up to succeed and then they will be able to push you gently when its appropriate. Have a look at their own horses/other clients and see if things seem quiet and relaxed, or is there a lot of conflict and stress going on?

The industry at large is still terrible at reading behaviour and recognising stress in horses, training and riding should not feel scary to you or your horse.

I talk often about breaking things down into the smallest steps when training our horses, we need to do the same for ourselves. That 90cm show jumping course or that 2 hour solo hack stop looking so out of reach when we break things down enough and just focus on enjoying the journey.

While these things may help with your feelings of anxiety, no amount of breathing exercises, herbal remedies or therapy can replace developing a good understanding of equine behaviour so you aren’t setting yourself up to fail in the first place. Horses can be enjoyable for everyone and they can enjoy being with us too. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

22/03/2025

Setting horses up to fail 🐴

I remember taking a pony to a gridwork lesson when I was a teenager, the pony came into the arena eyes on stalks and very anxious. I was told to trot him down a line of poles that was going to be built into the grid. He tentatively wobbled through with absolutely no rhythm while spooking at everything. I was told to use more leg. We came round once more and he did the same, then they immediately put a jump up at the end.

I remember my shy, anxious self expressing my concern that the pony wasn’t settled enough to do that yet and could we just do the poles a few more times. I was told no and that I just needed to kick on and make him go. The pony slammed the breaks on a few feet before the first pole and became more and more stressed while I was pressured into “making him go” while I kept asking if they could just put the poles back on the floor so I could walk him through. Eventually I got off and the instructor got on and smacked the pony until he went over.

I was left feeling embarrassed, ashamed and not good enough while also feeling really uncomfortable with how the pony was treated. I remember feeling so conflicted as it didn’t feel right in my gut but I was being told I was the problem by these people everyone told me knew best.

If I had just been allowed to walk/trot the pony down the poles as many times as necessary until he was comfortable and then built up to jumping, we’d both have had a confidence building and positive experience. I see horses (and people) set up to fail like this all the time and we are left feeling like we’re the problem.

You do not need to be brave or harsh to train horses, if you need to be brave or harsh then that training is not going to be a positive experience for the horse.

If your horse is doesn’t like hacking alone, instead of kicking and fighting while he tries to spin and rear, you could build up from short in hand walks to build confidence and be prepared to get off and lead when he needs you to.

If your horse doesn’t like one corner of the arena, instead of trying to force him into it while he resists, you could allow him to go as close as he is comfortable and let him slowly build confidence without making a big deal out of it.

If your horse doesn’t like the hose pipe, instead of keeping the water on him while he tries to get away and only stopping when he stops, we can use positive reinforcement and small, incremental steps to get him used to it without sending him into a panic.

The best training means you don’t have to “get into it” with your horse at all. Training should never feel like a battle if we want to have horses who feel safe around us. 🐴

Photo of a young Dan back in our jumping days.

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

21/03/2025

The warm weather has been such a relief the last few days, I love being able to leave their rugs off overnight and start on some spring improvements to the track.🌻

Weekend of drizzle now I think but hopefully it won’t bring too much mud back with it. 😬☔️

Little video hanging out with Dan while he does his surveillance.

21/03/2025

Empathy 🐴

Last week I somehow strained my neck and I was unable to turn my head without pain. I couldn’t sleep except in one specific position due to the pain and by the end of each day it would go into spasm just from having to carry my head around without support.

As I very carefully and tentatively worked through my physio exercises, I couldn’t help but think about horses and how much we as an industry oversimplify pain and discomfort.

I’m pretty sure if you had imaged my neck last week it would’ve looked fine, you could poke and prod at my neck and it wouldn’t hurt and, while it caused me pain to do so, I still had a normal range of motion. You couldn’t tell by looking at me that I was in pain, luckily I could vocally moan about it to anyone who asked.

I know I’ve written about pain a lot in the past, and I will link some of those posts in the comments, but I don’t think we can talk about it enough.

There is still the general consensus that we can “rule out pain” by doing lameness work-ups and some imaging. Aside from the fact diagnostics in the equine industry are still extremely limited, why do we never think about the fact pain can be present even if we can’t see a cause? A pulled muscle is not going to show up on an x-ray, but it can still really hurt.

So many of the ways we are encouraged to train, ride and manage our horses are really hard on their bodies and likely to be causing soreness regularly. If we’re riding into a strong contact or our horse is bracing and pulling a lot, they’re going to be sore. Yet we’re taught to see everything as a disobedience or behavioural issue to stamp out. I think of all the times horses try to say no and communicate their discomfort and we call it “sass” or “attitude”.

I was so irritable when my neck was hurting, if someone had tried to make me move quickly or push through my exercises I would’ve bitten their head off.

I’m tired of watching stressed, uncomfortable horses being hassled into compliance and sold as success stories, when all that has happened is they’ve learnt no isn’t an answer. Being ridden around with a compressed neck is no good for any horse’s body and yet it is still the norm. Your after video is usually a horse being ridden over bent no longer “fighting” the contact. Success. I’m feeling so frustrated by it all, but maybe that’s just the remnants of the irritability from the pain in my neck….

Next time you feel your horse is being annoying and they just won’t “do the thing”, consider for a second they might not physically be able to do so without causing themselves discomfort and whether the thing you want them to do is appropriate at all. Our horses will be much better off if we can just have a little empathy.

So many of our horses are living in compromised bodies. Understand that if they’re saying no they have good reason. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

www.patreon.com/lshorsemanship

19/03/2025

Dan always wants to share breakfast with my dad 🐴❤️

17/03/2025

Spring Management with Kelly from Horse Weighbridge North East

17/03/2025

This is tonight at 7pm 😎 come join us

FREE LIVE SERIES 🐴

I'm starting up my free Facebook live series again just in time for spring.🌻

Join me and Kelly from Horse Weighbridge North East next Monday 17th March where we'll be talking all things spring management.

Spring can be a worrying time with changes in routine, laminitis and weight-gain worries and potential gut upsets. We'll be discussing common problems and giving you realistic ideas to solve them so you can keep your horses healthy and feeling happy.

Questions very welcome.

Sign up here: https://facebook.com/events/s/spring-management/1351446612652183/