Taking a reactive, anxious and over stimulated pony to a state of calm and emotional regulation using the ‘invisible box exercise’.
👏🏼 Please 👏🏼 stop 👏🏼 trying 👏🏼 to 👏🏼 ride 👏🏼 and 👏🏼 train 👏🏼 horses 👏🏼 whilst 👏🏼 they 👏🏼 are 👏🏼 in 👏🏼 a state 👏🏼 of 👏🏼 fight 👏🏼 or 👏🏼 flight 👏🏼.
It’s dangerous and can lead to accidents that could have been avoided!
If you were in a genuine state of fear, due to thinking you were about to be attacked, would you be willing to think about and answer a complicated mathematical question being asked by the person next to you?
This is exactly what it is like when we try to ride horses whose nervous systems are in a chronic state of fight or flight/nervous system dis regulation.
Star here was sent to me because her little rider had lost confidence after star spooking and then bucking her off multiple times..
With a pony whose nervous system was so on edge and startled by the smallest of things before a rider even got on, it’s no surprise that these things were happening!
Using the ‘invisible box’ exercise I show in the video, I take Star from a state of fight or flight, to a state of calm groundedness. Bringing her nervous system from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic..
Please don’t sleep on this exercise! I would say this has been one of the most transformational exercises I’ve used on anxiety riddled, worried types…
You cannot force ‘relaxation’ or ‘focus’ onto a horse… You have to allow them to take the time it takes to process their emotions, before they can arrive to that place…
Once their mind arrives to that place, their body will soon follow… From this place they will feel safe and calm enough to actually hear other questions you may want to ask from them in training… They will be less reactive and they will work in a more relaxed frame without requiring pressure from the bit in order to put them into position…
This video shows the 1 hour and 1/2 process I went through to get Star to this point… The
Ruby Rose: SOLD
Ruby Rose has broken some hearts this week 💔 Dealing with the interest after her advert went up practically turned into a full time job for me 🙈 I’m so happy to say she has found the wonderful, forever home that she so deserved! 😇
Best of luck to her new owners! I look forwards to following their journey.
Need help finding your horse/pony a good home? Want the hassle taken out of the selling process? Unsure on how to market your horse to showcase him/her at their very best? Get in touch! I believe any horse can be someone’s dream horse if they are prepared and marketed well!
I will only ever take in 1 horse at a time, so a lot of my time and energy can personally be put into ensuring the horse/pony is well prepared for viewings and their new home prior to being advertised.
A process to help with bridling difficulties… To make bridling a positive experience by making the problem into a game…
Bridling (with a bit) in itself is such a delicate process… Trying to encourage a horse to willingly take a metal, foreign object in their sensitive mouth is a process which can very easily be turned into an unpleasant experience and lead to long term problems around bridling…
As I found with Joey, (being 16.2hh and with me being 5ft2) it was very easy for him to throw his head up and out of my reach just at the crucial moment I lifted the bit into his mouth, which then resulted in the bit clanging on his teeth, quickly reinforcing the pattern that in order to avoid such a discomfort, he needed to throw his head in the air.
A behaviour you see all too often.. Yes my mum who is taller than me could manage to put the bridle on him, with his head stuck in the air… Yes I could manage to bridle him with his head stuck in the air if I used a stool… Yes that could’ve been done in less than 1 minute… But I didn’t want a horse who required any sort of man handling to get a bridle on… I didn’t want every ride starting off with tension due to Joey hollowing his back and raising his head to avoid having the bridle on… I wanted him to feel differently about the process…
Which is why I turned what could’ve been a battle into more of a game… Teaching him to seek the bit out, instead of me seeking him with the bit… That in him doing so can be kind of fun? This started off as a longer process, giving him a treat for simply making contact with the bit for a moment with his muzzle… Then it progressed onto rewarding him for unclenching his jaw enough to mouth the bit… Then finally onto picking the right moment to hook the headpiece over his ears…
The process is still an ongoing one, but so far I’m happy with the progress… It now takes less than 1 minute to successfully get the bridle on, with less tension and more w
Using desensitisation to help a pony overcome fear of the saddle after a traumatic saddle slip incident (which was due to a loose girth). In this video I show two different approaches to desensitization. With the first clip I show how it should NOT be done and with the second part I show a better way to go about desensitizing a horse (in sciency terms it is known as Cat-H/ systemic desensitization).
If you try to understand this process/just really tune into your own intuition, you will have a wonderful tool you can use to truly solve all kinds of behavioral problems. For horses who are difficult to catch, horses who are scared of clippers, horses who are difficult to load, jumping horses who refuse fillers due to fear, basically horses who have any kind of fear over anything I would go through a similar process to this..
So a little bit of background before we get into it: Henry is a rescue 4 year old Cob. Henry was always the chilled/calm type until a traumatic incident last year involving a saddle slip with his young rider. Since this incident Henry has become a whole lot more reactive. He will tolerate the saddle going on, but in his owners words “Henry arches his back up like a cat in anticipation of something terrible happening.” When ridden he is said to do the same thing, in what seems like random moments. He will sometimes shoot forwards a few strides, before freezing and arching his back up like a cat. For this reason his young rider has understandably lost confidence in riding him.
My first question that came to mind, was can Henry be tacked up in the stable without needing to be tied up and without showing any physical signs of anxiety/fear. What can’t be done without a horse tied up, should never be attempted with a horse tied up. We need to find out the origin of his fear.. We need to unravel all of the small trigger points that lead up to getting the bigger reaction under saddle.. With Henry I found his anxiety levels began to rise the momen
This wild horse photographer, Susan (find her on IG @swgoudge) is living one of my dreams and has quickly become one of my favourite accounts to follow due to videos like this…
Her account gives great insight into the complex social networks of wild horses, their day to day activity and all of the running, fighting and loving that takes place when they are truly left alone to do what horses were put here to do… Such videos can bring me a sense of sadness in a number of ways… Sad for our domesticated horses, as no matter how hard we try, domesticated life for the majority of horses will never be able to fulfil and stimulate a horses mind and body in the ways they truly, intrinsically desire and need…
We can buy all of the enrichment balls in the world to hang in a horses stable, but at the end of the day how can hanging a few balls, the standard 1 hours ridden exercise and few hours of turnout (if the horse is lucky) ever compare to this?
We believe we are doing horses a favour by providing them with the lives we do… But at what cost? These horses in the video are ones who wouldn’t experience the months upon months of boredom/stress it takes to develop stable vices such as weaving and windsucking… Horses who don’t know what it feels like to have their autonomy taken away… Horses who can make decisions for themselves and their own well-being… Horses who don’t know the frustrations and pain of being constantly misunderstood (and usually punished for that) in order to meet our own human agendas in our human worlds.. The herd speak a language every one of them is familiar with…
These horses don’t know what it feels like to have their life long connections broken and taken away due to being sold/moving stables… Separation anxiety… What’s that? I wonder how many of these horses colic? How many of them have gastric ulcers? How many of them have any neurotic tendencies compared to our domesticated ones? I predict not many, if not 0. I
A compilation of ‘best bits’ from the horses and dogs play day in the snow… I find it just fascinating to watch the way horses play with each other.. That bitey thing Smurf and Joey keep doing, where they try to bite the backs of each others knees for what seems like an attempt to get the other one to fall over… Can anyone shed any light on what that’s all about? 🤣 I’ve only ever witnessed it between geldings.
Have you ever met a cat this brazen around horses before? 🤣
A compilation of ‘best bits’ from our stable cat ‘Ellie’… I still find it funny how out of all of our moggies and feral cats who’ve found their way to us (who obviously now reside in the house and wouldn’t dream of getting their paws muddy), that it is in fact the Siamese X Snowshoe who decides she would rather spend her time down the stables!
Ellie’s boldness around horses hasn’t always worked out well for her though.. She unfortunately got a nasty shock when she decided to jump up on the back of my youngster Joey a few years back (who at the time was an unbacked 3 year old).. From that day onwards let’s just say she showed a little more discernment in the horses she chose to ride 🙈
Leg yielding mindfully to improve inside hind leg engagement in order to strengthen a weak hind end and encourage healthier movement patterns. I also want to talk about why it is imperative to aim for correctness in form and movement BEFORE you add power/speed.
So for anyone who hasn’t been following Logan’s story, he came to me over a week ago with difficulties around going into canter smoothly and sustaining the canter. After having time to observe him, it was evident that these difficulties were most likely down to a weak hind end, poor posture (being hollow through the back, unable to engage the core, loading greater weight onto one shoulder) and therefore poor movement patterns..
Why are these things such a problem to the canter? The canter gait has a moment of suspension where a single hind leg will be responsible for carrying the entire weight of the Horse. A lack of strength in this area will lead to a horse putting more weight on the forehand, resulting in a loss of energy and balance through the front which makes the horse fall back to trot. A hollow back and uneven weight distribution through the shoulders will create blockages and brace in the body effecting a horses balance and thoroughness into, out of and in between transitions. These blockages can sometimes result in a horse who bucks/humps going into the canter. Which is what was also happening in Logan’s case.
The benefits of using leg yield as a tool?
✅ We can start to unblock the blockages I spoke of.
✅  We can start to activate and strengthen hind end muscles used for the canter.
✅ We improve lateral suppleness (flexion through the rib cage), which ensures a horse remains soft through muscle development.
✅The increased flexibility through the horses body also increases relaxation.
✅ The inside hind leg engagement created engages the abdominal muscles and is key to beautiful and healthy movement in all paces.
I can’t stress enough with this exercise, the impor
A simple but fantastic proprioception/straightening/hind end strengthening exercise to bring awareness to foot placement and to encourage a horse to take even steps. Keeping it slow, steady and mindful really allows the horse time to think about each individual foot.. Please don’t underestimate the difficulty of this exercise… This took me over 1/2 hour to achieve walking forwards and backwards with each of Logan’s hooves staying either side of the pole!
I decided to use this as an exercise for Logan, as I noticed conformation wise he is very close behind which results in plaiting. By asking him to walk with a simple pole in between his legs, when he loses straightness or gets too close behind, he feels the pole on whichever foot has deviated from the direction of travel, which then encourages him to either straighten out, or to not move quite so close. Just a tip: if you can, use wooden poles for this exercise, as the lighter plastic ones tend to move around much easier when knocked/stepped on, which might upset the horse as well as defeating the point of this being a proprioception exercise altogether!
I also used this exercise to teach a straighter rein back once the poles are taken away. I usually use rein back as a tool to instill clear boundaries with the ‘pushy’ or ‘anxious’ types. But in this context the rein back is a wonderful rehabilitative exercise for horses with weak hind ends. It It helps to engage their core and lower their croup, encouraging them to place more weight on their hind legs- but it can only have such effects if the horse is straight and taking even steps! Hence why I practiced the pole between the leg exercise before the rein back with no pole as a guide.
Link to part 2 of hind end strengthening:
https://fb.watch/h6rggQUFxZ/
Using ingredients from Liberty work and positive reinforcement to make loose jumping a more positive experience for Joey.
What you see a lot when someone loose jumps a horse is a person chasing the horse into the grid at a fair speed, driving the horse out of the grid to continue down the long side and then repeating the cycle over… This usually results in a horse who gets faster and faster, a horse who gets increasingly wound up and is then jumping out of fear… The horse learns to associate the jumps in front of them with rushing, tension and great fear… It can look like absolute chaos and sometimes an accident waiting to happen… Also, how can we expect a horse who was free jumped in this manner to then not rush and come to the jump in an even rhythm when under saddle?
There is another way…
To avoid all of the above and have a horse who has a more positive association to jumping when under saddle, I make sure to do the following:
🔹 Focus on the relationship with your horse on the ground first. Before loose schooling through the grid, I made sure I could stop Joey, send him away and recall him at Liberty.
🔹 Make sure you can send your horse through the grid (just with poles on the ground) at walk, then trot at a calm tempo, before you draw them back towards you at the end of the grid.
🔹 Make sure the distances between the jumps are correct. I find it helpful to start the grid with a trot distance to discourage rushing.
A comparison of Ruby’s (unhealthy) way of moving on the lunge at the beginning of week 1, compared to a more healthier way of moving in week 2.
See if you can notice the changes that are starting to show..
This kind of relaxation and ability to ‘let go’ would not have been possible with the use of any gadgets or side reins on the lunge. These changes are a result of establishing an understanding of basic yields on the ground at a close proximity first, so It was then possible to influence Ruby’s straightness on the lunge at a further distance. Once she became aligned in her body, relaxation was soon able to follow.
Whenever I look at a horse moving without a rider, I always think to myself does that look like he/she would feel comfortable to ride without me having to make too many adjustments? If the answer is no, more groundwork is needed… If the horse can’t move in a healthy way without someone on top, how on earth will they be able to do it with the burden of someone on top?
Ruby is just starting to reach the point where I think she could feel okay under saddle..
In an ideal world i would probably continue at least for another month with the groundwork (there is never such thing as too much groundwork) but in a realistic world where clients money is not infinite, some compromises have to be made and I have to try to find a way of meeting both the horse and the owner somewhere in the middle..
This moment right here is one of the things I’ve been working towards achieving with Ruby over the last week.. It may not look like much, or seem exciting, but please never underestimate the power in teaching a true stand still to a horse with anxiety, impatience or bolshiness problems. Also try not to underestimate the difficulty and time needed to properly teach this to the types I’d just mentioned.
When I ask someone whether their horse knows how to standstill most of the time I am met with a confident ‘yes’. To which I later might observe how the handler has to have a constant tension in the lead rope/reins (if in the saddle)… How the horse keeps pushing them out of the way, edging towards them and moving the handlers feet… Before you know it the horse is running rings around the handler (literally) and is in a continual angsty, fidgety state, unable to find the ‘switch off’ button.
With a horse that has truly been taught to standstill, no matter where you are, no matter what exercise you were doing you would be able to bring them back to this grounded place. You would be able to give them your standstill cue (in Ruby’s case it’s grounding my own body so it’s completely still and saying the word “Whoah”), you would then be able to keep slack in the lunge line (if you are on the ground), or go to the buckle end of your reins (if you are in the saddle) and have the horse to be completely at ease, mind and body, staying exactly where you leave them… You could then take a few steps backwards, sidewards, have a conversation with a friend and know your horse is grounded enough to stay exactly in the spot you left them.
Without this ingredient, trying to do anything else with an anxious/impatient type is like trying to bake a cake with no flour.. This ingredient is the gateway to finding ease and relaxation within all other movements for the anxious, tense ones… It’s the ingredient to establishing clear boundaries for the bolshy one
Meet Ruby the rescue part trotter. This footage is from Ruby’s second day with me. She has an anxious nature which results in an unbalanced mind and body, making her next move sometimes unpredictable and dangerous. The first thing I like to do with any horse, no matter what the problem or the training issue is to let them loose in the school (this is after walking them in hand up to the mirrors, so they realise they cannot run through them!).
What this allows you to do is to observe the horses true nature… Observe where their mind is at, to observe how they move naturally with no interference.. Usually I’ll put on some music/listen to a podcast whilst sitting in the corner so I’m not tempted into doing anything else other than observing..
It’s a shame that maybe due to fears of the horse injuring itself, fears of the horse damaging the surface or rules of the particular yard someone is stabled at, many are stripped of this opportunity to observe how their horse behaves when he/she is free of any restraints.
There are many things observing a horses true nature can tell you, a few being:
A horse that is totally non reactive, disinterested in their surroundings and unwilling to engage with anything could indicate a shut down personality.
A horse like Ruby who is highly anxious and constantly on edge is chaotic in her mind and therefore chaotic in the patterns her body makes too. She is unable to self regulate her emotions, unable to find a grounded place to relax. To get on a horse like this and to expect them to listen to our half halts and to be interested in responding to things like inside flexion cues and all the other things you might want is pure insanity. The horse is fearing for her life at times, so responding to such requests whilst in this state is inane to her.
To successfully move on and help a horse like this, you need to find a way of disrupting their negative thought spiral and bring their mind back to you. To do this is to do wha
Playing with some Liberty circles with Joey ✨ I originally had the idea to give this a try about a year and 1/2 ago, after some unsuccessful attempts in trying to lunge him as a 3 year old. Every so often he would pull away and ended up hurtling around the school, lunge line trailing, threatening to jump out at every turn.. So I thought why not make this into a game and give him reasons to want to stay close? Now he has little reason to pull away, lunging both without and with a line is no problem..
I’m now able to use these Liberty circles as tool for something completely different.. A tool to work on his canter balance. Previously, with me on top, cantering even a 20m circle was not something that come easy to Joey… Allowing him to find his own balance on the ground first, with no influence from me on top, has been so helpful in making that next step towards finding better balance under saddle.
“𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐲 𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞? 𝐈 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐜𝐤…”
This is a fairly common belief held by equestrians who “only want to hack.” I could list endless reasons as to why dressage training is not just beneficial, but essential to those who are wanting a comfortable and safe ride as well as long term soundness from their mounts. Hopefully Joeys story will change this way of thinking for a few happy hackers out there…
Joey (the grey cob in the video) was brought to me 4 weeks ago with a problem of napping out hacking. His owner explained that he had developed this clever trick where he would just drop his shoulder and keep on running through the shoulder (as demonstrated in the first part of the video) taking the owners mum and loan into driveways and whatever boundary happened to be in his way.. Joey was only ever hacked in the company of other horses, so it didn’t matter whether or not he had the moral support of others!
This was an incredibly dangerous pattern to keep falling into, especially given that the main part of Joey’s hacks involved taking him onto busy main roads.. The napping/spinning/shoulder drop also started to occur in the arena too.. It seemed to be his go to move now whenever he felt anxious or insecure about something.
So how did I go about trying to resolve such a problem? First of all, before coming up with a plan to resolve it, I had to try and understand it… After taking Joey out for a couple of hacks and having time to observe him over a week, I learned that outside of riding, Joey suffered from separation anxiety. I learned that he was an extremely bendy horse who would overbend to the inside when ridden through circles, resulting in him falling through the shoulder and loading most of his weight onto the outside one. He had very little awar
𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐣𝐮𝐦𝐩 (𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐲) 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟐.
Make sure to turn 🔈up.
Link to part 1: https://fb.watch/dWT2PR3hqE/
A breakdown of what this video instalment includes:
- How to transition the ground work to under saddle.
- How to progress onto riding around a full course of fillers at multiple venues.
- How to deal with unexpected refusals.
The video pretty much explains most things as you watch so I won’t go into too much detail about the overall content. A few key ideas to takeaway are:
I made small 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 changes each time I took Vex out. I started off going into an arena having to take him up to and touch 80% of the jumps in there before jumping them and rewarding him every time he did. Over time I started taking him up to less and less jumps until he was confident enough to jump anything without needing to touch it. Over time I started 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 rewarding him for for touching the jumps until I phased the treats out completely.
What I am going to talk further about here will answer a pressing question some of you may have on your mind after watching the video. What if I told you in some cases, 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑔 a horse to refuse a jump can actually be 𝘣𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 to their progress in the long run? No hear me out before you jump on me!
For a green/young horse or in Vex’s case an anxious/fearful horse, allowing them to slow down or even come to a complete stop in front of a jump allows the horse to systemically process what is being asked instead of being rushed into jumping something that scares them.
Still no
Richie, Richie… So a little bit of pocket sized drama for your timeline today 😝 Please watch the full video to understand how this behaviour was changed in one session. Watch until the very end to see a very cute surprise of what go’s on behind the scenes.
So Richie came to me with a problem of being naughty and difficult on the lunge. The behaviours he was displaying were undesirable to say the least.. However, it is important if we are to get to the true cause, we are able to view these behaviours as something else.. I saw a pony who was feeling insecure, one who felt confused at what was being asked and one who felt the need to become defensive as a way of protecting himself.
To find solutions I really had to ask myself why he was feeling these emotions. After doing the following:
- Establishing clear boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not.
- Establishing a line of communication that was consistent and predictable.
- Noticing what made him feel defensive (being sent out onto a circle with a whip) and therefore not doing this until trust and confidence was built.
The emotions he once felt slowly started to fade and were replaced with more positive ones.. As a result of this, the undesirable behaviours also started to fade and were replaced with more desirable ones. You see it was never necessary to punish him for the undesirable behaviour, all I did was ignore it and focus on how I could redirect it into something more positive..
And that’s why we call him the remote controlled pony 😝 Some voice training with Henry today (no lunge whip, no equipment needed). I believe for any pony/horse who may be used to teach younger, more inexperienced riders or one who may be used for lunge lessons, this sort of work is essential. Having a pony who is in tune with your voice aids, means even if the rider on top gets it wrong, you can still be in control of the ponies response from the other side of the school. Henry has given many nervous young riders heaps of confidence and made them feel like Charlotte Dujardin by simply doing what they ask and when they ask it…
I think the downfall for many kids starting out is being taught on ponies who have unfortunately not been kept in tune by the more experienced rider.. I’d maybe even go as far as saying some may never have been taught how to respond correctly to a riders aids in the first place… So the new riders have a few options: learn to be harsh with their aids to get a response, become frustrated and think the pony not doing as they asked is a reflection of their ability, or they lose confidence and don’t want to ride altogether…
P.s just added some photos to the comments for anyone interested in seeing Henry in his glory years… My mum bought him when I was 11 as a companion pony for £500. He had earned the nickname ‘psycho’ from previous livery yards he was kept at and was always ridden in a globe pelham as he was a known bolter. I fell off of him pretty much every time I rode him as a kid… Most likely down to my own naivety… But somehow he ended up turning into every child’s dream pony, turning his hoof to absolutely anything, earning the new name ‘golden hooves’.
