Amaethon Welsh Sport Horses & Ponies

27/11/2025

Ophelia is 6 weeks old and loves to practise her ballet moves

27/11/2025

Happy 4 th Birthday to Guilietta. She had developed into an incredibly,brave,sweet and generous mare. We are currently preparing her for backing and she will be for sale.

18/11/2025

Everything you ever were told about the outside hind being the first leg to strike off being blown out of the water. 😂 A google search will tell you it’s the outside hind and every coach I’ve ever had has told me the same and it is what I was taught as a coach too.

🧠🐎 Biomechanics Post – Follow-Up to the Canter Strike-Off Discussion

Wow — my last post about how horses actually strike off into canter created a huge amount of discussion (and a lot of sharing!). I love seeing riders curious about biomechanics, because once you understand how a horse truly moves, training suddenly becomes so much clearer.

So here’s a little follow-up… backed, this time, by a photo from a scientific journal and an article written by some of the world’s top researchers in gait kinematics. 📚🔬

Here’s the key point:

👉 It makes complete evolutionary sense that horses initiate movement with a front foot.

They’re prey animals designed to move themselves away from danger — reaching forward with a front limb and then following with the opposite hind.

That diagonal pattern is wired directly into their central pattern generators (CPGs), the neural networks in their spinal cord that organise movement.

Horses are, fundamentally, front-leg-driven animals.
Yes, as riders we work to engage the hindquarters and improve balance…

But when you look at the natural initiation of movement —
• Halt → Walk
• Walk → Trot
• Trot → Canter
• Canter → Gallop
— the first limb that leaves the ground is consistently a front foot.

The research article I’m sharing today includes an incredible visual of a horse striking off from trot to canter, and you can clearly see that front limb beginning the transition.

If you love understanding the “why” behind what we feel in the saddle — and why things like strike-offs can go right… or wrong — this kind of biomechanics knowledge changes everything.
It certainly did for me.

Happy reading!
👇📖 Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S094420061300055X

18/11/2025

Good morning faces

14/11/2025

Sometimes it feels like fighting windmills…
During my recent clinic tour in Australia, I talked a lot about horse welfare and posture. Here I was teaching correct bend, soft aids, partnership and correct dressage exercises. And then I opened my newsfeed and saw these dreadful images of the Melbourne Cup winner bleeding from the mouth.

It almost seems like whatever we “little people” do, whatever science says, whatever better system of training we come up with - it’s being ignored by the sport to a large degree. I’m well aware that there a lots of people who try to make money with horses and are still kind and ethical. But sometimes the discrepancy of what I try to teach, what I know many others are teaching as well, and these horrific videos and images of abuse just seem to make me numb and deeply, deeply sad.

In what universe is it ok to have a horse bleeding? Where there is blood, there is pain. Blood means damaged tissue.

Worst of all is the comment section. While most people are outraged, there are the voices who say “If you have never worked in the industry, you don’t get to have a say.” Or “well he just bit his tongue, no big deal, it happens.”

In 35 years or riding horses, I never got a horse to bleed. Anywhere. Not in the mouth, not from spurs. And I also haven’t always been the gentle horsewoman I am today.

If you find that these things are just part of the sport, then what does that say about your attitude towards horses? That anything goes as long as the outcome is what you wanted? How can you claim to love horses and that sport horses are treated like kings and queens, and at the same time not see the abuse happening? Clearly, horses would have a quite different understanding of what being treated in the best possible way means…

I also feel a bit angry because these recurring images of horses bleeding, having blue tongues, being beaten and rollkured have the potential to ruin the work with horses for all of us. Because if the official organisations won’t drive the change for better horse welfare, politics will do that. And then we all end up with rules that might make our jobs difficult to impossible. I seriously don’t understand why the sport can’t be better regulated and regulations really enforced! Sure, sometimes we see someone being “punished”, but not much seems to happen other than a one year ban. People who publicly beat the cr*p out of horses are still allowed to work with them!

When I meet horses these days, it doesn’t make me proud to be human and I almost feel like I have to apologise in the name of all humans. I’m so sorry that we just can’t seem to value connection and welfare over money and influence.

And yet, I will continue to teach and drive change, one horse and persona at a time. What else can I do.

Photo by Magda Senderowska

14/11/2025

Guilietta went for a venture today with her big Bro. First time down the road. She was the one marching out In front keen to check out the sights.

12/11/2025

What does this mean? Iago has a new friend in his paddock. The working kids paddock. It’s time Guilietta (4 next month) to be a big horse. She’s so sweet and easy. Confident and like all mares so switched on and just wanting to please. Today was her second long reining session which she took in her stride. We will continue to build on this and hopefully all going well she will get backed in another month. Then she will be avail for sale.

05/11/2025

Love this

If you only ever reward your horse at the end of the session, your horse may spend the whole session hoping for it to end.

If you reward your horse during the session, your horse may not want the session to end.

Think how powerful that is. 🤯

31/10/2025

Ophelia 7 weeks Old

19/10/2025

19/10/2025

I agree test balance and self carriage not incorrect extravagant movement

Classical Training: So Far Left We Have Gone Right

11/10/2025

How weird. I have never heard of anyone teaching inside leg for canter strike off. I was taught inside leg is the impulsion and outside leg direction so outside leg back and inside on

A topic of debate recently on dressage forums is the aid to canter, specifically if it is inside or outside leg that asks the horse to go to canter. I have witnessed it at dressage clinics, where the rider explains that they use the inside leg to ask for canter, and the instructor has to adjust the....