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Candid Equitation

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Portugal
Odemira
Candid Equitation

Starting, behaviour rehabilitation, classical dressage, cattle work, trail and more Based in southern Portugal and accepts horses for internal training.
(18)

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25/05/2024

🦄BRANCO🦄

Branco is up to 12 minutes walking in the river against the tide and has started going out for walks in the forest again! In walk he's looking great, trot is really getting there and this week he finally walked downhill without dragging his toe🥳 Various friends of his take him walking though I think he likes it best with Titus (pictured). They have a similar walking speed and get along very well.

I don't love that I took so much care to pick a yearling with a great body and perfect character and put in 3 years of correct training only to end up rehabbing for a serious long term injury the year I'd have been thinking about putting the first rides on. But that's horses for you and I guess there's always next year. Just hope my other personal horse manages to last until then without maiming himself (I'm looking at you, Bruno!).

23/05/2024

Lunging: connection or conflict?

Lunging gets a bad rap. "It's hard on their joints", "it gets them fitter without teaching them anything"; both these statements are true- that is, if your version of lunging is letting your horse motorbike around on a 40 degree angle at whatever speed it likes, head twisted to the outside pulling against the rope and all the weight dumped on the inside foreleg; all while you hang on for dear life looking like a gibbon doing crossfit. This isn't lunging though, this is just a great traps and lats workout for you that also really helps cement any genetic predispositions to kissing spines and juvenile arthritis your horse might have.

For me, lunging is a way I can work a horse on a variety of shapes and alter any number of postural niggles without them having to contend with carrying me as well. I start this without a rope at all initially. I want the horse reading my body language and to understand the concept of moving its feet without disconnecting it's brain. Basically I want the horse to move off in any gait with one ear fixed on me and asking "what next?"- as opposed to moving off like a rocket while fixating on something over the fence, with no intention of ever paying attention to me. It's only once this is established that I'll attach a rope.

If I attach a rope to a horse who disconnects when asked to move, the rope becomes an anchor. It's something that prevents a horse from being where it would rather be- this is how habits like rearing and dragging the rope away from the handler develops. To a horse who knows how to remain mentally connected to me while moving however, the rope is not an anchor but a conductors baton. It's something to follow and look for because it helps guide them to the correct answers more clearly and therefore better feeling sooner. Things such as running off, rearing and leaning outwards/inwards simply don't happen because the horse is already attuned to me and understands what's expected of it.

Here's Hendricks showing a much healthier response to the rope after a couple of weeks improving his ability to remain connected while in motion.

21/05/2024

🏇Don't forget to play!

As kids, we're just happy to be around horses. To get really something is rarely the goal- certainly my childhood ambitions were to gallop around the park faster than my friends and to jump the highest possible with two of us, a stirrup each, linked arms over the top of the saddle! Leg yielding? Never heard of her!

As an adult, it can be all too easy to get stuck in a routine or a regime with our horses. This is particularly true when it's your job! I'm often working against time restraints and owners budgets, figuring which corners I can cut, what needs improvement and monitoring fitness- all while trying to keep the horses emotional health intact or even improved. I'm also a massive perfectionist, so remembering to have fun is definitely something I need reminding of quite regularly.

Phili is my assistant and is very much the sun to my moon- she has a smile for everyone and somehow never lost that childlike wonder at just being on a horse. She is the master of fun and last week she found a bow and arrow in her garage- here's a bunch of different horses' responses to our latest shenanigans!

16/05/2024

🦄BRANCO🦄

I've kept my (now 4yo! Wth!) Branco off my socials for months now as I simply didn't know what was happening with him.

The gelding surgery itself went without a hitch, but he got a bunch of ticks in there immediately afterwards and a raging infection, followed by maggots. He lost an unbelievable amount of weight and was running a temperature of 40.6 for nearly a week. He stopped eating and was quiet and listless, none of his usual dicking about, showing off and just general in your face ridiculousness he's famous for. He was clearly in tremendous pain especially combined with his lingering injury acquired back in December while I was under anaesthesia getting my breast reconstruction. He fell and did the splits on top of a concrete hay container. 8 weeks later, he was still severely lame in trot and dragging his toe in walk. X rays, nerve blocks and re**al ultrasounds were done without any results and so the only option left was to take him all the way to Madrid for an MRI. This is very expensive, so I decided to go the old fashioned route and hope Dr Green and Father Time would sort out whatever it was.

I struggle with simply waiting around though and wanted to DO something. Once he'd recovered from his gelding ordeal (took another 6 weeks for him to get his strenght back), our osteopath (Ruth Mayer) did a bio resonance on him and had a hunch he had likely ruptured a ligament somewhere in his hind end. We decided to treat him as though this was the case and the improvement has finally jump started again! Interval training via daily walking in the river at various tides has finally got him lifting his foot off the ground again and looking level in walk and even the trot is quickly leveling up!

I was worried for a while back there that I had an expensive lawn mower for the next 20 years, but the recent improvements are looking promising so🤞this upswing continues.

15/05/2024

"Take that barrel away, it's making my life HELL😭"

This was an actual sentence that came out of my mouth yesterday. The struggle😫 The frustration🤬 The DRAMA!💃

It was windy and cold with clouds passing over the sun, casting changing shadows. Elia was in heat and worried about a particular barrel in the 'scary' corner and it was the first day of my period. I was a hormonal idiot on another hormonal idiot and everything just needed to fu***ng die🤷‍♀️

Now don't get me wrong, I am very much in the camp of dealing with problems rather than trying to pussyfoot around them. If you spook at something, you're eventually gonna wear it. However, sometimes I just can't! Sometimes I'm not in the headspace to work the problem through.

I used to stubbornly push through things regardless of how I was feeling and it resulted in some of the worst rides of my life. By the grace of God I never got hurt, but I definitely dismounted out of frustration more than once, finished on a bad note and the horses didn't want to be caught the next day.

These days I'm less of a hot head and know that there's always tomorrow. So yesterday, instead of a fight about the barrel in the scary corner, I dismounted. I opened the arena gate, got back on and we went for a fun trail ride. We took a familiar route and cantered past the pond and popped a couple of logs.

Did Elia learn anything from it? Probably not. Did it keep our relationship intact and bank up some good memories? Yes! When I went to collect her today, she came straight to me and after some initial heebie jeebies, we conquered the offending barrel🥳

Sometimes things are f**ky and there's always tomorrow. Give up. Do something fun and leave the hard stuff for another day.

05/05/2024

Peeling the onion🧅
(Long post!)

When a new horse arrives for starting, my priority is to get to know them. When a defiant horse like Hendricks first arrives, my priority is safety. I cannot get to know a horse whose main objective is to jump out of the roundpen and in with the mares, then be impossible to lead without two gladiators with a dually halter.

This means that the first part of training for the defiant horse has a different timeline to the standard horse. You'd think I'd take it slower with a difficult one, but in actual fact it's the opposite. Reason being is that the majority of horses arrive with natural curiosity, the ability to communicate with subtle gestures and a fast realisation that I can read those gestures; I can build on this day by day, fostering this curiosity and never taking any backward steps. Honestly, they're usually just relieved to meet a human who makes sense, so they buy what I'm selling with little persuasion. I'm typically not on board until week two, but I'll never have to put the horse in the roundpen ever again after those initial two weeks.

For the defiant horse though, he arrives curious to the extreme- in everything other than humans. Playing with ropes, pawing the mounting block, polishing a particularly interesting spot on the ground- everything is more interesting than the person in front of him. He already knows humans don't notice small signals, so he escalates straight to the big guns of rearing, striking, biting and kicking to get his point across. He doesn't want to know what I have to say, because it's probably going to be too overwhelming for him anyway.

With any horse, I build rapport by getting lots of 'yes' answers. I get 'yes' answers by asking easy questions. By the time I get a "no", they've already said "yes" twenty times, it turned out well for them and so they quickly change their mind to "yes". Now, with a 'normal' horse, I can get those yes answers by doing the absolute basics. Sending off, turning in to face me, following the feel of the rope- they're are the ABCs, the 123s. We do them until they are solid, then move on to the next thing. The outside world is scary, but their trust that I would never overwhelm them means that they're willing to go on an adventure anyway.

For the defiant horse on the other hand, the outside world is wonderful! It's full of sights, smells, sparring opportunities- it's a damn sight more fun than being in a sandpit with some schmuck asking stupid questions. Other horses are also much better than humans- they say what they mean, mean what they say and do cool stuff like exploring the pastures and mutual grooming. Therefore, it is pointless me trying to get "yes" answers by asking what 'I' deem to be easy questions! To the defiant horse, the easy questions are not "follow the feel of this rope" or "draw to me when I step backwards". The easy questions are "If you're going to stare intently at that horse being lunged, can I sit on your back and we watch together?"; "If you want to follow your friend on the trail ride, can I come too?". "Wanna cool off with a swim?".
With the defiant horse, you don't make him do stuff, you do stuff with him. This is hard to do in a world where the majority of riders are "taking it slowly" (meaning they're putting off riding because they're sh****ng themselves🤷‍♀️). But it's necessary to get those all important yes answers so that the defiant horse doesn't see you coming and think "oh God, it's her and her rope twirling again🙄". Once you have those yes answers, you can then go back to the basics in the roundpen and start where you should've started to begin with!

This is exactly what I've done with Hendricks. He's a solid trail horse but his response to the rein was somewhat begrudging and the final straw was when he made a mock charge at me just because I asked him to canter a direction he didn't fancy on the lunge😅

This week, I essentially gave him a chance to do his first day over, reintroduce himself so to speak- the difference was stark. Gone was the impressive rearing, threatening to jump the gate and refusal to canter more than 3 strides- instead, he did a wall of death run around the roundpen, calling out to the other horses, causing them all to run around, which of course wound him up further🙈and yet, at no point did he threaten to jump out of the roundpen. After a couple of minutes running, he finally noticed me stood casually in the middle and drew in, snorting like a dragon. The other horses continued to run. Hendricks looked at them for a few more seconds, began to breathe rapidly then did something he'd never done before: first he blew out and dropped his head. I reached out to scratch his neck and he took two very polite and deliberate side steps into my hand. The moment my hand made contact with his neck, he gave the biggest blink and started licking and chewing contentedly. The other horses continued to run around screaming in the surrounding paddocks; Hendricks watched, head low, eyes soft, interested but no longer needing to follow them to feel safe. Finally, he felt safe to show what the problem had been all along: he wasn't a defiant horse. He was a horse who was afraid of being left behind- most horses are, they're herd animals! The difference with him was that he didn't feel that the presence of a human could substitute that of a horse... until now! At some point during the chaos in the pasture and panic in his mind, he remembered the woman standing in the middle who he'd conquered the sheep with, who he'd jumped over ditches with, who he'd just generally had an epic time with- and decided that it was finally time to get a "yes" answer from me! "They're leaving me! Can I stay with you?"
"Sure!"
Now to start groundwork: rebooted 🤠

We were so lucky to get this pivotal moment captured in this picture!

30/04/2024

Big day today!🍀

"Never google your symtoms".

This is great advice, honestly. You'll be there thinking you've got a grade 4 Medulloblastoma when in reality you've been reading a 600 comment long argument on Facebook on tiny text on your phone for the last 2 hours and now your eyes look like p**s holes in the snow🙄

So imagine having a genuinely life limiting condition and no choice but to consult Dr Google about it! Imagine Dr Google being the ONLY one you can consult! Thankfully I'm a knucklehead who only ever lays awake at night worrying when it comes to running out of chocolate on a Sunday when the shops close early. However, in rare sensitive moments, I do wonder what will get me in the end. Will it be a common garden adenocarcinoma? That'd p**s me off. A particularly rare and exotic brain tumour? Pancreatic cancer has big f**k around and find out energy, that would be efficient 🤔

The biggest problem with having an extremely rare medical condition like Li-Fraumeni Syndrome in a small developing country like Portugal, is that Portugal has no protocol in place. Why would they? There's literally a handful of people who have ever been diagnosed here. This meant that my hospital that dealt with all my cancer and sepsis adventures had never dealt with LFS before. In turn, this meant that I myself, without even a GCSE in biology, was at the helm of the juggernaut that is my medical examination time table. Armed only with papers I found on Google scholar, I have been in charge of how my case is dealt with. I have been the one googling percentages to figure out which tests I should be doing and how often. Now, the hospital have been great- anything I need, they schedule it without quibbling. However, mistakes have been made (I still have nightmares about my awful full body MRI scan) and I don't trust myself to book a train ticket without spelling my name incorrectly- to have me in charge of life saving cancer detection protocol is both terrifying and hilarious.

Champalimaud Research Center for the Unknown is an institute in Lisbon, specialising in cancer. They are constantly developing new diagnostics for cancer and I figured they might help. I've been waiting for this appointment for 2 months and was quite antsy about it, having basically been told it would be great if I get another 10 years, good luck. This place was a breath of fresh air and to cut a long story short, they have experience with LFS and follow the tried and tested American LFS protocol👌 I can breathe a sigh of relief and hand over the reins to people who actually know what they're dealing with!

While I was there, I took part in a cervical cancer detection trial. In a bid to develop less invasive diagnostic methods, they're trying out testing breath particles against PAP smear results! I basically had to sit on the couch and breathe into an oxygen mask for 2 minutes- much more comfortable than a PAP smear! I've also signed up to take part in future detection trials; I will spend the rest of my life in hospital systems, I may as well try out various ways that might help me keep circling the drain a bit longer!

28/04/2024

Guess which idiot manged to attach the right rein to the left bit ring and the left rein to the right bit ring- and only realised when going into a sharp right turn at a hand gallop immediately followed by a jump over a ditch?
THIS GUY! 🙋‍♀️

Yes, right up there with riding the world's fastest roller coaster and driving 200kmph in an Aston Martin, as far as my top adrenaline rushes go, discovering I have precisely zero steering on a galloping horse with a newly broke galloping horse behind me is definitely a new entry! Thankfully Camelots verbal "whoa!" command is well oiled and once I'd realised we had a serious equipment failure (and I'd therefore stopped giving the poor guy a root canal every time I picked up a rein), I did something he recognised; I dropped the reins, said "Whoa!" and Cam said "Christ on several bikes, I thought you were never gonna start saying something reasonable back there 🙄 Of course we can stop!".

There is precisely no lesson to this cautionary tale. Except for definitely check your electric fencing is working at this time of year, with all the weeds getting tall enough to touch it. I say this, because on arriving home from this royal f**k up of a ride, we discovered the entire mares herd merrily taking a tour of the ranch and surrounding lanes, having pulled down their own fencing and several other fences in the process. I love a relaxing weekend😍

24/04/2024

I'm alive!
I thought I got away with my fall last week, but in the days afterwards 800mg ibuprofen wasn't touching the pain in my neck! Thankfully my osteopath cracked me like a glow stick and the relief was instant, as was my return to work. Functional cervical spines are underrated ❤️

This has meant that I've been playing catch up on practically everything and, as usual, social media is lowest on my priorities.

Here are my current 5 in training, details/updates in captions.

15/04/2024

When it goes right when it goes wrong!

I started my ride on Hendricks this morning cantering steadily through the forest in half seat, with my arms out to the side as is so easy to do on a horse with a stride as long and smooth as his. I ended it lying in a field on my back, looking back at some bemused sheep!

Hendricks had already done multiple water crossings, been past some cows and some outbuildings on our 14km trip. He'd dealt with it all even better than his hot headed lead (Camelot) and there was just the sheep field left to cross. I didn't know how his reaction to sheep would be, but I had an idea after our run in with the wild boar yesterday! Cows are not a good indicator of how they'll behave with sheep- cows are big, obvious and tend to make slow and easy to manipulate decisions. I find that once horses get over the initial "wtaf is that?", they get over it pretty quickly. Sheep, on the other hand, are often laying down in our hot climate and so they look like boulders. Those boulders then stand up,often in a Mexican wave, which causes most horses to freeze. Once up and about, they tend to move quickly and erratically in a swarm like pattern. In short, they're just less predictable and therefore more worrying to horses. Therefore, I will always dismount and lead the horse through it'd first group of sheep... apart from Hendricks, which, looking back was a rookie mistake and the cause of the events that followed!

Because he'd dealt with the wild boar so well yesterday, I assumed he'd be fine with the sheep- which he was! He stopped and lowered his head, had a good look at them and moved on lazily licking and chewing once he'd inspected them. We rode through the middle of the herd and he remained interested yet calm as they dispersed. I ride with these sheep all the time, so they're very used to horses. One sheep in particular was a little too relaxed about the horses! As we approached, the others around her moved away, yet she continued eating. We were talking and making noise, so she had a fair warning that she needed to move, but even when her head came up, she stood her ground! Hendricks was intrigued by this balsy little character and walked right up to her with his nose reached out. The sheep jumped which caused Hendricks to freeze; I felt the vibe change and so I kicked my feet out and picked up my left rein to jump off. As I swung my leg over his bum, the sheep suddenly lost her nerve and took off, causing all the sheep behind us to take off as well! Hendricks shot forward in surprise just as I let go to drop to the ground and I basically free fell and landed on my back. It was just terrible timing and of course it would've all been less dramatic had I been walking ahead of Hendricks and shooed the sheep on instead of on his back.

So why did I feel this went well?! Often it's not the thing that happens that shows how solid your training is,but the events that happen afterwards and this was one of those occasions. Instead of running away across the hills in a blind panic, Hendricks heard me call him and immediately changed his trajectory from towards home, to doing a small circle back towards us and came straight back! He stopped beside Camelot and winnied repeatedly at the sheep, but remained cool about them continuing to run. He wasn't spooky or het up afterwards and I was able to get back on and ride the rest of the way with no residual adrenaline or anxiety. Overall, there was no harm done (besides from a stiff neck for me!).

This was caused by complacency and unfortunate timing on my part- I'm human, it happens. I don't beat myself up if it goes sideways; my safety depends almost entirely on making accurate predictions of horses behavior. I'm often riding horses I've known less than a month while exposing them to new situations, so it's normal that every now and again I dont quite call it correct. I do the best I can for it not to go wrong, but life happens and it's nice to know that if it does go a bit squiffy there's enough of a foundation in place to prevent it being anymore than a minor blip.

12/04/2024

I'm back!

I've had family visiting for the last week, so between being a dutiful daughter, keeping horses in work, working out, keeping up with Duolingo and remembering to take my vitamins, I haven't had a spare moment to scratch my arse.

Rest assured, Hendricks is doing amazing and happily packing me around the countryside like a good citizen. He is also in the snaffle now and is understanding rein and leg aids much better. Seen walking home after a ride behind Camelot.

04/04/2024

⭐️HENDRICKS⭐️

First trot and canter with a rider? Completed it mate!✅️

After an unremarkable pony ride around the forest, Philli and I decided to see how Hendricks would feel about a rider while going a bit faster. Old mate acted like he'd been doing it all his life! No nerves, no arguing, just his usual unbothered borderline laziness. Onwards and upwards!

Have to give major kudos to Philli for being such a great crash test dummy. I'm often asked why I don't do the first few rides myself after the first sit; the answer to that is that at this stage, everything they are confident with is on the ground. The aids to go, stop, turn and relax are all via me being next to them. I find if I ride them before all that has been successfully transferred to the rider, their focus is "what are you doing up there?" rather than just carrying extra weight. Having a person up top who can stay out of the way and has no connection to the horse insures the horse remains focused on me and the task at hand rather than worrying about the person on top.

Philli is perfect for this job because it's a really specialist skill set! She has to be loose and relaxed enough to make herself known up there without getting in the way, be intuitive enough to feel when she can create more movement on their back and how much; she has to fight the urge to pull back if something happens and instead push them forward, and the big one is that she has to trust me on my decision making. If I ask a horse to move up a gait when it isn't ready, it's her that's going to get hurt (which has never happened, by the way)! The water tight friendship and effortless teacher student relationship we have is at least 80% of why I almost always use Philli for these first rides. Her technical skills are excellent but her ability to follow my instruction while also making smart decisions for herself is unsurpassed. I am the brains of Candid Equitation, but there's a team behind me who help my ideas and principles to be properly implemented and I couldn't do it without them!

03/04/2024

⭐️HENDRICKS⭐️

And he's back in the game! After nearly a week off due to the ranch being under water thanks to extreme flooding, Hendricks came back into work 2 days ago.

He'd retained everything he learned and though he's still macho and tries his luck in that way only stallions and late cut geldings can, we've had no rearing and he's generally a very mellow, easy to do sort.

First time with the roller yesterday was unremarkable, first saddling today was equally unremarkable so it felt right to get Philli on board and put it all together! He took it all in his usual nonchalant manner and so we're likely looking at getting him out on the trail at the weekend.

01/04/2024

Hey you🫵
Quit staring at the back of your horses ears!

If I've seen it once I've seen it a thousand times: "He spooked at nothing!"
How would you know there was nothing?! You were looking at the back of his head the whole time! If you can't simply look where you're going it's no wonder your horse sees ghosts, he has to survey the surroundings for both of you🤷‍♀️ If he's having to make all the decisions about what you're looking at, can you really blame him for attempting to make other decisions? Which direction, how fast, how slow... looking up isn't everything, but it's a big thing.

So chin up, soft eyes and ride with a destination in your mind and in your sight, even if the destination is just to the other side of the arena.

31/03/2024

🌊Excuse the language 🤣

The river burst it's banks again and everything is underwater! We usually canter along this track and I was expecting the water to be around chest height, but I didn't anticipate what was essentially white water rafting on horses 🤣 Thank you Camelot and Titus for your "seen it all before" professionalism and enthusiasm and Philli for always being my literal ride or die girl ❤️

29/03/2024

🐳ELIA🐳
One month of weight loss!

I'd love to say we did something revolutionary to get this girls weight down; unfortunately, I have to tell you that it's just the usual good old fashioned daily exercise, stress management and sensible feeding 😆

Elia will never be a streamlined gymnast type- she's a voluptuous lady! However, she gets her dancing shoes on whenever the occasion demands and now that she's getting fitter and feeling herself, she goes at it with gusto!

26/03/2024

Not the usual post from me, but apparently I got discharged from hospital after my bilateral mastectomy 2 years ago today!🤯

I remember taking the first picture and thinking "I hope to God this isn't as good as it gets- alive! But too weak to lift a kettle, bald, no eye brows. Not even a pube😠". I honestly hated how I looked and was getting so angry with well meaning but tone deaf people telling me I was beautiful anyway.

My back was constantly hurting due to the kicking my chest had taken and my body was all but destroyed after chemo and radio. Then came sepsis and of course the multiple surgeries that followed to correct the damage from that. I'd been warned press ups wouldn't be possible due to missing most of the pec muscle in my right chest; prior to cancer, I was doing 40 consecutive press ups every morning and prided myself on my physique. It's so important to me both as a horse trainer and as a human to be fit and strong, and the idea that this might be beyond my reach was depressing to say the least.

It's taken every single day of those two years, with frequent stopping and starting, and lots of trial and error to find what works with my new body; but I'm finally starting to feel like I'm getting my upper body strength back! I'm a total of 6kg heavier but the same waist size. So here's a rare smug bathroom selfie demonstarting the gains!💪

23/03/2024

🥳First sit on Hendricks!🥳

Fun fact: Did you know a b**b job makes it impossible to lean over a horse half way? Because I bloody didn't! They're so hard they don't let me lie flat on my front in bed, so why I thought they'd be good to go lying front ways over a horse I don't know. Hendrix is the first one I've backed since my reconstruction was finished, so this was a problem I didn't forsee! I've always traditionally stood on something next to them then hopped on half way. This discovery meant that there and then on the spot, I had to rethink my entire system (which has kept me safe on every single first ride I've done for over 20 years) of first time mounting🙈

After 10 minutes of fussing about trying to find something taller, I decided on the most temperamental barrel in the world, which seemed more intent on burying me than the horse ever hinted at! Once I'd buried the base of the barrel in more sand than it took to construct the Giza Pyramids, I figured I'd try crawling on from higher up and staying down against his neck so I could swing off if necessary. As you can see, it worked nicely and I guess this is how I'll be doing it from now on.

Asides from that, enjoy a typically uneventful Candid Equitation first 'ride'.

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Vídeos

⭐️Hendricks⭐️ Most people will look at this and think we're doing "liberty training"- we're not. I am teaching him two things: 1. To follow a feel without a rope. 2. To choose me over whatever is going on outside the arena. When I pick up a rein on Hendricks, he turns his head well enough. He turns his head because he knows the sooner he turns it the sooner I'll release the rein and he can go back to looking at whatever he was looking at before I rudely interrupted him. This response to the rein works well enough on a regular Wednesday. It does NOT work well enough should the day come where the horse is genuinely afraid and threatens to leave a situation. In that situation, a horse trained like this will feel your attempt at a one reinstop and do one of two things: 1. Turn its head and continue to run, looking the wrong way. 2. Twist its poll, leap into the air and drop you like a hot potato before running to safety. A horse who thinks of the rein as a safe place however, does not turn his head in the hope you'll let it go again while still bothering about something outside. He turns his head and he asks "yes? What do you need?". He doesn't need to escape because he knows if he follows that rein, he'll stay safe. If that horse becomes afraid, you pick up the rein and rather than viewing the rein as something that traps him and prevents him getting to safety, he feels that rein and says "oh good, you've got this! What do?" He will wait up and hear you out. So what relevance does this have to working a horse loose in an arena? It's simple: I can't transfer that feeling of safety to the rein if that feeling of safety doesn't exist to begin with. These sessions are essentially 'charging up' thatvsafe feeling until eventually i can say "you know you can feel safe if you follow the contact of the rein as well as my body language, right?". I do this loose in the arena and not on a rope or in the roundpen because both the rope and roundpen act as influences

I'm back! I've had family visiting for the last week, so between being a dutiful daughter, keeping horses in work, working out, keeping up with Duolingo and remembering to take my vitamins, I haven't had a spare moment to scratch my arse. Rest assured, Hendricks is doing amazing and happily packing me around the countryside like a good citizen. He is also in the snaffle now and is understanding rein and leg aids much better. Seen walking home after a ride behind Camelot.

⭐️HENDRICKS⭐️ First trot and canter with a rider? Completed it mate!✅️ After an unremarkable pony ride around the forest, Philli and I decided to see how Hendricks would feel about a rider while going a bit faster. Old mate acted like he'd been doing it all his life! No nerves, no arguing, just his usual unbothered borderline laziness. Onwards and upwards! Have to give major kudos to Philli for being such a great crash test dummy. I'm often asked why I don't do the first few rides myself after the first sit; the answer to that is that at this stage, everything they are confident with is on the ground. The aids to go, stop, turn and relax are all via me being next to them. I find if I ride them before all that has been successfully transferred to the rider, their focus is "what are you doing up there?" rather than just carrying extra weight. Having a person up top who can stay out of the way and has no connection to the horse insures the horse remains focused on me and the task at hand rather than worrying about the person on top. Philli is perfect for this job because it's a really specialist skill set! She has to be loose and relaxed enough to make herself known up there without getting in the way, be intuitive enough to feel when she can create more movement on their back and how much; she has to fight the urge to pull back if something happens and instead push them forward, and the big one is that she has to trust me on my decision making. If I ask a horse to move up a gait when it isn't ready, it's her that's going to get hurt (which has never happened, by the way)! The water tight friendship and effortless teacher student relationship we have is at least 80% of why I almost always use Philli for these first rides. Her technical skills are excellent but her ability to follow my instruction while also making smart decisions for herself is unsurpassed. I am the brains of Candid Equitation, but there's a team behind me who help my ideas and princip

🌊Excuse the language 🤣 The river burst it's banks again and everything is underwater! We usually canter along this track and I was expecting the water to be around chest height, but I didn't anticipate what was essentially white water rafting on horses 🤣 Thank you Camelot and Titus for your "seen it all before" professionalism and enthusiasm and Philli for always being my literal ride or die girl ❤️

🥳First sit on Hendricks!🥳 Fun fact: Did you know a boob job makes it impossible to lean over a horse half way? Because I bloody didn't! They're so hard they don't let me lie flat on my front in bed, so why I thought they'd be good to go lying front ways over a horse I don't know. Hendrix is the first one I've backed since my reconstruction was finished, so this was a problem I didn't forsee! I've always traditionally stood on something next to them then hopped on half way. This discovery meant that there and then on the spot, I had to rethink my entire system (which has kept me safe on every single first ride I've done for over 20 years) of first time mounting🙈 After 10 minutes of fussing about trying to find something taller, I decided on the most temperamental barrel in the world, which seemed more intent on burying me than the horse ever hinted at! Once I'd buried the base of the barrel in more sand than it took to construct the Giza Pyramids, I figured I'd try crawling on from higher up and staying down against his neck so I could swing off if necessary. As you can see, it worked nicely and I guess this is how I'll be doing it from now on. Asides from that, enjoy a typically uneventful Candid Equitation first 'ride'.

🏆A very different day for Hendricks! After yesterday's sh*t show, everyone was feeling somewhat apprehensive. Everyone except for me! If I've learned nothing else over the years, it's that day one is always the worst day. It never goes downhill from day one, ever. If I've played all my cards right, day two is typically the day I get to pull the rabbit out of the hat. As predicted, Hendricks' second day was no different and we had a completely different horse👌 Now that he was aware and thinking and actively saying what was on his mind rather than just stuffing his fingers in his ears and screaming, it became clear that he has rank separation anxiety. He worries the most when other horses are out of sight and doesn't yet have the emotional skill set to deal with this. Therefore, when I took him to the roundpen this morning, we took all his herdmates along and kept them at the edge of the pen. With the herd nearby, he felt safer and so his thoughts were much more accessible. This meant he could give me his full attention and realise that I wasn't so bad afterall. I finished him there then put him next to the arena (with his friends) so he could watch the lessons and all the horses coming and going at the saddling area. Apparently this was very tiring as he spent all afternoon dozing at the letter C! I worked him again in the afternoon very briefly and upped the difficulty by removing him from the pasture and taking him to the roundpen alone. He followed me meekly and did everything asked without so much as a whisper about rearing ⭐️ Now, this doesn't mean he's 'fixed'. Currently, if something stresses him out enough he absolutely will rear again. So now the focus must be on building his confidence and teaching stress management. But this is a promising start and he will get better as he racks up positive experiences. This is a brief clip from this morning where I asked him to do the same thing that caused his impressive rearing outbursts yesterday; it was

🚗🐎 Hand walking for lazy people! I know a bunch of people will clutch their pearls at this post, but there's logic to it! Branco is my rising 4yo stallion who fell on a hay container 6 weeks ago and pulled a ligament somewhere between his balls and pelvis 😬 Ideally he should be out in the pasture and recovering naturally, but unfortunately our pastures have been waterlogged with hock deep mud surrounding the hay. The risk of reinjury is far too high, particularly as he likes to play and generally be a fool (as he should at his age)! One slip and we're back to square one. So there's currently no option other than to keep him in and do a lot of hand walking. Hand walking was honestly awful for the pair of us, usually very laid back and mild mannered, Branco is extremely frustrated at being stuck in. It's been cold for weeks, so he has the wind up his tail anyway and his natural walk is faster than mine. This led to constant jig jogging and acrobatics, not all conducive to recovery. I got tired way before he did and I got back too tired to do my work outs needed for my own recovery! I had started to dread doing it because it was so annoying and inconvenient for us both! I couldn't pony him off another horse as his bucking and kicking while being unable to work him on a circle as descalation and trying to manage another horse was asking for more trouble. Then I remembered that at the height of chemo,I'd felt too weak to walk horses and to and from the fields. I'd seen other people lead horses from their cars in Portugal (lots of people have horses but virtually nobody besides the privileged few can afford the luxury of horse transport) and figured why not try it myself! Pretty much all my training horses got used to this and Branco thought it was just something all horses did. So Branco had already been used to being led from a car since he was a yearling. This turned out to be the perfect solution to our hand walking woes! With the car, instead of ho

🏇☀️Throwback to summer 2023 when I had a bunch of teenagers for 2 weeks of lessons, trail riding, swimming horses, garrocha and miscellaneous nonsense! Excited to repeat these shenanigans this summer 🌊 Who wants a similar camp for adults?👀

First session with 18 month old Louis Mule🫏 Louis was given to us at the beginning of summer when his owner realised their location wasn't suitable for a baby. He had no company and too much time indoors- so after getting him good with the farrier and osteopath, we've basically left him in the pasture to grow up until now. Mules are very different to horses in ways I should really write a new post about😅 But the basics are that 1. Mules are naturally more inclined to stand and fight. And 2. I really need to be mindful to not patronise them and leave time for them fill in the gaps themselves; what is clarity to a horse is micromanagement to a mule. With this in mind, the point of this exercise is to exploit Louis natural curiosity and chase drive. Mules are generally far more likely to run after something they want than to run away from something they don't want- this makes them excellent candidates for +R! I can eventually mould this into a moving target and teach him to circle me, which can then evolve to lunging. *Louis was one of the most food aggressive animals I've ever met! Note how he stops himself at the targets and waits for me to get to him rather than mugging for sweets *I had a boob job last week, excuse my strange jaunty running😆Feeling a little tender!

🦅How do I live somewhere that EAGLES casually join you on a ride?!🏇🏇 I've lived here nearly 4 years now and I am STILL finding rides I had no idea about! This place is just so intimidatingly vast and I love it more with every ride. This was a completely new route which treated us to this beautiful vista, but the icing on the cake was when the big Eagle we were admiring decided to check us out and follow us for a while! Of course Facebook will destroy the quality so the Eagle won't be visible🙄 Enjoy the view anyway!

Every so often you have to try something new- riding a tandem with Bruno and Branco was todays new thing! Riding one while long lining another has all the benefits of long lining from the ground except you can do a lot more trot and (eventually) canter work. It also the same benefits as ponying but with the added bonus of giving the less experienced horse time in the lead.

I taught my cat to sit😻 I have no time for horses while my family are here, so have a quick check in with my cat The Peach Fuzz! I never had a cat in my life up until last year and as a result, I didn't realise that the general opinion was that cats cannot be trained! Peach is not as forgiving as a horse and not as eager to please as a dog, but the unexciting combination of good timing and fairness works with every animal and she's no different. She knows a number of commands and learns faster than my dogs, but translating these commands to different locations seems more difficult for her. In that sense she reminds me more of training a mule than a dog or horse! I think it's important to train other animals besides horses, especially predators like cats. The skillset is more or less the same, but you must trust shaping much more. Simply putting more pressure on doesn't work with a cat, so you have to develop your observation skills instead and reward the cat as soon as you notice the desired response as possible- otherwise they just flounce off and lose interest 😆 Horses don't usually have that luxury as they're usually on the end of the rope or enclosed in some way. So there's my horsemanship tip for the week: if you want to be a better horseman, get a cat!

Transferring aids from groundwork to ridden work This is another step that gets missed if I have to start a horse by myself! Here we see Vesna sitting casually on Fae, who by now is used to the feel of a rider on her back. Up until now,her only job has been to pack weight around at all 3 gaits. This is the first session where she will be expected to follow instruction as well as pack weight. Here you you see me giving voice and body commands from the ground, treating this like a normal groundwork session with the addition of a human on top. I start 'weaning' Fae from ground work by not being so obvious with my body language and using the voice as my primary command. I then ask Vesna to do the voice commands which I then back up using body language if necessary, which I will show in another reel. As you can see, this keeps the transfer of aids logical to the horse and keeps confusion to a minimum. I had a very silly accident with Fae yesterday- I'm not usually a clumsy person, but I somehow managed to step through the lunge line while warming her up🙈 I didn't realise until I'd already asked her to canter, by which point I suddenly found my legs being ripped from underneath me! I hit the ground like a sack of sh*t and Fae got frightened and scooted forward; the rope suddenly tightened a loop around my foot and I was dragged up the long side of the arena, skinning my elbow and hip! Thankfully my boot was pulled off and I was spared any more severe injury 😅 Understandably this really scared Fae, as she's very sensible but still very green, and she wouldn't let me get around to the right hand side afterwards. So, we've gone back a few steps to get her feeling confident again which I will talk about in another post. I have family visiting at the moment so updates are a bit more sporadic.

When you're trying to pony the green one, control your rogue mule, take a video and maintain some sense of order all at the same time 🤣🤣 Buddy utterly disgraced himself this morning as my supposed older, more reliable guy to be a good influence on the youngun! 9/10 he's fantastic, but get him on a bad day and it's like being stuck on broken shopping trolley possessed by an angry bull. My usual old faithful Bruno is currently doing rehab work after his osteopath treatment, so I thought Buddy would be a good bet... Good thing Fae is sensible and Vesna has a sense of humour! Following yesterday's successful walk out inhand, today was the day Fae got ponied out! She has been ponied many times before this, I can't stress how important it is to teach your horse to be ponied before actually attempting to pony them- but that is a post for another time! For a horse first trot with a rider, I like to do it while ponying them. My main reason for this is that a horse can keep trotting at the right speed however long is necessary for the greeny to find that all important rhythm leading to relaxation. I'd be coming home in a coffin if I tried to run next to her at this speed! I prefer it over a roundpen because straight lines are easier on a young one plus they tend to flatten, making bucking unlikely. Same as yesterday, Vesna just sits in the plate, says "Jesus take the wheel" and does nothing besides use a stick to ask Fae to catch up when necessary. She uses a stick rather than her legs because Fae already know what a tap on the bum means thanks to being ponied in the past, while the legs still don't mean anything to her. Tomorrow, we do our first ridden roundpen session and install the leg and rein aids!

Fae's first time moving with a rider🏇 For Fae's next step of education, I needed another human! I can do it alone, but I'm finding it much faster and less stressful on the horses to keep me on the ground when rider weight is first introduced. Vesna is a long time student of mine who is perfect as a crash test dummy- she's lightweight, brave, relaxed and young enough to bounce should the worst happen (which it never has, touch wood)! Her only job is to sit up there and get Fae used to all the things a rider might do. Talking, scratching legs on bushes, knocking a helmet on noisy leaves, open gates and fences. What she does NOT do, is give any ridden commands. Fae doesn't yet know what the legs mean, therefore it's pointless using them when she's already having to deal with packing a human around on her back. Same goes for vocal commands, humans make a lot of strange noises and for a sensitive horse like Fae, I'd rather she learned to tune out to conversation before teaching her when to tune in. Fae's job is simply to follow me and respond to anything I ask, like she has done a thousand times before, regardless of what is happening on her back. Rather than walking around the arena, I prefer to walk a newly backed one out in the countryside for their first ride. I have a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that they can't worry about what is going on on their back and climb a slope or deal with dodgy ground at the same time. They have to pick one job and they usually pick the one that seems most important at that moment- staying on 4 legs always wins over looking over their shoulder wondering what that thing on their back is! Another one is that rhythm creates relaxation. Sometimes it's the other way round, but in this case it does the horse the world of good to find a good swinging walk at an even pace and realise that that's all that is going to happen. I also like to walk ahead a little and ask them to job to catch up to me. It's a good way to ge

When you go out with 2 horses and come back with 3!🤣🤣🙈 A couple of years ago, this little pony randomly appeared and accompanied me and Bruno followed us all the way home! Today I was out riding on Bruno again with a student on Titus in tow and low behold, in the middle of nowhere, there she was again🤣 Yet again she followed us home, but in order to get to the ranch from the trail rides to the South you must cross a tidal river. The tide was at maximum point here where even our 17.2hh Oldenburg has to swim! Little pony was incredible and dived in with zero hesitation 🙈 For her troubles, she gets a sleepover with her new horse friends and will be picked up by her owners in the morning (after they've presumably fixed their fencing LOL) Apologies for the language, I was genuinely amazed something so tiny with such short legs would even attempt to swim 😅

Blowing away a few cobwebs with Bruno and Branco this evening ❤️ Now that Branco is a little older, we go a little further and a little faster. He is loving seeing all the new countryside and is totally fearless about all the unfamiliar things we encounter! For some reason if you have a business account, Facebook reels only let's you use either what sounds like 70s porn music, "holiday in Tunisia FM" or stuff that didn't get enough votes at the selection process to represent the country in the Eurovision Song Contest. So you've just got me talking to my horses sorry.

I mean, if you're not whooping and laughing like a 10 year old on your first pony, why are you even doing it?!🏇 Bruno and I mucking about in the river accompanied by Milhão (grey) and my 3yo cream pearl stallion Branco

🐴🦄My Lusitano colt, Branco, was born the summer before a 2 year drought hit Southern Portugal. Finally the heavens have opened and it is time for his first ever experience of puddles in the forest!🤣