Kate Samuels Equestrian

03/15/2024

I am no longer of the opinion that OTTB’s or thoroughbreds in general just “have bad feet”. I think it’s high time we look past that stereotype and take more responsibility as horsemen for good trimming and proper hoof care as we are building our equine athletes.

Bad farriery affects the whole horse. Their muscular-skeletal system is based on these relatively tiny toes, so even small imbalances can have a big effect on the development of their entire bodies. Chronic pain on one foot could lead to a bigger, more serious injury on the other leg, or just really improper and unbalanced muscle development.

Lots of horses do their jobs with really poor trimming and shoeing, but should they have to? If this much change can be made in a little over four months, it gives me a lot of optimism for the future of this horse, but also some sadness that he had to perform with the previous situation.

Many thanks to Elliott Jennings for helping me develop a plan to rehab these feet, and showing me how to make a real positive change.

01/30/2024

No words necessary for this little glow-update:

01/14/2024

In case anybody feels like following science on this one:

Comparative neurobiology of horse and human.

Horses and humans are both mammals.
Our brains may not be the same size, but they are almost identical in their structure and function.

Why can our brains look so similar but our behaviours and sensitivity to the world look so different?

The area in the picture highlighted is the prefrontal cortex or the (PFC). Its job in humans, horses, dogs, dolphins, elephants, cats, mice, rats, all mammals, and even birds is to carry out "higher executive functions" such as:

🧠 problem solving
🧠 decision making
🧠 reasoning
🧠 risk assessment
🧠 forward planning
🧠 impulse control
🧠 intention

Obviously, these executive functions are more advanced in humans than in other species of mammals, but this part of the brain plays a pivotal role in higher levels of learning beyond primal behaviours and learning survival skills.

So why aren't we seeing these higher executive functioning skills and behaviours in horses as much as what we see them in dogs, dolphins, elephants and even birds?

Ultimately it comes down to safety!

The latest neuroscience research suggests that when the brain feels unsafe it causes the body to produce stress response hormones and these stress response hormones cause the PFC to go "offline".
This means that subcortical regions of the brain (deeper parts of the brain) such as the primal brain (AKA limbic system, survival brain, flight/fight brain) completely take over to increase the chances of survival.

Feeling unsafe causes the feeling of fear and it is fear that gets this party started.

So behaviours come from two areas:

1. The PFC, carrying out problem solving skills, reasoning, impulse control, forward planning etc. that may be interpreted as "obedience" and "partnership".

2. The primal brain, carrying out reactive survival behaviours. This brain does NOT carry out impulse control, forward planning, problem solving, etc. It just reacts to the world. This brain heavily relies on patterns and consistency. This brain will cause freeze/flight/fight behaviours such as shutting down, bolting, biting, rearing, bucking, kicking, barging, etc.

Which brain is the domesticated horse spending most of it's time in?
It's primal brain!

This is why we don't get to see their full intellectual and cognitive potential because most of the time, domesticated horses are perceiving their world in a fearful way to some degree.

We can help our horses with this!

Feeling fearful is the OPPOSITE to feeling calm.
If we want to help our horses access their PFC then we MUST do whatever it takes to help them feel calm.

☝️ ONLY when a brain feels calm can it slow down enough to develop TRUE confidence. Only when the brain feels confident will it access TRUE cognition (PFC).

☝️ We first need to understand that when we get "bad behaviour" from our horses, it's not intentional or naughty or rude. What you are seeing is either a horse that is just reacting to the fear they feel or they are carrying out their "coping mechanism" in response to their anticipation of feeling fear.

☝️ Try to remove expectations that your horse should "know better".
"Knowing better" implies that all behaviours are coming from the PFC and there should be some impulse control and reasoning. Unless your horse feels calm, they can't access the PFC to "know better".

THIS STARTS WITH YOU!!!

You need to be consciously aware if YOU feel calm first. If you feel calm, your horse will have a better chance at feeling calm. Expecting them to feel calm when you don't is unfair.

The best way to create calmness is to intentionally be SLOW!!!
SLOW EVERYTHING you do down.
SLOW your movement down.
SLOW your talking down.
SLOW your walking down.
SLOW your breathing down.
SLOW your horse down.
If you feel too slow, then you're going slow enough.

Calmness is slow, not fast.

This will help you and your horse to connect and feel safe together.
When the brain feels stressed, the stress response hormones cause the body to speed up.

Stress = speed

We can reverse engineer this process and create a calm mind through slow intentional movement and a relaxed posture.

The by-product of a calm brain is confidence and cognition (PFC access).

Happy brain training 🧠
Charlotte 😊

Photo: Credit: Adult horse (equine) brain, sagittal section. Michael Frank, Royal Veterinary College. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

01/13/2024

Here’s the thing about that recent video of Katie Prudent teaching a group of young riders: the way you react to the video tells me a lot about how you view the world.

Is it entirely possible to be very successful within your chosen sport/career while utilizing fear, punishment, and ego-driven, obedience-based methods? Absolutely. Many of the world’s top achievers in sport and business do this. It’s well known that psychopathy thrives in the executive branches across all different realms.

The question is not to do with Katie’s expertise within the field but the way in which she talks disparagingly about both horses and riders in this lesson. “Horses need a good licking” “I would flip him over backwards before letting him turn” etc. I won’t even get into the way she talked to the riders, because my expertise is with the horse side.

This tells me that her training methods are based in fear, and the thing about fear is that it only goes one way. Respect, on the other hand, in order to be real, has to go both ways. I don’t care if your relationship is within your species or inter-species, the knowledge of pain and punishment as the probable outcome to getting an answer wrong is not the way to build respect.

Kindness matters. It is also entirely possible to train horses with humility, care, and empathy, and achieve your riding and competitive goals at the same time. So why do we just say that the ends justify the means when it comes to high level professionals like this?

Anger is just ignorance in disguise, because something happened that makes you uncomfortable, and when you delve further into why it makes you feel that way, you’ll find the why. Why is my horse doing that? Why isn’t my horse doing this? Ripping his face off, or giving him a good licking prevents you from finding out the why, because you skipped that introspective moment of why it made you angry in the first place.

Why does the idea of another being “disobeying” make us so uncomfortable? Why do we require obedience at all times in the first place? Why do we think we inherently deserve it?

The perpetuation of this notion of “man’s dominion over beasts” with dominance and submission as the main tenets is absurd in this day and age. We have an explosion of science that proves horses to be far more intelligent, sensitive, and capable of complex emotions and feelings than we ever thought possible. Ignoring this is just intellectually lazy, and professionally embarrassing.

01/05/2024

Horses Are Possibilities

These photos are a month apart. Would you buy the first horse? How about the second?

The first photo features tense muscle patterns, a gait that looks like it covers about as much ground as a sewing machine, and an unhappy facial expression.

The work between the two? A few weeks of groundwork, at the walk. No riding. Bodywork, better farrier attention, and biomechanically correct training.

Maybe I’m delusionally confident in my own abilities as a horse-woman, or maybe I’m just addicted to projects and proving everybody wrong. Perhaps I’m just willing to put in the work when others see a culdesac, because I see a path.

This horse will never move like Valegro, but guess what? Most of us will never ride like Charlotte, and almost none of us really want to or need to ride a horse like Valegro.

However, he can always be a better version of himself, and one can only see his true potential when he is given a chance. It’s always, always, ALWAYS worth the trouble to care enough to hold yourself, your training, and your care and management to the highest standard.

01/03/2024

It’s very fun for me to work with Hank as he progresses this winter, he’s quite remarkable in his ability to be vulnerable and let you “in” while also being a right tough old boy for so many years.

We have been playing with lots of postural work on the ground, really just about 20 minutes a day of walking around the ring focusing on maintaining a neutral spine and relaxation through the thoracic sling while practicing walk-halt transitions, bending around turns, and stepping over poles. It’s a lot harder than you think to do this work correctly!

A lot of this early work might look like watching paint dry to the outsider, but it’s super nice to see him give these big releases multiple times during each session as he learns to swing through his whole body and let go of some long-term tension!