Happy Hiccups Equestrian LLC

12/19/2024

A good example of why we need to release the pressure/cue at the first good try (or, as my students are used to hearing me say it, ‘and be friiieeennnddds’😂)

Trainer - What day is it?
Student - Monday
Trainer - What day is it?
Student - The 16th
Trainer - What day is it?
Student - 😡
Trainer - I kept asking you the same question and you gave me the right answer, but I didn’t accept it, so you changed your answer, got frustrated and confused.
This is exactly how your horse can feel if you miss the release…
(Author unknown)

10/31/2024

Happy Halloween! The horses had a beautiful spooky morning at the farm today 👻

10/18/2024

Every perfect movement you watch in dressage is the result of hundreds of imperfect tries, of riders who never gave up, and horses who slowly learned to trust. Celebrate every crooked halt, every almost-there half-pass, because they are the real victories. The path to excellence is paved with mistakes, but also with perseverance and love.

09/16/2024

A happy Sunday to all from Skipper, who says she’d quite like to lay in the softest corner of the arena for a nice nap just now instead of being part of this “work” thing we keep asking her about, thank you very much! 😂

08/17/2024

Love this analogy - and it is why, when we have a horse who is really struggling to stay in the bridle, we transition instead to doing some “no hands” riding and work with our seat/leg. Then we’ll see if the horse decides to connect with the rider of their own free choice. Connection goes both ways!

“I’m teaching my horse to accept contact”

If I had a dollar for every time I heard this! Typically it is accompanied by a horse throwing their head up, diving behind the vertical, gaping at the mouth- essentially attempting to be anywhere BUT the contact.

Here is something I often say to people in my clinics.

Imagine you’re on a date. Your date grabs your hand and doesn’t let go. You squirm to get away, but he holds tighter. He says, some day you will have to hold my hand so you need to get used to it. I won’t release until you accept this contact. Maybe he’s brought up in the school of thought that your display of evasion should be countered with a strap of some kind to prevent you from moving away- a flash nose band of sorts for you.

It doesn’t matter how light or heavy he touches- it is contact that isn’t right for the moment. It’s greedy, and inappropriate.

Now imagine you’re on a date and the conversation has lead you to realize you really enjoy his company. Your relationship is developing, he brushes your hand, you reach out and hold it.

Those are two very different feelings, and they come from two very different places.

When the conditions are there, the contact is taken by the horse. Not the other way around.

Contact has meaning. It is not meaningless pressure on the horses mouth, it is a holding of hands while you dance- it is a connection between your body and the horse’s hind legs. It is the display of everything you believe and who you are- manifested through your hand and into the horse- and the horse’s response is a direct representation of their preparation and feelings about your body and hands.

08/12/2024

A nice general look at why we don’t pull the horse around with the inside rein/by the nose during our turns!

This is why your turn does not come from pulling on the rein. Note the riders hand and leg position and hip angle in each sketch. Note the development of the horses muscles in each sketch. Note the shape of the horse in each sketch. A truly supple, truly bent horse is working through their entire body. It is OUR job as the rider to guide the horse to become soft, supple, and through in all movements.

Rider one is pulling the nose around, and trying to push the haunches in, with a following outside rein offering the horse no balance, and a hardly supportive inside leg to wrap around. This has created a rigid, stiff horse that will surely be back sore, weak in the hind end, with front end bulk in all the wrong places. This horse has every opportunity, and will likely be so uncomfortable that it will try every time, to run out of his right shoulder.

Rider two is pushing the horse from his inside leg to his outside rein. The outside rein is providing a balance point for the horse, allowing him to be both comfortable and willing to carry himself. Because the riders rein is supportive and blocking the shoulder, the horse can not blow out the shoulder, and can only become truly bent along the entire length of the spine.

In order to build the athlete you want, and to allow your horse the opportunity to have a long, successful, and most importantly SOUND career, it is important to understand how we ride, even in seemingly simple tasks such as the walk or trotting circles, is effecting each muscle in your horses body. Not all muscle is good muscle!

- Ali Hamann / South Coast Sport Horses

07/30/2024

Do less better.

The majority of the time there’s no big magic fix, perfect one exercise, or big exciting change that you need to do in order to achieve whatever it is that you’re working on. Many times folks will come into lessons thinking they need to work on one thing and we end up going back to doing lesser things better. This of course can look different for everybody depending on where you were at, but we can almost always find this saying to be true with almost anyone. Including ourselves. It’s easy to get caught up in wanting to do advance maneuvers and trying to put our focus into those without first mastering how to do the basics well. That’s so much more exciting.

Your Horsemanship and your ride starts the moment you get your horse from the pasture or the stall. The way in which you lead them, the way in which you halter them, the way in which you handle them, the way in which you saddle them. It all truly matters. Good horsemen and women are created in their mundane, simple, and consistent tasks in which they do every everyday. Don’t get me wrong, we all want to advance to the higher level stuff, but many times when we focus on doing less better, the higher level things get so much simpler. 

07/25/2024

Unpopular opinion: Know when to back off.

Horses are not machines. Make sure you find a trainer that knows when to push, and when to back off.

Get you a trainer that pays attention to your horse and their needs.

Some horses are such people pleasers, such hard workers, so trusting and willing, that they'd follow people into their own breaking point; and the wrong people will push them past it.

Make sure you find a trainer that recognizes the limits in your horse and doesn't try to experiment with their mental or physical soundness for faster results.

Like it or not, sometimes days off teach your horse more than constant daily pushing will.

They cannot speak, but the right trainers can still hear them. Make sure they listen.

- Good Secret Horsemanship

📸 Max & Maxwell: Equestrian Photography

07/22/2024

Ooooh, someone looks STUNNING in their lipstick choice for the day! 😘 P.T. Barnum got his hooves painted pink, and decided that it was NOT ENOUGH PINK in his life, and gave himself some pretty lipstick to match (read: he rubbed his face on his hoof because he was itchy, and oops - accidentally fabulous!) 😂

07/13/2024

This is true for every horse that comes into our barn - it is why we are so strict about giving them plenty of time to “settle in” with no work until they get used to the routine of just EXISTING here. Then, we can start working on our training/lesson routine! 😊

"New Home Syndrome"🤓

I am coining this term to bring recognition, respect, and understanding to what happens to horses when they move homes. This situation involves removing them from an environment and set of routines they have become familiar with, and placing them somewhere completely different with new people and different ways of doing things.

Why call it a syndrome?

Well, really it is! A syndrome is a term used to describe a set of symptoms that consistently occur together and can be tied to certain factors such as infections, genetic predispositions, conditions, or environmental influences. It is also used when the exact cause of the symptoms is not fully understood or when it is not connected with a well-defined disease. In this case, "New Home Syndrome" is connected to a horse being placed in a new home where its entire world changes, leading to psychological and physiological impacts. While it might be transient, the ramifications can be significant for both the horse and anyone handling or riding it.

Let me explain...

Think about how good it feels to get home after a busy day. How comfortable your favourite clothes are, how well you sleep in your own bed compared to a strange bed, and how you can really relax at home. This is because home is safe and familiar. At home, the part of you that keeps an eye out for potential danger turns down to a low setting. It does this because home is your safe place (and if it is not, this blog will also explain why a lack of a safe place is detrimental).

Therefore, the first symptom of horses experiencing "New Home Syndrome" is being unsettled, prone to anxiety, or difficult behaviour. If you have owned them before you moved them, you struggle to recognise your horse, feeling as if your horse has been replaced by a frustrating version. If the horse is new to you, you might wonder if you were conned, if the horse was drugged when you rode it, or if you were lied to about the horse's true nature.

A horse with "New Home Syndrome" will be a stressed version of itself, on high alert, with a drastically reduced ability to cope. Horses don't handle change like humans do. If you appreciate the comfort of your own home and how you can relax there, you should be able to understand what the horse is experiencing.

Respecting that horses interpret and process their environments differently from us helps in understanding why your horse is being frustrating and recognising that there is a good chance you were not lied to or that the horse was not drugged.

Horses have survived through evolution by being highly aware of their environments. Change is a significant challenge for them because they notice the slightest differences, not just visually but also through sound, smell, feel, and other senses. Humans generalise and categorise, making it easy for us to navigate familiar environments like shopping centres. Horses do not generalise in the same way; everything new is different to them, and they need proof of safety before they can habituate and feel secure. When their entire world changes, it is deeply stressful.

They struggle to sleep until they feel safe, leading to sleep deprivation and increased difficulty.

But there is more...

Not only do you find comfort in your home environment and your nervous system downregulates, but you also find comfort in routines. Routines are habits, and habits are easy. When a routine changes or something has to be navigated differently, things get difficult. For example, my local supermarket is undergoing renovations. After four years of shopping there, it is extremely frustrating to have to work out where everything is now. Every day it gets moved due to the store being refitted section by section. This annoyance is shared by other shoppers and even the staff.

So, consider the horse. Not only are they confronted with the challenge of figuring out whether they are safe in all aspects of their new home while being sleep deprived, but every single routine and encounter is different. Then, their owner or new owner starts getting critical and concerned because the horse suddenly seems untrained or difficult. The horse they thought they owned or bought is not meeting their expectations, leading to conflict, resistance, explosiveness, hypersensitivity, and frustration.

The horse acts as if it knows little because it is stressed and because the routines and habits it has learned have disappeared. If you are a new human for the horse, you feel, move, and communicate differently from what it is used to. The way you hold the reins, your body movements in the saddle, the position of your leg – every single routine of communication between horse and person is now different. I explain to people that when you get a new horse, you have to imprint yourself and your way of communicating onto the horse. You have to introduce yourself and take the time to spell out your cues so that they get to know you.

Therefore, when you move a horse to a new home or get a new horse, your horse will go through a phase called "New Home Syndrome," and it will be significant for them. Appreciating this helps them get through it because they are incredible and can succeed. The more you understand and help the horse learn it is safe in its new environment and navigate the new routines and habits you introduce, the faster "New Home Syndrome" will pass.
"New Home Syndrome" will be prevalent in a horse’s life until they have learned to trust the safety of the environment (and all that entails) and the humans they meet and interact with. With strategic and understanding approaches, this may take weeks, and their nervous systems will start downgrading their high alert status. However, for some horses, it can take a couple of years to fully feel at ease in their new home.

So, next time you move your horse or acquire a new horse and it starts behaving erratically or being difficult, it is not being "stupid", you might not have been lied to or the horse "drugged" - your horse is just experiencing an episode of understandable "New Home Syndrome." And you can help this.❤

I would be grateful if you could please share, this reality for horses needs to be better appreciated ❤
‼️When I say SHARE that does not mean plagiarise my work…it is seriously not cool to copy and paste these words and make out you have written it yourself‼️