HHF-Harkey Horsemanship

28/08/2025

Beef shares available!
We’ve got two headed to the processor on Monday (9/1). One is spoken for, but one is available!
Whole, half or quarter, let us fill your freezer with locally-grown beef!
Shoot us a message here or text the number in the ad for reservations or inquiries!

01/08/2025

I hate the concept of the “30 day start” when it comes to riding horses.

To clarify, what I mean by this is the expectation that within a 30 day window, a horse should be broke walk/trot/canter after never having been ridden prior to that.

There are many issues with this expectation so let me break it down.

1. A lot of these horses are young and not finished growing. Oftentimes, trainers marketing this start are catering to horses between the ages of 2-4 years old.

Taking a horse that is effectively an immature adolescent when it comes to physical development and expecting them to pack weight at all gaits within 30 days is not a fair ask.

Let me ask people this honestly — could you throw on a backpack that is 20% of your weight and exercise at your full capacity and do so without being injured or sore when you’ve not trained for this?

Could you go from never doing this to doing it 5-7 days a week for a 30 day period?

There is no way to introduce this level of work load this quickly and not have other areas of the body taking on extra impact due to the horse fatiguing and not having adequate muscle built to accomplish this.

When you pair that with a spine that is completely underdeveloped, as well as many of the other supporting areas of the body, it’s a recipe for disaster.

2. Fitness is not gained overnight.

Even if a horse has solid ground work, which to be honest, many don’t (as someone who used to offer this service), they have not built the fitness to pack weight.

Fitness is obtained over time.

Structured exercise that gradually increases in intensity as the horse builds fitness is how you develop a fit and functional athlete.

Increasing expectations too quickly is a recipe for an injury or compensatory problems in the body because the horse will have to compensate in other areas for the fitness they have not built yet.

In carrying a human, we are asking a horse to engage their core and lift over their back.

This is basically ithe equivalent to asking a person to do the plank with weight.

Doing the plank with no weight is hard enough.

Imagine putting on 20% of your body weight and being expected to maintain that position for several minutes (or in most cases a 30min to 1 hour session).

You wouldn’t be able to unless you’d trained for it.

If you try to do it all at once, you’re likely to injure yourself.

If you cannot say “no” to your trainer and you’re repeatedly poked and prodded into continuing on when your body is telling you to stop, you’re even more likely to injure yourself.

This is compounded even more by the fact that these young and immature backs often lack the muscles structure to help better support them, which increases the risk of damage to these growing horses.

Even carrying a rider at the walk is a physical task horses aren’t fit for immediately.

Expecting it at all gaits within 30 days is unreasonable as fitness CANNOT be obtained this quickly.

3. 30 day starts undermine the value of groundwork and properly building fitness while prioritizing the human desire to ride.

Let’s be for real: the 30 day start is NOT for the horse. It is for the human.

Humans want to ride ASAP. They want their horse to come home and be rideable for THEM.

The time frame is about trying to jam as much education within as short of a time frame as possible to save money for the owner and send back a horse that they can just get on and go.

But, this comes at the horse’s expense.

It also completely negates the value of ground work.

Starting the horse to ride can involve doing mostly ground work and introducing a rider for short periods of time, allowing for breaks and keeping it within a reasonable expectation for the current fitness level of the horse.

We don’t NEED to be getting on them and staying on them for 30min to an hour just because they’ll let us.

And we certainly don’t NEED to be doing this at all gaits.

There are a lot of benefits that can be gained just from riding at the walk. Or trot.

A horse can end up having a better foundation and building better fitness without being asked to canter for months.

If you want me to be honest, the entire concept of the 30 day start is capitalistically motivated.

It is a great way to make money as a trainer and have a frequent train of horses coming into your program.

It is a great way to ensure clients can get into the show ring and start chasing their goals ASAP.

It is not a great way to promote longevity of the horse and this is seen within the sheer volume of physical problems we see in horses.

The way we start horses is often too quick.

Speeding things up comes at a cost because you cannot speed up physical fitness and muscular acquisition.

It’s high time we rethink the way we structure the training of horses and what we normalize.

Horses are incredible athletes and can continue to push through physical exercise at their own expense.

Just because we can make them do so does not mean we should.

Consider the demands of what you ask of your horse and whether or not it is functionally possible for their body and physical fitness to keep up with your training schedule.

Muscle needs rest time to heal and continue developing.

It also needs to be slowly built up.

When you speed things up to the point where they have virtually no rest and also no time to keep up with the increasing demands of training, it is not a fair ask.

Even if it is profitable and more fun for the humans.

This is why when I am starting horses, I will no longer offer a 30 day start in which I promise a horse who is rideable walk/trot/canter by the end of it.

I used to do it but after reflecting on it, I cannot justify the ethics behind it and I think way more trainers need to consider it.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

30/07/2025

Getting back into the saddle after time away? Brand new to riding and could use a patient instructor, dedicated to making you a skilled, versatile, and confident rider? Have a young horse that could use some fancy buttons? Have an old horse that could use some dusting off? Looking for a barn family that’s casual, fun, and committed to top-notch equine care and well-being?
Harkey Horsemanship is welcoming new lesson students, new boarders, and new training clients! With decades of experience and a constant push for new and continuing education, our barn is committed to horses and riders alike. We believe in a whole-horse approach to learning, with our students learning all aspects of horsemanship, and our training clients being managed both physically and mentally.
If this sounds like your kind of horsemanship, shoot us a message, an email, or text to discuss options!
Located in Ellenboro, NC, convenient to upstate SC, Tryon, Hickory, Charlotte, and all points in between
www.helmshillfarms.com

19/07/2025

Big things don’t always elicit big reactions. But all the small things do

Trigger stacking and why it is so relevant for safety when handling horses.

What is trigger stacking?

Trigger stacking describes the process of multiple stressors accumulating and increasing the stress level of an animal until they can no longer cope, resulting in an outward reaction.

The triggers can vary in intensity. But the nature of trigger stacking means that the final trigger that results in a major reaction in the horse does not always have to be a big trigger. It can be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

This phenomenon is why horses may sometimes appear to react out of nowhere or have a strong reaction to something that, in other circumstances, they might not be bothered by at all or as bothered by.

In other cases, the triggers in the environment might be so large that the horse reacts suddenly following one big high intensity trigger. A very scary moment.

But, in many cases where horse behaviour surprises people, and they cannot assess the cause, it is the result of multiple smaller triggers.

Let me give a great example of trigger stacking that I witnessed happening at the racetrack.

A pony Horse was being tacked up, tied to the wall in the middle of a shedrow.

Since he lived at the racetrack, he was stalled 24/7, which would serve as a chronic and rather large trigger.

It was shortly before the first race of the night and the barns were very busy with lots of horses walking to and fro. The hectic environment serves as multiple smaller triggers.

There was a fan in the aisleway oscillating back-and-forth.

Every time the breeze hit this horse, I watched him tense up, raise his head and flinch.

Every single time this fan hit him was an additional trigger.

Finally, the last trigger before his big reaction.

Someone picked up and moved the fan.

It was unplugged, so there was no breeze.

But, they moved a little too close to this horse, and the base of the fan just barely skimmed his leg.

This horse, who had already been a picture of tension before, exploded.

He pulled back against his tie, and when he felt the restriction of the rope, he panicked even more.

He pulled until his halter broke.

Then he froze and stood there trembling.

“ wow, what’s his problem!? He did that out of nowhere.” One of the handlers of this horse exclaimed.

But, he didn’t do it out of nowhere. They had just missed all of the signs of his tension growing, and because of that his reaction came as a surprise to the humans.

I watched the whole thing happen from a distance because it was not my horse, and I also had increasing anxiety as I watched how uncomfortable this horse was getting.

I knew a reaction was imminent and his response did not surprise me.

In horse training, a lot of times people feel like horses react out of nowhere.

But, the truth is, we are often just bad at noticing the earlier signs.

If people wear more in tune with the body language, their horse displays, the subtle size, in addition to recognizing the signs of stress, they would be more able to predict behaviour like this and avoid it in the first place.

Being aware of what trigger stacking is as well as the science of stress in horses is imperative for safety around horses.

A lot of the incidents that we see with horses are technically avoidable, whether or not people want to admit it.

There are almost always signs, training methods, and management factors that could be addressed to avoid dangerous reactions in horses.

While there are situations where the environment is so out of control that people are truly helpless to make changes to avoid really dangerous responses from the Horse, this does not happen as often as people might think.

So, next time you feel like your horse has reacted out of nowhere, ask yourself what might have triggered their flight response.

Start taking note of all of the things that happened just before the reaction.

Start looking critically at your Horse’s day-to-day life, and whether or not they are experiencing chronic stressors like lack of turnout, or physical pain.

And remember, just because you did not notice the signs, does not mean that the horse reacted out of nowhere.

16/07/2025

Being more conscious of how our behaviour impacts horses does not equate to a lack of boundaries.

Boundaries can exist inside of empathy.

Being mindful of where your horses’ behaviour might be stemming from and addressing that, rather than just looking at how you can punish it is not being permissive.

Horses are animals who have their entire own world going on around them.

A world that we are often very unaware of.

They are seeing things, smelling things, hearing things and feeling things that we are not always noticing.

On top of this, existing as a flight animal means they are way more conscious of their environment and a lot more present in the moment than most people are.

Being more patient and pausing to consider where unwanted behaviours might stem from is not soft or too sensitive.

It is compassionate.

Animals deserve autonomy, even within domestication.

It is possible to train horses while still valuing their right to communication.

Erasing all communication that is not exactly what people want to hear and see is equivalent to a dictatorship.

It also is highly likely to lame and damage horses because it does not allow them to adequately communicate when they are incapable of doing something.

Or, if they do communicate, they risk punishment and having their behaviour labelled as misbehaviour instead of looked further into.

The horse world is changing, and there is a lot more pressure to be more considerate and compassionate in our training.

This is not a bad thing.

It is something that is much overdue.

There are way too many horses who are discarded due to behavioural or physical problems that likely could have been solved if there was a different approach earlier on.

That fact alone should be enough to show us that we need to change the way we do things as an industry. 

Being more empathetic towards horses can feel like a threat when we have been operating with our egos and desires as the centre of everything in horse training.

Because, yes, considering the Horse more might mean that we have to forgo our own goals in favour of what is best for the horse in that moment.

But, that’s not a bad thing. It’s an opportunity to learn.

Horses have a lot to teach us.

One of those many things is the concept of empathy.

It is easy to ignore the needs of an animal that primarily communicates silently and with subtle body language.

Horses have a lot of important lessons to teach us. We just have to start listening better.

14/07/2025

09/07/2025

Big thanks to South Carolina Voyager Magazine for asking me to be a part of their Inspiring Stories series! I love their mission with this series to bring attention (and hopefully business) to local small businesses, artists and creatives, entrepreneurs, and dusty, sweaty horse trainers and farmers like us!
Go give this article a read, go check out some of the other folks from the series, and as always, if we can help you on your equine journey or if you’re interested in learning more, shoot us a message!
Www.helmshillfarms.com

Today we’d like to introduce you to Phoebe Rowan Harkey. Hi Phoebe, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.My husband, Ben, and I started Harkey Horsemanship back in the beginning of 2020, right before COVID hit. Ben started riding at a young age and has spen...