Bay Area Liberty Horse Training

02/07/2025

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02/05/2025

A recipe for liberty 🤔

- 3 cups of patience ⏳
- 2 cups of observation 👀
- 1 cup of action ❤️

Do less, watch more, mainly wait.

The biggest mistake iv made as a horseman is always assuming I needed to know another way to ask a question.

Training horses is all about communication. As is any conversation between two people.

It doesn’t matter how brilliant your question is if you ask it at the wrong time. Very few people will stay engaged with a conversation where the other person is just waiting for their turn to speak without truly listening. And everybody hates being interrupted or having their train of thought disrupted while processing what’s been said in order to answer correctly.

We know these things like we know the sky is blue. We navigate the subtle nuance of communication everyday.

It’s no different with horses.

Very often the reason our training doesn’t deliver the results we desire is not that we are asking for a movement incorrectly or poorly applying a methodology of horsemanship during the active asking portion of interaction.

We rush. We concentrate on ourselves and on how we felt. We fail to hear the other side of the conversation.

Let’s break it down 💪

3 Cups of Patience ⏳

Journey before destination. Fall in love with the process and treat the achievements that appear along the way with surprised wonderment.

I’m sure you like me don’t instantly master new skills. I like to take a pause once given information to process before acting. In my experience horses are the same.

Wait after giving signals to allow time for delayed or unsure responses from your horse.

Pause and praise between attempts even when we see minimal or no progress.

Your horse doesn’t know nor care that it was your 2025 goal to achieve liberty circles in canter by the 1st of March. They will progress in their own time, it’s your job to make the most of that time.

And above all to make sure your horse feels they are being given the time to flourish

Give it ten minutes and it will take an hour.

Give it an hour and it will take ten minutes.

2 Cups of Observation 👀

You most likely are asking for spanish walk correctly but are you moving slowly enough with your signals to genuinely see the effects they have on your horses mind and body?

Do you watch your horse intently when asking them for a movement or is your focus internal on your body and how you feel?

The more we watch, the more we learn.

In this instance take things slowly genuinely means move your arms, legs and aids (whip, rope, flag) SLOWLY. This gives you more time and a better chance to notice the flick of the ear, that slight tilt in the rib cage or the change in their breathing.

Every interaction with our horse is a chance to observe and gather information. Things don’t have to go the way we planned for us to learn valuable lessons about our horse and how they interact with and respond to the world around them.

Rush and you’ll miss it. Miss it and miss out on connection.

1 Cup of Action ❤️

Of course you need to know where to point at, when to step and how to best utilise your aids.

No one is pretending you can teach a flying change or a bow without knowing the process or the method ( www.benatkinsonmethod.com I would recommend 😉) but let’s link this back to the idea of communication and conversation.

The method we learn to train our horse is the equivalent of a child learning to speak. First it’s sounds, then words and finally sentences.

But the conversations that leave us feeling connected with others are so much more. They’re bolstered by empathy and emotion.

A person we can spend all night talking to knows when to back off or avoid a topic we aren’t ready for. Equally they know when to push to help us grow or discover aspects of ourselves we never knew existed.

By harmonising our method (action) with a hunger to listen (observe) and a default setting to take things slowly (patience) we can achieve anything 🙏

Photography credit to JShpicture

02/04/2025

What is Liberty?
“giving your horse the choice to share and express their emotions and opinions”
~ Matthias Geysen

Official webpage from Matthias Geysen. Offering exclusive content and insight into exciting interviews, podcasts and courses with Discover - a new platform designed especially for transferring his knowledge to you.

12/06/2024

Unconscious movements muddy the waters.

Lately, I have found myself teaching something consistently, across levels, across countries, in lessons with my clients. I have been assisting my community in finding a base line in their body that they can rely on. And their horse too.

Imagine talking to somebody, and as you talk to them, they don't look you in the eye properly, they fidget, shift from foot to foot, scratch themselves, fling their sweater haphazardly, and change weight rapidly without meaning, and posture themselves in 13 micropositions, all without meaning.

Well, the meaning is there. The meaning is= meaningless movement.

This is nothing to feel ashamed about around horses. We all do it. We all find ourselves stuck in patterns that became unconscious and out of our control. We all do it. I remember where I was when I learned that the movement of a lead rope laid up in my hands, and its pendulum swing as I walked quietly was enough to perturb a very sensitive horse. All I had to do, was keep the rope well in hand and well controlled and I could make my communication through to the horse, more clean.

Because that's what I am talking about. Clean communication.

The same way I strive to say my mind plainly nowadays, even to a fault I'll admit, is the same skill I bring to horses and teach to my community.

Be aware. Then, be aware of your awareness. Then be aware of your awareness and its own awareness.

It is amazing really how congruent a horse is. Present to me a fidgeting horse, that "gets bored" easily, or struggles to stand still or dislikes quiet, and I will show you their handler/owner nearby who is exactly the same.

If we present ourselves with background noise, you won't have a quiet horse.

And the quiet horse is the keystone, the backbone, of really beautiful and sucessfull training and riding.

A horse who is base line quiet now has the mental and emotional capacity to put energy into discerningly exciting activities with people- if they want to.

And that starts with us, cleaning up our movement.

If you struggle with this, I do have a whole online course designed for human movement for equestrians. But if you don't have time for that, I challenge you to find your quiet, still position, one that cannot and won't be moved. Start there, and end there. Find your position and start and end all techniques you train with there.

Just like my Vaganova Classical Ballet training taught me to start in fifth position, and end in fifth position- even if nobody is watching. It is a discipline that brings organisation and clarity to what can sometimes be very muddy waters.

And I am determined to be here, cleaning this industry up. One loving horse person at a time.

09/29/2024

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Mark 2:17

Good training and education requires kindness, patience, understanding and a willingness to restructure and explain ideas repeatedly in numerous different ways from a variety of viewpoints.

Adult, child, Human or Horse these rules apply.

If a horse misunderstands the cues for piaffe applying those cues with greater force will not achieve success. If a child cannot read the letters ABC increasing the anger and volatile nature of the teacher will not help the child learn faster.

A gap in a students knowledge cannot be bridged by the force or indignant frustration of a teachers exasperation in teaching the subject matter.

Only with patience, time and a willingness to explore each sticking point or misunderstood concept can a student achieve confidence and competence.

We all known this. We all agree upon this.

Many of us would proudly state this concept as a part of our integrity and something we fight for.

So why do I see so many people who believe they know better, kinder more ethical ways to educate people and horses attack, bully and harass those who require education to change?

Do you not see the trap???

What a toxic mindset to foster.

“All animals are equal but some are more equal than others”

All people should be kind but I can be foul to this person because they have lots of social media followers and I think I know a better way to achieve what they’re training…

WHAT?!

How can people preach love and tolerance than attack those they believe themselves better educated than?

If we, this odd little aspect of the horse world truly are blazing the trail of enlightened horsemanship on a journey to improve horse happiness and welfare we have to stop being so foul to people who haven’t had the same realisations yet.

The mindset of a person who believes to speak love then act out hate towards others because “they deserve it”

Can you not see how twisted that is? How when people act like that they are part of the problem and genuinely bring nothing closer to a solution. No change. Nothing. Just more hate and a wider gap between both camps.

The amounts of pages on Facebook and instagram I see join together not in celebration or enthusiasm but by collective hatred. It’s sickening.

How can we grow to be a better horseman, better people if we foster such evil concepts and allow them in our world.

I do not agree with everything I see in every aspect of the horse world. But I will fight to share the ways we can improve and I will not attack every person who has not found my personally perceived level of competence but share with them the aspects I think they are lacking.

I believe bullying animals is wrong

I believe bullying people is wrong

We must do better

Hate breeds hate not love

Photography credit to JShpicture

08/22/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2bsmSDcEjM

Les 8 et 9 juin 2024, le Haras de La Cense recevait Frédéric Pignon et Magali Delgado pour un stage de deux jours. Découvrez ou revivez cet événement grâce à...

08/21/2024

https://www.ondine.horse/post/liberty-as-a-tool

Having done liberty with my horse for 3 years now I find that I mostly use it as a way of tuning in. It's a liminal moment where she gets to say no, she gets to be as rowdy or passive as she wants to be. I get to shape that into the connection I want. The Joy of RunningI started doing liberty with K...

08/13/2024

"Animal communication doesn’t need to resemble human language to be full of meaning and nuance. Arik Kershenbaum delivers an expert overview of the astonishing discoveries made in the last few decades" —Frans...

06/15/2024

https://youtu.be/hjnF9s61y_o?si=dyw5H4hCuMc0KpDE

Frédéric Pignon nous partage sa rencontre avec Templado, un étalon devenu son mentor. Ce cheval fougueux et majestueux lui a appris ce que signifiait le mot ...

04/13/2024

This was her big entrance! /

She was very distracted and excited but kept it together - mostly

04/13/2024

Last summer Kitty and I did a Liberty demo during the County Fair. This was her first time performing. So proud of my girl in all her sassiness

So our show needs alot of polishing :) but there is so much there that she just gives me. She stays with me even when she has to go let off steam. She always...

03/12/2024

It's happening!
It's a small group so more feedback :)
(yes - I did go a little wild with the animations 😄 )

02/23/2024

We're looking for a new venue to host our Liberty Clinics. Any leads?

02/11/2024

great intro to in-hand work

Classical dressage based on biomechanics with Thomas and Shana Ritter. Horse and rider training with gymnastic, progressive exercises. Develop your timing, seat, aids, and mindset including Feldenkrais for Riders with Catherine McCrum.