Equine Equilibrium

12/20/2022

Kip December 12, 2018 Where Did the Wild Things Go? (© Kip Mistral 2018. “Water Sprite” by Theodor Kittelsen) Almost all of us riders met the horse first in our childhood imaginations. We took our seats on the gleaming black stallions, or the feisty red mares, or even the luminous winged white ...

11/13/2022

10/22/2022

10/20/2022

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It’s time to retrain ourselves in how to learn and expect learning to go.

For decades, top names have pedaled programs in digestible, easy steps. You can buy a dvd and a trademarked stick and stick to the plan for success; follow the flow chart. Trainers have rotated horses in and out of their barns at lightning speed, 30 days to broke. We’ve subconsciously learned that you can buy results, in a customer is always right mentality -
But you can’t buy it, and the customer is not always right. The horse is.

You can’t buy an education, and you can’t buy training. Not really. You, the student, have to open your mind, do the work, be your own salvation. The teacher can guide you to it, but you can’t buy it.

It’s time to get comfortable being uncomfortable. It’s time to accept information you don’t like- to be told you have to go back to basics. It’s time to stop seeking tips, tricks and tuneups, and start seeking a real basis of knowledge. Its time to understand the horse doesn’t come reading the training manual- it’s time to learn to observe and think for yourself, stop seeking a step by step plan.

It’s time to be ok with hearing no- your horse is too lame to jump, you can’t ride him til he’s ready, hes going to break down if you don’t rehab him first.

It’s time for clinicians and trainers to stop dumbing the content down, and to start taking their craft seriously. It’s time to tell the public what they need to hear, not what they want. It’s time to say you have no need to learn to piaffe, or flying changes, or whatever -
you need to learn how to sit better or quiet your mind. It’s time to start delivering the truth and not what’s going to make you popular.

It’s time for real change in the industry - it’s time for real change within ourselves. It’s time to get comfortable not knowing, not being validated, and not being sold a magical cure. You know it to be true, but it won’t happen until you take it to heart, and put it into action.

10/17/2022

It is still a bit of a minefield when you think where the rider sits for example and the responses you want to be elicited by reins, legs, and seat - there are over 30 of them. It is a lot to signal from where we are sitting and that's why it is really critical to make sure that the horse can discriminate our signals. The leg is often used for a lot of signals, go faster, go sideways, bend, turn. We expect a lot and when the horse does not understand, it may resort to its coping mechanisms which can vary from apathy to hyperactivity or aggression.

It is difficult to train a horse and we expect so much that regrettably our frustration and aggression comes to the fore sometimes. There is an underling expectation that the horse knows what it is meant to do and that it is too naughty to do it. But the problem with punishing for non-compliance, is that vou really don't know that the horse knows what he is meant to do. Certainly, if you have trained it clearly enough according to the law of habit formation; if you train something clearly enough and reinforce it repeatedly enough, then the horse would do it. If he doesn't, it must be something to do with the way we ask or the fact that it has not been trained clearly enough.

Talented horse people do not resort to force because they understand the necessary communication between human and horse. They understand the benefit of combined reinforcement. Most of us have to learn this.

This is an excerpt from 'Conversations with Dr Andrew McLean' available to purchase via our online store: https://esi-education.com/shop/

10/12/2022

Sometimes it's not ulcers.

Sometimes it's not kissing spine.

Sometimes it's not EPM.

Sometimes it's not the bit.

Sometimes it's not the saddle.

Sometimes it's not the trainer.

Sometimes it's the fact you're a crazy human who continues to anthropomorphise these behaviours and insist that it couldn’t possibly be a pain related issue or anything related to you.

Sometimes it’s the fact that your horse was designed for the purpose of moving 20+ kilometres per day with their head down grazing and is now confined to a box stall and fed up on high energy grain whilst going without hay for hours each day, creating a sore tummy and a greater likelihood of having ulcers as a domestic horse than not in addition to being chronically understimulated and largely unable to exercise unless they have a human on their back playing puppeteer.

Sometimes it's the fact that you dress your horse in a variety of equipment with the purpose of restricting the movement of their mouth (flash) or creating more leverage for you to be able to ride and direct them easier by using a number of different harsher bits or gadgets like draw reins. This effectively removes any ability for quiet communication, so when your horse can’t take it anymore, they must get louder.

Sometimes it’s the fact that way too many unqualified trainers play saddle fitter and tell students their tack fits when it actually does not.

Sometimes it's the fact that your horse absolutely adores running away from you because it is one of the few things that brings them relief from the otherwise high pressure, high stress lifestyle that can be rides, especially when their communication of stress and/or discomfort is being labelled as personality and otherwise viewed through an anthropomorphic lens.

Sometimes it's the fact that you think your horse will wait for you while you mount or dismount but your horse is chronically stressed and cannot fathom the idea of standing still for a couple of seconds while they’re in fight or flight mode so they instead use the opportunity for relief by moving.

Sometimes it's the fact that the majority of the stress and avoidance behaviours we see ARE correlated with mental and/or physical discomfort and have shown consistent correlation in extensive equine behaviours studies.

Sometimes it’s the fact that we have a 70-90% rate of stomach ulceration in domesticated horses so your horse is more likely to have them than not.

Sometimes, the issue is that we as humans are really great at denying anything that would push us to self reflect and see the gravity of what is an industry wide issue of ignoring the horse and then when they finally get loud so we have to notice, blaming their loud behaviours once again on them.

Horses do not lie, their behaviour is honest. Humans, on the other hand, DO lie. Especially to themselves. To protect from having to sit information that is hard to hear.

It’s taking the easy way out to anthropomorphise your horse. But, I can promise you that if you actually put the time, money and belief into diagnostic work, you will have a very good chance of finding out what physical issue is causing their behaviour. Many who claim it can’t be pain related just don’t actually put the work in to find out because the real truth is often expensive and could be painful. For years, I avoided the truth for the same reason, all without knowing that was why.

If you learn to look for the reason behind their unwanted behaviour instead of just looking at the behaviour at face value, you also may find what situations, equipment and other factors contribute to it.

If you consider ruling out pain first and honestly looking at your horse’s living situation from a welfare standpoint, you may just realize how often pain and inadequate management cause behavioural issues, because these factors are behind the vast majority of issues we run into with horses.

After all, I thought it was “never the horse’s fault” or are we just saying that to sound good?

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09/14/2022

“Siempre es un desequilibrio en su conformación y su musculatura lo que hace a un caballo difícil de entrenar. El jinete que entrena un caballo difícil, por tanto, debe reconocer con precisión, en que miembros se origina la resistencia; bien se trate de una conexión entre las partes de su cuerpo que son demasiado débiles o demasiado tensas como causa de esas resistencias. Él debe pensar, a pesar de sus deficiencias, en como hacer al caballo útil, mediante el arte de adaptar el trabajo. Él debe posibilitar y hacer que pueda trabajar de la forma más ventajosa posible, a través de favorecer el marco apropiado. Con este tipo de caballos el jinete no puede trabajar sobre la totalidad, al igual que lo haría con los otros bien conformados. En su lugar, tendrá que de forma periódica, prestar más atención a “gimnastizar” las partes mal conectadas, con el fin de ponerlas al mismo nivel de las otras naturalmente mejor conformadas, en la medida de lo posible. Por ello es necesario con este tipo de caballos, que el jinete no solo tenga una formación práctica, sino también contar con suficiente experiencia, y ser ante todo, un “jinete pensante”, que no solo se limita a utilizar sus manos y sus piernas, sino que hace de su cabeza, su principal ayuda.” E.F. Seidler.