The Horsemanship Academy

13/01/2025

I couldn’t agree more!!

Why so much, so young?

The horse industries, particularly racing, have operated the same way for centuries, pushing 2- and 3-year-olds hard. But that doesn’t mean other disciplines should follow the same path.

I take a conservative stance when it comes to a horse's age.

A yearling is still a baby—let them run and play in a field.

A 2-year-old is also a baby—still best left running in a field.

At 3, a horse is still a baby, though now big enough for some handling. Forget about "futurities" or "young horse programs." If you can’t resist doing something, put a saddle on, maybe work on long-lining, and get on occasionally to make sure they don’t buck you off. But then—send them back to the field.

If all you’re doing with a 3-year-old is the basics—shots, feet, teeth, leading, just like a yearling or 2-year-old—I don’t think you’re falling behind.

At 4, they are a young adolescent. Like most adolescents, they need a job, but not a demanding one. No speed, no tight spins, no pounding work. Focus on slow, steady physical development—lots of walking, building muscle, and gaining body mass. You're still in a foundational stage.

By 5, they’re either still a baby or starting to mature, depending on the horse. Train carefully, and above all, avoid injury and stress. Don’t rush them into some performance-driven "young horse" program unless they’re an early maturing type—and even then, be cautious. Definitely avoid this at 4.

By 6, they’re ready to start becoming a "normal" horse.

I know my timeline is unconventional. Many horses are worn out or injured by age 6, 7, or 8—some even younger. They're mentally exhausted and physically broken by trainers and riders who pushed them too hard, too soon.

But if you can be patient, allowing them to grow and strengthen, those same horses can still be in their prime into their late teens or even early 20s and retire at 30.

What’s the rush? Seriously.

Written by Tamarack Hill Farm

Farmleigh Storm Connemara Pony, a late maturing breed. Aged 6 year,

03/01/2025

01/01/2025

Happy New Year!

I hope 2025 brings you all that your heart desires! 2025 is a big milestone for The Horsemanship Academy! It marks the 20th year of my business on my farm! 20 years of training horses, teaching clinics, running my own farm, and working to make a difference in the lives of horses by teaching people how to build better relationships. And what a ride it has been! I am blessed and I have worked hard! It's been a journey for sure! I look forward to sharing some history and lessons learned with you in 2025, as well as celebrating!

As you may already know, I have a tradition of selecting a Focus Word for the year for my horsemanship and life! My word for last year was Love! And that was a great word to remind me to soak it in, to spend more time doing things I loved with horses and people I loved. And for me, I took time to also love myself, to be nice to myself, and give myself grace when needed.

For 2025, my Focus Word is Cadence. I hope to find my rhythm in movement, and to have the ability to pace myself in work and in my personal life. I tend to find something that interests me and dive deep, often ending up down a rabbit hole, then coming back up for air trying to remember what sent me in that direction in the first place! I'd like to find a little more cadence, a little more purposeful progress if you will. To have a better ability to speed up and slow down, with slowing down being the hardest for me.

What's your Focus Word for 2025? I'd love to know!

I wish you the very best for 2025! May you above all else, Enjoy the Ride!

22/12/2024

Such a fun memory that was just shared with me! Helping people get connected with their to have more fun is what I do! The Ultimate Equine Partnership Process is how I do it!! To learn more about how I can help you just send me a PM!

https://www.facebook.com/share/17o46p1baH/?mibextid=CTbP7E

19/12/2024

Have you joined the Ultimate Equine Partnership Group?
This is a great place to learn more about connecting with your horse and a place where I post free training. Drop me a note below if you would like a link!

15/12/2024

Love this. Horses take time!!! Connections and trust can take years. Let’s do right by the horse!!

We Just Can’t Do It Anymore😔

~The evolution of wild mustang competitions~

A hundred wild mustangs in a 100 days with 100 trainers.

It was a brilliant idea🧐. Innovative, creative, exciting and challenging. Plus, the added bonus of showing the world just how trainable and amazing the American Mustang is.
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And it was amazing. It worked great for about the first 10 or so years. See back in the beginning you were a huge success if you got your horse around the courses. They were not too complicated. You could win your freestyle if you carried a tarp around and taught them to lay down.

Then the trainers got better.

The competitions got harder 😳and what we expected of the horses got to be monumental. In order to stay competitive you had to work your horse every.single.day. A lot of top trainers worked their horses all day. I know of some who didn’t take outside horses when they did the makeover so they could just concentrate on that one makeover horse.

🏆Winning was everything and we lost sight of the goal.

Horses were auctioned off who were dangerous but promised to be “solid, broke horse for anyone”. Some ended up in kill pens, some went from home to home to home. We lost sight of the why. The why we are doing this in the first place.

When horses are trained to win at a freestyle, many essential pieces are missing for a good transition to domestic life and a new home. They still need those holes filled.

A lot of wonderful trainers 🤠did all they could to encourage buyers to keep the horse in training and give them more time before taking them home. Many tried buying their horse back to keep training and have a say in placing them in the right home. This can be quite costly and let’s face it, mustang trainers aren’t exactly bringing in tons of money 💰training mustangs.

Good trainers got burnt out🥵. Good trainers heart’s 💔couldn’t take the grind and what was necessary to be competitive. Made no sense to put all that money into getting to the show if you couldn’t at least be competitive. Most do not have the bank accounts to be purely philanthropic yet got shamed by the public to simply want to survive financially.

A change was needed.

🥳A change is here.

The powers that be have taken notice. The new competitions offer more time ⏱. One of the reasons I have always loved the Magic. It gave 120 days rather than just 100 and those extra 20 days were huge.

But it still isn’t enough for most mustangs.

That is only enough time for a select few who can handle the stress of rapid training. Most mustangs are not like that and even then you are asking too much. They are generous and forgiving creatures, but it is too much 😞.

We are headed to the time of the majority of the competitions offering from 6mths to almost a year. This is incredible 🤩and the essential evolution of the mustang competition. It is more in-line with the rest of the equestrian show world as well. Check out what Mustang Heritage Foundation and Mustang Champions are doing breaking new ground and making huge changes.

These competitions are also allowing trainers the option to select the homes the mustangs they train go to. This helps the trainer as well as gives the mustang the best possible chance to not change homes or end up at a kill pen somewhere. That level of training, time invested, money invested and control of the person who knows the horse best (the trainer) helps push everything towards the best possible outcome for the horse.🐴

There is this domestic horse formula meme floating around FB right now:
📍Takes 1 year to get them broke
📍Takes 2 years to train one to a discipline
📍3-5yrs to season one
📍10yrs to truly finish one

Expecting wild mustangs to rise to a different time line is unfair and breeds for some rather unsavory 😬practices to result.
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We feel it takes 1-2yrs to get them even domesticated, then they can truly START on the timeline above. Sometimes they can do it concurrently.

We expect too much of them and then throw them away 🗑when they don’t meet that accredited timeline.

They deserve better from us. Let's treat them at least the same as we do domestic horses.

Give them time.

I recently pulled Sandia from the Mustang Magic - Ft Worth 2025 competition. She is a lovely mare but was not handling the stress of this timeline well. Her last video and why we pulled her from the competition was just posted to our YouTube channel.
Link in the comments.

Edited to add: To all those new to us. Isidro doesn’t do any of our social media. It’s me, the other half of IEH - Amber 🙂 though we do share sentiments and point of views on what’s posted here.

04/12/2024

Science isn’t my strong suit, but I thought this was a good explanation sharing the difference between the horse brain and the human brain. By understanding, Horses behavior and nature, I feel we are given the strategies we need to help them feel safe and get out of their “reflex brain“

Understanding their body language and learning to communicate with them through body language and intention can greatly help.

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)

11/10/2024

I love this!! And might be a new mantra surviving the aftermath of this storm

Work Hard! Stay soft!

The journey that we call horsemanship is not for the faint of heart, nor for those lacking in discipline, or perseverance. If you want to understand the many feels and nuances, that you must, in order to ride and interact with your horse successfully, then you have to be willing to work hard but still stay soft!

What might that mean? The working hard part pertains to the discipline you must possess to gain control of your body parts in all of their unique individuality so that you can both follow, and communicate, with your horse. The soft is just that. Becoming buoyant instead of rigid in all your joints while following and yet maintaining the ability to influence the horse beneath or around you.

Another skill set that must be mastered is the control of all emotions…other than peace, and empathy, for the horse.

My goal is to break this down. Cut it in half, if necessary, then cut it in half again. When you first…understand… and then apply, precise communication aids in your riding and interactions you will learn and your horse will begin to respond predictably. What is needed in order to communicate with the magical creatures we get to spend time with…?

It all starts with understanding these unmatched beings. What motivates them? Who are they? As their own unique set of personality traits, intelligence and energy levels are factored into the equation, a recipe, for each individual emerges.
I am not implying that discipline and boundaries are not necessary because they are. In ourselves.
The horses will follow suit.
Some personality types and energy levels are harder to communicate with at first.
Stallions need special handling at the beginning.
I have a long and varied background in the equine industry and consequently have worked with colts and stallions more than most folks get to. Some folks don’t like stallions but some of my best performance horses were stallions.
Stallions value good timing, fairness and consistency. They will hold you accountable if you don’t provide that. Along with relaxed control of your emotions. Repetition of fair handling leads us where we want to be.
I also have enjoyed many opportunities to work with “tricky” horses in my prime. They sure helped me get better about all of these skill sets I preach about to my students. Sure I made mistakes…we all do. But I learned from them and never blamed the horse.
Some horses challenged me, some ignored, some were too frightened or distracted at the beginning to listen. Bit by bit though, they all came along towards the best that they could be. That was always enough.
True talent in any discipline is rare but progress towards your goals is always possible.
Another thing. All horses do not suit all people. In my early years I did not possess the skill set or understanding to provide proper guidance to certain horses. While I learned a lot from these horses I cannot be sure they learned that much from me.
Mostly because I approached them from my place of comfort not theirs. I try not to do that anymore.
If this sort of language and approach is interesting to you maybe we should connect.

We will be embarking on a series of clinics at the rescue that cover all areas of conversational horsemanship. Comment if you have interest and we will be in touch.

07/10/2024

Something you don’t see on the farm everyday! I am thrilled to see them heading back to clear the destruction left behind by the storm!! Here’s to power returning and The Horsemanship Academy getting reopened for business!!!

As soon as we get power I will be rescheduling all that had to be cancelled… lessons, evaluations, and the Immersion.

Although I may take a day off and sleep, then reschedule!!🤣🤣🤣