Lisa Kay Equine (2025)

Specializing in building a relationship, foundation training, young horse development, behavioral problems, liberty work, and classical dressage.

18/03/2024

The WALK - mother of all gaits

Most riders spend little time at the walk outside of "cooling out" or "warming up".

Not realizing it is the gait that BIRTHS everything you do, and REVEALS everything you may need.

"The FEI rule book once stated that it was at the pace of the walk that imperfections of dressage are most evident"

Every issue can be felt and seen through the magnifying lens of the walk.

"François de Lubersac, a master from the legendary School of Versailles in the 18th century, recognized that in dressage training, the first gait in which to train is always the walk.

Remarkably, de Lubersac, trained his horses only at the walk, and when he decided that they were ready, his horses were able to do everything at all gaits."

The walk is an anchoring gate. To teach and refine the horses balance, collectabilty, lightness, refinement, propreoception, suppleness, relaxation, lateral gymnastics, and understanding of aids... just to name a few.

There is no better gait to school these concepts then the walk. Testing things up the ladder of movement; trot and canter, and then anchoring back to the walk to fix, progress, or prepare.

The walk is the gait you "polish the stone" of all these qualities, more than any other gait.

It is the gait you come back to again and again, where the root of it all lives.

And remember, as with any gait, there is more than "just ONE walk".

Tempo, balance, stride, and frame can change in so many ways within any single gait that it lends itself to many "changes of gait within a gait", based on what that horse needs at any given moment.

In my opinion, a classical rider can easily spend an entire ride at the walk, and the higher up they ride, the more time they may spend at the walk...polishing the stone.

Mindful footfalls live in the walk.

What is your walk telling you?

08/03/2024

"My horse just spooks to get out of work."

FALSE

Spooking to "get out of work" is a thought process that requires an egoic part of the brain that horses simply don't possess.

They literally CAN'T think like that. They dont have a Prefrontal Cortex to think like that.

So let's just drop that ancient training perspective and talk about what's actually happening.

What's very likely happening is that the horse is operating in a chronic state of fight or flight. Its like someone left a light switch on in their sympathetic (fight/flight) nervous system, and its running up the meter.

Imagine being in a state of anxiety or stress, and potentially pain...

Now add to that a filter of the world where everything around is a potential threat to your survival...
..and in that state, add MORE stimulus to yourself with tasks you may or may not understand, pressure to figure it out, someone yelling at you, and maybe even hurting you.

What you likely will notice outside of fear, anxiety and stress, is a hyper reacitve state developing. Meaning that everything and/or anything could make you come out of your skin or fly off the handle.

It could be a pattern of triggers that set you off, or it could be random things.

Why random things? Because you're TRYING to keep it together. You're pretending to be ok when you're not ok. Sometimes you can kind of keep it together, and other times, the slightest thing sets you off. Maybe something that you didnt react to a minute or even day ago, all the sudden becomes the "random" thing that sets you off today because you're already maxed out.

OR it can become a pattern of behavior, that everytime a specific thing happens you loose it. You are now spooking or triggered by repetitive association and this becomes a pattern that easily gets looped over and over.

Think of how jumpy, nervous and on edge you might feel walking through a haunted house. Someone closes the door, drops something on the floor, the slightest noise and you jump, or even run depending on how nervous you are. Little things would set you off.

This is how your horse feels as a prey animal without the right tools.

When we see the behavior through the inacurate lens of "they are just being bad just to get out of work", it lends us to a place of punishment, or putting more pressure on our agenda to fix the situation.

This usually goes one of two ways, the horse gets worse and spooks more, or you intimidate them into an "obedient" state of learned helplessness(freeze state), which becomes robotic and potentially even more dangerous.

But if you see the pattern of spooking as a SYMPTOM of a chronic fight/flight state with repetitive triggers causing hyperreactivity(spooking, stessed, anxious, tense), and/or hypervigalance (cant focus, cant retain simple lessons) then you can address the issue appropriately and empatheticly.

So, how do you this?

🔸️ Learn what THRESHOLDS are and how to work with them appropriately

🔸️ Learn the many of ways to turn down your horses fight or flight response and switch on more of the parasympathetic nervous system to access relaxation and confidence.

🔸️ Learn what "letting down" signals mean and how to read them in your horses body language.

🔸️ SLOW DOWN

🔸 ️Be WILLING to CHANGE your AGENDA

🔸 ️Learn what EMOTIONAL FITNESS is and how to work on it.

🔸 ️Understand that your horses abiltiy to relax WITHIN ridden work is directly corilated with quality, athleticism, and bascially anything you're likely trying or wanting to achieve with your horse.

🔸️️️ DONT train high states of adrenaline and think its power.

15/02/2024

Another great example of how much a horses posture and suppleness can change.

This is after only 3 sessions under saddle. Imagine another month....year...etc.

Top photo:

- Improved softness of muscle tone. (Muscles are more doughy, soft, and smooth when free of tension)

- Lift in the base of neck and back

- Improved transition into the wither from back and neck, due to the lift of the thoracic sling.

- Increase in bloodflow and capillary fill, giving the horse a less "dull" or "gray" look to the hair coat.

Disclamer:

This is not achieved by excessive forward ridden work or gadgets of any kind.Those things will create an opposite result when trying to change posture, balance, or release tension within the posture or muscle(s).

What does achieve these results is SLOW ridden or in hand work, and many times, work at a standstill or in a stall initially....Can I emphasize SlOW again.

Anytime you are changing posture, balance, or relasing tension, SLOW is fast in regards to positive results.

From there you carefully build the horse back into more energy and develop strength on a foundation of balance, suppleness, and lightness that's free of tension or heavyness.

Obviously it takes a bit of skill and knowledge to do in hand or undersaddle, and thats where bodywork can be a great place to start learning some of these tools and concepts that are SO important to understand as riders and trainers!

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