Lisa Kay Equine (2025)

16/02/2025

Classical In-Hand Work

In-hand work is a part of classical dressage dating back to its earliest records.

It is a part of dressage that is rarely seen in most modern dressage barns, but has started to resurface in interest recently.

In-hand work helps to educate, enhance or refine the horses posture and movement without the rider. It is an excellent way to introduce or refine movements, balance, lateral maneuvers, transitions, suppleness, and much more.

I personally love in-hand work because it is such a wonderful way to break things down, help the horse release tension, gain confidence, or find detail in a posture, position, or movement.

In-hand work in my experience seems to be a more palpable form of aid assistance when the horses themselves are trying to learn or understand something. It then of course beautifully compliments and translates to the saddle.

I also love using it when diagnosing saddle fit issues, building confidence or relaxation, or using it as a form of body work in motion.

For me, I have developed a hybrid of natural horsemanship concepts combined with elements of body work that seems to effortlessly flow and build into the traditional presentation and education of classical in hand work.

There are also different positions one can obtain when schooling in hand. From work in the cavesson, beside the horse in the bridle, or from behind with a special form of long reins (not to be confused with long lines). Each position helps with different stages or areas of focus when schooling in hand.

Would love to hear any questions or success stories you may have of classical work in hand!

10/02/2025

"FACTS don't care about your feelings!"

But have you considered that...

"FEELINGS don't care about your facts?"

For horses, their feelings DON'T care about your facts, and as humans, your feelings are directing far more of the show then you realize, facts and all.

So before you display the coffee mug catch phrase, take a pause and lets talk about some "facts" in regards to these feelings...

The statement "facts don't care about your feelings!" Is many times delivered in a subtle yet condescending tone, or at the very least, an indifference to ones emotional state.

It's a hard statement to argue because although seemingly fundamentally true, it's incredibly short sighted and generally used as a weapon to suppress another experience.

Why does this matter? It's an important mindset distinction that can have detrimental affects on your horses training and confidence, not to mention your personal relationships.

FACT #1

Feelings drive your behavior, wether you know it or not.

Every action and thought you have has a feeling and emotion behind it, much of it is outside your conscious awareness. But feelings are what drive us to do literally anything in life. We then use logic to justify our behavior or action.

FACT #2

Your FEELINGS effect what "facts" you use and see.

You can’t separate the influence your feelings have on the facts that you know.

Facts are difficult to determine. What most people possess is knowledge of a subset of the facts, and how you decide what "facts" are included in that subset is going to be determined by your background, your experiences, your social circle, your interests, and yes, by your feelings.

How you consciously or unconsciously FEEL about an underlying conclusion of research is going to determine what findings you emphasize and what findings you discard — as well as what research you seek out.

How you consciously or unconsciously FEEL about the political slant of a news source is going to determine which ones you prefer.

But back to the horses....

Obviously this mindset affects not only how we approach each other, but also how we approach our horses.

Feelings drive behavior. I'll repeat. Feelings drive behavior.

So for whatever you're trying to achieve or teach yourself or your horse, it's the feelings that are your gate way to said outcome. Feelings will either block your path or they will be the catalyst to the progress you're pursuing, but you cannot avoid them.

When we can help horses find relaxation and confidence, that is when the quality of whatever we do skyrockets. That is where cognitive learning, consistency, physical strength, suppleness, coordination (etc.) is all at its best.

Feelings are insanely powerful and trying to override them with obedience or force has many physical, mental, and emotional consequences.

Learn the tools necessary to dissolve, direct, and redirect negative feelings if necessary.

Emotional intelligence will get you a LONG way in this process and is a skill that can be learned for ourselves and our horses.

Understand the "facts"...embrace the feelings.

01/02/2025

RECEPTIVITY of the AIDS

The aids are the riders way of communicating, integrating, and influencing the movement of the horse.

How the horse RECEIVES these aids is the make or break between ex*****on, accomplishment, and quaility of movement.

The receptivity of the aids can be assessed in three categories... 🔹Mental 🔹Emotional🔹Physical

How does your horse RECEIVE the aids MENTALLY? Does he cognitively understand what the aid is asking?

How does your horse RECEIVE the aid EMOTIONALLY? How does he FEEL about your hands, seat or leg? Defensive, shutdown, anxious...?

How does your horse RECEIVE the aid PHYSICALLY? How does the body respond? With tension, dullness, reactivity?...and in what anatomical order?

Most of us have been taught the aids in a series of successions and combinations. What many of us don't understand very well is the aids in isolation. This is key to being able to diagnose an issue and get to it's root.

Aids in isolation are like letters. A,B,C,D,E......
Your right leg is a single aid, left leg, right rein etc...

Using aids in combinations is like forming words out of letters...like CAT.

Aids used in combinations with energy and exercises is like writing sentences and paragraphs.

You develop sentence structure and punctuation and it becomes and art. As a horse progresses it can get complex quickly without the right foundation, and if a horse has missed a letter in the alphabet there can easily be discord that purpetuates quality or prevents forward progress.

Common receptivity issues are lack of engagement, rider nagging, tail swishing, rushing, or heaviness...to name a few.

Now of course these issues can also be caused from poor tack, training methods, or body pain, and if not addressed will in turn negatively affect the association of the aids as well.

Remember Pavlov dogs. The dogs learned to salivate at the ring of a bell because of the consistent pairing of food with the sound which programmed an ASSOCIATION. Associations are incredibly powerful!

So even if the aids were not the initial problematic cause, there is now a negative association and many times some of the aids have to be rebuilt even once the bad saddle, training, or body pain is fixed.

If you feel you have a receptivity issue, the fix is to break things down into parts, or isolations. slow everything down into SLOW motion, or better yet start from the halt to asses receptivity.

Let's use the leg as an example

Slowly and Softly present the leg, does your horse tense it's body, grind it's teeth, swish it's tail, or rush off before you even began? Any one of these are signs of a receptivity issue.

The first thing I want is for my horse not to be afraid or defensive to any of my aids. So that means I will approach and retreat with any aid, slowly and Softly until the horse is relaxed.

Step 2 is to educate the horse (from a place of relaxation and confidence) the desired response.

If the horse was defensive to the leg, the first step would be to get the horse relaxed with the approach and feel of the leg, THEN teach the horse how move forward or yeild. Rewarding small effort and not over facing.

Step 3 is to then progressively develop and refin the aid. many riders make the mistake of expecting too much too soon and it can make the horse defensive, anxious, sore, or less willing to try in the future... resulting in nagging.

Building the aids is like teaching a child the alphabet, then teaching them how to spell words, and then creating sentences and structure.

Think of how the aids break down into their most simplist form. Have a really good understanding and awareness of how the aids build from there.

Spoiler alert, understanding receptivity is a cornerstone in refinement and creating soft, light, and willing partners.

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!

Lisa Kay Equine

16/02/2025

10/02/2025

01/02/2025

18/03/2024

08/03/2024

15/02/2024

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