SL Equestrian BSc

15/02/2025

15/02/2025

Rehabilitation 🦄👌

Horse about to go through surgery? You can consult us to come out and support the post surgery rehabilitation process to aid yourself and your horse with correct care.

Working in conjunction with Stealth

15/02/2025

Wonderful young Atlantis in his dance class! If he was a gentleman! 👌🤸

11/02/2025

We were so grateful to our local RSPCA (England & Wales) Inspectorate contacts yesterday.

A concerned member of the public had spotted this poor abandoned youngster late on Sunday, suffering from Strangles (a highly contagious disease of the upper airway in horses).

This set the social media jungle drums off in spectacular fashion.

Thankfully the horse was found swiftly and is now receiving the care and attention needed.

Worth mentioning here the very useful app What Three Words - a huge help to all of the emergency services when people or animals need locating easily. Check it out!

10/02/2025

Long and low. Supporting the swing through the back by achieving the push power from behind.

Muscle build in the saddle coming from weeks of correct groundwork after having KS surgery.

Rehabilitation spots opening up!

BSc.

Message to book 📚

09/02/2025

Little Marv and Atlantis 🦄👌

07/02/2025

And Bertie is back with a rider on after his KS rehabilitation process 👌👌👌 no drama and full on okay with no sign on pain or pain memory 👍

Minus one stirrup 🤣🤣

Harry being super light and agile was up for the job of first man on 👌🌱

07/02/2025

And the owner is on board!!! 👌👍🤗

07/02/2025

Rory looking absolutely to die for today the swing through his back exceptional 👍👌

Changes made by his owner was his front shoes came off and he's all round not tripping as much and moving more fluently.

He'll be a natural coblet dressage diva!

06/02/2025

Atlantis finding his big boy pants in his saddle 🦄👌

06/02/2025

Atlantis 👌
He has the diva vibes 🤩🦄

04/02/2025

Little Marv and Harry 🦄🌱💚

04/02/2025

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

03/02/2025

Quote of the day

Support eachother and each horse as they come. If they thrive, support the thrive 🙏🦄👌

01/02/2025

My lovely boy. Not too bad considering we've basically had the past few months off work 🙌🦄

31/01/2025

Clipping, manes and tails underway 🦄

31/01/2025

How to time the last clip of the season?🦄
Traditionally, it was recommended that the last clip of the season should be timed for the end of January to ensure the new summer coat came through unhindered. However, this is purely subjective, and clipping can be carried out all year round. It just depends on your horse and your requirements!
Do you have a last clip for your horse?