Stepping With You Equine Behavior and Training

23/03/2025

I highly recommend Dr. Alyssa E. Keto for your veterinarian needs.

21/03/2025

20/03/2025

Do you have spring fever? Remember to clean your geldings sheath. This time of year many things are contributing to the horses "crabby" aka unwillingness on the ground and/or in the saddle. Give them one less thing to worry about and clean that sheath! Don't forget mares need their back end cleaned regularly too!

Here are some beans I just cleaned out of a stallion. Now I'm all covered in white hair and smell like sheath! Yup, spring is here!

19/03/2025

19/03/2025

19/03/2025

18/03/2025

https://youtu.be/9n17CfwgOuQ?si=Y9IFReKSrJiqcWPe

15/03/2025

For everyone interested. My weekdays have opened up. Depending on where you are located, I am available Mondays through Fridays after 2:30 p.m. for evaluations and training sessions.

14/03/2025

It only took me a few minutes yesterday for Mr. Jimmy to come and allow me to put his haulter on. Second training session and he is already trusting me. He was confident enough to let the farrier trim him for the first time in several months.
No pictures for this. But Max , the 18 hand Belgium offered his feet to the farrier for a few brief seconds. Prior to this his owners were told he could only be trimmed in stocks. But they were unable to touch his legs or even lead him into stocks. The farrier Clarissa was very happy with what she saw. We are looking forward to working together and helping this boy get his feet properly trimmed. Moving forward one Step at a time!

06/03/2025

Spring is in the air!
I had 2 evaluations today. These boys couldn't be caught to get their feet done for quite a while. They are very sweet, smart and eager to learn. Their owners are very dedicated in learning how to help these wonderful horses.

22/01/2025

Behaviour is a symptom 🐴

We often see people asking for help with training through a behavioural issue, they’ll describe perhaps being a bit crabby under saddle or being difficult to mount. Usually someone in the comments will suggest a pain issue and the response is “but he isn’t showing any symptoms of pain”. Behaviour is a symptom, of something, even if it isn’t necessarily pain.

I think we are so used to seeing horses showing discomfort and stress that we don’t notice it as unusual, that’s just how horses are to us. We perhaps think that pain behaviours must be really loud, obvious lameness, biting, kicking, throwing people off etc.

When I go to any big livery yard there are inevitably a number of horses showing fairly extreme stress behaviours which is just accepted as normal, eyes are rolled, they are shouted at and “put in their place”. If this is what we’re exposed to all the time, its no wonder we feel confused when someone suggests our horse isn’t okay.

The other difficult thing to navigate is the number of professionals going out to see these horses who are also telling people the behaviour is normal and nothing to worry about. I suppose they are victim to the same conditioning, if all you see throughout your training are stressed, uncomfortable horses, then that seems normal to you. Education on behavioural science and how horses bodies should, or could, look without seeing them through the lens of the current industry standards is severely lacking.

There is such a disconnect that we cannot see our ways of keeping, training and riding horses are usually the main contributing factors to our horse’s physical and behavioural issues. But if we can break away from our conditioning and start to look at our horses through a different lens we can really change things for the better for them, and for us.

I want to give a couple of real world examples of seemingly subtle behaviour that people have been told to train through and what was actually going on.

🐴 Horse was bracing their neck up and shifting back as the rider mounted, was “fine” once you were on. Saddle had become too tight and was pinching.

🐴 Horse started snatching/striking out with front legs when trying to trim hooves. Horse was diagnosed with SI issues and was struggling to shift their weight behind and balance on 3 legs.

🐴 Horse started being difficult to load. Horse was diagnosed with kissing spine and hock arthritis that was potentially making travelling extremely uncomfortable for them.

🐴 Horse was pulling faces and threatening to kick people who came into their stable while they were eating. Horse was diagnosed with stomach ulcers. (I have a whole post coming on food anxiety).

How many of these scenarios have you seen that have been “trained” through using pressure and making the horse move their feet until they give in and comply? All behaviour is information, we just need to look a little deeper and question why rather than ignoring it or looking for a quick fix.

Do you have any stories of unusual behaviour which resolved when you discovered the underlying issue? 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

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22/01/2025

Fascia- tissue paper thin tissue that can make your horses body (& ours) as happy or as unhappy as can be.
Head to tail to toes- EVERYTHING CONNECTS. Treat the body as a whole.
"Fascia is a thin casing of connective tissue that surrounds and holds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve Tiber and muscle in place. The tissue does more than provide internal structure; fascia has nerves that make it almost as sensitive as skin."
So when you have a trauma related injury, a bad fall, or structural damage, things move. You might bring a chiropractor in to help your athlete out, rightfully so.
Well when they "don't hold their adjustment" it's typically because fascia has already adjusted things internally and re-learned how to be wrong instead of correct. So we have to release the fascia in order for the body to learn how to be correct again. Bring in Acuscope/Myopulse. We can help the body do some fascia release! My chiropractors, osteopaths ect.
Find that when I work on them before or after, things go hand in hand, and results stay put.



" - The left side is balanced and correct.
The right side, somewhere, something (fascia) is holding/ pulling on part of the body and throwing the whole body off. Causing over compensation, soreness, ect.

20/01/2025

https://youtu.be/lwa9l5Zf5gE?si=3rHDlEEhLTlp6HOo