Kelly Marks and Intelligent Horsemanship

01/09/2026

Recommended and Clare MacLeod MSc RNutr Independent Equine Nutritionist is guest speaker for Intelligent Horsemanship Members on 30th September! 😊

If you're a horse owner interested in a healthier, happier horse, I made 21 ways in 21 days to help you navigate the truth about feeding your horse so that you can upgrade their diet and nutrition.

It's completely free.

Comment '21', you'll get a DM to a link - then I'll send #1 right away.

Feel free to share to let your friends know

Thanks!
Clare
🐴🍏

31/08/2026

Suffolk! Norfolk! Essex! Don't miss this! Soon our fabulous Emma could be moving to fields afar! She's such a great teacher, physio and horse advocate - I highly recommend x

30/08/2026

A trip to Gifford’s Circus made me think I must really Up my exercise routine 😂

I remember hearing Prima Ballerina, Debra Bull,talk about the Joy of Using Your Body and
I was thinking of the joy horses’ can experience when they can run and jump and play. (And so can we).

Daisy was saying the other day she’d never felt better than when she was training to be a firefighter.

Fire fighting - That’s another story - but ‘never felt better’ - that’s worth going for.

We can only do what we can do with the limitations and time we have – but at the beginning of this year I was so unfit with such a stiff back and shoulders that I’ve made it a bit of mission to move and feel better.

Honestly it’s been so worth it. My first step was buying a pilates mat – you have to start somewhere! I’ve joined a Pilates group here (do whatever suits you), one of the group does it all from a chair and she says it’s made such a difference to her various riding and a car accident injuries. She’s also the group clown so keeps us all laughing.

Being in a group helps keep you motivated as you don’t want to let the others down but there are good online courses available and so much on Youtube.

So if you’re thinking ‘Ugh Winter’s coming up’ this may be a good nudge.

PS Not boasting but can get up from floor without using my hands now – Yay!

PPS Feel free to put your exercise recommendations on here! ###

28/08/2026

I've only just seen Daisy aka The Neice wrote this 😊 it's so nice.
Intelligent Horsemanship members don't forget you have till Tuesday to enter the draw to win an Online Confidence course with Daisy. Starting in October when those dark nights have really settled in. If you like this page you'll like the How Very Horsey page. ###

There are people who pass through your life, and there are people who quietly shape it. For me, one of those people was Monty Roberts.

When I first met him, he guided me through my very first Join-Up. I remember wearing enormous wellies and being convinced I was going to trip over. Monty would calmly say, “Walk left… now right…” and I was so worried I’d get it wrong that I held my hands out in front of me - one like an L so I remembered that was left.

Years later, as a frustrated teenager, I stormed into my auntie’s house, threw my school bag into the sitting room and heard an American voice say, “Ouch!” Mortified doesn’t quite cover it. I’d just launched my school bag at Monty Roberts.

Over the years he was there for so many milestones. He cheered me on at Hickstead and HOYS. He taught Pie to jump ditches and Joey how to tie knots. He taught me to lasso… and then, with impeccable timing, let me be the one being lassoed while I ran away laughing.

He had time for people. He had curiosity. He had an extraordinary gift for helping both horses and humans feel understood.

People will always have different opinions about methods and horsemanship. That’s true of anyone who changes an industry. But whether you agreed with every aspect of his work or not, it’s impossible to deny the difference he made.

He took an unimaginably difficult childhood and turned it into a lifetime of trying to create more understanding, more kindness and better relationships between horses and people.

What a legacy.

Thank you, Monty, for the lessons, the laughter, the encouragement and for being part of so many of my happiest horsey memories. Sorry about hitting you with my school bag - violence is never the answer!

Rest easy, Monty.

27/08/2026

Congratulations to Sue Fletcher, July's Member Prize Winner. Have you entered the August Draw Yet? If not do get your entry in now before the draw closes. WIN a Place on the Online Rider Confidence Course sponsored by How Very Horsey.A huge thanks to all of our sponsors for the wonderful prizes!
Thank you to all those who entered. If you weren’t the lucky winner this time, do check out the UPCOMING MEMBER PRIZES.
Already a member? Click the link in the comments to view and enter.
Not yet joined? Find out more and become part of the IH family. Click the link in the comments.
IH members get access to our free monthly prize draws, with brilliant gifts donated by our generous sponsors, including Smart Saddles, HowVeryHorsey, Equiculture, TopSpec, Ariat, Horses Inside Out, MeadowMania, Premier Equine, Clare Macleod, Great Horse Products, Red Horse Products, The Horse Physio and more.
A huge thank you to all our wonderful Sponsors.

27/08/2026

What does the expression INTENTION mean to you? No right or wrong answers just what it means to YOU. It's a word used a lot around horsemanship and horsetraining - but do people have different people have different ideas of what it is and how to do it/use it?

PS The picture has no relevance - it's just me being lost at TREC some years ago. I was looking for a picture of the wonderful Pat Burgess as she used to talk about intention. I couldn't find one so I settled on this. x

26/08/2026

New Welfare Guidelines from Scottish Rural

Do people actually read things like this and we all click and like and go ‘yeah, yeah great better welfare?’

I’m starting a campaign for ‘Horses are Individuals’ alongside ‘I’m not a cave dweller and if I’m sick get me to a doctor ..."

For Example

“Evolutionary needs”

“Equids today have similar biological and behavioural needs to those that evolved on the plains, mountains and deserts over four million years ago.”

But how similar are they to those days? ‘Plains, mountains, deserts’ very poetic but have horses really not changed that much?

I remember riding horses let’s just say, 50 years ago (the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms) and they were much physically tougher than they are now by all accounts.

Competition horses are not bred for strong feet and a sturdy constitution. Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival of the fastest, the highest jumper, the biggest leg movers and ‘I’ve got this mare that’s gone lame, I know, I’ll breed from her’.

Of course, there are some similarities still but the perhaps the most important things to take into account is realising that the desert horses are different from those from the mountain (I’m thinking Welsh).

Desert horses ie Arabs and those containing those bloodlines (and donkeys) have finer coats that are less well adapted to cold and wet. They can take more food that the mountain ponies who have evolved to survive on less. That’s an important point for horseowners to understand (IMO)

And then we have: “Traditional management practices where animals are prevented from forming social bonds and even from having social contact with other equids, provided feed and forage at set mealtimes or given free access to relatively high energy forage and/or pasture, and prevented from moving freely, have a significant negative impact on their welfare.”

That’s all one sentence! Whatever happened to full stops? How is ‘provided feed and forage at set mealtimes’ put in the same sentence alongside ‘preventing social bonds’ - as mismanagement?

Is it bad welfare to give horses feeds as neccessary? Can’t we throw hay in the fields twice a day?

Anyone on this Facebook post has a good idea of how to manage their horse – but this is written presumably for people with little knowledge.

My question to you is – is it clear and is it helpful? And also who writes this stuff? Are we questioning things enough?

PS I don’t want anyone to lose their job – it was probably AI 🙄

Photo from my Namimbian documentarty 'Whispering the Wild'
These were horses left by the German Army after World War 1 that adapted to become Desert Horses

25/08/2026

With the Horsemanship world being ever more competitive I just want to say how much I appreciate messages from those trainers I haven’t known that well but have taken the time to message how sorry they are about Monty.

To me taking the trouble to do that is a mixture of ‘kind’ and ‘classy’.

Those include, but are not limited to Sophie Seymour Equestrian, Emotional Horsemanship by Lockie Phillips, Guido Louis Equine Behavioural Training and Lisa Canfield, who I don't know personally but I was touched to get a message from her too.

Thank you guys and wishing you all the best. Also to Lucinda Green MBE not a horsemanship trainer as such but another example of a class act.

But that brings me to am I walking the talk? I do my best and when I saw Clicker Trainer, Alexandra Kurland, passed away at just 65 years (I have her book after starting with ‘Don’t Shoot the Dog’) I really wanted to send a message of condolence but couldn’t find the right place for it to go. Let me know if you can help with that.

Which brings me on to a good podcast I listened to (I think it was by Noelle Floyd?) the gist of it being – whether you like or dislike Join Up or Clicker Training, we need to respect the pioneers - those who got us all thinking.

PS Do go on our email list - I can sporadically be quite interesting and you can always unsubscribe