EquiSense Horsemanship

It’s been a while since a post! Returning with something that struck me so fiercely it felt right to begin a new chapter by sharing something so relatable. 🤎🐴🤎

I accidentally replaced executive functioning with a 🐎.

Having horses when you’re neurodivergent is basically running a very high-budget wellbeing retreat for yourself and only realising halfway through the year when you're seemingly bankrupt.

You think you’re buying a horse........
What you actually buy is an external hard drive for your nervous system.

People love to say horses need routine.
Mine seem perfectly content with ✨vibes✨.
I arrive at wildly inconsistent times like a feral yard goblin and they’re just like,
“Yes. This version of you. We remember.” ⏰🧌

Executive dysfunction is a funny one.
Emails? Ignored for weeks.
A horse staring at you like you’ve personally betrayed them by stopping at three carrots when they know there’s a fourth?
Immediate action. No delays....must provide happiness for giant creature. 👁️🌾

When everything feels too loud, the phone is unbearable and people are… people…
a horse chewing hay is apparently the exact frequency my brain has been searching for. 🙏
The mental buffering wheel finally disappears. 📵🌾

Social battery flat? Perfect.
Horses don’t do small talk.
They’ll stand with you in silence and call it a meaningful interaction. Absolute dream. 🤝 SIGN ME UP.

Hyperfocus sneaks up quietly.
You pop down to “just check them”.
It’s now dark. You’re muddy.
And you’re conducting a full emotional audit of saddle pads and bags of items that once had a purpose. 🔦🫠

And emotional regulation?
They clock your internal chaos before you’ve even turned the engine off.
No judgement.
They just calmly refuse to cooperate until you stop spiralling.
Strong boundaries. Iconic behaviour. 👑

Masking doesn’t land either.
They see straight through it.
“Please stop pretending you’re fine. I can smell the cortisol.” 👃😐

They don’t care if your life’s a mess.
They don’t care if you’re late.
They don’t care if WhatsApp hasn’t seen you for three days.

They care that you show up.
That you’re kind.
And that the hay eventually arrives. 🌾💛

It’s connection.
And that’s exactly what our brains needed all along. 🧠
This concludes today’s wellness retreat. Please exit via the muddy gate.

Thats £3849594 please 🙏


🐴✨

Vaccinate them ponies and educate yourselves!

Don’t take my word for it, here’s a vet’s advice (because you know, I’m “just a tech” and couldn’t possibly know anything since I’m not a Dr).

Y’all know I’m about having the tough conversations…so here goes.

As both a breeder and a veterinarian, I see these conversations from two very different, but equally invested, perspectives.

I recently saw a post in a Gypsy group asking when people vaccinate for flu and tetanus. Maybe it was innocent. But when the comments quickly turn into “I’ve never vaccinated in 50 years and never had a problem” and “those diseases don’t even exist”… that’s not education. That’s willful ignorance.

So let’s talk about reality.

Tetanus is not a myth. It’s caused by Clostridium tetani, a bacterium that lives in soil. The same soil our horses live on every day. I have personally seen horses die from tetanus. It is a horrific, painful, completely preventable disease.

Equine influenza is not a conspiracy. Outbreaks happen. Horses run fevers of 104–106°, cough for weeks, drop weight, and barns shut down. Shows get canceled. Movement stops. It’s not theoretical, it has happened repeatedly across the U.S., including recent outbreaks that halted horse travel and competition. That was not a “joke.”

Choosing not to vaccinate doesn’t make someone more natural or more enlightened. It increases risk, not just for their horse, but for every horse they come into contact with.

And the comment that really stood out to me was someone saying they couldn’t imagine choosing a profession that harms animals every day… referring to veterinarians.

Let me be very clear.

Veterinarians do not take on massive student debt, years of advanced education, sleepless nights, emotional burnout, and constant second-guessing from Google graduates because we enjoy harming animals. We choose this profession because we are wired to protect them. To prevent suffering. To advocate for those who cannot speak.

Are vets perfect? No. Medicine evolves. Recommendations change as science advances. That’s a strength, not a weakness. But dismissing trained medical professionals while elevating anecdotal “I’ve owned horses for 50 years” as superior expertise is backwards.

Experience is valuable.
Education is valuable.
Now imagine someone who has both.

If someone has been a lifelong horse owner and a veterinarian, does that somehow make them less qualified because their answer doesn’t match yours?

We have watched outbreaks shut down movement. We have watched preventable diseases take lives. We have watched owners devastated over something that could have been avoided with a simple vaccine protocol guided by their veterinarian.

Doing better for our horses means leaning into evidence-based medicine, not away from it.

If you don’t trust your vet’s recommendation, have a conversation with them. Ask questions. Discuss risk factors. Tailor a protocol to your farm.

But pretending diseases don’t exist because you personally haven’t experienced them is not responsible horsemanship.

Our horses deserve better than ego-driven medicine.

Do better for them.

📸: Samantha Dawn - Equine Photography

Horses’ wellbeing before human needs. Let go of the “need” you are using to justify pushing harder against clear communication coming from your horse trying to tell you what they actually need.

Are we really helping the horse? 🐴

I’ve been struggling to put this into words that will make a coherent post for a while, I’m not sure I’ve been successful.

The more horses I meet and the more I learn about their bodies and behaviour the more I realise so much of the training we’re doing is inappropriate for them in that moment.

Today I’m not going to talk about the rough stuff, I want to talk about the gentle training, the slow stuff that appears to be putting the horse first, no explosions just quietly coaxing the horse along. Even when training like this, it can still be inappropriate.

The problem is, most behavioural issues are rooted in chronic stress and/or pain/discomfort.

When we simply train with pressure and release and keep repeating until the horse does the thing, most horses will give up and comply despite being uncomfortable or sore, even if that pressure is seemingly quiet and gentle. If we are persistent enough, even pressure we deem to be “soft” can be enough to make a horse comply to make it stop.

I have a client horse who started exploding under saddle and the rider fell badly. The horse was “cleared” by a vet after a generic lameness work up and they had a trainer out to help them re-back the horse. In the video they shared with me the saddlecloth was introduced rubbed along the horse’s back, the horse tried to walk away and was kept close to the trainer by a lead rope, the horse eventually stopped with a very tense face and tolerated the saddlecloth going on. This process was repeated with the saddle and then the girth. When they went to girth up the horse visibly flinched, so they did it over and over again and explained “he needs to learn its not going to hurt”. The problem is it was hurting and he was desperately trying to communicate this.

I went out to see this horse after he had thrown 2 further riders and referred him straight back to a vet because of all of the very blatant signs of pain he was showing, he was diagnosed with arthritis in his neck and grade 3 stomach ulcers. This horse also had extremely poor muscling over his whole body so regardless of his behaviour no professional should’ve been encouraging sitting on his back.

A lack of explosive behaviour is not a green flag to keep going. We are not listening well enough if we only listen once the horse is screaming at us. Its also no good recognising more subtle signs of stress if you choose to repeatedly ignore them and keep going because you can “show the horse its fine”.

So you're saying its always pain? Yes, no, maybe 🥲. I try to use the word discomfort. Which can mean the obvious kinds of pain in the body we think of, but that can also mean emotional discomfort from training the horse is finding too stressful or physical discomfort from being ridden in uncomfortable postures or asked to do inappropriate levels of work for where their body is at right now. Sometimes all of the above.

This isn’t meant to be a doom and gloom post, perhaps just planting a seed to really look at what we’re doing with our horses when trying to “fix” behavioural issues.

I just wonder how these horses may improve if, instead of going straight to behavioural modification, we just backed off, prioritised their emotional state by getting their daily living situation as stable and low-stress as we can giving them chance to down-regulate, then re-introduced the training scenario in a completely different way to build new, positive associations. Then we would have a base to work from and see what's really going on underneath. Maybe with some time like this and some gentle movement to improve their posture some of those chronic tension/soreness patterns in the body would go away.

We need to be looking at everything, management, social life, nutrition, posture, hoof balance, emotional health, previous history etc, instead we are “problem-solving” behavioural issues by taking a horse into a training space and teaching them to be obedient when pressure is applied, everything else is an after-thought.

Horse doesn’t like the saddle? Keep putting the saddle on and off until they give up and stand still
Horse won’t go forward? Keep nagging with legs/stick until they take a step forward
Horse won’t stand at the mounting block? Make him park there and just put him back every time he moves until he stops bothering.
Horse won’t load on the trailer? Keep applying pressure and only release when he steps forward.

My whole approach now is to get the horse into the absolute best place I can emotionally by reducing the overall stress levels in their life so we can perhaps get them into a trainable state. Sometimes the horse is so stressed that the first session looks like tweaking management and teaching the horse to eat out of some buckets in an appropriate training space, then leaving the owner to do that until the horse is relaxed about it, then the next session we can introduce some training.

When dealing with behavioural issues that can be caused by pain/fear like aversions to tack/being mounted/loading, I’m always going to bring choice to the table, using pressure/release to do this isn’t giving them a real choice. Its quietly shutting down their communication as there’s really only one answer we will accept. When we give horses choices, they can communicate with us more effectively. Sometimes we aren’t going to like the answer, which is why people push against this sort of training as being “ineffective”. But I am more interested in finding out how the horse actual feels so I can then hopefully find out why and help them.

I’m not interested in nagging horses into doing things they do not want to do, and probably cannot do comfortably, for my own interests. Unfortunately it makes for a terrible business model.

This is an industry-wide problem, extreme stress behaviour is so normalised that we’re mistaking less-explosive stress behaviour for calm relaxation. It is also normalised that horses are there for us to use and they should do exactly what we want them to do at all times or else. I don’t know how else to elicit change except to constantly blab on about it, then hopefully those among us who genuinely want to put our horses first can start to see through the narratives and see a different way forward. 🐴

“Things I wish I saw instructors doing with their students for 100, Alex!”

If you’ve ever wished your students could stand in the horse’s shoes, these lesson activities might be for you. 💞

Empathy is the heart of ethical, effective horsemanship, but it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. In our experience, empathy has to be TAUGHT to students, starting at the very first lesson and developed over the following weeks, months and years.

Here are a few of our favorite exercises designed to encourage compassion and help students understand the horse’s perspective:

🎒 Fill a backpack full of books - preferably heavy, slippery training manuals! Have students take turns wearing the backpack while jogging through a pattern, course or dressage test.

Ask how the backpack affected their performance: did they get tired faster? Did the backpack remain balanced, or did the books slide off-center? What changes did they have to make to their gait or posture to make the backpack more comfortable?

👢 Use the same backpack, but adjust it so that one shoulder strap is much tighter than the other. Then ask students to remove their boots and switch them, so that their left boot is on the right foot and vice versa. Again, ask them to perform a pattern or course on foot.

How does the ill-fitting equipment impact their comfort and athletic ability? What if they were unable to say anything about the discomfort - and knew they would be punished for disobedience?

🏇 Have students practice guiding each other with a bit and bridle, with the “horse” wearing the crownpiece of the bridle over their head and wrapping both hands around the bit. The catch: the “horse” must be blindfolded throughout the exercise. What kind of leadership helps them trust their “rider”? What kind of rein contact feels best?

🐺 Explain to students that they will be playing “wild horse herd” and moving from one “water source” to another. One student must make this journey with a smooth pebble inside their shoe (think mancala bead, not driveway gravel!). If they limp or alter their gait noticeably, the predator will get them, so they must figure out how to hide their lameness.

⏳ Construct four boxes in the arena, using ground poles or cones. These squares should be just far enough apart that students have to raise their voices to speak to each other. Have students pretend to be horses and allow you to lead them to their “stalls.” Once they are enclosed, set a timer for 15 minutes.

We use this powerful exercise in lessons on species-appropriate environment, equine enrichment and stable vices, as it usually takes less than 15 minutes for students to get fidgety inside their stalls!

More Learning Levels resources you might find helpful:

🐴 Horse Talk Cards
📗 Teaching Guides for Green HorseSense Level (especially The Perfect Fit and Focus on Fitness)

Want more ideas? THE BIG BOOK OF BARN LESSONS is a treasure trove of unmounted lesson activities like these. 📖 LLPro members can also find lesson activities for every objective in our unmounted curriculum in the HorseSense Teaching Guides - plus worksheets, games, flashcards and more!

Many times when entering into an interaction with a horse, the persons perception of what's going on, or what they think is right or wrong, creates the outcome of the interaction.

A lot of people have a list things a horse may do that are completely unacceptable to them, even if they horse doing doesn't actually cause a problem.

I recently had someone ask me about a horse that nips at the halter as they try to put it on, as well as a list of other behaviours that come after that once the horse is haltered.

I suggested not deterring the horse from nipping the halter allow it, even to allow the horse to chew on the halter if she needs to, and allow it to go on as long as the horse wants (GASP, I can feel some of you have a visceral reaction as you read this).

I recently received this email from the owner that I thought worth sharing here.

"I took your advice and have been working on letting her chew on the halter as much as she wants before I go to halter her. (It isn't really a "chew" it's more like a rolling it around in her mouth a bit now.). Anyways, WOW what a difference! She isn't chewing on it nearly as much as a couple of weeks ago and after she's done she drops it and her head and I then slip on the halter with no issue. The tension between us during the haltering process is also gone. I think she is feeling more seen and I am feeling more aligned with my values in holding space for her to work through things. I have also slowed things way down and am more intentional. I think she is appreciative of that and is way more willing in our activities after we put on the halter. It's almost like I was showing up expecting a "fight" and she and I both carried that energy. Your approach has completely changed the relationship with my horse. Thank you so much."

I feel like this is the most important part "I think she is appreciative of that and is way more willing in our activities after we put on the halter."

Most people would think if they "let the horse get away with" chewing on the halter they would then take more advantage of the person in every other interaction, but the opposite is actually true. When you start to understand that the natural world is more about collaboration than competition, then things really start to change.

In Irish, there’s a gentle word you don’t hear very often: Sásamh
(pronounced SAW-suv, with a soft “v” at the end).

It means contentment, or deep, quiet satisfaction.
Not the loud, chest-puffing kind of pride.
Not arrogance.
Not showing off.

Just the soft feeling of looking at your life, your work, your children, or your own reflection and thinking,
“Yes. This is good. This is enough for today.”

In the old Irish stories, heroes weren’t perfect.

They were brave one day and frightened the next.
They won great battles, and then turned around and made terrible mistakes.
They got lost. They failed. They had to start over more than once.

And still, the bards sang about them.

Not because they were flawless, but because they kept going. Because they tried. Because they grew. Because they were human.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned a harsher lesson.
That we shouldn’t feel proud unless everything is perfect.
Unless the house is spotless, the work is finished, the children never struggle, and we never fall short.

We look at other people’s lives, other people’s homes, other people’s children, and we start measuring ourselves against them.

But comparison is the thief of joy.
It steals the quiet victories.
It blinds us to how far we’ve already come.

So if the word pride feels heavy or uncomfortable, maybe try this one instead:

Sásamh.

That quiet, steady feeling of contentment with your own journey.

If you woke up today and won an Olympic gold medal,
I hope you feel a deep sásamh.

If you finally quit smoking,
I hope you feel that same quiet sásamh.

If you cleaned your whole house top to bottom and organized it just the way you like it,
that is worthy of real, honest sásamh.

But you know what else?

If you didn’t… you still deserve it.

If all you did today was one load of laundry,
there is still sásamh in that.

If all you managed was a couple of jumping jacks,
that effort still holds sásamh.

If you bought one pack of ci******es instead of two, because you’re trying,
there is real sásamh in that step.

If all you did today was open your eyes when all you wanted was to keep them shut…
there is deep, quiet sásamh in that too.

Your work matters.
Your effort matters.
Your small steps matter.

You are not only the distance you still have to go.
You are also the miles you’ve already walked.

And that deserves to be honored.

So take a breath.
Look at your life with gentle eyes.
And allow yourself a little sásamh.

You’ve come farther than you think.

Originally posted by thehorse.com, this is a great system by system overview of how horses handle extreme cold and winter in general. Stay warm out there everyone!
🥶🐴❄️

Feet and Legs
The horse’s feet and lower legs are designed to handle cold without freezing and without chilling the rest of the body. Therefore, a horse can stand in deep snow and not suffer frostbite. Pamela Wilkins, DVM, MS, PhD, Dipl. ACVIM, ACVECC, professor of equine internal medicine and emergency/critical care at the University of Illinois, says horses do not have muscle masses below the knee or hock. “The lower leg is mostly tendon and bone, which resist the effects of cold much better than muscle. These are not energy-requiring tissues, in comparison with the rest of the body,” says Wilkins.

There’s an old saying that the horse has an extra heart in each hoof. The frog, digital cushion, and a mass of veins are all part of this elaborate system. Each time the foot takes weight it pumps blood back up the limb.

“The blood flow in the foot is also part of the cushioning effect when the foot hits the ground; it creates a hydraulic, fluid cushion like a gel pad,” says Connally. “If there’s enough blood to create a hydraulic cushioning effect for a 1,200-pound horse’s foot hitting the ground, there’s a lot of blood going through there.”

Julia Wilson, DVM, Dipl. ACVIM, executive director of the Minnesota Board of Veterinary Medicine and past president of the Equitarian Initiative, points out that the shunting mechanisms in horses’ feet also benefit them in cold weather. “According to my spouse, Dr. Tracy Turner (DVM, Dipl. ACVS, ACVSMR), horses intermittently shunt the blood away from their feet. This may be a coping mechanism that keeps their cold feet from chilling the rest of their body when standing in snow. It also may be one of the reasons we sometimes see laminitis in winter. If you have a horse with chronic or subclinical laminitis (perhaps due to metabolic syndrome), and he needs to intermittently shunt the blood away from his feet in cold weather so they don’t get too chilled, this may be what exacerbates laminitis flare-ups,” says Wilson.

Cold Weather Problems
Frostbite in an adult horse is rare and usually due to an accident such as falling through an ice-covered pond. There are also some plant toxins that hinder blood circulation, such as feeds contaminated with ergot, or endophyte-infected fescue grasses. If a horse eats these, circulation to extremities might be impaired and ears might freeze.

Daniel Kenney, VMD, Dipl. ACVIM, of the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College, says horses generally have good blood circulation to help keep extremities from freezing. “If it becomes acutely cold, however, they refocus circulation to vital internal organs, leaving ears, tail, etc., more vulnerable to frostbite,” he says.

“We don’t see many frostbite cases here (at the Ontario Veterinary College) because we are a referral hospital, but I have seen a few,” says Kenney. “One was a youngster not used to the cold that was put outdoors and suffered frostbitten ears. Another case was a horse that had broken through ice on a pond and was immersed in cold water. That horse came in very hypothermic. We had to stabilize his blood circulation and gradually warm him up.”

He warns that if you warm a cold animal too fast, blood vessels at the skin surface dilate, bringing more blood to the body surface. “This takes away essential circulation from the body core, and this can be life-threatening,” he says.

Dipping temperatures can be especially problematic for certain equine populations. Julia Wilson, DVM, Dipl. ACVIM, executive director of the Minnesota Board of Veterinary Medicine and past president of the Equitarian Initiative, says, “Cold weather creates challenges for horses that are hypothyroid (thyroid hormone-deficient); their ability to thermoregulate is compromised. As a veterinarian, I tell owners that hypothyroid foals are severely at risk for hypothermia … Another group that can have problems (in cold weather) are obese donkeys that develop hypothyroidism,”

Wilson also advises owners to make sure animals have a good dietary source of iodine to prevent cold intolerance and hypothermia (low body temperature). This nutrient can be provided in a trace mineral salt or added in feed. “Owners need to be aware that the iodine in a trace mineral salt block can leach out. Ideally, horses should have a covered source of mineral salt so it won’t get wet,” says Wilson.

Respiratory System
The horse’s respiratory system is designed to warm incoming air. “It is extremely well-adapted for air warming, just as it is for dissipating heat in summer,” says Wilson. Cold stress on the lungs, therefore, is minimal. By the time the air gets through the upper airway (and the moderating effect of the guttural pouches, the two air-filled cavities at the base of the horse’s skull), the air is warmer and not as abrasive to the lungs.

Body Condition
Horses with adequate nutrition start building a layer of fat under the skin as days get shorter and nights grow colder. Some horses put on fat readily, while others need more nutrients to gain the extra weight and body fat.

“Wild horses, or even horses that run on large pastures on ranches year-round, eat all spring and summer and go into fall with body condition scores of about 6 on a score of 1 to 9—with 1 being extremely thin and 9 being obese,” says Connally. “Mother Nature wants them to have extra fat for winter, to serve as insulation as well as calorie reserves. By the time they come out of winter in the spring, they’ve dropped to a body condition score of 3, but they survived. Then they gain weight again through summer and are fat by the time winter comes around again.”

Connally says modern-day horsemen have disrupted this natural cycle. “We want to ride horses in summer and grain them because they’re working and get them up to a body condition score of 5 or 6,” he says. “Then winter comes and we put them in the barn, put a blanket on them, keep the barn warm, and feed them extra because it’s winter—and by spring they are too fat to ride, which can usher in a host of other obesity-related problems.”

Connally says the natural thin-fat-thin-fat cycle is better for horses than just getting them fat and fatter. The horse’s fat layer holds heat in during winter and is gone by spring. The horse can then more readily dissipate heat when working hard.

Monitoring body condition is important during winter to know whether horses are gaining, losing, or holding their weight. At the end of a working season, horses that have been in fit, athletic condition without much fat need time in the fall to gain more body fat. Wilkins recommends letting those horses gain at least 5% in body weight (50-60 pounds) to give them some reserves to draw upon for heat energy.

Wilson also recommends feeding fat to older horses to help provide them with the extra calories needed to maintain their body condition. “Geriatric horses are hard to keep weight on, with the need for extra heat generation combined with an aging digestive tract that’s not efficient anymore,” she says. “High-fat supplements are a wonderful tool to help horses in that stage of their lives.”

Digestive System
Fermentation of roughage such as grass or hay, on the other hand, takes longer and the hindgut creates heat more steadily as a byproduct of that microbial fermentation. Therefore, if a horse grazes most of the day or eats hay several times a day (keeping the digestive tract full of forage), he will have a constant source of heat energy.

“In cold weather (horses) should have fibrous food in front of them at all times and be able to walk around—which also helps with gastrointestinal motility,” says Wilson. “Horses have their own internal furnace, due to being hindgut fermenters. You should increase the proportion of hay in the diet as outdoor temperature becomes colder.”

Circulatory System
The horse has a huge circulatory system, which helps move the heat around the body. If heat needs to be dissipated, blood vessels are right under the surface of the skin, and heat escapes into cooler air around the horse. In cold weather the physiology of the horse is programmed to retain heat, rather than dissipate it.

The horse’s muzzle is richly supplied with blood, so these tissues rarely freeze. Ears, on the other hand, are most prone to freezing because those tissues are thin, but there is a lot of hair around the ears to help protect them and a lot of blood circulating in the skull—which also helps keep the ears warm.

Shivering
We often worry about horses that shiver, but this is just another mechanism to generate warmth, burning fuel in the muscles. “If they only do it for a little while, they’ll be fine,” says Connally. “They shiver, then maybe run and buck and do whatever it takes to get warmed up. But if they can’t stop shivering for hours because they are soaking wet, you need to help them.” Otherwise they’ll eventually run out of “fuel” to keep up their body temperature. V

It's a simple rule, the highest point of the neck is ALWAYS the poll. If the poll is below the crest of the neck, all kinds of bad things happen. Breathing is restricted. The horse's ability to balance is restricted. It is painful for the vertebrae even if they get used to it.

The trend toward hyper flexion of the neck that began in the 1990s was started by Anky Van Grunsven. It was "different" and trend seeking people adopted it believing Anky's supposed "benefits" from it. I am always looking for prospects and I 'd say 1/2 of the trained horses for sale pictures I see today proudly display this flaw. If you are selling a horse and display images of hyper flexion, knowledgeable riders will not be interested in your horse. They won't think much of your ability either.