Jullaroo Equestrian

06/10/2023

Mister Kodi all settled in his new home ❤️. This marks the end of a hell of an era. Kodi was my last client horse to be placed. Although I will still being offering lessons, clinics and trimming and can still travel out to training sessions on your own property, I will no longer be offering training at my place. Quite simply, the costs have gone up too much and it just doesn’t pay enough to be worth the risk anymore. Thank you to everyone who trusted me with your horses over the years ❤️ I will still keep this page updated with lesson and clinic info, and god forbid, I might even have enough time now to post training videos with my own horses 😂.

23/09/2023

This shows how forgotten we are. I admittedly could not find where Reiner Klimke said the 2nd photo was incorrect. His reason is it's behind the bit!
Its quite funny! This is how far removed riders are today. The nose should never want to stay behind the vertical. It's a sign of tension and imbalance.

29/08/2023

5 YEAR OLD MORGAN GELDING

Looking for a new 🏡

Kodi is a brilliant 5 year old purebred Morgan. He was lightly backed 2021 and then spent last summer hacking out both in company and alone. Currently he is working on his schooling and is green in the school but happily walk, trot and canter. Hacking out he is brilliant. Good with traffic and spooky things. He is lovely and foward with good breaks. Isn’t phased by open spaces. Kodi can be ridden in a rope halter or a snaffle bit.

Around the yard he is a good boy but would require an experienced owner with groundwork to keep him this way as he does get pushy with handler who don’t maintain their personal space. With a good handler he is fantastic. He is excellent for the dentist (no sedation needed), fantastic to trim (no holder needed and doesn’t lean or sn**ch at all for the trimmer), good to worm etc. He is good to load and travels well.

Kodi thrives on regular work and loves using his brain so a home with a regular rider would be best however he’s had several breaks of 1-3 weeks off during this summer and never put a foot wrong when he was pulled out of the field for work again.

Kodi would make an excellent endurance or serious trail rider/long distance horse. He loves hitting the trails and exploring new places. He doesn’t get silly in boggy ground. He would also suit riding club/pony club activities. He has lovely paces and is comfortable to ride all day long. If you’re an older, competent rider who needs something with paces that are easier on your joints then this is the guy. He has a similar smoothness to haired breeds.

Overall Kodi is an absolute dude. He is still green in some areas but is ready for someone to put their own stamp on.

Priced to sell at 4🥕🥕🥕 with his saddle, numnah, rug etc. Very negotiable for the right home. We really want this guy to go to someone that will love him as much as we do.

29/08/2023

The next Caithness trip is scheduled for the 7th and 8th of September. Please pm to book your appointment.

15/08/2023

David Brown the EDT is doing a run on the 21st and has places available. Please contact Kim Lough on 07799024827

01/08/2023

Join Tez Reany from Jullaroo Equestrian for a day of confidence building and horsemanship at the Doll Riding Centre on the 12th of August. Limited riding/participation spaces available. Spectators welcome. All levels welcome (including lead line and unridden horses). A perfect low stress day for green horses, nervous riders or people who would just like a nice fun day out with their horse.
The day will consist of a morning session of groundwork and foundation exercises with an introduction into teaching horses to be happy over obstacles, a problem solving demo over lunch and an afternoon session using the skills from the morning over an obstacle course.
£40 for the day.

17/07/2023

Ability to change, the new standard for welfare.

Homeostasis, for quite a while has been the gold standard in animal welfare. That animals who settle into and benefit from a stable, predictable routine, are the animals with superior welfare.

Yet how many of us know horses who will bang on stable doors, or call to the house if we are 5 minutes late to feed them breakfast? How many horses have you met who behave brand new, if their routine deviates one iota from expected protocol?

I started experimenting with Allostasis about 18 months ago.

"Allostasis is defined as the process of maintaining homeostasis through the adaptive change of the organism's internal environment to meet perceived and anticipated demands. From: Stress: Concepts, Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior, 2016. " https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/allostasis #:~:text=Allostasis%20is%20defined%20as%20the,%2C%20Emotion%2C%20and%20Behavior%2C%202016

Though there is not much research done on allostatic horse keeping and even less done on allostatic training, I began to explore it.

Lucky me, I had a horse who was exactly case study number 1, in a horse who responds poorly to change.

My rescue horse Caleb, I have long suspected is either in**ed, or has learning disabilities, or some sort of undiagnosable neurological difference which makes any sort of flexibility of thought, stressful for him, predisposing him to behave in hazardous ways under any change in routine. He would call to the house and fence weave if fed on a schedule and that schedule was seconds late. He would explode, or run away, if training deviated from a strict same-same protocol. He has run through fences, knocked folks over, and attacked those who fed him, if his routine was different and he didn't understand it.

So we started playing with Caleb's neuralplasticity. We implemented a routine where he was fed breakfast between 7am and 11am. And dinner between 5pm and 9pm. He always did get fed. We never skipped a meal. But we varied the times each day. Hay and water was always available.

Then, in training, we would start by asking him to do things he knows well, and he would do them with extreme regularity and precision. Then, just before he started to become mechanical and automatic, we would pivot into giving an 'Ambiguous Cue'. Any sort of random cue which constituted a question he had to think genuinely about. Caleb had to actually think about the answer, creatively. Instead of respond automatically. We could actually feel the wheels and cogs of his mind turning. We would then mark and reward ANY response he offered. But just before he got anxious in ambiguity, we would pivot back into known behaviours, driven by explicit cues with predictable outcomes.

We would time the training and note how many minutes he could stay emotionally balanced in either situations.

1. Balanced emotional state in known behaviours changing just before he became mechanical
2. Balance emotional state in ambiguous cues, changing just before he became anxious

In this context we categorised mechanical behaviour as any movement done with a "NOT SMOOTH" movement quality. So, jerky, sudden, disconnected moves from position to position the way a chicken looks around in a join-the-dot style movement (Explained by instinctual lizard brain activation). Anxiety in this context was anytime we got 1 or more calming signals, so; whale eye, frustrated sighs, foot stamping, leg itching etc. We titrated the transition between allostasis and homeostasis in training to expand his brains capacity to change without having a trauma response.

Really important is to know the difference between an EMOTIONAL RESPONSE and a TRAUMA RESPONSE. The two are very different and even experts continue to confuse them. (I have a tutorial teach that here: www.patreon.com/emotionalhorsemanship)

The result?

18 months after beginning all of this we have a horse who is vastly improved at handling change. In fact, he was the first horse on our truck for a two day drive across Spain. And travelled the most calm out of all the horses, and settled within seconds into a brand new routine.

All our horses have done well, but Caleb has done the best, I think because of his specific training which expands his ability to handle change.

Allostasis and homeostasis finding balance in both horse keeping and horsemanship to procure an emotionally balanced horse.

I am excited to continue experimenting with all of this! And by the way, these trainings with Caleb, were far from complicated. In fact, I was usually doing them, in a lesson, teaching my adult beginner student Ann how to do this for him. So, yes, this protocol is beginner friendly.

08/06/2023

The next Caithness trip is scheduled for the 29th and 30th of this month. Please Pm to book. Suitable for trimming, individual lessons, group lessons, problem horse help, trailer loading and dog training sessions.

31/05/2023

What is your superpower? Mine Is the ability to work very hard, for many hours on many different things and never give up.

What us your greatest challenge? Mine Is the ability to work very hard, for many hours on many different things and never give up.

Therefore, I get a lot done. AND, I am on the edge of burn out a lot of the time.

The same Is true for your horse. They will have strengths which serve them very well in certain circumstances and which we may love about them. This superpower is also likely to come back to bite us on the proverbial in other situations. They have been bred to be who they are, and once we understand that very often their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness, we may be less surprised about why things go the way they go.

If you have bought yourself a horse who has been bred to drive, then they will use this skill as their ‘go to’. We may swoon over their powerful neck and huge front end – and when used to best advantage those shoulders do a great job pulling a heavily weighted vehicle along. However, when we sit on them we may find them leaning on their forehand and on the bit, and discover that cantering isn’t that easy. This should be no great surprise; they are who they are.

If you fell for all the fire and pazazz of a horse designed to canter sideways and spin in front of a bull, then it is no wonder that he draws on this same superpower when he is concerned about a surprise bag in the hedge. He is not being naughty, he is being himself.

If you got yourself a horse who has hundreds of years of bloodlines pre-disposing them to go very fast in straight lines, then it would be useful if you liked the feeling of wind on your face. And it is no great shock that your horse may find some other things that you’re interested in (like going slowly in circles) less natural.

Now, this isn’t to say that you cannot learn to better balance these two sides of the same coin. I am playing with having an afternoon off and noting that there is no bolt of lightning to strike me down. And my previous whirling dervish of a Lusitano has learned he can ask me for guidance before he defaults to a 360. He is quicker to change than I am, of course.

Your cob can learn to move in a balance which is better suited to being a riding horse, and with intelligent understanding on your part they may develop a magnificent canter.. Your OTTR can learn to move with ease at slower speeds, in company, even in wide open spaces. But they need us to recognise who they are, and rather than berate them for it, thank them for this great gift and understand how we can better support them.

This means, of course, there can be no one size fits all to working with a horse. I mean, lots of people try to ‘round and down’ all of these types different horses, and they all end up in their own variation of the trouble this causes.

I wonder if you know what your horse’s superpower is and how this may be tempered. What do you know about your own…(eeek, be careful in there!)

27/05/2023

ROTATIONAL ASYMMETRY AND HIGH-LOW SYNDROME: PLEASE DON’T CHOP THE HEELS

I often warn people away from chopping off heels in general, but when it comes to any type of club foot - bilateral, unilateral, or due to phalangeal rotation with founder - I’m particularly adamant about this.

I was taught to try to force the heels of a club foot down to ‘normal,’ and there are many barefoot trimming methods that still teach this.

It’s often taught that it’s OK if the horse is a little uncomfortable afterwards, as the muscles are just ‘going back to normal.’

Please don’t do that. I’ve seen horses crippled by it.

Pain is like a smoke detector. Please don’t ignore it.

Forcing heels down can tear fascia, ligaments, and tendons.

Years ago, I was introduced to the idea of wedging the high foot as a way to equalize growth, from an understanding of a ‘functional limb length disparity’ due to asymmetrical grazing stance, and because of my fascination with rotation as it relates to horsemanship, it made sense.

When the barrel has an asymmetric rotation in the thoracic sling, it takes up slack in the deep digital flexor tendon unit, explained as ‘tendon contracture,’ which triggers changes in the toe to heel growth ratio to protect the limb.

The heel MUST remain high until the rotational asymmetry is addressed.

In my experience, I often won’t see growth and the divergent growth rings normalize in the high foot until I’ve built adequate vertical height and angle in the low foot, AND addressed the rotation of the barrel.

With any club foot, it’s incredibly important to reverse wedge test before changing heel height, because there may not be enough slack in the DDFT unit to safely lower it.

We can’t force symmetry in the feet until there is symmetry in the body, and vice versa, and I do think we also need to consider there may be limitations to achieving symmetry. Sometimes there are permanent structural asymmetries.

As with horsemanship: force nothing.

Below, barrel rotation left with relative elevation of the left shoulder, and the associated mild high-low feet.

Sharing a relevant high-low link from Yogi Sharp, and one on rotational asymmetry in general.

https://www.theequinedocumentalist.com/post/high-low-hoof-conformation-farriery-and-whole-horse-relevance?fbclid=IwAR3CNMuXoCh4waE-4I4PJbmN9ZhOSdSfk_TTFL6SMaIzCyniAyNky-Ztgsg&mibextid=Zxz2cZ

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=550907713711028&id=100063754110668&mibextid=qC1gEa

18/05/2023

Inconvenienced
Kathleen Beckham

Years ago, I had a baby horse, and when he was about 18 months old, I had the opportunity to have an equine chiropractor work on him. He was wiggly and squirrelly, and I apologized to the chiropractor for that. “That’s okay,” she said, “Little babies haven’t learned how to be inconvenienced yet.”

That was big for me. So big. “Inconvenienced.” I hadn’t thought of that before, but it was the perfect word for it. We don’t want our horse to tolerate being hurt, or being treated unfairly, but he dang sure needs to be able to be inconvenienced.

From that day forward, “being inconvenienced” became a more thoughtful part of my horse work. I started to see some of the “issues” students were having with their horses as having to do with the horse’s inability to be “inconvenienced” without becoming very anxious. I also saw the stress that some of my students experienced when they knew they were going to inconvenience their horses. It turned out it was, indeed, a “thing.”

The ability to be inconvenienced and be resilient about it, it’s a skill. It’s a skill for people, it’s a skill in dogs, and it’s a skill in horses. It’s a skill that needs to be purposefully taught, and then carefully developed and expanded over time. It should be part of any training process for horses, because it’s something that they don’t necessarily come “from the factory” with, and it’s something they really need to succeed in the human world we insist they live in.

For a horse, “being inconvenienced” can be things like being asked to work while other horses are eating, standing tied, not being fed first, being turned out or brought in a “non-preferred” order, standing next to strange horses and not being allowed to socialize, having their feet picked up, going down the trail while other horses speed by, having veterinary work done, getting in a trailer or other small space, not being allowed to graze while working… I think you get the picture. Once I started thinking about my horse being “inconvenienced,” I saw it everywhere. Gosh, a LOT of a horse’s life in the human world is inconvenience. I also started to see how much stress a horse who had not learned to be resilient about being inconvenienced could experience.

It’s not always possible to remove the inconveniences in our horses’ lives, and I’m not sure that’s the way to go anyway. A horse who is resilient about being inconvenienced develops many other positive qualities because of his ability to be inconvenienced. He learns to self-soothe, he learns to think before he reacts. He learns patience and he learns to be flexible. He learns not to get stuck in patterns and expectations. He learns to be softer and more thoughtful. He learns to be calmer and quieter.

A horse who develops the ability to be inconvenienced as a principle of his training/life is less likely to be herdbound, gate sour or barn sour. They’re more likely to trailer load easily, to tie quietly and to learn whatever we are trying to teach them. It’s kind of the “secret sauce” of horse training, if you know about it.

Being inconvenienced might start very small. The first time one of our youngsters is inconvenienced might be the first time we have him on a lead rope and he wants to go left and I want to go right. Or he wants to eat grass and I want to take him for a walk or take him over to get his feet trimmed. So it might start very small at first. But I’m aware of it. I’m aware of when he’s inconvenienced, and I’m aware of how much inconvenience he’s able to take, for his stage of development. I am carefully and thoughtfully, methodically building his “fitness” to be inconvenienced.

Those little, fleeting inconveniences will turn into bigger ones eventually, like being left outside or in the barn by himself, or standing tied to the trailer all day, or working in the rain, or working while the farm is being fed. Those are much bigger inconveniences than being asked to turn left when you want to turn right. A working horse, or a horse we want to be able to take places and do things with, he’s really got to be able to be inconvenienced. That makes him much safer and more fun to be with.

Being inconvenienced is also about a horse being practiced at changing his mind. So he can practice thinking about one thing (“I want to go sniff that horse over there”) and change what he’s thinking about (“Hey horse, let’s go over here, away from that horse, and do a stop/back/bring our front end around.”). To do that, we have to be able to decipher what our horse is thinking about, and then become proficient at causing him to change his thoughts. Horses who can’t change their thoughts do not deal with inconvenience very well, while horses who are good at changing their thoughts will be much better at being inconvenienced.

This is different from “desensitization,” and it’s not about getting the horse “shut down. It’s not about hurting him, or flooding him, or setting him up to fail. It is literally about building the horse’s mental flexibility, by degrees. It’s methodical and progressive. It’s sometimes a delicate balance, and it can be something that takes some awareness and skill on the human’s part. It’s no different than building a horse’s physical fitness and abilities, it’s about choosing the right size steps for that horse’s fitness level.

A horse whose ability to be inconvenienced has been well-developed will be quieter, less anxious, less ulcery, and more physically and mentally balanced. They will have more brain-space available for things of our choosing.

This ability to be inconvenienced, it’s a gift to the horse. It’s a gift to him, so he doesn’t have to suffer the unnecessary stress and anxiety caused by his lack of mental flexibility. Done mindfully, it doesn’t have to be scary or dangerous. And done earlier, it’s easier. And older horse who has never been inconvenienced, that’s going to be more difficult than a younger horse with no preconceived ideas about things.

At the end of the day, this is a practical thing. We choose to have our horses live in our human world, so if they can be inconvenienced, that makes living in our world a lot easier for them. It’s a gift, not a burden to them.

Coming soon... The Attention Course: an online learning opportunity that will help you get, keep and direct your horse’s attention (thought), and in the process, become worthy of it. This is part of being inconvenienced, because it is not always convenient for our horse to pay attention to us (or for us to have to ask for his attention). If you’d like to be eligible for a discount on The Attention Course when it goes live soon, sign up for your discount here: https://www.ethosequine.com/courses

15/05/2023

Next Caithness dates are this Friday and Saturday. Pm if you would like to book in 😊. Spots suitable for trailer loading sessions, individual or group lessons and dog training.

03/05/2023

24/04/2023

4 YEAR OLD MORGAN GELDING

Looking for a new 🏡

Kodi is a brilliant 4 year (5 this June) old purebred Morgan. He was lightly 2021 and then spent last summer hacking out both in company and alone. Currently he is working on his schooling and is green in the school but happily walk, trot and canter. Hacking out he is brilliant. Good with traffic and spooky things. He is lovely and foward with good breaks. Isn’t phased by open spaces. Kodi can be ridden in a rope halter or a snaffle bit.

Around the yard he is a good boy but would require an experienced owner with groundwork to keep him this way as he does get pushy with handler who don’t maintain their personal space. With a good handler he is fantastic. He is excellent for the dentist (no sedation needed), fantastic to trim (no holder needed and doesn’t lean or sn**ch at all for the trimmer), good to worm etc.

Kodi thrives on regular work and loves using his brain so a home with a regular rider would be best however he’s had several breaks of 1-3 weeks off during the summer and never put a foot wrong when he was pulled out of the field for work again.

Kodi would make an excellent endurance or serious trail rider/long distance horse. He loves hitting the trails and exploring new places. He doesn’t get silly in boggy ground. He would also suit riding club/pony club activities. He has lovely paces and is comfortable to ride all day long.

Overall Kodi is an absolute dude. He is still green in some areas but is ready for someone to put their own stamp on.

Priced to sell at 4🥕🥕🥕 without tack or 45🥕🥕 with his saddle, numnah, rug etc. Negotiable for the right home.

08/04/2023

In the making of a Hackamore or Bridle Horse, the quality of the finished product will depend greatly on the timing and feel offered by the hands on the reins. We can use different bits, hackamores or other devices tied at different angles to develop a head set or certain responses, but the maintena...

17/03/2023

“They know when you know. And they know when you don’t know.”

CAN YOU GET A HORSE "WITH" YOU?

These horse are "with" each other. Call it connected if you like, but I prefer "with" each other.

When they are with each other, they are more curious, confident and likely to approach instead of flee.

They are like this as they are being a team, processing and assessing the world together...pooling their abilities. They are together and "with" each other. Not alone, not with me...but with each other...united in their thoughts and you can see this.

Together they are intrigued with my presence in their paddock and they have come over to investigate.

When we form a partnership with a horse, we have to get the horse "with" us.

The problem is, this is poorly understood.

I tell people you have to get the horse "with you in a bubble" and I teach people how to do this.

When this happens the horse is processing and assessing the world via us and we are incredibly good at working out whether things are safe. Being with us can be a comfortable safe place for a horse.

But, this is not natural for a horse and you have to teach them to do it.

It has a lot to do with what you are thinking and how you are making the horse feel.

To get the horse with you and in a bubble - you have to be WITH the horse and IN the bubble then when they are learning - WAIT for them to arrive.

Perfectionists, control freaks, people pleasers struggle to get the horse with them, as they struggle to be in the bubble themselves as they tend to worry about everything external to the bubble. Everything from judgement, uncertainty to the "what ifs".

They create a bubble that resembles a car being driven by a nervous, reactive driver and wondering why their horse gets nervous and tense when they are expected to get in the car and go for relaxing drive!

Look at that photo, imagine if that lead horse was a perfectionist control freak people pleaser that worried about the "what ifs"....it would not be walking relaxed and curious up to me!

And I say this because I am a reforming perfectionist control freak people pleaser that worked out what I was doing wrong!

26/02/2023

If anyone has been looking for decent Australian saddles.

24/02/2023

• What does a noseband do?

• Do riders know WHY they use them?

• More importantly, is the desired outcome truely being achieved by the action of using them?

I have found all cases of horses nashing, opening the mouth, being inconsistent or heavy in the contact, head tilting, hollowing, etc, is about having the correct bit that the horse finds comfortable. It is also about the riders hands & the way they use them to communicate via the horses mouth. These are the two things that need correction/attention & NOT the addition of a noseband.

So to correct a horses ‘mouth’ you shouldn't try to ‘stop’ an undesirable trait with restriction (i.e.: tighten the noseband, or worse still, tighten a secondary strap below the bit) - this would cause further discomfort & resistance for something the horse is already expressing is not comfortable, therefore it cannot accept it with a quiet mouth.

And a quiet mouth is NOT a ‘shut mouth’. No living mammal on earth goes around with it’s jaw closed & teeth together - it must remain relaxed & open. Optimum performance cannot happen any other way.

Therefore the conclusion is simple - the noseband really should be a fashion piece, treated like a browband - it serves no purpose/benefit to be ‘used’ to do anything, as any tightness or restriction from a noseband simply makes peak performance impossible. Any horses ‘winning’ with this gear…. imagine how amazing they would truely be WITH A LOOSE NOSEBAND! & here is why:

Did you know:

– On an equine dissection (yes, like an autopsy) any pressure applied in the horses mouth or to the jaw (which causes the hyoid bone at the base of the tongue to move up and/or back in the jaw) renders the hind legs restricted (difficult to move by a human) with effects also evident in the hips, yet the leg can be freely moved when the jaw is released (when the hyoid bone is allow to sit lower & forward in the jaw/mouth). This is fact.

– The job of the jaw is to act like a pendulum to give the horse correct balance & allows the horse to have awareness of limb placement. This relies on the TMJ (temporomandibular joint) of the jaw to be pain & pressure free.

– The jaw of the horse is a reflection of the pelvis. If the jaw is stuck, the horses pelvis will be too. This is seen in the obvious evasion of head tilting to allow the pelvis to move if the jaw cannot.

– closing the mouth & closing the gullet (over-bent) when riding causes the hyoid bone of the tongue to become blocked, which is directly connected to & tightens the muscles at the base of the neck through to the chest. This also makes it hard for the horse to swallow - causing excessive saliva/foam to pour from the horses mouth.

So in light of these facts - here is the positive side of having a loose, caveson noseband (or none at all!):

+ The horses mouth becomes a reflection of it’s acceptance of the reins aids & how much they understand the communication of their rider

+ The horse has nothing to resist against - as there is no restriction.

+ A calm yet mobile mouth means they are light on the reins & relaxed through the neck so they can easily swallow

+ Freedom to the jaw will allow freedom in the pelvis & hind legs

+ Your horse has 100% chance of giving you it’s best performance!

It’s time we all stopped just using items of gear, because that’s what they sell in the shops ~ but really think about how we are trying to train our horses to understand us & give them the best chance of producing what we really want ~ HARMONY

© Love Your Horse

16/02/2023

There’s something of a misconception, I think, about the power of a horse’s memory. Simply put, they do not forget.

It helps to remember this, when we’re faced with a traumatic event or prior poor handling that we’re trying to work past. There is literally nothing on earth that will have such a horse forget what happened to him. No amount of training or repetition will have a horse pull down a curtain on what he knew before.

So, what do we do?

We acknowledge that something bad has happened and then, we work to rebuild trust. We work on our joint mental and physical fitness. We ask only the questions that the horse has a chance of answering with confidence. We chunk things down into doable bites. We do our best to create new neural pathways that will have as much chance, or better, of becoming the horse’s default setting.

So much of going beyond past traumas comes down to the heart and personality of each individual horse. Some horses are so willing to grab onto any life line offered, they progress astonishingly quickly. Others quite clearly say, “No, thanks. I’ll pass.”

The amount of ‘forgetfulness’ a horse is willing to offer is allied closely to his ability to forgive.

For us, the challenge becomes one of reading each horse on its own merit, of listening and asking the right questions that will steer it to recovery. We build on these new experiences with praise and repetition, which some folks dismiss as the creation of ‘conditioned response’. So be it. We do our best to work forwards to a goal, rather than fixating on the unfortunate past.

This is the sole reason I never refer to my horses as either rescued, or formerly abused. I am mindful to not slap a ‘damaged goods’ label on any horse or pony for whom I wish joy and courage.

I can recall the horses who were in a horrific highway accident and when it was time to clear the scene, they trustingly left the wreckage and loaded onto a stranger’s trailer. I’ve known those who’ve dragged a tipped carriage for a while and then, they’ve stopped, watched and waited while the buggy was righted before calmly trotting off. Conversely, I remember high-mileage harness horses who’ve been in runaways and mishaps, whereby they were never again safe to drive.

My own very brave ranch horse would get in front of any cow and turn her, unless she was a Longhorn. It didn’t matter the size of her span, he simply said, “Hell, no!” Because he’d a long and colourful ranching career before me, I knew that he’d a story to tell. He was a genuine worker but he’d had a run-in, sometime, somewhere, with a territorial horned cow. No shame in that. Life can be a demanding teacher.

So, one never knows from day to day, what our horses are carrying inside them, or what they will soon have to do, to cope anew. Like people, some are braver than others; some are less able to forgive us our mistakes.

Rest assured, no matter what we do, our horses do not forget. They don’t draw a blank with places or situations, other horses, dogs or people, which should lead each of us to ponder this one thing. From safety to comfort, from confidence to friendship, from pain to misunderstanding…

“What will my horses remember most about me?”

***

Shown here, my old friend Highland Piper, a lionheart laying down a winning cones run in the biggest show of his life...

This, only two weeks after he'd had a runaway after tangling his halter rope with my little son's bicycle. Our pony exited the yard at a terrifying pace, turning onto the busy summertime highway. He actually overtook a motorhome, leaving a trail of bike parts, our yelling family and the chore truck, in hot pursuit. I was devastated. There was no way he could ever recover from this trauma! Just the sound of a dragging lead rope would set him off anew.

What I had discounted, however, was the depth of Piper's character. He not only came back, he returned, stronger than ever. 'Til his dying day, however, my little man was watchy and worried about certain sounds. He overcame... but in no way did he forget.

📷 Spruce Meadows Today.