Lost Creek Fjord Horses

04/11/2026

Food for thought ...

What early separation may be teaching the young nervous system

01/24/2026

Not true of everyone (some people DO engage on topics like species-appropriate management, and some people DO go silent — or go on the attack! — when topics like hoof care comes up), but this has largely (and sadly) been our experience as well ...

I’ve noticed a pattern that’s been bothering me, and I think it says something uncomfortable about our industry.

When I post about hoof balance and how it affects the horse, it gets attention.
When I post about pathology, posture, or the professional working on the horse, it gets attention.

But when I post about the rider.
Or the environment.
Or human management.
Or the fact that the horse is living in a species-inappropriate world.

Silence.

And that silence tells a story.

We are very good at engaging with problems that allow responsibility to sit somewhere else. Somewhere external. Somewhere that doesn’t require us to change how we ride, manage, house, train, or think.

But when the finger turns back toward the human system surrounding the horse, engagement drops off a cliff.

My webinar series on ethological reasons why the industry needs to change had the lowest viewing figures of any series I’ve ever run. And yet, arguably, it was the most important work I’ve done. Because the pathological relationships we like to discuss, lameness patterns, postural collapse, behavioural fallout, chronic tension, almost always trace back to the same origin.

The implications of domestication and how far modern horse management has drifted from the biological and behavioural needs of the animal.

This isn’t just an equestrian problem. It’s a human one.

Psychology has a name for this pattern. Cognitive dissonance. When evidence threatens our identity, habits, or sense of competence, the nervous system doesn’t lean in. It protects. As described by Leon Festinger, humans will often avoid, dismiss, or disengage from information that implies personal responsibility or behavioural change, even when the evidence is strong.

There’s also the well-documented bias toward external attribution. We are more comfortable blaming tools, professionals, or isolated body parts than confronting systemic causes that implicate our own choices. Especially when those choices are culturally normalised.

But horses don’t live in fragments. They live in systems.
And we are the dominant variable in that system.

If we only ever talk about what’s wrong with the horse, or the hoof, or the tack, without addressing the rider and the environment that shape them every single day, we are treating symptoms while preserving causes.

The truth is harder.
Because the truth asks something of us.

It asks for responsibility, not blame.
It asks for change, not critique.
And it asks us to sit with the discomfort of realising that many of the problems we study so closely are downstream of human inertia.

Silence doesn’t mean the message is wrong.
Often, it means it’s landed exactly where it hurts.

With that in mind, I invite anyone who’s willing to lean into this to engage with the ethology series and the upcoming webinar on rider biomechanics on Jan 28 not as a sales pitch, but because it truly matters to the horse.

👉 https://equineeducationhub.thinkific.com/courses/riderbiomechanics
👉 https://equineeducationhub.thinkific.com/bundles/how-can-the-equine-industry-maintain-its-social-licence-to-operate

12/21/2025

Fear may look different in Fjords, but this still applies — freezing (or flocking) out of fear is still fear.

Pushing a Fjord while they are fearful doesn't allow the kind of learning that makes human safety more likely, but instead positions humans as **part of the fear** — a danger-thing rather than a protector-friend.

"Things" are definitely expendable if a Fjord's survival response suddenly becomes "flight"; "things" become a target should a Fjord's fear escalate and turn the survival response to "fight".

12/20/2025

12/20/2025

11/29/2025

Love this way of explaining ...

This is NOT anthropomorphism - it’s mammalian neuroscience. To be clear.

Most horse people have heard the term trigger stacking, but few truly understand what’s happening inside the horse’s body when it occurs. And fewer realise that humans experience the exact same nervous-system process.

This is not “treating horses like humans.” This is a biological truth.
Horses and humans share the same basic mammalian nervous system:

• sympathetic (fight/flight)
• parasympathetic (rest/digest)
• vagus nerve
• thresholds
• stress hormones
• startle responses

So comparing the experience is not only valid but it helps people understand, relate, and develop compassion.

So let us look at YOU the human reading this:

Think of a day like this:

• didn’t sleep well
• you’re running late
• the kids are shouting
• you stub your toe
• your phone keeps pinging
• someone snaps at you
• you’re worried about money
• the traffic is heavy
• you spill your coffee

You hold it together… until someone asks something tiny of you:

“Can you just... ?”

And suddenly you:

• snap
• cry
• shut down
• withdraw
• feel overwhelmed
• can’t cope
• overreact to something small

People think it was “the last thing.” But you know it wasn’t.
It was everything before it that pushed you past threshold.

This is trigger stacking.

And your reaction was NOT a meltdown, or disobedience, or manipulation. It was your nervous system saying:

“I cannot take one more demand.” and guess what friends? Horses are no different. Not because they are human like but because we share the same biological wiring. Isn't that just fascinating to comprehend?

Now, lets translate that from a horse's perspective...

A horse’s day might look like:

• didn’t sleep lying down
• herd tension
• flies irritating
• heat or humidity
• slight hoof discomfort
• a loud noise earlier
• a new horse on the farm
• a human arriving stressed
• pressure from the halter
• the saddle pinching
• uncertainty about what’s coming next

None of these alone may cause a big reaction. But inside the body, each one is adding sympathetic charge and slowly building on top of eachother stacking and stacking...

• small adrenaline spikes
• cortisol accumulation
• reduction in vagal tone
• increased muscle tension
• faster startle reflex
• sensory overload
• hypervigilance

Just like a human, the horse’s system is slowly filling the bucket.
Then the final moment happens when it all becomes too much:

• “Walk on.”
• “Just stand still.”
• “One more try.”
• someone closes a gate too loudly
• a bird takes off
• a leaf rustles
• your energy spikes

And the horse:

• spooks
• bolts
• balks
• bucks
• freezes
• shuts down
• refuses

People say, UGH “That came out of nowhere.” But it didn’t. It really did not. It came from every single moment that added to the stack.... Just like you.

This is NOT humanising horses. It is recognising shared mammalian reality.

When horses (and humans) experience multiple stressors, the same biological cascade happens:

• sympathetic activation rises
• cortisol stays elevated
• heart-rate variability decreases
• prefrontal cortex (thinking brain) goes offline
• limbic system (survival brain) takes over
• proprioception changes
• muscles brace
• breath shortens
• tolerance shrinks

This is why neither horse nor human can “think clearly” once the stack is high.

Neither is “naughty.”
Neither is “difficult.”
Neither is “dramatic.”

Both are overwhelmed. Let us please see it for what it is, in eachother and in horses.

And this is not anthropomorphising. Anthropomorphism is actually giving horses human thoughts, motives, or stories. This is different.

This is comparing shared physiology:

✓ We both have amygdalas
✓ We both have vagus nerves
✓ We both produce cortisol + adrenaline
✓ We both have startle reflexes
✓ We both have thresholds
✓ We both get overwhelmed
✓ We both shut down when we exceed capacity

This isn’t “treating horses like humans.” It’s understanding horses better by recognising what is universal to all mammals. You have lived through trigger stacking. You know what it feels like.

So when you see a horse “explode,” or “go blank,” or “overreact,” or “say no” - instead of judging, you understand.

You feel compassion. You soften. You respond differently.

This is why relating horse and human nervous systems is not anthropomorphism - it’s empathy rooted in biology.

How do we support our horses through trigger stacking?
Preventing the stack means supporting the nervous system:

Environmental

• herd stability
• forage
• movement
• predictable routine

Physical

• pain checks
• saddle fit
• hoof care
• vet care
• bodywork

Relational

• clear, consistent boundaries
• choice
• slowing down
• not pushing past threshold

Co-regulation

• you regulate first
• stable breath
• soft intention
• calm posture
• reading early signs

You are either lowering the stack… or unintentionally adding to it.

Horses don’t “react out of nowhere.” They react when their system can no longer cope, the same way you do.

When you realise this, everything shifts:

• behaviour becomes communication
• resistance becomes protection
• “naughty” becomes overwhelmed
• training becomes partnership
• pressure becomes patience
• correction becomes compassion

And the horse softens - not because they’re forced to… but because they finally feel safe. Just like you do when someone holds space for you, stays regulated when you can’t, listens without judgment, and meets you with gentleness instead of pressure.

We are not so different when it comes to how we feel things in our bodies. Meet the horse the way you would want to be met. ❤️

06/11/2025

Being all-in or all-against R+/clicker training misses crucial points. Ada Draghici's post hits the target. R+/clicker is a tool, and like all tools, it can be used extremely well, misused, or go entirely unused (and there are shades of grey in between all of those, too).

The most important tool to master is our brain, which in turn facilitates all other-tool use!

04/29/2025

04/16/2025

Strength in our gentleness.

Gentleness brings results that other approaches will never bring. Escalating gives you action, often in the absence of your partners internal well-being. It can be cleverly disguised, elegant, competent. But coercion is coercion and we no longer find that impressive, inspiring, worthwhile or desirable.

Having a mild temperament towards our horses is often touted as a failure.

How wild it is, that kindness is controversial?

Even wilder, that it is now the task of the gentle among us, to be willing to be strong, even abrupt, in their boundaries, as we navigate a world where pushiness and entitlement is the norm.

It requires no inner work, no introspection, no self-control to release yourself to violent urgings to get what you want out of others. None.

It is difficult, often exhausting, to be patient, to be gentle, to be kind. It is often uncomfortable for some of us who are busy, or constrained.

But this is no longer about what is easy, or what is difficult.

It is about doing what is right. Not out of self-righteousness. But out of self respect.

Being violent towards others at some level, passively or directly, sure it hurts others. But it hurts you more. That's the true tragedy.

So, it takes strength to be gentle. It requires effort to be kind. It requires study to be patient.

And it is worth every inch of that investment, when the results begin to speak almost magically for themselves.

02/27/2025

Our kind of weird! 💚❤️💜❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

02/23/2025

Our own journey has also gone into and then beyond Natural Horsemanship. When you know better, do better. There is SO MUCH to learn.

What happened to Natural Horsemanship?

Well, it is still around. That thing is still thinging. There are folks working with it that do good work for good people, all around the globe. But for some of us, it was not enough.

For some of us, we found Natural Horsemanship at a time when it appeared to be a valid alternative. The alternative to just, getting on and riding, the alternative to methods that ignored the way horses thought. Ten, fifteen even twenty years ago, to utter the words "Natural Horsemanship" in some equestrian environments was enough to make your heart beat with fear. Fear of being seen as a weirdo, of social exclusion, of being dismissed by people who thought it was rubbish, felt it challenged their business or world view, or thought it undermined traditional training.

Somewhere between then and now, at least in the eyes of the people I know, Natural Horsemanship has found its way into the category of "traditional practices".

It is the big pink elephant in the room. Name any celebrity horse trainer today, and you can point to a part of their history where Natural Horsemanship influenced them. Some are talking about it. Some are pretending that never happened.

Blackballing the mentors and ideas of your past does not make them go away.

If we, as innovative horse people today, are walking, it is because Natural Horsemanship crawled. They pioneered a way forwards that alternative practices could not only be "effective" but also be a successful business model too.

So, where is Natural Horsemanship today? This page is called Emotional Horsemanship. And to many, that lumps me in the Natural Horsemanship category. I remember declining a clinic invitation because they asked for a Natural Horsemanship clinic. Still, as recent as my last clinic tour, and as recent as the very last lesson I taught (25 minutes ago), I am approached by people who remark with surprise that what we are teaching with Emotional Horsemanship is really NOT natural horsemanship, according to how we imagine it.

"It really is something different!" Someone said at a clinic. I giggled, because I am been trying to tell you all. But sometimes you just gotta see it for yourself.

I am very grateful for the Natural Horsemanship pioneers. I won't list them by name. But I am grateful for the doors they opened. I am also grateful for the ways that their monopoly of the industry has divided up into tens of thousands of smaller businesses, rather than 1-2 huge conglomerates. It was the democratic evolution of their innovation... that it eventually was de-centred away from powerful men, and into the hands of smaller communities.

But just like you, there came a moment when I was practicing, teaching and training with Natural Horsemanship techniques and principles, that I stopped myself. I started to think beyond what I was doing.

I changed my standards for what constituted a good training.

I was taught that a good training was the EFFECTIVE training that got the result as quickly and tactfully as possible.

In practice, I saw that the NHMS techniques were indeed by design, functioning in a manner to create RESPONSE in the horse, sooner rather than later.

I also watched as the same rope swing that released the horses stuck body and emotional inertia, saddled them with emotional baggage. I stuck around those horses long enough, asked those same horses enough questions in enough environments, that I discovered what that baggage often was.

And the baggage these horses had, had nothing to do with the INTENTIONS natural horsemanship espoused.

The intention was to replicate natural horse behaviour, and create a bond with a horse that replaced force and pain, enabling horsemanship to continue in a safe and kind manner to the horse.

I found out, that in many cases (but not all) that bond was forged in fear. Fear of varying degrees of severity, a spectrum of fear. Sometimes it was the horses realisation that their human was mostly harmless, but not entirely, enough to put them mildly on edge around people. On edge enough to never have steady feet or a long thought. Steady feet and long thoughts often are confused as lack of response or respect. They are not. And often the horses just outright feared what comes next if they do not respond- now.

Not all fear is fear for your life. You can fear for the loss of a varying number of things. Loss of your comfort, your knowledge, your place in the world, your social connections. Loss of your physical safety, loss of your autonomy. All these things can be feared.

To anyone reading who is already annoyed with me for talking about it, I want you to know, I am definitely not talking about you. I am talking about what I used to do. And if this shoe doesn't fit you, don't wear it.

So, for the above reason, and many other reasons I won't get into now, I began to question if Natural Horsemanship was the revolution I wanted to form my entire personality around. I discovered it was not, for me. And certainly not the the horses I was meeting.

So I took what I could, salvaged what I could, and moved into a lifeboat.

In that lifeboat, I floated here and there. I spent some times at varying islands, different methods, eventually those islands and their natives gave me reason to get back in the boat and move on. Why was there so much hostility... everywhere? A strange abundance of hostility and an odd lack of critical thinking?

I kept paddling.

On the way though, I met some lovely folks who jumped in my lifeboat with me. They put their shoulders to the oar. They brought their tools. We collected what we needed to have a sound ship.

Eventually, when I came to create my first online course, I realised that this ship could sail on its own.

I realised I no longer needed natural horsemanship. I took many of those techniques, and edited them. Edited out any aspect that could create fear, small or large, and chose a different foundation.

The foundation is that of care. And not a trite, fluffy, no-substance type of care. And not just horse keeping- though quality horse keeping is the foundation of all quality training.

Care informed by deep scientific work, robust trial and error with thousands of horses, and the authentic connection between what we say, and what we do.

Because I will no longer stand in a room that tells great stories about the horsemanship, but when we actually look at how those words translate into action...

I recorded a podcast on this subject with fellow oarsman Michelle Knapp. She too was deep into the NHMS world, and she too, found her way out to something else.

I want to thank the people who have already listened, and wrote me to let us know how helpful it was for them to hear this subject spoken about plainly. We are here for you.

02/17/2025

TRUTH!

Nobody is born with perfect knowledge, nobody lucks into a perfect education on any subject, and nobody is ever a finished expert on any subject. When you know better, you can do better; rinse and repeat!

Send a message to learn more