Dr Shelley Appleton Calm Willing Confident Horses

Dr Shelley Appleton Calm Willing Confident Horses Educator, Horse Trainer, Podcast co-host () and Writer. I bridge the gap between practical wisdom, experience and science.

I am a thought leader, pragmatist and can make complicated ideas easy to understand. Dr Shelley Appleton is an expert in human learning and performance. Shelley combines her specialist knowledge and horse training skills to teach people how to help their horses be calm, willing and confident to ride. Her approach shows how training starts with groundwork and progresses into ridden work. Her approach can be found in her books, online courses and through her coaching and clinics. If you want to solve your horse problems, build your horse riding confidence, or improve your competition performance, Shelley is unique in her ability to transform you and your horse. Shelley is also available for private consultations, editorial work, presentation or interviews to interested groups or parties. Find out more from www.calmwillingconfidenthorses.com.au or via email at [email protected]

When Technical Expertise Becomes a Blind Spot🫥I have been thinking about a curious problem in equestrian sport.We have b...
15/09/2026

When Technical Expertise Becomes a Blind Spot🫥

I have been thinking about a curious problem in equestrian sport.

We have become extraordinarily good at describing what horses should be doing. The poll should be up. The hind leg should engage. The tempo should remain consistent. The horse should bend correctly, maintain the contact, stay balanced and remain on the aids.

All useful things to understand.

Unfortunately, there is an entire horse attached to the poll.😎

Sometimes our technical expertise becomes so dominant that we stop asking what is happening to that horse while we are busily producing the technically correct answer.

This is "technical tunnel vision".🧐

Of course we need to ride well. We need good balance, an independent seat and the ability to be a good load for the horse to carry. Technical skill matters enormously.

But you can possess a beautiful seat and tremendous technical skill and still damage the horse underneath you if you don't understand and respect the layers of the animal carrying you.

Because the horse is experiencing you too.

It is experiencing your body, your aids and your expectations, while simultaneously experiencing its own body and the environment you have placed it in.

Horses arrive with asymmetries, learning histories, physical limitations, fatigue, attention, arousal and their own perception of what is happening around them. A horse can also perform a technically recognisable movement without performing it functionally well. It can compensate, brace or continue trying after fatigue has changed how its body is coping.

Yet technical tunnel vision offers wonderfully straightforward solutions.

The poll dropped? Put it back up.😵‍💫

The horse lost bend? More bend.😵‍💫

The horse is rushing? Control the tempo.😵‍💫

The horse became tense? Ride it more correctly.😵‍💫

And thus we arrive at one of equestrianism's more impressive achievements: trying harder at the very thing that may be making the situation worse.😕

Good horsemanship requires something beyond technical correctness. It requires decision-making.

You have to notice when the horse changes and ask why. Sometimes you continue. Sometimes you reorganise. Sometimes you change the exercise, reduce the demand, allow the horse to stretch or recognise fatigue. Sometimes the problem you thought required more training requires a completely different question.

Without that flexibility, technical knowledge can become surprisingly coercive, even in very capable hands.😎

If I believe the technically correct response should occur when I apply the technically correct aid, failure to produce it can easily become justification for applying more.

More leg. More rein. More insistence.

After all, the training manual isn't tired.🙄

But the horse might be!⚠️

This isn't an argument for less technical expertise.

But technical expertise needs to sit alongside an understanding of how horses learn, how they experience their environment, how tension changes movement, how fatigue changes capacity and how an individual horse is coping with what we are asking of it.

The real skill is knowing when the technically correct thing is also the right thing for the horse in front of you at that moment. Sometimes it will be. Sometimes good horsemanship means changing the plan.

After all, the horse hasn't read the training manual. We have.

That rather puts the responsibility back where it belongs.❤

Collectable Advice 293/365. Please SHARE. Technical brilliance doesn't impress me much when the horse has disappeared from the equation. Equestrian sport could do with a little less technical tunnel vision and a lot more curiosity about the horse underneath it.❤

IMAGE 📸: This was one of the first images that popped up when I searched “dressage rider” in Shutterstock. Interesting, I’ll leave that one with you.🤔

P.S. This is exactly why I’m excited about Project Reboot. Technical skill is only one layer. We’re going right back to discover everything else that matters to the horse underneath it.

Introducing My New Service😜: Social Media Horse Communicator🔥⚠A small warning before proceeding: this post contains some...
14/09/2026

Introducing My New Service😜: Social Media Horse Communicator🔥

⚠A small warning before proceeding: this post contains some scepticism about animal communication and the spiritual realm. If that is likely to offend you, perhaps don't proceed. Please don't complain if you choose to go there anyway...😎

I would like to announce a new service.

I am now a "Social Media Horse Communicator"..

I don't need a photograph, a lock of mane or a spiritual connection through the Archangel Michael or your credit card details. I just need a reasonably detailed Facebook post describing the problem you're having with your horse.

Because when you've worked with horses and people for long enough, something interesting happens.

👉When people describe their horse problems, the horse often starts talking too.😎

Here's an example.

"I'm looking for an experienced groundwork trainer for my mare. I want someone gentle, calm and fair who understands behavioural issues. She occasionally pulls away and bolts when being led. Sometimes she becomes worried, but other times she simply decides she wants to get to the grass and leaves."

There is a lot of information in there.

We know the mare sometimes leaves the handler. We know grass is involved. We know the behaviour has succeeded often enough to become a problem. We also have a clue about the human's beliefs and priorities from the type of trainer they are seeking.

And suddenly I can hear the horse.🐴

"I want the grass. Sometimes I pull towards it. The human tries to stop me. Sometimes, if I try hard enough, I discover I can leave anyway."

But my powers detect something else.

A horse becoming highly motivated to sn**ch at grass during handling may not simply be telling us that grass is delicious. Grazing and grass-sn**ching can also occur during tension or conflict. So I would want to know what happens immediately before she becomes so determined to get her head down.🤔

Perhaps she has learned that pulling gets her to grass. Perhaps handling is also creating tension that increases her motivation to graze. Perhaps both are happening.

Then there is that interesting phrase: “gentle, calm and fair.”🧐

Nothing wrong with that. I want those things too.

But what does "gentle" mean?😎

If it means thoughtful, skilled and proportionate, fabulous. If it means avoiding escalation, never insisting or turning clear requests into suggestions, we may have found another piece of the puzzle.🔍

Sometimes the lead rope means come with me. Sometimes pulling harder changes the answer. Sometimes becoming worried makes the request disappear.

That may feel kinder to the human.

BUT - It may not feel clearer to the horse.🤨

And here lies an uncomfortable paradox in modern horse ownership. In trying desperately not to create stress through pressure, we can create MORE stress through confusion and inconsistency.🫣

I can't diagnose this horse or handler from a Facebook post. There may be pain, fear, previous learning or factors we know nothing about. What I can do is identify useful hypotheses from the information they have inadvertently provided.

Which brings me to the disappointing news about my exciting new service.

👉You can probably do it too.🤓

You don't need access to the spiritual realm. You need to channel something considerably less glamorous: your understanding of horses.🐎

Learn how horses behave and learn. Understand motivation and stress behaviour. Observe posture, movement, tension and muscle patterns. Pay attention to what happens before a behaviour, what the human does next and what the horse ultimately achieves.

Then listen carefully when someone tells you the story of their horse.

Hidden inside the human's interpretation is often an extraordinary amount of information from the horse.

Behaviour doesn't give us magical access to a horse's thoughts. It gives us EVIDENCE. We use that evidence to form hypotheses and then go back to the horse to see whether they hold up.🤓

Horses are communicating information about themselves all the time.

Perhaps we don't need to become more spiritual to hear them.

Perhaps we just need to become more knowledgeable about horses.❤

P.S. I'm not claiming that horses can't reveal something to us that feels deeper, more intuitive or beyond what we currently understand. They certainly can for me. My point is simply that we don't have to leave the ordinary, boring, observable realm to understand an extraordinary amount about them and, most importantly, actually help them. There is plenty of magic in learning to see what is already right in front of us.😎

Collectable Advice 292/365. Please SHARE, just make sure you draw your audiences attention to the disclaimer 😆❤

Perth Dressage Clinic | 21–22 November 2026Landor Equestrian, Bullsbrook WADressage is full of familiar terms: seeking t...
13/09/2026

Perth Dressage Clinic | 21–22 November 2026

Landor Equestrian, Bullsbrook WA

Dressage is full of familiar terms: seeking the bit, half halt, suppleness, contact, impulsion, collection.

But what do these things actually mean? What are we really trying to teach the horse, and how do we practically achieve them?

When the understanding and know-how are missing, familiar problems emerge: tension, resistance to the bit, sucking behind the contact, rushing, lack of forwardness, spookiness, environmental reactivity and struggles with the canter.

And with so many competing explanations in dressage, how do you know who or what to listen to?

Join Dr Shelley Appleton for a two-day, dressage-focused clinic designed to strip away the complexity and give you clarity about what you are actually trying to achieve, why it matters and how to do it.

This is more than a series of ridden lessons. The clinic combines presentations, demonstrations and ridden coaching, using multiple ways of teaching so you can see the concepts, understand the theory and then watch and experience how they are applied in practice.

You’ll discover how clearer training can help horses understand what is being asked, focus more effectively, become confident in their responses and progressively develop the athletic qualities we associate with good dressage.

You may even discover that what looks like a “tense” or “sensitive” horse has far less to do with temperament than you realised.

Come away seeing dressage differently, with greater clarity about what you are trying to achieve and the practical know-how to achieve it.

Booking link for Horse position HERE:
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=24017282&appointmentType=71351033

Booking link for Fence Sitter position HERE:
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=24017282&appointmentType=98190265

What Really Falls Apart in a Dressage Test🔥Today I spent several hours pencilling tests at one of my favourite dressage ...
13/09/2026

What Really Falls Apart in a Dressage Test🔥

Today I spent several hours pencilling tests at one of my favourite dressage clubs, watching horse after horse make its way around the arena.

Beside me, the judge was assessing the performance in front of her and I was busily writing down comments about needing more bend, counter-flexion, relaxing into the contact, being more forward, rushing, needing more engagement behind and losing balance.

All perfectly reasonable observations. But sitting beside her, I was watching something else as well.

I was watching varying degrees of what I think of as "pressure-cooker coping".

I was watching horses managing different levels of tension, soundness and physical capacity. I could see natural asymmetries becoming more pronounced as tension increased. I was watching riders managing their own tension, balance and decision-making while their horses tried to process an unfamiliar environment and simultaneously respond to the person on their back.

Sometimes the pressure would build until the horse hovered near that tipping point, caught between the rider trying to contain them and every cell in their body screaming to get out of there. 🫣

And yet this is exactly why I think a dressage test can be such a brilliant stress test of your training.

At home, your horse might maintain rhythm, bend correctly, transition smoothly and work into a lovely contact. Then you put the horse on a float and take it somewhere else, where there are unfamiliar horses, warm-up traffic, announcements, spectators and, in today's case, people casually walking their dogs while somebody's horse attempts to remember the finer points of a 20-metre circle.😎

The horse's attention becomes divided, arousal rises and the body changes.

Tension then does what tension is very good at - it makes a caricature of the horse that is already there.😎

The slightly stiff side becomes stiffer. The weaker hindleg becomes more obvious. The slightly fragile transition becomes rushed. A small balance problem becomes considerably larger. The horse doesn't necessarily develop a collection of exciting new problems at the competition. The pressure simply magnifies the vulnerabilities that were already there.

That means competition shows us which parts of our training and the horse's gymnastic development remain available when the pressure goes up. That is incredibly valuable information.🙏

The problem is that we can accidentally turn up the heat ourselves. 🔥

The rider feels the horse deteriorating and understandably tries to fix what is happening. The horse counter-flexes, so there is more rein. The horse loses bend, so there is more leg. The horse rushes, so there is more holding. The horse comes above the contact, so the rider works harder to put everything back where it belongs.😕

Meanwhile, the horse is essentially thinking, "I was already finding this difficult and you appear to have chosen this exact moment to become considerably more complicated".😱

Tension changes movement, the movement deteriorates, the rider applies more correction, the horse becomes more tense and the movement deteriorates further.

Welcome to the pressure cooker.🫠

Interestingly, the riders who handled these moments best didn't try to renovate the entire horse between K and A. They looked up, rode their line, kept quietly guiding and made sensible decisions. Most importantly, they gave the horse something familiar to come back to.

And this is the training underneath the performance.

You cannot prepare a horse for competition by trying to prevent tension. You prepare them by teaching them to stay connected and responsive as the pressure rises, and, just as importantly, how to find their way back to you when tension momentarily pulls them away.💚

This is something I spend an enormous amount of time developing in horses and riders. We need anchors: familiar, well-practised responses and grounding exercises that reconnect the horse to the rider, help loosen the body and allow the horse to reorganise and become available to the aids again.

Those anchors need to be trained before you need them. Competition day is not the ideal moment to introduce your horse to your brilliant new grounding exercise while they are already struggling.😕

The horse needs to know the exercises and the responses need to be reliable. Just as importantly, the rider needs to recognise tension early, understand how it changes their particular horse and know which decisions are likely to diffuse the situation rather than simply correcting whatever symptom has appeared.

That is know-how, and it is absolutely learnable. It is at the heart of my work because when you understand how to recognise tension, make good decisions and bring your horse back to you, so much of everything else starts to flow. The performance becomes the result of the training underneath it, rather than something you are desperately trying to manufacture in the moment.

So when your judge writes "needs more bend', don't automatically go home determined to manufacture more bend. Ask yourself why the bend disappeared. What happened as tension increased? Which asymmetry became exaggerated? What happened to rhythm, balance and contact? When did your horse become less available to you?🤓

Then ask the most useful question of all:

Do I know how to diffuse tension and anchor my horse back to me?🤔

Your dressage test isn't merely a report card on what happened between A and C. It is showing you how robust the training underneath your performance really is.

And that gives you something incredibly useful to train.

Don't just practice the test. You practice the travel, the arrival, the warm-up, the exposure, the ability to anchor them back to you.

Collectable Advice 291/365. SHARE this with anyone who has ever experienced the "pressure cooker coping".😆

P.S Project Reboot is all about this know-how❤

NEW CANTER THERAPY PODCAST EPISODE IS UP🎙️🐴Kat and I have wanted to interview Equine Bodyworks By Mary Sargeant for ages...
12/09/2026

NEW CANTER THERAPY PODCAST EPISODE IS UP🎙️🐴

Kat and I have wanted to interview Equine Bodyworks By Mary Sargeant for ages, and she did not disappoint. Mary is funny, incredibly knowledgeable and, most importantly, she makes you THINK.

We covered everything from anatomy, pain and bodywork to riding, consent, regulation and some of the stories we tell ourselves about horses.😆

One of my favourites from Mary: “We look at our relationship with the horse and we forget the horse’s relationship with us.”🤔

If you enjoy conversations that challenge your thinking rather than simply tell you what to think, have a listen to this one. I think you’ll really enjoy Mary.

Links below and you can listen on your favourite podcast platform.

NOTE: Mary has recent released 3 brilliant e-books that help you learn horse's anatomy - we discuss these as well and links to find them are in the show notes❤️

I Thought I Had a Confidence Problem. I Had a Know-How Problem.🫠You can go along quite happily with horses believing you...
11/09/2026

I Thought I Had a Confidence Problem. I Had a Know-How Problem.🫠

You can go along quite happily with horses believing you know what you're doing. Your horses generally do what you ask, problems have solutions, and experience quietly accumulates into that reassuring feeling that you're reasonably competent at this horse business.

Then you meet a horse who exposes the limits of everything you know.

For me, that horse was Skuda.

At the time, I didn't recognise him as a gift. I mostly recognised him as a rather inconvenient horse who was frightened of almost everything.😐

Eventually, our ridden universe contracted to a 15-metre circle at one end of my arena. This was the bit of Earth Skuda had deemed acceptable and, because I was trying to be kind (and stay alive😬), I stayed there.

My reasoning seemed impeccable. My horse was afraid, therefore I should remove whatever frightened him.

The trouble with this strategy is that eventually you run out of world.😕

Looking back, I wasn't just riding around inside the limits of Skuda's confidence. I was riding around inside the limits of my own know-how.

I thought I understood the problem. Horse is afraid. Don't make horse do frightening thing.

The only alternative I could imagine was force. I needed to become braver, put my leg on and make him go down the terrifying end of the arena where, as far as I could establish, nobody had actually been eaten.

Those were the options I could see. Avoidance or force.🔥

What I couldn't see was everything I didn't yet know.

I didn't understand how my riding was making his body feel. I didn't recognise how my balance, timing, aids and restraint were affecting his sense of security. I didn't realise that I was practising failure, then interpreting the resulting behaviour as further evidence that Skuda couldn't cope.

He worried. I avoided. He relaxed. I relaxed. We repeated it tomorrow.😕

We became exceptionally good at not going down the other end of the arena.

But the biggest thing I had wrong was cause and effect.

I would see Skuda staring nervously at something and think, "That thing is making my horse feel like this."

I never thought, "What if something I'm doing is making his body feel like this, and that's changing how he experiences that thing?"🤔

That possibility simply wasn't available to me yet.

So I became very good at identifying all the things Skuda was supposedly frightened of. Corners. Objects. Parts of the arena. Things outside the arena. Things that moved. Things that didn't move but looked as though they might be considering it.😱

The list grew.

What wasn't on the list was me.

And that's the fascinating thing about not knowing what you don't know. You interpret what you see using the explanations available to you. If the explanation is wrong, you can become extremely dedicated to solving the wrong problem.

Then I learnt more.

I changed what I was doing.

And Skuda changed.🤯

As soon as I stopped sabotaging him, I met a different horse.

That was his gift to me.❤

Skuda taught me something much bigger than how to deal with a worried horse. He taught me that sometimes the thing standing between us and the horse we want isn't kindness, courage, connection or trying harder.

Sometimes it's simply know-how.

I like that word because we use so many words around horses that people don't necessarily relate to. Training. Horsemanship. Technique. Skills. Expertise.

Know-how is much more ordinary.

It's knowing what to notice. Knowing what matters. Knowing what to do. Knowing how to do it. Knowing when to change it. And having enough understanding to question whether the story you've told yourself about the problem is actually true.

I thought I owned a horse who couldn't cope with the world.

What I actually had was a horse showing me what the world felt like when he was with me minus the know-how I needed.🫣

Project Reboot is all about sharing the know-how❤⬇💬

Collectable Advice 290/365.
Please SHARE for all those people that might be missing the know-how too😎

When “I Just Want to Ride” Becomes the Problem🔥A trainer friend of mine recently lost it with a client. This bothered he...
10/09/2026

When “I Just Want to Ride” Becomes the Problem🔥

A trainer friend of mine recently lost it with a client. This bothered her enormously because she is normally incredibly patient. She is also kind, experienced and genuinely goes out of her way to help people.

The client was lovely too, and that matters. This isn't a story about a horrible person mistreating a horse. It's about a perfectly nice person who loved her horse, wanted to ride her horse and was struggling to see that some of the things standing between her and that goal weren't going to disappear simply because she really wanted to ride.

For a couple of months, my friend had been helping her with an anxious, spooky mare. Quite quickly, she noticed several things. The mare appeared mildly footsore. Boots were purchased, but my friend suspected more investigation was needed, including looking at diet and hoof care. The saddle had also never been properly fitted.

Then there was the riding. When the mare became anxious and rushed, the rider would shortened the reins and pulled harder on her mouth. On the ground, her handling of the lead rope was inadvertently creating confusion. Nothing malicious was happening. She simply didn't yet have the capability or insight to recognise how these interactions might feel from the horse's end of the rope.

So my friend went back to groundwork. Not because groundwork is some sacred spiritual practice, but because the woman needed to learn how to communicate with her horse. The mare was already showing some anxiety on the ground, and my friend wanted to help the owner develop the skills to guide and support her there before adding the complexity of riding. The groundwork wasn't really about groundwork. It was about helping the human become clearer, more reliable and more capable of guiding the horse when things became difficult.

Each lesson, my friend explained what they were doing and why. She demonstrated, coached and gave the woman things to practise. Unfortunately, very little was practised, so they kept returning to much the same place. This wasn't a case of a trainer endlessly insisting on groundwork while refusing to let someone progress. The things preventing that progression weren't changing. The mare was still showing some anxiety on the ground, the owner's handling wasn't improving because she wasn't practising, the feet remained questionable and the saddle remained unchecked. They couldn't progress simply because time had passed when the problems they were trying to resolve were still sitting there waiting for someone to resolve them.

Then one day the client announced that she was sick of groundwork. She wanted to ride.🤨

Somewhere inside my friend's normally well-regulated nervous system, a small fuse finally reached the explosives.💥

Because the groundwork wasn't preventing her from riding. A collection of unresolved problems affecting the horse was.

The horse's feet were uncomfortable. The saddle hadn't been assessed. The owner still struggled to guide the mare clearly, and when the mare became worried under saddle, the response was to restrict her further. Getting on and riding wasn't going to magically make any of that disappear.😑

In fact, it potentially bundled all the problems together and added a human.

This is the part of the story worth committing to your memory banks.

When we describe a horse as anxious, spooky, reluctant, resistant or lacking confidence, we are describing what the situation looks like from our side. We still need to ask what the situation might look and feel like from theirs.

Perhaps the horse isn't simply anxious about the world. Perhaps she is anxious about experiencing the world while her feet hurt. Perhaps she is reluctant because the saddle is uncomfortable. Perhaps every time she becomes worried, the human shortens the reins and increases the pressure. Perhaps she doesn't feel particularly secure with the person handling her because that person is still learning how to communicate clearly.

Then we climb aboard and wonder why the horse isn't confident.😑

Determination is a wonderful human quality, but it has limitations. You cannot out-determination sore feet. You cannot positive-think a poorly fitting saddle into fitting. You cannot repeatedly confuse a horse and overcome the consequences by deciding that today you are definitely going for a ride.😑

My friend eventually lost her temper. She wishes she hadn't, but I understand why she did. Perhaps a boundary could have been established earlier, but hindsight is wonderfully articulate. She had spent weeks trying to help someone understand what she believed the horse was experiencing, and eventually her frustration got the better of her.😕

There is a useful warning here for all of us. Horses don't experience our good intentions. They experience what actually happens to them.

You can adore your horse and still accidentally make their life difficult. That doesn't make you a bad horse owner. It gives you something to investigate, learn or change.

The problem begins when the horse keeps providing information and we decide we don't want to hear it because it interferes with what WE want to do.

So perhaps the uncomfortable question is this: do I want to solve the problem my horse is experiencing, or do I just want my horse to stop having a problem with what I want to do⁉️

Because there comes a point where saddling up and getting on is no longer perseverance. If the horse is uncomfortable, the equipment is questionable, the communication is unclear and the horse keeps struggling, but we choose to ride anyway because riding is what WE want to do, perhaps we need to stop calling that determination.

At some point, refusing to listen to the horse in front of us becomes disregard for their experience.

And surely, if WE genuinely care about horses, that should matter more than whether we get to ride today.❤

Collectable Advice 289/365

Please SHARE this one, especially with the coaches and equine professionals who have found themselves in this exact situation. I suspect many of you will read this story and think, “Yep. I’ve lived this moment too.” Sometimes the hardest part of helping the horse is helping the human see what the horse has been trying to tell them.🥹

PS. I am looking forward to Project Reboot ❤

Have We Forgotten How to Understand Things? 🔥I think modern life has made us remarkably comfortable with not understandi...
09/09/2026

Have We Forgotten How to Understand Things? 🔥

I think modern life has made us remarkably comfortable with not understanding how things work.

I don’t understand how my phone sends a photograph to someone on the other side of the world in approximately three seconds. I don’t really know what happens when I type something into Google. And if my television stops working, my technical expertise extends to turning it off and on again and hoping for the best.🫣

And mostly, that’s fine.

But I wonder if there is a downside to living in a world where we can operate increasingly complicated things while understanding almost nothing about how they actually work.

Let me explain.😎

Black Box Theory describes a system where we can see what goes in and what comes out without necessarily understanding what happens in between.

Modern life is absolutely stuffed with black boxes. We press buttons, swipe screens and occasionally enter into a deeply personal dispute with a printer over a paper jam, all while having almost no idea what is actually going on inside these things.

Someone else has done the understanding for us.

Which is terribly convenient.

But I do wonder whether it has also made us a little lazy about understanding things when understanding actually matters.

Like horses.🧐

You put your leg on and the horse doesn’t go forward. You pick up a rein and the horse doesn’t turn. You ask for canter and the horse pins its ears. You point the horse towards the float and it plants its feet.

The input went in.

The expected output did not come out.

Damn it.😕

And this is where the human brain really gets to show off.

Because give us a gap in our understanding and we can fill it faster than you can say nervous system regulation.

The horse is stubborn. Or scared. Or disrespectful. Or dysregulated. Or saying no. Or testing us. Or doesn’t trust us. Or possibly has some unresolved emotional issue from that groundwork session three years ago when you failed to honour its authentic "no".

Maybe.

But filling the black box with an impressive-sounding explanation isn’t the same as understanding what is actually happening inside it.

And with horses, unfortunately, we actually need to understand.😎

We need to understand horses as a species. We need to know how they learn, what they notice, how they make associations and how our actions influence their behaviour. We need to understand arousal, pain and physical capacity, and how previous learning affects what happens today.

Most importantly, we need to understand how we make sense to them.❤

Because a horse has not been designed around a human user interface.

Leg doesn’t inherently mean go. Rein doesn’t inherently mean turn. Walking willingly into a small metal box on wheels because we just expect them to.

Those meanings have to be learned.

And teaching them is our job.🤓

That is perhaps worth remembering in a world where we have become accustomed to extraordinarily complicated things being made ridiculously easy for us to operate. We can press buttons all day without understanding what is happening behind the screen because somewhere, someone clever has already done the understanding for us.

You cannot outsource that bit with your horse.😎

There is nobody behind the scenes quietly correcting your timing, clarifying your aids, checking whether your horse understood you, or issuing a software update because Version 7.3 has developed an unfortunate habit of refusing to leave their friends in the paddock.

That bit belongs to us.

So when your horse’s behaviour doesn’t make sense, resist the temptation to immediately give it a label, find another technique or construct a magnificent psychological explanation for it.

Get curious about the part you don’t yet understand.

You can spend your entire life using a phone without knowing how it works.

But if you spend your life with horses, understanding how horses work is part of the deal.❤

Collectable Advice 288/365. Please SHARE as a reminder that even in the age of AI, understanding your horse is still your job.❤

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