My focus often was and is on ill-behaved / confused horses, as it has always challenged me to work out their needs and reasons for acting up, and of course they are the ones few people wish to deal with.  It always gives me much pleasure to help guide horses through their very own maze and tangles, to come out at the end less confused and willing to cope with life again.  I achieve my work mainly using horse / human communication through groundwork, observation, building of trust and mutual respect.  At times, I also work closely together with horse communicator Gaynor Davenport.  Her special ability has proven invaluable on many occasions during the past 20 years.

 

My experience of rescuing horses goes back as far as 1992 and the most number of horses I have had so far in one herd living out together was seven. This has given me valuable insight into horse herd dynamics, leadership and ranking order, as well as a myriad of other subtle observations within a group of horses living out around the clock.

 

Through dealing with my own rescued horses, I kept coming up against the same question time and time again. 'Why did people do to horses what was so demonstrably not working for them?'  Also, meeting more and more horsey people through my leather work, visiting yards to take measurements or giving advice on fitting harness correctly made me see how little people had been exposed to understanding their equine counterparts. Potentially, the lack of this knowledge created a big void between them, resulting in rising frustration and many failed partnerships with unhappy people as well as unhappy horses.  Eventually, when nobody knows what to do anymore and horses and ponies get branded uncontrollable, unsafe or even dangerous, they get put down, or, if they are lucky, end up with someone who finally understands what they need to enable them to live a sane horse's life after all. There they have to find out all about what it means to be a horse again - some of them for the first time!

 

Years of remedial work has shown me how effective leadership and groundwork is to help horses regain trust and equilibrium. This is also the case for any other horse, with the view to building a solid foundation of mutual understanding between humans and horses.

 

Over the years I got very interested in massaging, stretching  and biomechanics that might help each horse on an individual basis to deal with past injuries and weaknesses through past accidents with the aim to restore the horses healthy mind, body and soul.

 

The realisation that emotional fitness precedes physical fitness occurred to me some years ago through ongoing observation. Also, my relatively newfound knowledge and skill of podiatry, taught to me by Trevor Jones, has had a great impact on horse health recovery.  Another important milestone for me was learning much more about equine nutritional health. Some of my older ponies in the herd really challenged me there for a while. This knowledge has helped my ‘oldies’ greatly and has also changed the way I feed horses of all ages.

 

Having always had a keen interest in horse and human psychology, I have spent the past 10 years especially, observing equine facilitated learning and healing. It is amazing to watch human beings  enter into healing relationships with horses.  People feel drawn to certain horses, who can in turn relate to past experiences of human beings and in due course help close the rifts within.

 

I have been interested in many different forms of horse disciplines. English and western riding, carriage driving,  eventing, polo, show jumping, long distance, le Trec...  What crystallised for me many years ago, though, was not the importance of competing against other human competitors and their horses, but the level of partnership between me and my horses during our time together, not just in a competitive environment, but every time we train, go out for a hack or a friendly carriage drive with friends.

 

Last but not least a big THANK YOU to all the very special, insightful, spiritually connected and otherwise gifted people, who have shared information and insights with me over the years and helped me in turn understand important connections. It is great having met all of you and I am honoured to be able to call some of you my friends. You all know who you are!

 

All of the above has led me to my newest venture in life:

 

To teach others about Equine Communication and Confidence, which is the very foundation any horse/human relationship is built on. In 2015, I started teaching basic courses of this nature and more recently have given  a lot of thought towards a way forward after the foundation course to help people with their own horses gain the necessary knowledge to succeed with eachother.

 

If you want to know more on how to improve these skills, look at my course schedule and structure.