Integrated Horsemanship

My horse story started on the beach in Scarborough where i fell in love with a donkey. That led to much nagging at parents till they finally caved in some years later when at the age of 10 I felt like the luckiest girl in the world to get my own pony. From then on horses have been my world, progressing through pony club, showjumping and eventing till the late 1980`s when I rode a Spanish horse while visiting Andalucia and fell in love all over again. I was lucky to be offered a job by the owner of that horse, Miguel Barrionuevo of Pura Passion so chose to stay in Spain and immersed myself in the wonderful world of classical dressage. Some years later I was able to buy my own place where I started off just working with horses, specializing in starting youngsters. I was convinced that only by riding at least 6 a day could I ever hope to be as good as I wanted to be. I soon realized that it was the humans more that the horses who needed educating. i discovered that I really enjoyed teaching and found , to my delight, in that process, a whole new way of learning. This led to running residential courses and only taking in horses whose owners were willing to come and be involved in the work. See liveandbreathehorses.com .
Over the last 20 years I have worked with students from all over the world on topics ranging from improving their dressage tests, facing fears, personal development, developing their feel, building a stronger foundation of horsemanship to name just a few. Through all this, and my own explorations into bio-energetics, yoga and martial arts, I have developed some very effective techniques which help humans find a harmonious connection with horses. I am always working to improve myself and so was delighted to fall in love all over again some years ago when I discovered Tom Dorrance, Bill Dorrace, Ray Hunt and Buck Brannaman’s pure horsemanship.
Due to personal circumstances I am now closing Live and Breathe Horses and will be on the road giving clinics. That way I can meet more people and be effective helping riders explore learning opportunities with their own horses.
An important thing I have learnt during my years in the horse world is that good horsemanship is just good horsemanship. Whatever tack you use or don’t use, whatever your choice of clothing or name you give to what you do, for the horse it is all the same. Horses work on feel and for me this quote from the legendary Ray Hunt says it all
“ The human has to learn to feel where the horse is at, then feel of him, then feel for him so that you can feel together “ Ray Hunt
Without this basic principal nothing else makes sense. This is what I work on each day with my horses, always grateful for the opportunity to get better, to get closer to perfection and to feel together with them.


Horsemanship

Horsehumanrelationship

The horse operates on feel. If we are to strive towards true unity with our horse we must meet him where he is at.
He does not care what we call our horsemanship, what we wear, what tack we use or don’t use, for him it is just about the feel. Direct and in direct feel. Feel can be many different things. The horse knows at all times how we feel better than we do, if we are to have a relationship based on trust and respect we must be honest with ourselves and take the feedback from the horse. If we can become aware of what we project onto the horse we can learn to be authentic and total in our approach.
“ You are not working on your horse, you are working on yourself “ Ray Hunt
Working this way with your horse will transform you relationship, as you learn to feel of each other you will be amazed how little you need to do, the possibilities are infinite when he has space to learn while we ourselves stay open to learn. This is education and it can take us way beyond the ideas of training systems
Feel is the essence of everything else we would like to do with our horse.
Feel, along with timing are the key ingredients for balance.