Our Practice and the Science that Supports It

With a new horse, we first let them settle in. We like to let the herd look after them at first and show them how wonderful it is to live at our Centre. Depending on the horse, we may even start by just rewarding them for paying us attention, as Claire did here with Valiente:

As the new horse finds her place in the herd and starts to relax, we like to start interacting closer to them if possible. We want to build friendship and trust, so typically we’ll simply be with them without asking them to engage if they prefer to stay away. Here Hope felt so comfortable with Claire, she stayed snoozing while Claire came close. Segura, Claire’s mare was used to having a snooze beside Claire and you can see how she joined in, which reassured Hope that Claire was OK.

We like to use enrichment exercises, such as hiding feed in buckets and among obstacles to help our new horses to explore their new environment. It also mimics natural; foraging behaviour and is a great way to relax horses. From there we also work to empower them to become more self-confident, as you see here with Leonera:

Once our new horse is settled in enough and beginning to trust us, we start to train using positive reinforcement. This means that we reward them for giving us behaviours that we want. We usually train them to target first…this means to touch a cone with their nose. We can use that behaviour to ask them to stand still at the cone or to follow a hand-held target. So we get these two basic behaviours without using fear or force, just good communication and a rewarding connection. Claire’s daughter Eva explains the basics here:

As you see, we never push horses into engaging with us. If the horse is particularly anxious, we will work behind a barrier so that they feel comfortable to leave us if they need to. You can see that this still allows all the necessary training and contributes to trusting relationships.

Once we have these basics established, we use the same process to train or re-train all the necessary handling and health-care procedures. Here are some examples:

Preparing horses for re-homing requires attention to more advanced behaviours, such as being mounted and ridden. We use the same positive approach and tale a lot of care and time to ensure our horses love being ridden. This makes them safer to ride and means that riding is enriching for them. After all, feral horses spend many hours per day moving about and exploring their environment. It is very healthy for horse to get out and about, getting lots of good movement and enriching their lives.

We start on the ground building communication, connection and relaxation.

For physical rehabilitation we use poles, pedestals and other body-awareness exercises in the arena:

We do a lot of walking out in hand using physical terrain to build strength and suppleness. This also helps the horses to learn to leave the rest of the herd and rely on their bond with their human partner.

Preparation for Riding

Breath Connection Under Saddle

Our work is not "our method" or "our system". It was developed scientifically in the early 20th Century and found it's way into horse training via marine mammal training, in the 1990's.

The origins arise from the behavioural work of scientists like B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov. However, modern neuroscience has added a much bigger dimension to this work by demonstrating scientifically that mammals do experience emotions and are sentient beings. Rachel has studied this neuroscience closely and applied it to our understanding of horses. This supports the way we respect, keep and train horses. The work of Jaak Panksepp in particular has informed our work. 

Rachel produced a series of videos explaining his emotional systems and how they apply to horses and horse training. Many people have followed these videos and incorporated them into their learning and teaching.

Rachel has also studied equine ethology for over 20 years, learning from great teachers such as Marthe Kiley-Worthington and Lucy Rees. Recently she has studied Language Signs and Calming Signals with Rachael Draaisma and they have toured together giving joint seminars on these topics.

Here are a selection of Rachel's videos explaining horse behaviour and learning from these perspectives.