An Equine Conversation

Welcome to An Equine Conversation, a podcast brought to you by Abbey’s Run Equestrian.

This podcast aims to help you, the horse owner, improve your knowledge by giving you access to top quality information that will help you be the best horse owner you can be so that you can give your horses the best life possible.

Through An Equine Conversation, I’ll share my expertise with you along with helping you connect to and hear from some amazing experts in their own fields – because while I have a lot of knowledge, I am by no means the expert in all of the things. We’ll also be talking with horse owners about their journey with their animals.

We’ll explore ways our horses can be physically and mentally healthier through topics around training, horse-health, enrichment, emergency preparedness, history, our own mental wellbeing and physical health and more. We’ll be giving you practical actions you can implement with your horses and information to explore, consider and further investigate.

These podcast episodes are absolutely designed to be thought-provoking and they may bring you some ideas, approaches or information that you haven’t come across previously.

Thank you to Matthew Bliss for podcast production & consultation. If you'd like him to help with your podcast, get in touch by email at business@mbpod.com

Sarah Nickels 11/13/24 Sarah Nickels 11/13/24

S5 E2: The Hard

Today, I want to speak about ‘the hard’ in horses. I recently shared a post on our Abbey’s Run Equestrian Facebook page about this & it resonated with a lot of people.

This topic is inspired by those who in the past few months have shared their hard with me, just how tough-a time they’ve had of it, and the thinking and reflection that those conversations have left me with.

I don’t think we share enough about the hard and so this episode aims to change that.

Sarah Nickels 4/17/24 Sarah Nickels 4/17/24

S4 E3: ‘The Non Ridden Equine’ Facebook group - with Vicki Jayne Yates

In this episode of our Special Edition Season on ‘What Else Is There?’, I’m delighted to introduce you to Vicki Jayne Yates and the Facebook group she established with her husband Steve, ‘The Non Ridden Equine’.

This free group that continues to grow weekly with a current membership of over 32,000 people from around the world. I’ve been a member for a number of years now and love being part of such an inclusive, welcoming group and a place where I can draw inspiration on ideas of what activities I can be doing with my horses besides riding.

I wanted to showcase this community to you because I think we can sometimes feel isolated and perhaps lonely if we’re not riding. So much is focused on the ridden world and there can be peer-pressure to ride, I know I’ve faced it. I want you to know that if you are not riding your equines or even if you are, that there is this amazing, international community out there that you can be part of if you’re not already. There are SO many people around the world who have equines that they don’t ride & enjoy in other ways. The Non Ridden Equine Facebook group is somewhere that you can find connection and possibly some inspiration too (listen next week for more on this).

I also find Vicki and Steve’s story with Kez, which inspired the establishment of the group very powerful and wanted to share that with you too.

Enjoy & see you in The Non Ridden Equine Facebook group soon.

Sarah Nickels 4/3/24 Sarah Nickels 4/3/24

S4 E1: Why this special edition season - ‘What Else Is There?’

I have spent many hours thinking about bringing this Special Edition Season of An Equine Conversation to you, and then of course planning & sourcing guests & editing episodes.

The more I thought about it, the more and more important and the clearer the WHY for this episode became to me. And it seemed more than what was sensible to fit into the already long Season Trailer, so here we are at Episode 1, talking about the why. Why we are producing a Special Edition of An Equine Conversation on ‘What else is there?’.

Sarah Nickels 11/15/23 Sarah Nickels 11/15/23

S3 E7: The Wine Cellar

Let me invite you today, to come for a little journey into the wine cellar with me, which is kind of ironic, given I don’t drink alcohol, but hey, I can still appreciate the amazingness that is a wine cellar… so come on this little journey with me.

Why are we going to the wine cellar? Well, for very, very good reason:

Because, we have a tendency to start training our horses on the ground floor or somewhere above it, so, in the middle instead of at the beginning, instead of starting down in the gloriousness that is the wine cellar.

I think we do this for a variety of very legitimate reasons, but it often leads us into a pickle in lots of ways with training our horses where we get ourselves stuck or facing problems.

I hear some of you cry here, ‘but but but, I am not a horse trainer, I am an owner and I work with a trainer so this episode can’t be for me’… and I’m here to tell you that anyone who works with or cares for any animal, anywhere is a trainer – regardless of whether we’re conscious of it or not. So yep, if you care for a horse or any other animal, you are a trainer & this episode, this visit to the wine cellar is for you. As if you don’t want to go to the wine cellar anyway!?

In today’s episode I’m going to speak to the training that comes before the training. Because that piece is inextricably connected to just how successful any training, which I say in inverted commas, is.

So let’s head down the stairs into the cool of the wine cellar together and get started.

Sarah Nickels 10/4/23 Sarah Nickels 10/4/23

S3 E1: Movin’ to the country - with Benn Sheffield

This episode of An Equine Conversation is quite a different one:

In late 2015, Benn & I moved to the country, from the outer suburbs of Melbourne. Yep, we did eat a lot of peaches initially (we knew people with a prolifically producing tree), and have since planted 2 peach trees of our own LOL. For me, moving to the country had been a dream since I can remember (I can’t remember a time I didn’t want my own ‘farm’) and for Benn who grew up on a hobby-farm but then moved into town for study & work, returning to a more rural lifestyle was something he always intended to do. Here we are, almost 8 years on (sometimes it feels like 5 minutes, other times, forever) & while it’s an awful lot of work, for the most part, we absolutely love it.

Inspired by our friend and Podcast Producer Matthew Bliss & his wife Bernadine & their podcast ‘From My Home To Yours’, Benn (who had volunteered to come on a podcast episode) and I thought we’d take a moment to reflect on our experience of moving from one type of lifestyle to another. Something we haven’t really stopped to do like this since we moved almost 8 years ago now. It was an awesome opportunity to reflect on some of the challenges, some of the awesomeness & some of the differences we found in moving to the country, to live on our 40 acres. We thought you might enjoy listening in and sharing on our revisiting some of the most memorable changes.

Sarah Nickels 5/31/23 Sarah Nickels 5/31/23

S2 E6: Set up for success: it takes a team

We want your training with your horse to be fun & enjoyable for your both – in short, we want you to be really successful in your training.

When we think about training with our horses & being successful with our training, we often think about the time when we're actively training 1:1 with our horse... but there is a whole bunch of stuff that comes before the active training part that is inextricably connected to how successful any active training will be or not.

Some of the things that come before take some time to put in place & others can be done more rapidly. The very cool thing too, is that the more we get in place and the more practiced we get at setting ourselves and our horses up for success, the faster it becomes over time. So while initially, it might take some conscious, focused thought and actions – it will become easier over time.

Setting ourselves up for success is something we will be exploring in greater detail with you awesome humans who get involved in our virtual young & green horse program that launches on the 1st of August 2023… but setting ourselves & our horses up for success is so important & we wanted to touch on it here, through An Equine Conversation too.

There is so much we could talk about on how we set ourselves and our horses up for success but today we’re going to follow on from something we mentioned super briefly in Series 2, Episode 3 of An Equine Conversation with Dr Lisa Walter – that it takes a team.