From the age of about 10-11 years old, it was my dream to have my own children’s riding school. I started instructing at 16 and taught a lot of young people. Initially at riding schools & then at Pony Club where I often taught the youngest members, the more junior groups.

In my mid-to-late 20’s, I’d had enough of teaching young people, of dealing with their parents and so I chose to focus on working with adults.

I didn’t realise at that time, that part of the reason I’d had enough was because of the more conventional way I was having to teach people & that this just didn’t sit right with me. At that time, I didn’t know of or see another way. I wasn’t aware of alternative options.

Fast forward to a few years ago, and my initial dream started to re-kindle in a fashion, with sparks, ignited by the work of people like the lovely Bex Tasker from Positively Together in NZ. I started to see a handful of people around the work, having learning adventures with young people that looked absolutely amazing.

This, their approach, different from that conventional way, really got me & I started to have hope that my initial dream, could, in some way, happen in future. For now, this is something that’s still in my future, something I have bubbling along in the back of my mind, but now I have hope. I have hope for amazing alternatives for ways of working with young people and horses, and moreover, I’m so excited by what I’m seeing is possible to support young people learning about working with horses and other species in very cool ways that I wish were around when I was young.

I couldn’t go past inviting Bex to come and have a chat with me here on An Equine Conversation, to share about her own learning journey and how she evolved her career to working with young people & animals, totally busting the myth that it’s something that we shouldn’t do. Bex does amazing work with young people as the learn about training animals and in turn, that’s giving them a bunch of personal development, teaching them invaluable life-skills on how they engage with their peers, families & humans around them. This includes learning about compassion, boundaries, choice & consent. Hugely important life-skills for us all.

I find this work of Bex’s incredibly inspiring, as do others & Bex has more recently started to support other positive reinforcement focused coaches who work with and want to work with young people through her Shaping the Future membership.

This is an episode for anyone who’s involved with young people, not just those in the animal training space. I hope you enjoy and find inspiration in this conversation.