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 11/20/24 Sarah Nickels 11/20/24

S5 E3: Swagger’s journey - with Ivy Starnes

Today we welcome our first new guest for this Season. Ivy Starnes caught my attention through her generous sharing of videos documenting her journey with a horse called Swagger, a young, now gelding who was previously living in the wild. I’ve been captivated by Ivy’s training with the support of her coach and friend Michelle, as they help this incredibly unique and quite spectacular horse learn about connecting with humans. He has forced Ivy to really refine her training, and it is super inspiring to watch.

Not only is the training lovely, and the problem-solving Ivy and Michelle work through, but also Ivy’s dedication to recording the journey and then paying forward the assistance she was given earlier in life, by sharing the footage so openly.

I’m so pleased that Ivy is joining me today so we (I mean, let’s be honest, I invite people onto An Equine Conversation so I get to hear from them too) get to hear more detail around Ivy’s experience with this seriously unique horse.

Sarah Nickels 11/6/24 Sarah Nickels 11/6/24

S5 E1: Introducing a new horse - with Dr Dorothy Heffernan

I’m delighted to be starting Season 5 of An Equine Conversation with a returning and very popular past guest, Dr Dorothy Heffernan.

In today’s episode, we catch-up, get an update on Rio, Dorothy’s New Forest pony with Equine Metabolic Syndrome (although, this was recorded back in August 2024, so there’s likely already another update due) and then we get onto today’s topic of how to set everyone up for the best chance of success when introducing a new horse to a herd.

If you’ve not encountered Dorothy before, let me suggest jumping back and listening to Season 3, Episode 8, our first episode with Dorothy to hear more about her horsie origin story.

Sarah Nickels 11/22/23 Sarah Nickels 11/22/23

S3 E8: An Irish start & another EMS pony - with Dr Dorothy Heffernan

Here we are at our final episode for Season 3 of An Equine Conversation. The months & months of recording & editing have all finally finished & you now have the whole season to listen to & what an epic season it has been too.

Stay tuned at the end of the conversation for some announcements.

I’m delighted to bring you this final episode with the 4th inspirational women in the horse world I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with this season.

This is yet another conversation I’ve been so looking forward to having and to sharing with you. Dr Dorothy Heffernan is based in Scotland, my favourite place in the world besides where I am in Victoria, Australia, but grew up in Ireland. I mention in the conversation, an Irish documentary that was on TV when I was a child about horses in Ireland and so I always wondered what it would have been like growing up horsie in Ireland. You’ll never believe it, but someone’s put that 53 minute and a bit documentary, which must have been made in the 1980’s or even 70’s onto YouTube. I almost fell off my chair when I thought to look and found it.

I digress…

Dorothy first came on my radar a number of years ago with her insightful responses to questions on some of the equine behaviour & positive reinforcement Facebook groups & it seemed Dorothy liked mine too & we connected over a like-minded approach.

Since then I’ve been following Dorothy’s journey with both her training work with humans & horses in Scotland, and with her own little herd of horses. I knew Dorothy grew up in Ireland and I wanted to hear what that was like & I love Scotland so am always happy to speak with anyone there.

I know some of you lovely listeners had really resonated with & appreciated hearing Julia Inglis story with her EMS horse and you wanted more information around EMS – a growing challenge for many horse owners. Dorothy has an EMS pony Rio – whose story I wanted to share with you as well, so we delve into the trials and tribulations of managing an EMS pony in Scotland.

It was such a fun conversation with Dorothy who is a great story-teller. Even listening back to edit the episode, I laughed and I almost shed tears at different points. I hope you enjoy listening as much as Dorothy & I enjoyed recording this for you.

Sarah Nickels 6/7/23 Sarah Nickels 6/7/23

S2 E7: Advocating for your horse - with Erin Moore

I first encountered Canadian-based Erin Moore when a friend pointed me to a podcast episode Erin had done last year on running a successful dog training business and I immediately resonated with Erin’s work. I loved what Erin was all about & since that time have been working with Erin on my business, Abbey’s Run Equestrian.

Cut to earlier this year & Erin was on the ‘Drinking from the Toilet’ podcast, which is a fabulous podcast about all things dog training that I highly recommend. It’s one of my favourite podcasts to listen to, with much of the content translating very directly to horses. On that episode, Erin was talking about advocating for your dog and it really struck me that this is content horsie folk needed to hear too. I know it’s something I could personally always get better at and in the past I’ve supported quite a number of my students in some of their advocacy options for their horses.

We can often think about advocacy as being confrontational, but it doesn’t have to be that. Sure, it is sometimes, but there are many other non-confrontational ways we can advocate for our loved horses and other equines too.