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A podcast by Abbey’s Run Equestrian
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
S5 E7: My Accident
On the 8th of June 2008, my life changed forever with a split-second accident that saw me trampled by my then 2.5-year-old horse, Fernando, and air-lifted to Hospital for life-saving surgery.
This episode is the story of that accident, what happened, the damage that did and where that’s left me now.
S5 E4: Why Virtual Learning’s Worth Exploring
In today’s episode I’m going to chat with you about the awesomeness of virtual learning in the horse world. This episode is inspired in part by Ivy sharing her experience in last week’s episode and just how integral Michelle’s remote support has been to Swagger and Ivy’s journey and progress. But it’s also inspired by my own experiences with the virtual learning landscape, and by conversations I’ve had with a few people who groan at the prospect.
I want to nudge you up-front to say that you’re actually likely already engaging in enjoyable, helpful, virtual learning - most likely the free stuff if not paid. Like me, you’re a good chance to have watched things on YouTube, see things on social media, read blog posts, and I mean, you’re listening to this podcast. You’re doing it already!
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.
Season 5 Trailer
Hello lovely listener! I am so excited to be back & bringing you this, our first Special Edition Season of An Equine Conversation.
Just like previous Seasons of the podcast, Season 4 includes 8 episodes, the first of which will drop next Wednesday.
Check out this trailer to hear just what the topic of this Special Edition Season is.
S4 E4: An Owner’s Story - with Chris & Michael Fallon
This episode of our Special Edition Season on ‘What Else Is There?’ takes a little bit of a different view. Today, instead of us meeting with those who engage in this space in a more professional capacity, it is my pleasure to introduce you to a couple who are horse-owners and to share their, very personal but very inspiring journey.
I connected with Chris and Michael Fallon, based in the United States, as a result of the post I put up and shared into the Non Ridden Equine Facebook group, asking what fun, non-ridden activities were people getting up to with their equine friends. Chris posted a comment that included the most delightful video montage of a bunch of tricks their horse Pirate was doing, many with her husband Michael. The video, especially Michael’s joy as he played with Pirate & Pirates engagement, made me chuckle, filled me with joy and I made a point of showing it to Benn, for him to see another male having fun in this way. We were both tickled.
So I reached out to Chris and invited her and Michael to join me for a conversation, to share their experiences with you as other owners who are not professionals in the ethical horse world. To my delight, they were happy to chat with me so that their story could inspire others. I think a really key part of Chris and Michael’s story is that their horse Pirate CAN be ridden at this point, unlike Vicki’s Kez that we spoke about last week. Pirate can be ridden and still they are having a fabulous time with him from the ground.
I am incredibly grateful to Chris and Michael for meeting with me and so openly sharing this personal story with me and now you. I hope it leaves you feeling inspired about what’s possible with your equine friends.
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?’.
Season 4 Trailer
Hello lovely listener! I am so excited to be back & bringing you this, our first Special Edition Season of An Equine Conversation.
Just like previous Seasons of the podcast, Season 4 includes 8 episodes, the first of which will drop next Wednesday.
Check out this trailer to hear just what the topic of this Special Edition Season is.
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.
S3 E5: Farts & Unicorns
Today’s episode is a really short & snappy one, dare I say, a mini-sode.
Despite being short, it’s an important one, where I’m sharing 2 valuable training tips that I’ve been talking about with my students for more than a decade: farts & unicorns. These are two training tips you can take away immediately and incorporate into your training.
A short episode, but one I hope you find really helpful.
And now I best explain just what I mean by farts & unicorns. Listen to find out.
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.
Season 3 Trailer
Hello lovely listener! We are delighted to be back with Season 3 of An Equine Conversation, a podcast brought to you by Abbey’s Run Equestrian. I’m your host, Sarah Nickels.
Just like the previous Seasons, Season 3 includes 8 episodes (plus this trailer). Episodes will drop on a Wednesday morning, Melbourne/Sydney time. We’re dropping our first episode next Wednesday, October 4th.
Check out this trailer for a glimpse of what’s coming up this Season & to find out about the free challenge we have starting next week (October 5th) and our next intake of our young and/or green horse program, From Green to Growth: developing positive partnerships for the future.
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.
S2 E4: The ‘truth’ in buying a horse
In my almost 3 decades of teaching people with horses, there are some things I have been asked about many times. Questions around or support in buying a new horse has been one of these.
Horse shopping, much like property shopping, can be an emotional roller-coaster of an experience. Then when you finally land on which equine and have your new partner home, things may not go, in fact often they don’t go, quite as you imagined they would.
In this episode I’m going to speak to the ‘truth’ in buying a horse, whether that be your first, second, third or tenth horse.