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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 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.
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?’.
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 E6: How learning with horses can teach young people key life skills - with Bex Tasker
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.
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.
S2 E8: The difficulty of language - with Julia Inglis
I’m delighted to welcome our good friend, Julia Inglis back to An Equine Conversation. We first met Julia in Series 1, Episode 8 ‘Julia’s story - a tale to learn from’. If you want to hear Julia’s story, you can jump back and listen to that episode.
Julia & I talk so much about training, so we thought we’d start to share some of these conversations with you.
In this episode, we start by catching up on how Julia’s horse Maddy, who has Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS) went over last Spring and Summer. Then, we get into the weeds of talking about the challenges of the English langauge, particularly the use of labels, in the horse world…. but because this is Julia and I, we quickly end up down various rabbit holes due to what we’d both been seeing in the months before we spoke, inc. clinic Julia watched…. , including talking about what you do when you remove labels & the challenge of addressing the actual problem when that impacts your plans.
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.
Episode 7: What IS training with positive reinforcement?
In the previous podcast episode with Sara Jackson, and in the next episode with Julia Inglis, you’ll hear mention of ‘positive reinforcement’ as a training approach. We’ve mentioned it ourselves too in talking about our Start Your Engines course+workshop.
I suspect that some of you listening will be well familiar with training using positive reinforcement, but there are likely others listening who are not so sure. So in this episode, we’re going to touch on what training with positive reinforcement, often abbreviated as R+, actually is.
Episode 6: A journey to speaking horse with Sara Jackson
In this episode, I’m speaking with Sara Jackson who is across the other side of the Country from me, over in Western Australia. For those unfamiliar with Australia, that’s a 4-hour flight, plus the drive at each end to the airport, which at my end is over 3 hours.
We’re speaking about Sara's her own, quite colourful journey with horses and how this has brought her to sharing with other people about equine body language, equine behaviour & how important understanding this is for having a 2-way conversation with our horses and improving our relationship with them. Sara helps others learn more about equine behaviour and body language through her business Equestrian Balance and the Learn to Speak Horse Online Program.
Episode 5: But it says ‘horse’ on the label…
In this episode, we’re going to discuss why getting our horsie ducks in a row is a challenge, acknowledging that this is happening for us all, and look at what we can do about it.
Episode 4: Preparing for Bushfires as a Horse Owner with Sharon Merritt
In this week’s episode, I chat with Sharon Merritt from Victoria’s Country Fire Authority, better known here as the CFA, on preparing for bushfire (or you might know it as wildfire events) when we own horses. This is something we feel strongly about having had friends and family impacted in some of the more recent major fire events in our Country and having had fire come close to where our horses live a number of times. While we’re having a very wet Spring in our part of the world, fires still happen, and all the vegetation growth brought on by the rain will be creating fuel load for future fires. Join us for invaluable information and actions to implement that we all need to be aware of and implement for our own and our horses safety.
Episode 3: Getting Your Ducks in a Row
In this episode, we’re going to discuss why getting our horsie ducks in a row is a challenge, acknowledging that this is happening for us all, and look at what we can do about it.
Episode 2: Talking Emergency Response & First Aid with Dr Lizzie McCready
In this episode I’m talking with Dr Lizzie McCready who has taken her profession from on the road practice to working with horse owners to improve their emergency response skills. Find out some top tips to improve your own skills & be better prepared for those inevitable emergencies that arise when we have horses.