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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
S6 E5: How a Table-top Game can make you a better Owner/Trainer - with Mary Hunter
To the uninitiated, suggesting that a table-top game can make us be better horse trainers may sound a bit bonkers. But to those of us in the know, and those of us who have played this and similar games, we have experienced just what a positive difference they can make to our training in what is a low-risk environment – there’s no chance of us stuffing up our horses.
I’m so pleased to have Mary Hunter from Behavior Explorer join me today to explain a little about how this works and why playing a game, away from our horses can do so much for us.
Plus, we get to hear Mary’s horsie origin story too, where, much like Lucy in S6 E3, Mary had a particular, special horse who really changed the trajectory of her life.
S6 E4: Sarah’s Story - part 1
Throughout An Equine Conversation, we capture many of our guests horsie origin stories… but of course, being the interviewer, I’m the one asking the questions. In this episode, I’m going to share with you the early years of my own horsie origin story & some of the strong memories I have along the way.
S6 E3: Lucy & Tao’s story - with Lucy Chester
I so much enjoyed recording this conversation with Lucy Chester from Lucy Chester Horsemanship in England. I’ve followed Lucy’s work for a while and admired her care of her horse Tao, and the work she has been doing to raise the profile of more ethical training approaches. I wanted to hear Lucy’s horsie origin story and to hear about Tao’s story too, as I knew it had not been and still isn’t all smooth sailing. Lucy's story is, I think, very inspiring.
It was amazing to finally connect with Lucy and to realise just how much of the learning journey that we had both experienced, despite being on opposite sides of the world.
S6 E2: Yes, but…
In today’s episode, I’m going to chat about my training approach. Why it’s not just about positive reinforcement training.
Late last year, I was asked some great questions about my training approach that really got me thinking. And as this has become clearer to me, well, nothing’s changed, it’s more I’ve found the words to explain it, I want to share those words with you.
I should say, in a later episode this Season, I’m going to speak about my horsie origin story, so we’re not going into that detail here. This is about where I’m at in my story just now.
So, do I train with positive reinforcement, abbreviated as a capital R followed immediately with a plus sign? My answer to that is: yes, BUT.
And there are really 3 ‘buts’ here that I’ll talk through this episode.
S5 E8: The path to mules - with Ellen Cochrane
I’m delighted to welcome Ellen Cochrane back to An Equine Conversation. We heard from Ellen in Season 4, talking all about equine agility and The International Horse Agility Club. This episode is something quiet different: We’re hearing about Ellen’s journey to and experiences in working with mules, both her own mule Inara, and her voluntary efforts in supporting humans working with mules in Morocco to improve welfare outcomes for animals and people. I get tingles even thinking about this episode & what Ellen has been involved with. I hope you find the episode as educational and inspiring as I have.
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.
S4 E8: Equine Scent Detection with Dee Horwood & Cortney McCartney
This is the FINAL EPISODE of our Special Edition Season of An Equine Conversation on ‘What Else Is There?’ besides riding.
Last but by no means least, I’m absolutely delighted to welcome our Australian guests for the season, Dee Horwood & Cortney McCartney, owners of the business Scent Horses Australia.
Cortney is, I think, only the 2nd person we’ve had on the podcast who I’ve actually met in person, and lives only 2 hours from me. Not only that but Cortney’s horse, the one used to proof the scent detecting concept is a half sibling to my horse Rufus, so technically, we’re like extended family yea?
Dee & Cortney are joining me to share their story of getting involved in Equine Scent Detection training fun – a journey that was inspired by a conversation Cortney had when visiting Canada back in I think it was 2011. We’re talking about the awesomeness that is scent detecting with equines. This was such a fun conversation and these humans have such a great story.
I’m so excited to help raise the profile of what’s possible here & what these two awesome humans are getting up to.
At the end of the episode, stay tune for a bunch of end of Season announcements.
S4 E2: Equine Agility - with Ellen Cochrane
I’m so excited to introduce today, our first guest of our Special Edition Season on ‘What Else Is There?’ (besides riding).
I’ll be straight with you and say that one of the joys of podcasting is having a reason to speak to some awesome humans in our industry, because uh, I want to connect with them myself, and today is no exception.
Ellen Cochrane came on my radar a couple of years ago, when someone shared the footage of Ellen’s mule Inara, pushing a soccer ball around an S-bend of poles. It was posted on Ellen’s page that follow’s Inara’s journey, ‘It’s a Mule’s Life’ and it was amazing. This was clearly someone who was a very clever trainer and able to achieve awesome things, and so I started following Ellen’s work.
In parallel with this and probably even before I knew of Ellen, I had heard about Equine Agility and was captivated by the idea. There is so much I love about this as an activity we can be doing with our horses for fun, that hones our training skills broadly with lots of real-world positive impacts, and it also facilitates those who have a competitive drive to compete, while still keeping their horse comfortable as possible as the entries are submitted from home. It’s something that can be done un-mounted on lead and off-lead and also done mounted. There are so many options and the creators have made this opportunity inclusive for so many equines and their humans. I can’t wait to explore it with my equine team.
But, let me stop there as Ellen will explain so much more in the conversation you’re about to hear.
I will just say that I’ll be speaking with Ellen again soon in a future Season of An Equine Conversation as there are so many more things we want to share with you.
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.