http://www.lshorsemanship.co.uk/

LS Horsemanship, Stokesley (2026)

15/10/2026

Our obsession with “boundaries” 🐴

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to piece my thoughts on this together as coherently as I’d like to but I’m going to try. Its going to be a long one.

Something that comes up time and time again, usually as a rebuttal to anyone advocating for being kinder and listening to horses, is the “boundaries” argument. “We have got to have clear boundaries with horses they are big and can hurt us”. While it is true that of course horses have the ability to hurt us, the idea that you have to be hard on them to make them safe to be around is false.

Firstly, as I’m always writing about, horses who are difficult to handle are struggling, they usually have pain/discomfort they’re dealing with, are often dealing with chronic stress from their living environment and on top of this usually negative associations with training/people. Taking these horses into a training space and making them yield to pressure and move their feet until you are satisfied is not helping them, it is creating a shut down horse. What I find is when we actually focus on addressing the underlying issues instead, we find our handling issues melt away.

This is why I don’t give boundaries with my horses much thought, not because I don’t think safety is important, but because horses are not unsafe to be around when we approach them with this mindset.

I try to stay away from words like “boundaries” and “clarity” because they don’t really tell us what someone means. What are the boundaries? What are we clarifying?

My horses are extremely safe to be around, anyone can handle them, I trust that they would never bite/kick a human, but they are like this because I treat them with respect. They do not fear people, they know they will be listened to. I do not make them move their feet, or make them back up every time they step close to me, or make them stay every time they want to leave a situation. Sometimes I even yield to them, as in when they move I move out of their way. 😱 And yet despite this, they move their bodies however I ask them off of light tactile pressure, they stay with me when I ask them to, they have never trampled me or pushed me over and they are excellent when having to deal with uncomfortable procedures with the vet. Horses are never trying to dominate us, they are communicating and trying their best to cope, and they are such gentle, compliant creatures when they feel safe with us.

We often hear that “horses aren’t gentle with each other, we’re just speaking their language by being rough with them”. Firstly, the intense resource guarding behaviour we see in our domesticated horses is created by the environments we keep them in, but I’m not going to go into that here. Secondly, when a horse drives another horse away, this is called distance-increasing behaviour, they want the other horse to move away, and as soon as that other horse moves away to what they deem an acceptable distance, they stop. They do not have the other horse on a rope preventing them from straying too far, they do not repeatedly force the other horse into situations where they have to endure their corrections again and again until they’re following along like an obedient robot. Thirdly, your horse knows you aren’t a horse.

I want to tell you a story about a client horse, at 3 years old he retired from racing and went to a respected NH trainer, these videos are still on the internet as a success story. His body is clearly very weak and compromised in the videos, yet he is put through groundwork where he is taken into an arena and frightened with a flapping flag, while being prevented from leaving with a rope halter and the weight of a grown man on the end of it. The horse desperately tries to get away, several times nearly kicking the trainer in the head as he spins and tries to leave a situation he is finding intolerable. Of course he is forced to stay and eventually he shuts down and complies, the trainer praised as so brave for putting himself in that situation with such a dangerous, unruly horse. The horse is described as much happier now he has “clarity” and trusts this trainer as “leader”. This horse goes on to be ridden by the trainer for several months as a 3yo in his weak, compromised body. He stays very compliant.

Fast forward to now he is 7 years old and has luckily found his way into my client’s gentle herd of horses. He has passed through several homes since the trainer, his body tells such a story, it is taking him a really long time to feel safe around us. When he first came he would bolt in hand, he would panic through gateways and run straight through you. Any pressure would cause really dangerous behaviour. His tolerance for stress is really low before he blows, I would describe him as traumatised. He has since been diagnosed with nuchal ligament damage, neck issues and kissing spine. I look at this horse, and so many horses like him, and wonder how much of this damage was present while he was being repeatedly yanked around by his head as a weedy 3yo, made to disengage his quarters, made to back up, ridden in circles, how much pain was he in? Was any of it caused then? Why did nobody see how much he was struggling, why did nobody see an issue with his body looking the way it did?

Most horses have compromised bodies in some way or another, many horses are carrying around significant pain that is causing their behavioural issues in the first place. Putting them through this sort of training is not only unethical, it is physically and emotionally damaging. Yes horses need to be able to cope with pressure, but there is plenty of stress and pressure in the world already, we do not need to be the source of it, we are supposed to be their partners there to support them.

When horses have been hurt and frightened like this it poisons the relationship, the headcollar and rope means nothing good, and it becomes really difficult to make them feel okay and safe with pressure again. Once they come out of that shut down and you see what is really underneath, then you see that the so-called “dangerous” behaviour never left, it was simply suppressed as a coping mechanism. This sort of training makes horses really pessimistic about us and the world, they may seem obedient, but when you actually start trying to really connect with that horse again they often want nothing to do with you.

I often wish it was appropriate to emulate what is done to horses on people so we could really think about how the horse feels. Imagine someone started coming at your with a flag or a whip with no explanation that you can understand, you just have to keep guessing how to make it stop. You finally get relief but you’re not sure what to do next, you have to guess the next right answer. If you make a mistake you are hassled immediately. How would you feel around someone who communicated with you like this? Safe? Relaxed? Anxious? Defeated?

I keep watching a lot of zoo animal training content and seeing the creative, thoughtful ways they are training animals for necessary procedures, keeping the animal’s experience at the forefront. I wish we would look at training horses like this instead of expecting them to be obedient robots who are there to obey our every command.

A horse does not need to be blindly obedient to be safe to be around. We can make our horses much safer to be around by thinking about our own behaviour and what we can change to help them.

I think back to last new year when we had a very frightening incident with fireworks being let off right on top of my horses, I was trapped in a very small space with them both, with the sky exploding, pitch black to flash to pitch black to flash, they were both panicking and scrabbling around the space, neither of them knocked me over or trampled me, even in their blind panic, I didn’t even know what was going on, yet they still managed not to hurt me. Horses are incredibly sensitive, vigilant animals who can read the subtlest of body language or change in environment. I’m sure they see us as clumsy, confusing idiots, we can be so unaware of our own presence and what we are giving off.

I want people to know there is a different way, you do not need to take your horse into a training space and make him yield to you to create a safe, resilient horse. If you are struggling with your horse, please listen to them and think before you start just trying to suppress behaviour. I have yet to meet a horse with a behavioural issue that simply has an issue with “boundaries”, but I meet many horses who have been damaged by this belief and it is such a difficult one to unpack.

You do not need to come in like a sledgehammer to offer your horse clarity. We can train gently once we address the underlying issues and have our horses in a more trainable state. In the meantime we can stop setting them up to fail by putting them into situations we know they’re going to struggle with in the first place, lets be more creative.

I want to keep writing about this as much as I can because I am so sick of seeing horses who are clearly struggling being labelled as simply “dominant” or “has learned he can intimidate people”. Horses do not work like this, they have no motivation to do this, they are desperately to to communicate with us and they are usually communicating that they are in pain. I appreciate some of this sounds vague but its really difficult to give solid examples without letting this post go on, I will write some client stories soon. If any of this is speaking to you at all please feel free to reach out. 🐴

Photo of my horse Dan coming to see if the snack man has snacks (he does) ❤️

13/10/2026

“Its not always pain” 🐴

As we are seeing wider education of stress and discomfort indicators in horses, we are naturally also seeing a push back as this stuff can be really uncomfortable and confronting. If someone points out to you that your horse may be uncomfortable it can feel like a personal attack accusing you of deliberately hurting your horse. Or perhaps deep down you feel something isn’t quite right but you don’t know what to do so you spin a different, more comforting narrative and surround yourself with people who will validate that. We are only human and we want to avoid discomfort if we can, our brain is trying to protect us.

We are flooded with videos of horses showing high-stress and pain behaviour. But it is not described as such, instead we have more palatable descriptors like excitement, sass, spicy, opinionated, having a tantrum etc. All things that take any responsibility away from the human to look deeper at the cause. This frames the behaviour as just something the horse is deciding to do and not influenced by anything the human is doing nor is it seen as necessarily a negative thing.

Now, if you’ve been on this page for more than 5 minutes you know I’m always banging the pain drum, because most horses I meet are struggling with pain which needs veterinary intervention. But for the purposes of this post I’m going to talk about this “its not always pain” counter argument we keep seeing.

When we are saying its not pain, we are presumably meaning there is nothing there for the vet to treat and we don’t think the horses is suffering with any illness or ailment that is causing them pain. And this may be true, but this doesn’t then mean the behaviour we are seeing isn’t rooted in distress, discomfort or pain in the moment, its just that the source isn’t the horse’s body.

With permission from a lovely client I’m going to share a story to explain what I’m talking about. This client was struggling with her horse who was very forward going and would seemingly keenly pull her into fences. She was now having issues with the horse bucking on landing and frightening her. She was told that her horse loved jumping, was just so excited to get to the jumps and that the bucking on landing was a further expression of this excitement. Its a nice, comforting story that fits with our desire that our horse loves to come jumping with us.

She showed me a video clip of her jumping some fences at home. The horse was very hollow and I could see the rider was having to keep strong pressure constantly on the reins to control the speed, the horse would lock onto the jump and speed up despite strong pressure on the reins and, because of this, as they jumped the rider was getting slightly left behind and catching the horse further in the mouth. So the horse was trying to stretch and round their back to jump, but being restricted and ending up having to hold their neck awkwardly to avoid the pain of the bit. The horse then landed, tail swished, swung their head and bucked.

So what we were actually seeing was not an excited horse expressing as such, but an anxious horse experiencing pain from the bit, but also probably pain/discomfort in his body as he actually made the jump as he wasn’t able to stretch out and use his body properly, resulting in an “ouch” moment which he expressed with the buck on landing. The more they jumped the more anxious the horse got which was creating an infinite loop of going faster, needing more pressure for control and then the jump being an uncomfortable experience for the horse as a result of this.

We went right back to basics, didn’t jump the horse again until they were able to walk/trot/canter round in a balanced fashion on the buckle end over poles on the ground then built up from there. The horse is now calm and rhythmical and shows no expressions of his previous “excitement”.

Of course it was so much more complex than this, we were looking at the horse’s life, management, nutrition, posture, relationship to people, relationship to training, but I’m just trying to make a point about our perceptions of horses and pain.

Next time you come across something uncomfortable and then you see a narrative that makes you feel reassured, I encourage you to pause, really look at the horse and just ponder if perhaps something else could be going on.

If you have stuck with me this far before irritatedly scrolling by and I have peaked your interest at all, I have recently put out a webinar which goes in depth on my thinking into exactly this topic that I will link in the comments. It may just give you some food for thought. I put this stuff out there because I want horses to be understood and treated more kindly, I think all of us who love horses want that too and there is always more for all of us to learn. 🐴

12/10/2026

“You’re not being a good leader” 🐴

The phrase so many of my clients have had bleated at them when they’re having behavioural issues with their horse and have sought help. Usually the solution they’re given to make them a “good leader” is to flap a flag at their horse or yank on the rope when they perform any behaviour that is undesired, with no sensible thought as to why that behaviour is occurring in the first place. As the horse quickly figures out how to get the scary, horrible behaviour from the human to stop, we’re told the horse is trusting us as leader now and is much happier now they have "clarity". What is actually happening is the horse is being shut down, they still feel stressed, they can't escape it and now you’re another source of stress too.

If we want to train ethically and have horses who actually feel safe and relaxed around us, we need to be consistently calm and predictable to be around. Coming in like a sledgehammer with your flag/rope/stick every time the horse dares to move a hoof out of line or god forbid nudge you with their nose makes you a scary, unpredictable and exhausting person to be around.

You might be thinking “well its dangerous to let my horse walk all over me and being hard on him is the only way I can get him to listen”. When we only look at behaviour as stand-alone and something to “fix”, putting the horse into the situation where we know they’re going to struggle just so we have the opportunity to correct them, we are setting them up to fail and using this to justify harsh training methods.

If your horse is bargey/pushy/strong/difficult to handle they are not rude/bad-mannered/taking the mick, they are stressed. We need to look at what is contributing to this behaviour, reduce that stress-load and then train in small, easy steps that set the horse up to succeed. If the horse is exploding and becoming dangerous then we’ve already gone way too far.

One of my clients bought a new horse back in the Spring, they tried and vetted him, but once they got him home they started to have issues leading him to and from the field, handling his legs and tacking him up. They had a well-recommended horsemanship trainer out and were told that the problem was their horse didn’t see them as a good leader because they were too soft with him and that he knew he could walk all over them. They were told “horses crave leadership” and the trainer then proceeded to spend an hour making the horse move his feet by flapping a flag or whacking the rope clip up into his face if he dared to move without being asked. My client expressed concern about her horse pulling faces and swishing his tail when they approached him in the stable with his tack and was told that she mustn’t ever back off when he pulled faces as she was teaching him he could push her around.

Luckily for the horse, my client was really uncomfortable with what she was being told and reached out to me. When I first assessed the horse I found him to be extremely stressed in the environment as soon as he had to leave his field, he did not feel safe and this came out as barging and pulling. He really did not like being touched anywhere on his body and I felt his musculature wasn’t healthy enough to be carrying a rider and could potentially be contributing to discomfort around being tacked up and ridden. As soon as you even entertained the idea of lifting his feet he became extremely upset, something my client said had gotten worse since the trainer had tried to make him do it. This horse didn’t lack leadership, he needed help.

I strongly suspected we were dealing with possible gut discomfort exacerbated by the yard move and the ongoing stress, alongside other discomfort in his body. We completely parked the idea of riding for now and we went into what I call “crisis management”, when you can’t safely handle your horse for daily tasks and welfare needs, we need to get on top of those things first. My first concern was making sure she could bring him in from the field safely, I didn’t feel clicker training was appropriate straight away so we simply taught him to lead between buckets on the floor and threw food into them as we reached them. We could quickly use this to teach him a pattern to and from the field with buckets on the way.

We tweaked his management making sure he had access to appropriate forage at all times and his owner chose to use a gut supplement to support him with the caveat that she would go to the vet if he did not improve. I also gave her simple enrichment games to do with him with no pressure. This and the removal of the high-stress training/trying to ride him meant his stress levels dropped quickly and within 2 weeks we had a horse who was in a much more trainable state.

I explained that when he pulled faces at us he was communicating his discomfort with what was happening and it was important that we did listen to him and back off. Within a few weeks she was able to gently groom him without him being upset. We got a good bodyworker involved once he was more settled as trying to treat or assess a horse who is so defensive around being touched can be counter-productive. They found that he had some soreness under his saddle area and through his back end, potentially caused by being ridden with such poor posture, which was definitely enough to make holding his legs up uncomfortable.

We are now at the end of the summer and she has a horse who is calm and leads well, she can groom and handle his feet with no issues and as we have gradually developed his body he is now comfortable to be tacked up. She has just started riding him for short periods a few times a week.

I see cases like this again and again, and all these clients want to do is what’s best for their horse, yet they are misled, patronised and told their kindness is the problem. We have to speak up and stop letting people justify treating horses like this in the name of “helping” them. It has been normalised and praised for too long.

Compliance should not be our only measure of success. 🐴

11/10/2026

Your horse is not trying to give you a hard time 🐴

Every time we see a post trying to educate people on stress behaviour in horses the defensive comments come rolling in, “my horse isn’t stressed he’s just a dick, you don’t know anything about him, I know my horse best”, "not every horse is in pain, some of them are just clever" etc etc.

Its reasonable to feel anger and irritation towards a horse when you’re interpreting their behaviour as vindictive or rude, and its much easier to think this way as then its all the horse’s fault and we don’t have to change anything about our behaviour. But these behaviours that are seen as disrespectful and naughty are usually a stress/pain/fear/confusion response and once you interpret it as a horse that is struggling your emotion towards them starts to feel very different.

You can be adamant your horse isn’t stressed all you want, it doesn’t change the fact he is stressed. Just as someone being adamant their horse isn’t in pain, doesn’t change the fact their horse is in pain, the horse is still living that experience whether you choose to believe it or not.

I used to feel very defensive when I came across information that suggested what I was doing with my horses perhaps wasn’t great for them, I completely understand the feeling behind this. It feels like a personal attack, you don’t want to change something that feels like a fundamental part of you when you’ve been doing it for years and how dare someone suggest you’re doing anything to harm your horse? 😤

Unfortunately, I was inadvertently harming horses, maybe not with whips and spurs, but I wasn’t listening to them and I was working them in ways that were damaging to them both physically and mentally. It took me a long time to actually sit with those thoughts and start to be open to change.

There is a very strange attitude in the horse industry that seems to mock kindness, eye rolls at anyone who suggests to look a little deeper and praises people for being hard on their horses. You see it constantly online with people making sarcastic comments about investigating pain while laughing at videos of horses showing reactive/stress behaviours. Its such an odd phenomenon when these same people clearly love horses, I think, perhaps its giving a sense of community and belonging, perhaps its a reaction to push away any uncomfortable thoughts.

It doesn’t bother me what people think of me anymore, I only care what the horses think about me, but its taken me a really long time to get there and I'm lucky to be in control of my own horse's living environment so I don't have the daily pressure of other's opinions. These attitudes can be so alienating when you're on livery yards. I have clients who are essentially being bullied because they want to take their training in a more ethical direction. There is very little discussion around how soul-destroying it can be, even as an adult, when you’re trying to go against the grain, people can't just leave you be.

I want this page to be a place of support for like-minded people but also open to civil discussion. I have absolutely no problem with chatting about things and why I think what I think, but most people don’t actually want a discussion they just want to tell you you’re wrong. When we start talking about “Karens” and “haters” as soon as someone disagrees with us we are never going to be open to listening to and perhaps learning from each other. I find it frustrating to see how quickly mob-mentality can take hold when people gain a larger following and any discussion is quickly mocked and stubbed out by their loyal fans.

I don’t need to know your horse personally to know that he’s a horse that behaves like a horse. None of us are infallible but I will continue to follow the evidence which is giving us the information we need to make better choices for our horses 🐴

This post is a bit all over the place but its an edit of an old one and I'm very tired tonight 😅

10/10/2026

Just because a horse lets you sit on his back doesn’t mean he’s ready to be ridden 🐴

There’s a misconception that horses are designed to be ridden. We think as long as they’re not lame or sick then they’re capable of carrying a rider. Maybe we think once a horse turns a certain age they’re good to go or that a horse that’s been in work for years must be strong enough to be ridden without issue, right? As long as they’re compliant then they must be ready to do the thing we’re asking them to do? Unfortunately this is not the case.

This is not a post about the appropriate age to back your horse, there are plenty of resources and thoughts on that, I want to talk about the other factors we need to consider before we continue sitting on our horse’s backs and expecting them to perform.

The backing process for most horses seems to be heavily focused on having the horse accept tack, learn how to respond to cues, move with tack on and eventually accept a rider. I don’t want to go off on a huge tangent here about the backing process but usually this will often look like lunging or long reining with tack on, then legging the rider up and doing that desensitising process, then great off we go, we start riding the horse and getting him to hack and do poles and circles etc.

It is great to have a horse calmly get used to tack and a rider, but here’s the issue, there is usually very little time spent developing that horse’s posture and musculature without a rider. Lunging an unbalanced horse around in side reins isn’t going to do it, neither is long reining about the place for a few weeks. We are talking slow, progressive groundwork that just takes the time it takes depending on the individual horse, you can’t run them to a schedule.

We might talk about just doing lots of hacking, but it doesn’t really matter if its “just” hacking if carrying a rider at all is causing a horse to develop compensatory movement patterns because his body just isn’t capable of carrying a rider without doing so yet. We might talk about turning a horse away for a season, but again it doesn’t really matter if we then just crack on like before. A horse isn’t suddenly strong enough to carry a rider in a healthy way at 4 years old or 6 years old or 10 years old if we don’t do anything to develop that strength from the ground first.

Often the older horses are worse off, because they’ve spent years developing their compensatory way of going, and by the time I see them the wheels have really started to fall off. They’ve been playing whack-a-mole with the vet and their horse still just isn’t right, because we keep trying to stick a plaster on then carry on as we were. We’re never going to fix the foundation if we keep damaging it every time we ride. We need to stop doing the things that are contributing to the damage and start doing the gentle work to help it, only then can we start to see real progress.

It is extremely frustrating as an owner to be doing all of the supposedly right things and seeking professional help and not be told any of this. Unfortunately the horse industry is still stuck in its ways and its taking a while to catch up with the information we have access to now. We are in such a quick-fix industry and this kind of thing is a really inconvenient truth, so I get why people push it away. Why listen to this idiot if the vet/bodyworker/instructor are telling you its fine to crack on? I get it, but just because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t make it right, and maybe we should reflect a little on why the majority of horses are “broken” in some way by the age of 10. Isn’t it great that there might be something we can do to help our horses?

This is a huge reason why I don’t take horses in on training livery, I find it much more useful for the horse to stay at home, in their comfortable environment and work away slowly with all the time they need. I do not envy people who’s career depends on taking horses in for a few weeks training or selling them on, it is an extremely difficult if not impossible business model to run ethically.

I find myself scrolling the sales ads and just seeing horse after horse with sunken necks and backs out jumping and doing dressage describing how great and willing they are, and they will be bought by a new owner and this will continue until they start to break down, as these horses pass 5 stage vettings all the time. I know because I meet them a few months down the line. We have to start looking at things differently if we care about our horses wellbeing. 🐴

Photo of my horse Dan as a 4yo at his first show, very compliant but I can recognise now far too weak to be carrying a rider, let alone doing a dressage test.

08/10/2026

“When the only tool you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail” 🐴

I love this quote and it applies so well to horse training. With people becoming so much more educated on equine behaviour and much more interested in doing things ethically, there is a pushback from many who are perhaps feeling threatened and uncomfortable that the way they’ve been training for decades is being questioned. I understand that, its human to feel defensive, I’ve felt the same in the past, but its not an excuse to continue treating horses like this.

Boundaries has become a buzzword used to justify harsh treatment as necessary. There is a lot of talk about boundaries and safety which is trying to scare/patronise people out of being kind to their horses. Making it sound as if you don’t scare your horse with a flag every time he comes an inch too close to you he’s going to head out into the village and devour all of the local children.

I’ll try to give an insight into how I look at things now. Lets say we have a horse who is barging into their owner, dragging them all over the place, maybe setting their neck and tanking off. Previously my first thought would be to put on a pressure halter and do lots of groundwork until the horse learns “respect”. Instead now my first thoughts are what is contributing to the chronic stress in this horse’s life and how can we change that?

🐴 How is their management, is it species-appropriate? Do they get enough turnout/socialisation/forage?
🐴 How is their health/are there any indications of pain/discomfort (usually yes)?
🐴 What are their past experiences with training/people? Are there negative associations there (always yes)?

From here we will discuss and make changes and set the horse up to succeed so we don’t have to put ourselves in a situation where we’re battling with the horse.

This idea that adding high-pressure to a stressed horse and battling through with them until they comply is making them feel better is so mis-leading. Sure you can quite quickly get a horse under control but the notion that you’re making them feel safe with you by scaring them and pushing them around is a fantasy, you’re shutting them down.

I had a horse at one of my obstacle clinics who came in really stressed, he was barging and dragging his owner around and wasn’t responding to any pressure. At their request I took over for a few minutes to demonstrate how I wanted them to train with him. I took him to a place where he seemed to feel safest and just stood with him on a loose lead rope and fed him a few handfuls of meadow nuts. If he’d tried to turn around and leave to the gate I would’ve let him and gone with him. He didn’t. After a minute I taught him really basic nose targeting for a food reward. I then started taking a step and seeing if he’d come with me, he did. Within 5 minutes he was learning to approach the first obstacle, at no point did I use pressure on the lead rope, at no point did he barge into me or pull me.

He wasn’t barging because he was disrespectful and had no “boundaries”, he was barging because he was extremely stressed and scared and in a situation he couldn’t cope with. Just pausing and saying “hey lets just chill here and eat some hay nuts, I’m not going to make you stay here” brought his stress down enough that he stopped trying to leave and could actually process what we were asking him to do. He started to see me as a place of safety, someone who was listening to him and someone who could help him feel better, rather than someone to get away from and fight against. Now I am not saying it is this simple at all for every horse, but it was for this horse and I hate that in another situation they’d have been encouraged to push him hard, yank him around and move his feet to get him to comply.

Does pushing horses around with high-pressure get obedience quickly? Yes. But lets not pretend this is ethical or “for the horse”. I’m not interested in blind obedience, I’m interested in safety for the horse and the humans. Stressed horses are the least safe to be around.

I know the way I look at horses now is very different to the industry- norm and that it can be hard to understand a concept that is so alien to how we’ve been conditioned to behave around horses. I can almost see people visibly recoil when I suggest allowing the horse to say no, or going with the horse when they choose to back away from something. We’ve been so conditioned that if we let the horse have any say we are going to create a dangerous monster.

I have boundaries with my horses and it looks nothing like causing them high-stress and scaring/threatening them with flags/ropes/sticks. It looks like making sure their needs are met so they are able to cope with the pressures and challenges of living in our human world. It also looks like not setting them up to fail by putting them in situations they aren’t equipped to cope with yet. They can cope with pressure just fine and they are safe for anyone to handle and be around.

I have so many more thoughts on this topic and I know it is divisive, but I am becoming more and more disillusioned with the industry and I just want to put a voice out there for the horses, and for the people who are feeling conflicted due to the shaming and patronising tone that is being directed towards them. Horses are gentle animals and we need to change the narrative around how we treat and perceive them.

Are we talking about boundaries or are we talking about horses complying with everything we ask without question no matter the circumstances? 🐴

Pictured is my positive-reinforcement trained horse, with apparently no "boundaries" because I let him have agency as much as possible, playing a game I like to call Yeet the carrot™ before his evening shift devouring the locals.

LS Horsemanship

15/10/2026

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