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The Equine Catalyst, Raglan (2026)

03/09/2026

I watched the first of these webinars with Dr Kate Fenner the other night. A must see for anyone with an OTTB .... Looking forward to what gets unpacked in the next one!

03/09/2026

LEADERBOARD DIARIES #12 🐎
Meeting the Bull 🐂

Leaderboard has travelled the world. He’s flown on aeroplanes, raced in front of huge crowds, been through busy parade rings and jumped race fences, logs and tyres.

But strangely enough, none of that necessarily prepares a horse for meeting a life-sized marine-ply bull standing silently in the middle of an arena. 😂

In a few weeks I’m hoping to take Leaderboard to his first little Working Equitation competition, so this former racehorse suddenly has a whole new set of skills to learn.

Bridges. Gates. Sideways over poles. Riding one-handed while I carry a spear. And eventually approaching a strange-looking object closely and confidently enough for me to spear a ring from the top of it.

Today, we start with the bull. 🐂

If I have the option, I really like approach conditioning with something a horse is worried about - where the horse learns that his behaviour can actually make the scary thing move away. It’s something I tend to use when introducing horses to cattle.

Unfortunately, this fellow doesn’t move. 😆

He just stands there looking suspicious.

So here I'm using a combination of systematic desensitisation and counterconditioning.

Systematic desensitisation means gradually exposing Leaderboard to the bull at an intensity he can cope with - in this case largely by controlling how close he gets - and progressively increasing that exposure.

Counterconditioning is slightly different. I'm pairing the potentially worrying stimulus - Mr Bull — with something Leaderboard already finds very positive.

FOOD. 😂

And specifically his beloved Mitavite!

The idea isn't simply to bribe him closer. By pairing the presence of the bull with something he already values, we're trying to change the emotional association he has with the bull while giving him time to investigate, process and regulate himself.

I want him to see it from both sides, come close to it, move around it and discover in his own time that nothing terrible happens.

Halfway through our lesson the police sirens arrive 🚨😂 - presumably the Scared Horse Police, coming to tell Leaderboard that he’d better stop being frightened immediately.

Unfortunately for them, we carry on taking our time. 😂

And getting comfortable with this bull is only the beginning.

At another Working Equitation venue the ring might be sitting on a different bull… or a trout… or a kiwi… or whatever weird and wonderful creation that particular club has come up with.

Horses aren't necessarily great at generalising, so Leaderboard deciding that this particular bull is harmless doesn't guarantee that the next strange object will be.

So I’ll move our bull around the farm. We’ll meet him again in different places. And I’ll find some other weird objects for Leaderboard to investigate as well.

Because ultimately I don't particularly care whether Leaderboard learns:

“This bull is safe.”

What I really want him to learn is:

“When I meet something I've never seen before, I can stop, investigate, take my time and work out that I'm okay.”

And while he's learning that, there will very likely be Mitavite in my pocket. ❤️

One strange object at a time as we work towards Leaderboard’s first little Working Equitation outing.

02/09/2026

A little look inside Educated – From the Ground Up today… 🐴
Good whip handling is such a handy skill to have - and it's something I see a surprising number of people struggle with.
The whip isn't there simply to make the horse “go”. I want to be able to use it precisely and deliberately, so the horse can learn exactly what each signal means.
In this little section from the course, I'm talking about teaching the step-back response, and the two places I commonly programme a whip tap:
👉 On the chest - my preferred basic response, because it's a cue I can later replicate from the saddle.
👉 On an individual front leg - really useful when I want to influence one particular leg to take a bigger step back - particularly important when working on straightness.
I also talk about something that sounds ridiculously simple but makes an enormous difference - how you actually hold and handle the whip.
Good whip skills mean being able to move easily between forehand and backhand positions and target exactly where you intend to, rather than poking, fumbling or accidentally giving the horse a completely different signal!
It's a small piece of training, but that's really what Educated – From the Ground Up is about: breaking our groundwork down into clear, consistent responses that the horse can actually understand.
This is an actual snippet straight from inside the course - thought I'd share a little of what goes on in there during Groundwork Month. 😊

01/09/2026

Would your horse pass his WOF? 🐴

We horse people can become remarkably good at working around the little gaps in our horses' education.

Maybe we don't lunge because it gets a bit wild. We avoid clipping. We hope nobody asks us to trot up. Or we always make sure there's someone around to hold the horse while we mount.

So for the start of Groundwork Month, I want to find out just how educated our horses really are.

I've created a simple 20-point Horse Warrant of Fitness - and it's completely FREE.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to take some of those individual boxes and look at what we're really asking our horses to understand, why problems develop, and how we can make things clearer.

👇 I'll put the link to get your FREE Horse WOF in the comments.

Then I want to know:

What did your horse score out of 20?@
And no creative accounting. 😂

EquitationScience HorseTrainingTips

31/08/2026

Is your horse actually educated?

And I don't mean talented, athletic, or capable of doing fancy things under saddle.
I mean educated in the really basic things.

Can you control their feet? Can they stop and wait? Can they lunge without spinning or buggering off? Can you get on off any gare / fence / mounting block?

Can they cope when something unfamiliar happens?

And most importantly - do they actually understand what you're asking?

These are the things I think of as the Warrant of Fitness of horse training.

So I've decided that September is going to be Groundwork Month at The Equine Catalyst.

Throughout the month I'm going to go right back to the foundations and look at what makes a horse safe, responsive and predictable - and at the science behind how we actually create that.

I'll share some exercises, some common training holes I see, real-life examples with my own horses, and probably some examples where things don't go perfectly too. Because that's training!

And I'm not talking about teaching tricks or doing endless groundwork for groundwork's sake.

I'm talking about giving our horses a really clear education that makes everything else we want to do with them easier.

Tomorrow we're going to start with a little test.

Would YOUR horse pass their WOF? 👀

Welcome to Groundwork Month. 🐴

29/08/2026

SUNDAY MUSINGS - YOU DON’T HAVE TO FINISH EVERYTHING

We are taught from such a young age to finish things. Finish what you started.
Finish the job. Finish the book. Finish what’s on your plate.

That last one has certainly followed me through life - apparently leaving three chips behind is some kind of moral failing. 😂

But a conversation this week got me thinking about how deeply ingrained this idea of finishing actually is. And whether it always serves us.

I had a horse this week that I desperately wanted to help with a particular problem. In fact, it’s an area where I would normally consider myself pretty bloody good. Maybe even one of my superpowers.

So I tried. And I tried again. And again. And after four sessions, I realised I needed to pull the pin. Not because I didn’t care enough. Not because I couldn’t think of another thing to try. But because I had reached the point where continuing simply because I wanted to succeed was no longer necessarily the right thing to do.

And that was surprisingly uncomfortable. Because then came all the other stuff.
The disappointment. The shame. The little whisper of maybe you’re not as good as you think you are. The feeling of failure that comes when you don't accomplish something you were determined to accomplish.

If I look at it through an Internal Family Systems sort of lens, I can see the different parts of me having their say.

There’s the determined part that says, We don't give up.

The problem-solving part that says, There must be another way.

The achievement-driven part that wants the satisfaction of fixing it.

And perhaps a younger, more vulnerable part underneath all of those that worries that not succeeding might mean I'm not good enough.

But none of those parts necessarily know when enough is enough. Sometimes the wiser thing is to stop.

And I wonder how many things we continue with simply because somewhere along the way we decided that stopping equals failing. We finish the meal even though we're full.
We finish the book we're no longer enjoying. We persevere with a project that no longer makes sense. We keep trying to solve something because we've already invested so much time in it.

We keep an enormous number of tabs open in our brains because closing one without getting to the end somehow feels wrong. And believe me, if you could see the number of open tabs in my life at the moment, you'd know I'm still very much a work in progress on this one. 😂

But maybe we don't need to finish everything. Maybe you got everything you needed from that book in the first two chapters. Maybe that idea was valuable even though it never became what you imagined. Maybe the four attempts taught you something the successful fifth attempt never could have.

Maybe enough is a perfectly legitimate ending.

Because there is a difference between giving up because something is difficult and consciously deciding that continuing is no longer serving you. Sometimes completion means reaching the finish line. And sometimes completion is simply drawing a line.
Putting down the book. Closing the tab. Leaving something on the plate. Saying, I have done enough here. And putting a full stop where you once imagined there would be another chapter.

Perhaps knowing when to stop is its own kind of accomplishment.

And perhaps there is freedom in realising that not everything we start needs to be finished.

Some things just need to be finished with.

26/08/2026

LEADERBOARD DIARIES 🐎 | The Windsucker
Yep. Leaderboard windsucks.

And no, I’m not putting a windsucking collar on him!!

One of the first things people worry about with a windsucker is, “Won’t the other horses copy him?” But the research doesn’t support that old belief. Studies suggest that exposure to a crib-biter/windsucker is not an important risk factor for another horse developing the behaviour.

What the science does point towards is much more interesting. 🧬 Genetics matter. Some horses appear to have a greater predisposition to stereotypic behaviours, with Thoroughbreds among the breeds in which crib-biting/windsucking is more commonly reported.

🌱 Early life matters. Weaning, changes in feeding, restricted forage, confinement and reduced social contact have all been associated with the development of stereotypies.

🧠 And it may be a coping mechanism. Research suggests that performing the behaviour may actually help some established crib-biters regulate their physiological stress response.
I have absolutely no idea when Leaderboard started windsucking. It could have been around weaning, during his early training, or sometime during his long racing career.

These days his life looks very different. He lives outside, has plenty of forage, movement and friends, and very little to be stressed about.
And yet sometimes he’ll still wander over and have a windsuck while he's quite happily hanging out in the paddock.

You see, stereotypy can remain long after whatever originally contributed to its development has disappeared. It doesn't necessarily tell us that the horse is stressed NOW. It may tell us something about his genetics and/or his history.

So rather than physically preventing Leaderboard from performing a behaviour that may have once helped him cope, I’d rather concentrate on giving him a life in which he hopefully doesn’t need to use it very often.

He can keep his windsucking. AND his paddock mates can keep hanging out with him. ❤️

22/08/2026

**SUNDAY MUSINGS - The Gift of Sight… and Insight 👁️**

This week, I did something rather extraordinary... I let someone aim a laser at my eye. 😂

After laser eye surgery, I now have one eye doing the long-distance work and the other doing the close-up work, while my brain figures out how to put the two pictures together.

And it got me thinking about sight… and insight.

Sight changes what you see. But insight changes HOW you see it.

Some of the greatest changes in how I see the world have actually come relatively recently. One of the biggest has been understanding just how much of what we humans do is an attempt to regulate, soothe or protect our nervous system.

For me, that has sometimes looked like workaholism. For someone else, it might be alcoholism. For another person, it might be doing absolutely nothing.

It can look like overachieving. Avoiding. Controlling. People pleasing. Keeping constantly busy. Withdrawing from the world.

Very different behaviours on the surface.

But these days, instead of only seeing the behaviour, I'm much more interested in asking: "What is underneath it?"

What is this person trying to soothe, avoid, protect themselves from, or feel safe from?

And that insight has made me far more forgiving - of other people, and of myself.

Another phrase I've come to love is:

"If it's Hysterical it's Historical."

When our reaction to something happening today seems far bigger than the actual event warrants, sometimes we're not reacting only to what is happening now.

An old wound has been touched.

I've experienced that through inner-child work - finding the six-year-old me, the ten-year-old me, and teenager me - and recognising that sometimes the person having the reaction isn't really the grown woman I am today.

She's a much younger version of me who learnt a long time ago that something wasn't safe (and I mean internally, not externally like when you are about to be bucked off!)

That doesn't mean we don't take responsibility for our behaviour. But understanding where it comes from can bring an enormous amount of compassion.

And perhaps that's one of the greatest insights I've gained as I've got older:

The more I've learned to see what's underneath behaviour, the less interested I've become in judging what's on top.

It's funny. This week I've been given the gift of better sight. But I think some of the greatest gifts I've received in life have been INSIGHTS.

The things that were probably right in front of me all along - I simply didn't yet have the eyes to see them.

Sight changes what you see - Insight changes how you see it.

What is something you see completely differently now than you did ten years ago?

22/08/2026

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