Footloose Farm LLC

07/22/2026

This!

I wonder how many horses spend their whole lives trying to tell us something, and we’re simply looking in the wrong place.

One of the biggest changes in the way I train horses didn’t come from learning another exercise or another technique. It came from changing the questions I was asking.

Years ago, if a horse was leaning on the forehand, hollowing its back, bracing through the neck or constantly rushing, I’d have been looking for a way to stop those things happening. The focus was on improving the behaviour.

Now, I find myself asking something completely different.

What is this horse trying to solve?

Because horses don’t wake up in the morning and decide they’d like to lean on the forehand or make life difficult for their rider. They use the body they have available to them, and if that body isn’t balanced, comfortable or capable of carrying itself efficiently, it will find another way. Sometimes that means leaning. Sometimes it means tension. Sometimes it means speed. Sometimes it means using muscles that were never designed to do the job they’re now doing every single day.

The more horses I work with, the more convinced I become that what we often describe as resistance is simply compensation. It’s a horse doing its very best with the body it currently has.

I sometimes wonder how many horses have spent years being corrected for something that was never really a training issue at all. Not because anyone was unkind, but because nobody had shown their owner what the horse was actually trying to say.

That’s why I think learning to observe is one of the most valuable skills we can develop. Not just watching where the legs go, but understanding why they go there. Not just noticing that the horse is carrying its head high, but asking what made that feel like the safest or easiest option in the first place.

When you start looking at horses like that, it’s very difficult to go back to seeing them in the same way. You stop chasing symptoms and start looking for causes. The whole conversation changes, and with it, the way you train.

For me, that’s where real progress begins. Not when we become better at correcting horses, but when we become better at understanding them.

07/07/2026

Yes!

06/07/2026

What do you see? 👇 This is what we see. Perhaps you see differently?

1. Mouth and Lip Seal

Top horse
* The lips parted, mouth open
* The tongue maybe blue from compression
* Excessive saliva dripped onto the chest
* The horse’s lip seal broken for correct breathing
* Nostrils tight, nose wrinkled

Bottom horse
* Lips and mouth closed
* No disruption of the mouth
* No saliva
* Natural appearance of muzzle

2. Head and Neck Posture

Top horse
* The neck has visible “break” or acute angle in the upper-to-mid cervical region
* Head behind the vertical
* Neck posture highly compressed
* The throat lash area compressed

Bottom horse
* Head in front of the vertical
* Poll is highest point
* Neck less compressed.
* Open angle through throat-latch

3. Rein Contact

Top horse
* Reins visibly taut
* Visible tension on the bits - the shank bit especially compressing the tongue and causing the mouth to open

Bottom horse
* No reins
* No bit
* Self-carriage
* No compression on the sensitive oral cavity so mouth closed

4. Forelimb Loading

Top horse
* One forelimb elevated dramatically, does not match hind leg elevation
* Supporting forelimb loading significant proportion of body mass, fetlock is severely distended

Bottom horse
* Forelimb and hind limb elevation match
* Loading on supporting forelimb is not severe

5. Facial Expression

Top horse
* Eye is tense.
* Muzzle is tight
* Mouth movement is visible

Bottom horse
* Eye is soft
* Muzzle is relaxed
* No mouth movement

Given the growing body of evidence that bits cause pain and that hyper flexion is a recognised welfare concern, why do governing bodies continue to require bitted competition while excluding modern ethical bit-free bridle alternatives? Is it because the top horse could not be ridden without force and pain due to inadequate and inappropriate training?

04/09/2026

03/27/2026

Yes yes yes!

My Number One Lunging Prerequisite

Horses are not designed to go round in circles.

So the moment we put them on a circle, we are asking them to do something that requires balance, coordination, and organisation through the whole body.

And most horses are not ready for that.

The biggest problem I see with lunging is not behaviour.

It’s compensation.

Most commonly:
Too much bend in the neck.

When the neck is overbent, it is no longer sitting centrally in front of the chest.
And when that happens, the shoulders lose their balance.

The horse will then:
– Fall in over the inside shoulder
– Or drift out and collapse onto the outside shoulder

At that point, the spine is no longer aligned.

The horse might still be going in a circle…
But the body is no longer organised within that circle.

And if you keep going like that, step after step, you are reinforcing dysfunction.

This is where the common problems on the lunge come from:
– Rushing and getting faster
– Curling or overbending through the neck
– Falling in or out
– Bucking or tension
– Stopping and turning in

These are not random behaviours.

They are the result of a horse that cannot balance its shoulders on a curved line.

Which is why my number one prerequisite for lunging is this:

You must be able to communicate with the shoulders.

Before lunging, you need to be able to:
– Move the shoulders in
– Move the shoulders out
– And lift them enough to rebalance the horse slightly off the forehand

Because the shoulders determine whether the horse can stay organised.

If you cannot influence them, you cannot maintain alignment.

And without alignment, the circle will always fall apart.

This is also why I don’t follow the traditional model of lunging.

Standing still, holding a line and whip in a fixed triangle, and sending the horse around you…
This makes it incredibly easy to create overbend in the neck and loss of balance through the shoulders.

Because you are not guiding the front of the horse.
You are simply driving it forward.

The horse then hits the line, loses balance, falls in or out…
and the cycle repeats.

Lunging should not be static.

It should be dynamic.

Your position changes.
Your body influences the shoulders.
Your communication adapts moment by moment.

You are not just sending the horse around —
you are organising the movement.

But that communication has to be established first, at a closer distance.

You cannot expect to control the shoulders from the end of a line
if you cannot influence them when you are stood next to the horse.

So before lunging, you should already be able to:
– Recognise when the shoulders are losing balance
– Adjust them quickly
– And prevent the neck from becoming the place where correction happens

Because no correction on the lunge should come from overbending the neck.

It should come from organising the shoulders.

Done well, lunging can be an incredibly effective way to build strength and improve movement.

Done badly, it is one of the quickest ways to create tension, imbalance, and long-term dysfunction.

If your horse struggles on the lunge,
look at the shoulders first.

That’s where the problem usually starts.