In this episode I am talking about Ginny and why I named my business after her. I talked about her a lot in the "My Journey" Episode but I didn't go into much detail when I talked about some of the things she put up with from me, the guilt I feel surrounding her, where she is now, what my logo means, and how I came to the decision to name the business Horsemanship from Ginny, often creating confusion surrounding my name and people thinking I'm called Ginny.

Ginny has had a huge influence in my life and still does, even now, 15 years after I first met her, I can look back on my life, and still go through things in my ife, and the people who re the most important to me in my life, she is still a direct link as to why they're in my life and how much of an impact she has had over me and will continue to have over me throughout my life as I continue on this journey.

I will be forever grateful for this mare coming into my life, despite the neglect she went through due to my ingnorance and lack of funds to really be able to look after her properly. She never asked for much, just to be treated fairly and I often fell shirt of that, which I will always feel sorry for, but the lessons I learned from her I take forward in my life, in my personal relationships, in my training and relationships with the horses I own now, and the clients horses I get the pleasure to work with thanks to the path this very special mare sent me on.

In this Episode I'm talking about Fernley. A beautiful bay Gelding who really struggled with a lot in his life.

From loading, to general handling, which would bleed into his ridden work. He has some health issues in his life which made life harder for him, and quite sadly lead to his death.

Thank you to Beth who gave me permission to tell Fernley's story, while I could talk for hours and hours about Fernley and all the things he found difficult and how he had to learn pretty much everything from scratch again, that horse tried his heart out for me and tried his absolute hardest for me everytime.

Fernley was easily the hardest horse I've met in my life to work with, but the physical issues he had made it hard to know why he was so difficult until it was too late unfortunately.

RIP Fernley

The One, That Tested My Patience

While watching videos of many of the trainers that are out there, you might've heard the phrase "Make the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy".

But what does that actually mean?

Well that's what I talk about in this episode, giving several examples, reasons why it works, ways it can be done wrong, and why it doesn't mean simply beating on a horse, kicking or pulling them about. Why it's not about removing choice from your horse, but it actually gives them a choice to make, while guiding them to do the things we want them to do.

In this episode I talk about associative learning.

I talk about what associative learning is, how it works and why it's important to understand when working with horses.

I talk about the power of associative learning, the speed of it, and how it creates strong emotional memories. The pros and cons to associative learning and a few examples of how you can create poor associations without even meaning to.

In this episode, I talk about the Four Quadrants of Training.

While to actually train a horse you know need to know these terms perfectly, and training animals isn't as simple as knowing them and following them to a tee, understanding the difference between them is really important. Their uses, what they do, and personally, I don't think it's something talked about enough in horse training.

It gets talked about and argued about a lot amongst dog trainers, largely to be pedantic to win an argument that has no foundation and to try and get one up on someone that is having disagreements online. The terminology itself isn't that important. It what they mean and what it does in your training, understanding reinforcements and punishments and how they work is very important for understanding what you are doing and what you hope to achieve with your horse.

Horse training is an art, everyone does it differently, everyone disagrees, but most people regardless of whether you agree with what they are doing or not is at least trying to do what is best for the horse.

Regardless of what training methods people use, they will be using at least parts of the four quadrants of training.

In this episode I'm going to be talking about using treats during training with horses.

A strangely contrivesial topic in the horse world, and somethig I used to be very strongly against.

I'm going to be talking about Positive reinforcement, the issues that can arrise with it, which are largely why horse people are still so stead fast against using treats for training.

I talk about how to prevent these issues, and things to think about when using treats in order to make sure you don't face these problems, as preventing issues is far easier than fixing them.

So buckle in if you're into long podcasts, because they're what I plan to do!

This podcast is just an explaination of where I come from. What I've done through my life, and how I've got to where I am now.

Through my time with Ginny, how I came to use natural horsemanship as my main way of working with horses. The ups and downs I've had working on different yards, life situations that impacted how I was working with horses, my time away from horses and what I learned working with different animals, leading to how I found my way back to horses, and where I am now.

I do go off on a few tangents, but unfortuneately, that's who I am as a person, and my mind is often times all over the place when I'm not concentrating on a horse in front of me.

If you enjoy the podcast, I'd really appreciate a like and a comment.

Any questions you have will be answered in my fortnightly Live Q&A's, avaliable to my patreon members!

Well, I hope you enjoy listening to me ramble on!

This is just a little introduction into who I am, what I do and a general idea for what this podcast will be.

These podcasts will largely be a place for me to put all my thoughts about training, issue that are curently going on in the hore world, my opinions on them, and I eventually plan to get guests onto the podcast from profressionals in the industries, to complete novices asking the silly questions that more advanced people might not think to ask, or think to explain to people as it may seem obvious.

I'll be offering up chances for people to ask some questions, which I will go through and answer on Q&A Podcasts, and as I get better at doing this, I'll start to add some videos to the podcasts, but for now, these will be audio's only.

This is basically just a place for me to share my random thoughts and opinions, not all of them will be fully thought through, so for anyone who's interested in listening to what I hve to say, follow along, if you're not, hey ho, I'm still gonna just post my thoughts.