From the age of about nine until I went away to university, I was very fortunate in that I spent most of my spare time riding and caring for my own pony. Like many young girls, I loved my pony and when I thought the whole world was against me, I could depend on him 100%. I used to just sit in his stable or drape myself along his back as he was grazing in the field, telling him about things that were going on in my head. Even then it never seemed right to me to force a horse to do anything.
My Intelligent Horsemanship journey started in October 2007. My mother had bought tickets for me to see ‘Monty Rides Again’ at Hartpury College. I can honestly say I have never been so inspired and moved by anything before. I should perhaps add for my husband’s benefit, except for my wedding day! Although I spent much of the demonstration in tears, I felt a flame ignite within me and I can still hear Monty’s words from that night ringing in my ears: ‘ this is not magic; this is real; this can be learned’. And so I booked myself onto the 5 day foundation course.
The course itself was everything I’d hoped it to be, and more. I left Hartsop Farm at the end of the week even more certain that I had taken the first step on a new journey. I couldn’t wait to return home to practise everything I had learnt with my team. Let me introduce you to them:
Alfie Trigger Paddy
These guys are proving to be great teachers. They each have their subtle differences that are essential for learning to deal with varying characters, dispositions and situations but for the first few weeks after my course I simply practised all of the basic principles and methods that I had learned.
About six weeks ago we were joined by another member to our team:
Dommitt
I fell in love with Dom at Hartsop Farm. He was there for training whilst I was on my course and it wasn’t until I expressed the fact that I was smitten to Rosie Jones (R.A.) that she informed me that he was in fact looking for a new home. Well the rest, as they say, is history. He is a very gentle and loving horse, however he has challenged me a little bit further than the others. He is very sensitive and anxious and so far I have found myself dealing with three different scenarios with him where I have had to apply the principles learnt and try to adapt them ‘intelligently’ to suit Dom and the particular issues at hand. It is these experiences that I want to share to show how we can apply the Intelligent Horsemanship methods and different mindset learnt, even after just the stage 1 foundation week, with successful results.
The first of these issues is anxiety about being separated from his friends. I was warned about this before taking him on - ‘he’ll jump anything from a standstill if he is left on his own’! Well, the ‘anything’ was pretty much smack on! He’s jumped this…..
and this…..
…..and this…..
This was clearly something that needed addressing, but how? I had in my mind that he had recently changed his home and probably needed time to settle in but also he has a history of jumping out anyway and so this worried, anxious behaviour was maybe partly his nature. As I saw it I had two choices: try to set up a scenario where he would graze separately from the others, thereby getting him used to being more independent, or let him be a part of the herd and manage the comings and goings at home by never moving him first or last and putting him somewhere safe (the roundpen) when taking the others away to pony club events.
My initial gut instinct was to separate him but I knew unless I had six foot fencing all round him, he would simply hop over the boundary. I needed to do this gradually, by degrees, almost so that he wouldn’t notice it had happened. I divided our paddock up into three sections with electric fencing; the left hand strip containing Alfie and Trigger and the middle and right hand strips, with a three foot gap in the electric fencing, containing Paddy and Dom. At times I noticed that Dom and Paddy were on the same side of the fencing but at other times they were on opposite sides - Dom didn't seem to mind this. After a few days with this set-up I turned them out as normal and kept an eye on where Paddy and Dom were in relation to each other. As they wandered onto opposite sides of the fencing, I sauntered out and closed up the gap. Dom didn’t seem to mind – I couldn’t believe it! A huge step forward for him.
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These guys are proving to be great teachers. They each have their subtle differences that are essential for learning to deal with varying characters, dispositions and situations but for the first few weeks after my course I simply practised all of the basic principles and methods that I had learned.
About six weeks ago we were joined by another member to our team:
Dommitt 
I fell in love with Dom at Hartsop Farm. He was there for training whilst I was on my course and it wasn’t until I expressed the fact that I was smitten to Rosie Jones (R.A.) that she informed me that he was in fact looking for a new home. Well the rest, as they say, is history. He is a very gentle and loving horse, however he has challenged me a little bit further than the others. He is very sensitive and anxious and so far I have found myself dealing with three different scenarios with him where I have had to apply the principles learnt and try to adapt them ‘intelligently’ to suit Dom and the particular issues at hand. It is these experiences that I want to share to show how we can apply the Intelligent Horsemanship methods and different mindset learnt, even after just the stage 1 foundation week, with successful results.
The first of these issues is anxiety about being separated from his friends. I was warned about this before taking him on - ‘he’ll jump anything from a standstill if he is left on his own’! Well, the ‘anything’ was pretty much smack on! He’s jumped this…..
and this….. 
…..and this…..
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