Equine Nutrition Australasia (ENA)

03/02/2026

*Choose Equine Specific Feeds
*Be Certain of the Ingredients
*Feed Adequate Quality Horse Friendly Roughages
*Feed Small & Often
*Any Changes Introduce Slowly
*Never Forget the Importance of Deworming, Farriery, Dental & Vaccinations

03/02/2026

Good Horsemanship - Ross Jacobs
Thank You

IS IT EVER THE HORSE’S FAULT?

When a horse does something we don’t want, who is to blame?

Most people would say it’s our fault. We are to blame. It’s become the standard catch cry of modern-day horsemanship wisdom.

When we ride with a group, and our horse wants to pull on the reins to be in the lead, who is to blame? When a horse is being chased by a swarm of bees and doesn’t stop when we apply the reins, who is to blame? When a horse with a sore back tries to buck, who is to blame? When a horse lays in the sand and then rolls over and gets its feet trapped under a fence, who is to blame?

We could ask dozens of questions like these, and clearly the answer will be that sometimes people are to blame, sometimes the horse is to blame, and sometimes nobody is to blame.

I bring this topic up because I am really tired of the political correctness that humans are to blame for everything that goes wrong when working a horse. Trainer after trainer lectures us that horses are perfect and mistakes are never the horse’s fault. What world do these people live in? They must be working with a special breed of horse that I have never met. It’s time people stopped being so gullible for anything an expert tells them and look at horses and how they operate with the hard reality of how things truly are.

Yes, every horse person makes mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are inadvertent errors of judgment, sometimes they are caused by ignorance, sometimes by arrogance, and sometimes by stupidity. People are to blame for a lot that goes wrong with horses.

But horses are not infallible either. Just like people are not perfect, neither are horses. As amazing and brilliant as horses are, they suffer from lapses of judgment and bad decisions. Sometimes a well-educated horse will lose focus through no fault of the rider. Sometimes, a very experienced horse will misjudge the height of a fence and crash. Sometimes a highly schooled horse will misinterpret a rider’s cue and make the wrong choice. Sometimes a horse just has a bad day - after all, they are only human

Making mistakes and screwing up is part of the learning process of any complex brain. It’s called learning by trial and error. But for this to work, the animal has to make errors, even when faced with overwhelming evidence to make a better choice.

At clinics, I often talk about the need for people to try something they never thought to try before, and if it is a mistake, learn from it and try again. I don’t believe it is possible for a person to become a good horse person without making a hell of a lot of mistakes that then form the basis of an encyclopedic knowledge about horses and training. The more mistakes a person learns from, the bigger their database of knowledge.

This is no less true of other species, including horses. Horses have to screw up in order to learn and understand how the world works. Like us, it’s how their brains operate in the process of learning. It’s called experience.

I’m not saying these things to give people excuses or a free pass for poor outcomes in their horse training. I’m saying these things because I believe we should question the trite mindlessness that gets passed for wisdom in the horse world. It’s all very well to quote some horsemanship guru as saying “horses are never wrong….” (or something similar) to make us feel wise, loving, and compassionate towards our horses. But the reality is that a statement like that is pure bovine (or should I say equine?) manure. It is detached from reality. Horses do make mistakes and horses do screw up – just like people, dogs, cats, chickens, axolotls, dolphins, and just about any animal with a sophisticated central nervous system that has the capacity to make choices.

I know humans are smarter than horses and better at problem solving than any horse I have meet. That’s why I am the senior partner in the relationship with my horses. Yet every day I work with them, I still make mistakes. So why would I ever suppose that horses don’t make mistakes? If I can make mistakes, so can they. They are not machines.

The important part to keep in mind is to own and correct the mistakes we make and not to blame the horse for something we did wrong. And even if it is the horse’s mistake, our job is to guide them to a better response and not take it out on the horse. We need to accept that the blunder is part of the learning process and embrace it while at the same time offering a correction. Instead of criticizing a horse for making a mistake, guide them to do better.

It is important that people question everything they are told, even when it comes from their favourite horse person. Does anyone really believe horses always make perfect choices, and the reason something goes wrong is never that the horse made an error of judgement?

Horses don’t need us to assign them special abilities they don’t possess (like being infallible) to make them any more special. We do them no favours by not seeing horses for what they are – wonderful, beautiful, honest, and imperfect.

Photos: Who is to blame for this mistake – the horse, the human, or the tree?

03/02/2026

Thank You to The Whole Horse Journey

I speak a lot about biology, behaviour, nervous systems, and practical, science-based horsemanship. I do this very intentionally.

I am not here to convince anyone that horses are spiritual beings. I know how polarising that kind of language can be. My purpose is to create awareness around horse sentience, their emotional lives, and the need for deeper compassion in how we treat them. If I need to leave some of the “woo” out in order to reach more people and shift how horses are understood, then I will, and I do. I understand the landscape I am working in.

But for those of you who are more spiritually inclined, or open to something beyond pure biology and mechanics, I want you to know this.

Alongside our work with behaviour and nervous systems, I am also an animal communicator and intuitive. I work with horses on a deeper level almost every day. I connect with their inner worlds, their emotions, their thoughts, and their experiences in ways that go far beyond what science can currently explain.

What they have shared with me has been profoundly humbling.

They are far more aware, perceptive, and emotionally intelligent than most people realise. They understand their humans deeply. They sense your emotional state, your stress, your relationships, your inner struggles, even your financial worries. I have had horses tell me that their “parents” were fighting over money. Others have shown me how weighed down they felt by the emotional burden their human was carrying. Some have expressed frustration and sadness at feeling unseen or misunderstood.

They know their own bodies remarkably well. I have had horses describe injuries, pain, and discomfort that were later confirmed by vets and X-rays. They have communicated specific needs around food, minerals, or supplements. They are not passive recipients of care. They are aware beings living inside their bodies.

They also feel connection and loss deeply. Many have asked me about a friend who left, wondering where they went and why they never came back. They have told me how painful it was to be separated. Some have shared their longing for a foal, or their grief at being apart from one.

In healing sessions with humans, horses have reflected back complex emotional dynamics, including childhood trauma, unspoken pain, and what the person truly needs to process and release. They have offered insight that was both wise and precise, often ahead of what the human themselves was consciously ready to see.

They even perceive energetic and environmental shifts. Once, our horses repeatedly refused to interact, which was unusual for them. Through communication, they shared that they were processing a change in the land and I was shown people moving out (current tenants who were the current owners). Less than half an hour later, we found out that the property had just been officially transferred into the new owner’s name.

They know things on a level that many of us are not tuned into. Their awareness operates on a frequency that is quiet, subtle, and deeply intelligent.

This is why I do this work.

Because to me, horses are not machines, not tools, and not objects. They are conscious beings having their own experience on this earth. And unlike us, they do not have the same agency or sovereignty.

So I will keep speaking for them. I will keep listening to them. And I will keep making space for their voice, however that needs to look.

Gaylene Diedericks

03/02/2026

Dr Shelley Appleton Calm Willing Confident Horses
Thanks

If the Wisdom Is Real, It Shouldn’t Need Three Paywalls and a Loan🤑

Let’s get this out of the way first.

Anyone can charge whatever they like. Anyone can pay whatever they like. That is capitalism.

But after I wrote Who I’m at War With (Part 2): The Wound Farmers, my inbox turned into an informal support group for people who had accidentally joined what I can only describe as the Church of Expensive Word Salad and Conceptual Fog About Horses.

The stories were depressingly consistent.

Two-day clinics costing well over a thousand dollars where nothing happened beyond standing at the end of a lead rope and being gently informed that you were not “ready” to be helped unless you committed to signing up for a very program.

Programs promising transformation, connection, healing, and the most beautiful bond and trust imaginable, but only after you unlocked the next level.

Seven-day “free trials” that quietly rolled into year-long expensive subscriptions if you missed the fine print.

The pattern was always the same. Big promises. No detail. Vague language dressed up as depth. Emotional, pseudoscientific, or moral superiority layered on top. And when nothing changed, the responsibility was handed back to the owner for not trying hard enough, not believing enough, or expecting too much from their horse and being "entitled".

Which brings us to the real question.

What is fair?🤔

Here is my position.

This is my profession. I charge for my work. I have expenses, taxes, and bills that remain stubbornly uninterested in good intentions. But I refuse to guilt people into handing over $10,000 to wander through conceptual fog while their horse remains exactly as confused as before.

So I share a great deal for free through social media and the Canter Therapy Podcast. I run clinics that are structured and practical. I design courses that tell people exactly what to do and allow me to monitor progress. And I created a low-cost membership so people can access real support without large financial risk, long-term lock-ins, or pressure.

Because here is my red flag.🚩

If you have to pay just to find out what the method is.🤔
If clarity only appears after your credit card clears.🤔
If the “real work” is always behind the next gate.🤔
Then you are not buying education - you are buying blind hope.😵‍💫

Online learning is not the problem. Some online programs are excellent. I have learned valuable skills online, from biomechanics to clicker training and all about bits. But transparency matters. Structure matters. And real education survives daylight.

If something relies on secrecy, urgency, guilt, and large financial commitment to justify itself, it is worth asking who is really being trained.🫣

Collectable Advice 147/365 Save it. Share it. Please do not copy and paste.🤝

03/02/2026

The Whole Horse Journey
Thanks

If you teach riding, this is for you.

Being a good instructor is not only about correct position, clear aids, and tidy transitions. Those things matter, but they are not the whole picture. They are only part of it.

In many riding schools and yards, children are still being taught how to sit on a horse long before they are truly taught who the horse is beneath them.

They are learning to ride before they understand behaviour, body language, pain, herd dynamics, or how a horse communicates. They are often fast tracked to “up top” without ever really meeting the being on the ground.

That gap matters.

A child who understands a horse learns empathy, timing, feel, and responsibility. A child who only learns to ride learns technique without relationship.

Groundwork should not be optional. It should be foundational.
Understanding feeding should not be an extra. It should be basic horsemanship. Recognising signs of discomfort, stress, or relaxation should be as important as knowing the correct diagonal.

Because when you teach the whole horse, you don’t just create better riders. You create more thoughtful, compassionate humans.

This is also a safety issue, not just a welfare one. A child who can read tension in a horse’s eye, notice a tight jaw, a swishing tail, or a subtle bracing of the body does not just have better feel. They have better judgment. They make safer decisions, and the horse feels safer too.

If a ten-year-old were able to quietly halt her pony mid lesson and say, “He’s telling me his back hurts,” that would not be riding skill.
That would be relationship, and it would matter.

And here is the piece that often gets overlooked.

Progress needs to be visible.

Too often, students are “working on trot” or “improving position” for years, but with no clear sense of where they are, how far they have come, or what comes next. The learning is happening, but it is invisible.

When progress is not clearly mapped, children start to believe they are stuck, even when they are actually improving every single week. Confidence fades, motivation drops, and families drift away, not because the teaching is bad, but because the journey is unclear.

One powerful way to make space for deeper horse understanding is to treat it as real progress, not a delay before “real riding.”

Imagine if “reading body language,” “recognising discomfort signals,” “leading with feel,” or “understanding herd behaviour” were visible milestones alongside rising trot or canter (lope) transitions. If students could look at a simple map of skills and say, “I’ve already mastered this, this, and this, and I’m only three steps away from the next level.”

Suddenly, learning feels purposeful and every effort feels worthwhile, and lo and behold - excitement returns.

And this does not require overhauling an entire programme overnight. It can start small.

Five minutes discussing why a horse pins its ears.
A monthly unmounted session on grooming, anatomy, and body language. Asking, “What is your horse telling you right now?” before “heels down.”

I also know lesson time is precious. I know parents want to see their child cantering, jumping, and “making progress.” I know facilities have limitations and instructors are under pressure to deliver visible results, especially in a competition driven culture that often rewards speed over understanding.

But foundational understanding does not slow progress. It accelerates it. Students develop better feel, better timing, and better awareness when they understand why the horse responds the way it does.

And to the parents watching from the rail. Your child may beg for faster gaits or bigger fences. But the instructor who slows down to teach horse language, discomfort signals, and ground skills is not holding them back. They are building something that will last decades, not just a season.

If you are an instructor, it is worth asking yourself honestly.

Are you just getting through lessons, or are you guiding students along a clear, meaningful journey?
Are you helping them recognise their achievements, not just their mistakes?
Are you teaching them about the horse as a living, feeling, communicating being, or only about how to sit and steer?

And if you were not taught this way yourself, that is okay. Most of us were not. But we can be the generation that changes it.

Teaching with horses is not just about producing competent equestrians. It is about shaping how the next generation relates to animals, to responsibility, to care, and to connection.

Make the path visible and show your students how far they have come. Honour the whole horse.

Because when you teach deeply and transparently, you don’t just keep students. You change how they see horses forever.

02/02/2026

Equilyn Nutrition Thanks

VITAMIN B5 IN HORSES: ENERGY, METABOLISM & PERFORMANCE ⚡🧬🐴

Vitamin B5, also known as pantothenic acid, is a water-soluble vitamin essential for energy metabolism and proper cellular function in horses.
It plays a central role in converting nutrients into usable energy, contributing to vitality, endurance, and overall physical performance 🌿

❓ Why is Vitamin B5 important?

✅ Supports energy production and cellular metabolism ⚡
✅ Essential for fat metabolism and the synthesis of certain hormones
✅ Contributes to healthy skin and coat ✨
✅ Supports proper nervous system function
✅ Aids recovery and stress management

🔬 What is Vitamin B5?

Horses store very little Vitamin B5.
It is mainly supplied through the diet and partially synthesized by the gut microbiota. This natural production may become insufficient during periods of stress, growth, or intense work

⚠️ Risks of deficiency

A deficiency may occur during prolonged exercise, chronic stress, or when the diet is unbalanced. Possible signs include:
❌ Fatigue and decreased performance
❌ Slower recovery
❌ Dull coat and skin discomfort
❌ Increased nervousness or sensitivity

⚠️ Risks of overdose

As a water-soluble vitamin, excess Vitamin B5 is generally excreted in urine.

🧠 Key takeaways

✔️ Essential for energy metabolism
✔️ Supports the nervous system, recovery, and performance
✔️ Supplementation should be tailored to the individual horse’s needs

02/02/2026

TheHorse.com
Thanks for this podcast excerpt

Dr. Frank Andrews explains how vitamin E and selenium could help support your horse’s immune system.

02/02/2026

Empowered Equines
Thanks

When we teach our children how to work with horses we know this goes far beyond horses and deep into their core understanding of how to interact with all living beings and even their own self reflection. Some lessons we may want to include might be, 'Love is never supposed to hurt or cause pain', 'it’s not consent if they’re afraid to say “No”, and 'how you treat someone is always more important than what you can get from them'.

When we teach our children that loving someone can involve inflicting pain on them to get things that we want, this lesson doesn’t just stop when they get off the horse. When your kids are fighting over who gets to chose the TV channel, why is your little rider suddenly kicking their sibling? If we teach them “ask, tell, demand” (a common practice in horse riding, where the rider escalates the aversive level of our cue until the horse complies), we are not teaching them to be confident – we are teaching them violent communication skills. Instead of learning how to communicate with their partner to come to a compromise or solution to their disagreement, they learn to become harsher, louder, more intense in how they ask to get what they want. This may be a strong character attribute when working your way up in a lawfirm – but this is not how healthy relationships between partners should look. Not only are we teaching them to use violence to control and manipulate animals and their peers, but we are also teaching them that violence is acceptable in a love relationship. If they can love their horse and hurt them to get what they want, then can’t the person who is hurting them also love them? But violence and control should never be a part of a loving relationship. True partnerships are built on communication, compromise, mutual reward, and compassion for one another’s life history.

When our children utilize these aversive-based training techniques they are learning that if someone says “no”, to keep asking, demand, even force the other to comply, so long as you get what you want in the end. This is teaching them that when one party says “no” it’s ok to push them into compliance, without even really considering why they said “no”. Not that “why” should matter, “no means NO”, but it may be a physical or emotional problem inhibiting the horse from complying. By ignoring their communication and utilizing “ask, tell demand”, we teach our children to ignore the other individual’s truth, their side of the situation, just to get what they want. Their horse may be in pain or scared out of their mind, but by ignoring their feelings and their attempts at communication we are unteaching empathy. Teaching them that so long as they get what they want in the end, what happens to the other who we are controlling doesn’t matter. Think about this lesson in reverse. If teaching our children that consent and control can be taken away and disregarded by anyone strong enough to take it – we are teaching them that they too can have their consent and control taken away. That it’s acceptable to say “no” and have that be ignored and overpowered. That even someone who we love or loves us can disregard a lack of consent.

The competitive, “win at all costs” mindset that often comes in riding lessons often prioritizes winning over the welfare of the horse. We teach our kids that it’s ok to diminish our horse’s welfare if it gets us what we want. From something as simple as our horse in small box stalls vs. appropriate sized and socialized turn out, to assure they’re clean and ready to compete. We are teaching our kids that it’s acceptable to reduce our horse’s quality of life to make it more convenient for us to get what we want out of them.

Especially when we look at extreme sports (the dangerous ones) we are putting our horse’s health and safety at risk without any regard to their willingness to make this sacrifice. When we ask our horse to jump unbreakable jumps or run too fast, too far, too young, we compromise their wellbeing, safety and future lives. We may have fun the first few years but at the cost of the horse’s last several years. Causing premature aging and career-ending injury. Then the disposable mentality of trading in your horse when they no longer meet your desires, to get a new one. This teaches kids that when something isn’t fun anymore it should be thrown out – even if it costs them their life. A horse with a riding-ending injury will rarely get a safe home, even if you think it’s safe it may only be until that person also gets bored of them. Because we have developed a disposable mentality to life itself. We also teach our kids this is how they should treat their other pets, their family (watch out when you get old!!), or that they themselves could be treated this way. If you are no longer fun or doing what someone wants out of you, you too may be thrown away for a newer, funner version.

So stop and think about these values we introduce our kids to when you begin their horse journey. Horses are a friend, a partner, their quality of life is entirely dependent on your quality of care, their safety and wellbeing is up to you, for life.

02/02/2026

The Whole Horse Journey
Many Thanks

There is a kind of horse owner that impresses me, not because they are flashy or loud or opinionated, but because of how they show up for their horses. They truly put the horses first, in every way.

This is the person who is thoughtful, even pedantic, they rather do too much than too little. The owner who notices details most people overlook. Who asks questions, reads widely, watches closely, and then actually takes what they learn back to the barn and applies it. They aren't perfect, but they are sincere, honest and accountable. They are also present, they care about welfare, they care about the WHOLE HORSE.

They are knowledgeable, yes. Often very knowledgeable. But their knowledge is not a weapon and it is not a shield. It is simply a tool in service of the horse.

This person is deeply hands on. They spend time with their horses and in the day to day reality of caring for living, breathing beings.

What makes them truly wise is not how much they know, but how willing they are to keep learning. They can say, I used to think this, but now I see it differently. They can be challenged without feeling attacked. They can change their mind without feeling humiliated. Their ego does not run the stable.

They want the best for their horses, no matter what. Even when that means changing their own habits, letting go of familiar methods, or admitting they got something wrong. Their loyalty is to the horse, not to their pride.

And then there is the other type of owner.

The know it all. The I have been doing this for years so I must be right person. The one who shuts down conversations before they even begin. My way is the only way. I do not need to learn anything new. I do not need to listen to anyone else.

On the surface they can look confident, experienced, even authoritative. But beneath that certainty is rigidity. And rigidity does not serve horses well.

Horses live in nuance. In subtle signals. In constant feedback. They do not thrive under black and white thinking or stubborn human egos.

So be the first person.

Be the owner who is meticulous because you care. Curious because you love learning. Humble because you know how much there is still to understand. Hands on because your horses matter to you beyond theory and opinion.

Be the person who is always trying to do better and be better for the horse in front of you.

That is real horsemanship.

02/02/2026

Horses Explained Thanks