Guiding Sails Caught By The Winds of Change
Sep 12, 2024
Things are shifting in the horse world. I'm seeing more and more promotion of liberty work, bitless/bridaless, and lovely shows that have completely different judging criteria from the traditional show jumping or dressage.
I love the often bit-free element of this and the focus on connection rather than control. I think it's definitely a move in the right direction.
However, I am always slightly cautious when saying all liberty work is good for this reason: just because a horse is performing without restraint, it doesn't necessarily mean it has positive associations with those behaviours. Just because he can physically do his own thing, doesn't mean that he can emotionally.
If force and coercion were used in the training, those emotions will still be there once the ropes, sticks, round pen etc are removed. In learning theory terms, learned helplessness or conditioned suppression are all too easy to induce in horses.
Unfortunately, there's no real way of knowing without seeing the actual training (unless the handler is still carrying a whip of course) as the finished behaviour generally looks the same whether it was trained positively or not. There are a few giveaways when we look at some of the horses' communication signals though.
Improving horse welfare in sport and beyond is a long journey and I'm so glad it's making such a promising start. I think the next step will be developing education so that force-free, horse-led training techniques and management become the norm as they are with non-domestic species (in wild animal collections).
Are we allowing our horses as much choice, control, and challenge in their lives as possible?
There's such an exciting road ahead 
To learn more about how you could safely give your horse more autonomy in his life whilst having amazing adventures together book your free 30 minute chat with me today at https://calendly.com/nicolaaross/private-consultation
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