S2 E8: The difficulty of language - with Julia Inglis
I’m delighted to welcome our good friend, Julia Inglis back to An Equine Conversation. We first met Julia in Series 1, Episode 8 ‘Julia’s story - a tale to learn from’. If you want to hear Julia’s story, you can jump back and listen to that episode.
Julia & I talk so much about training, so we thought we’d start to share some of these conversations with you.
In this episode, we start by catching up on how Julia’s horse Maddy, who has Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS) went over last Spring and Summer. Then, we get into the weeds of talking about the challenges of the English langauge, particularly the use of labels, in the horse world…. but because this is Julia and I, we quickly end up down various rabbit holes due to what we’d both been seeing in the months before we spoke, including talking about what you do when you remove labels, the challenge of addressing the actual problem when that impacts your plans and what the movie ‘Frozen’ has to do with horses and training.
Julia Inglis:
Julia grew up in the UK and was animal mad from a young age, catching her first pet when a rabbit wandered into her garden. She learned to ride at school but stopped for many years when she went to university in Glasgow before moving to London for further studies. Julia completed her PhD in neuropharmacology in 2004 and went on to establish a research career in the area of pain mechanisms in arthritis.
After completing her studies Julia started riding again at a local riding school, and around this time she met her now husband at a conference. He lived in Perth, Australia and in a bid to persuade her to move there started sending adverts for horse properties and horses. Within months Julia moved to Australia and they bought their first horse, which soon became 2 then 3, and is now a small farm full of animals.
Julia rode traditionally for close to a decade, bush riding and dressage but when her horse refused to move under saddle ended up learning about alternative ways to train and positive reinforcement. This has now become her passion and obsession as it combines science and training geekery with animals - her two great loves.
In this episode we discuss:
1:39 - episode introduction
3:08 - an update on Maddy over last Spring & Summer (Julia’s horse with EMS)
12:26 - how we use language, labels & why they're problematic but also useful
26:35 - what you do when you unravel the label & then have to do something about what’s going on
38:04 - back to labels - 'boring'
41:21 - so what even is a 'bombproof' horse or pony & what the kids film ‘Frozen’ has to do with ‘bombproof’ horses
53:11 - where to now - body language again & building a common language & labels as short-hand
59:08 - summary & the need for a new shared language / labels in the horse world
1:02:33 - the influence of history & present art on what we label 'beautiful' & see as desirable
1:06:06 - top tips & then some
1:13:14 - important end-of-season announcements
Link from Julia:
While not mentioned in the podcast, Julia has requested we share the link for the Western Australia (WA) Equine Clicker Trainer group so that those in WA who are interested can join and share.
Our links mentioned this episode:
Abbey's Run Equestrian website
Abbey's Run Equestrian on Facebook
Thank you to Matthew Bliss for podcast production & consultation. You can find out more about podcast support on offer via: Blissery.FM or email info@blissery.fm