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A podcast by Abbey’s Run Equestrian
An Equine Conversation
Welcome to An Equine Conversation, a podcast brought to you by Abbey’s Run Equestrian.
This podcast aims to help you, the horse owner, improve your knowledge by giving you access to top quality information that will help you be the best horse owner you can be so that you can give your horses the best life possible.
Through An Equine Conversation, I’ll share my expertise with you along with helping you connect to and hear from some amazing experts in their own fields – because while I have a lot of knowledge, I am by no means the expert in all of the things. We’ll also be talking with horse owners about their journey with their animals.
We’ll explore ways our horses can be physically and mentally healthier through topics around training, horse-health, enrichment, emergency preparedness, history, our own mental wellbeing and physical health and more. We’ll be giving you practical actions you can implement with your horses and information to explore, consider and further investigate.
These podcast episodes are absolutely designed to be thought-provoking and they may bring you some ideas, approaches or information that you haven’t come across previously.
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
S2 E4: The ‘truth’ in buying a horse
In my almost 3 decades of teaching people with horses, there are some things I have been asked about many times. Questions around or support in buying a new horse has been one of these.
Horse shopping, much like property shopping, can be an emotional roller-coaster of an experience. Then when you finally land on which equine and have your new partner home, things may not go, in fact often they don’t go, quite as you imagined they would.
In this episode I’m going to speak to the ‘truth’ in buying a horse, whether that be your first, second, third or tenth horse.
S2 E3: Why ruling out pain in horses is hard with Dr Lisa Walter
How many people do you know who’ve had some kind of pain or illness that the human medical professionals have not been able to get to the bottom of or provide relief from? Or where it’s taken some time and robust investigations, often driven by the person or their family to figure out what’s going on?
I know quite a few & have experienced this myself, and this is with the diagnostics available to human medicine.
Almost daily I see equine-owning humans asking for training help online with a horse that’s body language and behaviour is indicating likely pain. Sometimes this body language from the horse is fairly explicit and other times it’s more subtle. Some of the lovely humans asking for help have sought some veterinary intervention, but it can happen that their initial vet hasn’t been able to find anything wrong.
If you listened to Episode 8 in Season 1 of An Equine Conversation, Julia’s story with her horse Maddy, you’ll know that Maddy was exhibiting behaviour that indicated something was wrong and that Julia had to push past initial vet suggestions to get to the point of an actual diagnosis for what was wrong, and then how to treat and manage what was going on for him. It took some time and probing and pushing to figure it out.
And here’s the thing. Pain in horses is not always possible to rule out or resolve. It’s not a matter of just saying there’s nothing wrong – because there can be and the science and diagnostic equipment just isn’t there yet to figure absolutely everything out – but, the science, the technology and the research are making progress and there’s so much more available to us than 20 years ago.
I wanted to talk to an Equine Veterinarian about why it’s challenging to rule out pain in horses and what we can and should do about it as owners, so I asked my friend, Dr Lisa Walter, Equine Vet in South Australia, if she would join me for a chat. I always love speaking with Lisa as she has so much knowledge and a constant curiosity about how the horses body works – which has led her to working on a PhD in Sacroilliac dysfunction. I’m so pleased to bring this conversation to you and hope it helps expand your knowledge, awareness, understanding and ability to pursue niggles about any pain you are suspect of with your equines.
S2 E2: What’s in a name… and a logo?
We recently released our brand new and long-awaited logo for our business Abbey’s Run Equestrian. The bones of this logo have been rattling around my head for more than 2.5 years and we were finally in a position to bring it to life with the help of Evie Francesca Design Studio.
While the logo itself is physically 2-dimensional, each element holds a purpose or a story about our business, what we do and why we do it. This episode is to share with you the meaning behind each of the logo elements and what they mean for what we do here at Abbey’s Run Equestrian now and into the future.
S2 E1: A trainer, a donkey & a Golden Globe winning film - with Megan Hines
Late last year I started seeing promotions for the film The Banshees of Inisherin, an Irish film that included a miniature donkey Jenny as one of the stars alongside a cast of several other animals and the human actors including Kerry Condon, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. I’m not always a fan of animals in films but frankly, Jenny was just gorgeous and as my partner Benn is a fan of miniature donkey’s, I was paying more attention.
I was so delighted to know that Jenny had been trained using positive reinforcement. Not only that, but she had been trained by someone I’d heard of for some years, Megan Hines. Working on a major motion picture with some big-name stars and experienced crew is not something many of us have exposure to, let alone training an equine using positive reinforcement to exist and perform in that environment. I was really keen to meet Megan, hear her training journey and learn about the experience on the film with Jenny… and to be able to share that conversation with you, so I invited Megan to join us for an episode of An Equine Conversation.
Season 2 Trailer
We are super excited to be back with Season 2 of An Equine Conversation. Check out the trailer for a glimpse of Episode 1 & some fun training action we’ve got going on.
As with Season 1, Season 2 episodes will drop on a Wednesday morning, Melbourne/Sydney time. The season consists of 8 episodes (episodes we are so excited about bringing to your ears) plus this trailer. Episode 1 will be released on Wednesday, April 26.
Episode 8: Julia’s Story - A Tale to Learn From
In today’s episode, I’m speaking with Julia Inglis, a very good friend of mine who I met virtually through a mutual friend. Julia lives over in Western Australia, the other side of the country from me, and we’re actually yet to meet in real life. Julia and I are messaging one another and sometimes talking, almost daily about horse training and management. While we had so much we talked about discussing on this episode, we decided that actually the best place to start, was with Julia’s story – or at least some of. It’s a story that there is a lot to learn from - both in the way of managing horses (particularly those with EMS and ulcers) and in the way of training approaches.
Episode 7: What IS training with positive reinforcement?
In the previous podcast episode with Sara Jackson, and in the next episode with Julia Inglis, you’ll hear mention of ‘positive reinforcement’ as a training approach. We’ve mentioned it ourselves too in talking about our Start Your Engines course+workshop.
I suspect that some of you listening will be well familiar with training using positive reinforcement, but there are likely others listening who are not so sure. So in this episode, we’re going to touch on what training with positive reinforcement, often abbreviated as R+, actually is.
Episode 6: A journey to speaking horse with Sara Jackson
In this episode, I’m speaking with Sara Jackson who is across the other side of the Country from me, over in Western Australia. For those unfamiliar with Australia, that’s a 4-hour flight, plus the drive at each end to the airport, which at my end is over 3 hours.
We’re speaking about Sara's her own, quite colourful journey with horses and how this has brought her to sharing with other people about equine body language, equine behaviour & how important understanding this is for having a 2-way conversation with our horses and improving our relationship with them. Sara helps others learn more about equine behaviour and body language through her business Equestrian Balance and the Learn to Speak Horse Online Program.
Episode 5: But it says ‘horse’ on the label…
In this episode, we’re going to discuss why getting our horsie ducks in a row is a challenge, acknowledging that this is happening for us all, and look at what we can do about it.
Episode 4: Preparing for Bushfires as a Horse Owner with Sharon Merritt
In this week’s episode, I chat with Sharon Merritt from Victoria’s Country Fire Authority, better known here as the CFA, on preparing for bushfire (or you might know it as wildfire events) when we own horses. This is something we feel strongly about having had friends and family impacted in some of the more recent major fire events in our Country and having had fire come close to where our horses live a number of times. While we’re having a very wet Spring in our part of the world, fires still happen, and all the vegetation growth brought on by the rain will be creating fuel load for future fires. Join us for invaluable information and actions to implement that we all need to be aware of and implement for our own and our horses safety.
Episode 3: Getting Your Ducks in a Row
In this episode, we’re going to discuss why getting our horsie ducks in a row is a challenge, acknowledging that this is happening for us all, and look at what we can do about it.
Episode 2: Talking Emergency Response & First Aid with Dr Lizzie McCready
In this episode I’m talking with Dr Lizzie McCready who has taken her profession from on the road practice to working with horse owners to improve their emergency response skills. Find out some top tips to improve your own skills & be better prepared for those inevitable emergencies that arise when we have horses.
Episode 1: When Your Horse Says ‘No’
In this episode we’re going to explore why it’s okay that our horses say no, how our horses are saying ‘no’, why we should listen to and respect the ‘no’ and what to do when the horse says ‘no’. We’ll also touch on when it’s okay to override the no.