Good Horsemanship in Delungra, New South Wales | Sport & recreation

Good Horsemanship

Locality: Delungra, New South Wales

Phone: +61 409 414 564

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25.01.2022 I think the video below is interesting and asks many questions that we all should consider. I post it here in the hope that it will help trigger people’s critical thinking skills when it comes to horsemanship and riding. I believe people who read this page are horse-loving individuals who care very much about the welfare of horses. If they are not, I don’t see why they would come here a second time there is nothing here for those that do not care about the horse as a horse...Continue reading

23.01.2022 The first horse that I belonged to was called Luke. Well, when he came to live with me his name was Sebastian, but I couldn’t let him carry that burden for the rest of his life. He didn’t deserve that. So Luke became the name he answered to when I called him for dinner or when he ordered coffee at Starbucks and when the bakery asked what name he wanted on his birthday cake. I met Luke when I was about 23 and despite many years of riding and training he was my first, but I was...Continue reading

23.01.2022 Last year I rode a horse at a clinic that was brilliantly sensitive when I ask it to stop. The owner was very proud that it took just the slightest relaxation of my seat to get the horse to transition down from one gait to another or to establish a stop. But the stop button was not why she brought her horse to the clinic. It was the absence of a go button that was causing her grief. She told me she was really happy with the way her horse halted, but the other half of the... equation of getting him more forward needed fixing. Thinking about this horse a few days ago reminded me of a horse from a few years ago with the opposite problem. That horse had so much go that even walking was a challenge for it. Control was all about how much braking power you applied The owner loved the fact that her horse was fast and had such a responsive throttle. But she just thought for the sake of safety she’s like the horse to be little more responsive to stopping. What these two owners were not aware of is that the thing they liked most about their horse was exactly what created the thing they liked least about their horse. With the first horse, the way she trained the great stop button broke the go button. But for the second horse, the hair-trigger go response meant she had lost the stop response. Both horses had the same fundamental problem - in the conversation with the rider, there was a breakdown in focus, clarity, and softness. Almost always the things we like most about our horse are linked to the things that create our biggest training challenges. Video: This is from a Zoom lesson I did today with Jeanette and Pepsi. You can see that Pepsi is not thinking forward as he is being lunged. He is trotting with one hoof on the brakes. So when Jeanette lowers her energy even slightly Pepsi took that as an opportunity to do his favourite thing, stop. His lack of forward thought enabled the easiness of his stop. #goodhorsemanship #horsetraining #RossJacobs #horsemanship

22.01.2022 The NSW government has announced opening the border to Victoria from November 23. So I am happy to announce a new clinic in Rokeby (near Warragul), Victoria on November 28-30. It will be great to see some old friends and I hope make some new ones. See you there.

21.01.2022 WHAT'S IT LIKE TO BE A PHONY? A few years ago I was responding to a question on a horseman list on the internet. In response to one particular question I made an inadvertent and off-the-cuff remark to the effect that it wasn't my desire to have my horse "plodding around like an old packhorse." This seems to have raised the hackles of at least one subscriber and a long letter was sent to me by e-mail. I have inserted the letter below for the benefit of those who (like me) have...Continue reading

19.01.2022 I was getting my mare, Six ready for a video shoot this morning, for a series of videos to be part of a membership site I will be launching shortly. As I groomed her before saddling, handfuls of hair clogged up the brushes. My goodness, Six is going bald, I thought. But I calmed down and realized she has started to shed her winter coat. It’s been cold here, with the nights approaching freezing temperatures. The winter solstice was a few weeks ago and the days are starting to ...Continue reading

18.01.2022 What's New for Good Horsemanship Members

17.01.2022 All new on goodhorsemembers.com

16.01.2022 Like most children, I learned to tell lies early in life because I learned lying was one way of avoiding trouble. When I was an annoying and disobedient kid I learned how to behave well enough to avoid getting into too much trouble with mum and dad. When I was a teenager I learned how to just apply enough effort to my schoolwork to avoid getting into trouble with the teachers. When I was in my first year at university and away from home I learned how to plan my driving route ...Continue reading

15.01.2022 When I was first starting to learn about horses and horsemanship, my teachers all had rules that I was meant to follow. I was to mount from the left of the horse. I was to lead a horse from my right. I was to ask a horse to pick up its feet by pinching the chestnut. When there was a disagreement with a horse I was to always make sure I won. If a horse turned its tail towards me I had to always correct it. A horse should not be allowed to stop when it had a bathroom moment. Yo...Continue reading

15.01.2022 BACK TO WORK .... This is to announce my first clinic since March. It will be great to be back working with a terrific bunch of people and horses. Covid safe rules will apply. ... For more information and bookings contact Alex Wickham - [email protected]

12.01.2022 I was watching a video of a trainer discussing herd behaviour. It was pretty boring and nothing new was being revealed that I hadn’t heard many times before from many trainers before. Until they said . I understand horse behaviour because I have a lot of years and a lot of experience....Continue reading

12.01.2022 Last year I attended a dressage clinic as a spectator. I witnessed and heard several things I liked and a few things that made me wince. One thing that caught my attention was when the clinician said, When a horse has a dip in the neck, just in front of the wither it is a sure sign that a horse has been ridden incorrectly. If you look at the photo, you’ll see I have circled the area the clinician was referring to and it is clear the horse has a dip in its neck exactly like ...Continue reading

12.01.2022 Watch the video and comment below what you think is happening. In a couple of days I will post a break down of the video.

12.01.2022 There is so much information in this video, it could fill a book. I hope you will re-wind sections that interest or confuse you and study the "why" of it. Feel free to ask questions about what I did and why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRtu3YucbzY&feature=youtu.be

11.01.2022 Over the years I have gotten to know many students of horsemanship. People become devotees of horsemanship in much the same way that they become fanatical fans of dressage or tennis or music. It’s a passion that they pursue with all the energy and time they have. As part of their passion, they try to learn something about the work of many of the horsemen and women that put up a shingle with the title Horse Trainer or Horsemanship Clinician. I think this is a great idea a...Continue reading

11.01.2022 I received a question from Kathy Davis Baker this morning that I believe is worth discussing. Why do people always say this horse just needs a job? I’ve heard it a lot over the years. I have heard famous and not-so-famous clinicians say it and I’ve read it in magazines. But what does it mean? When most people direct the claim at another person, they usually mean that somebody needs a purpose in life. But do horses need a purpose? A job? I don’t think so. They have a job jus...t being a horse. The most common source I’ve heard is from horsemen whose background or interest is in American ranching. So many I have come across seem to love the idea of giving a horse a job. Usually, it refers to getting a horse to work cattle or maybe work other horses. There is nothing wrong with asking a horse to move a cow or work another horse. But if people believe a horse needs a purpose and that’s why they need a job, they’re wrong. Let me plagiarise myself by quoting what I wrote to Kathy this morning. Yeah, I've heard that statement several times. I can't speak for what other people mean. The idea of a job seems to mean different things to different people. I mean for the cowboy types, a 'job' seems to suggest a real job like moving cows or a 20 km ride (the old sweaty saddle blanket being good for a horse myth) or working another horse in a round pen. Whereas to somebody like me, a 'job' could be moving a single foot accurately or asking them to look somewhere. But whatever a 'job' means to a person I believe the intent behind it is to motivate a horse to focus. The outcome we are looking for is to have a horse pay attention to us so we can direct them to a task. Giving a horse a 'job' is a strategy to improve focus. I'm not sure everyone thinks of it in terms of focus, but I believe without achieving greater focus there isn't a lot of purpose to giving a horse a 'job'. Without improving focus a horse is just learning a pattern of movement, which has limited advantages. Everything good in 'good horsemanship' starts with focus. So if a job does not benefit the ability to focus and have that focus directed, I scratch my head to know what is the point of a horse needing a ‘job’." Thanks, Kathy for your question, and I hope my answer gives others something to ponder. Photo: Police horses with a job

11.01.2022 When I was a school kid I learned that gravity was the reason why things fell. I learned that they fell at a rate of 9.8 metres per second. Later I took an interest in general relativity, which told me that my understanding of gravity was naïve and incomplete. Since then I took an interest in quantum gravity and dark gravity and how they shape our reality. An understanding of these phenomena (even a basic one) has opened my eyes to realities that I didn’t appreciate before. I...Continue reading

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10.01.2022 In my book, The Essence of Good Horsemanship the first major section discusses the importance of a horse’s focus and how to achieve it and maintain it. That’s because focus is perhaps the most important requirement even before the teaching can begin. If a horse is not paying attention, we trainers are doing little more than talking to ourselves. In my view, there are two ways to obtain a horse’s focus on us and our feel. We can either ask a horse to do something it does not k...Continue reading

10.01.2022 I was born and raised in Sydney a big city. My dad was not a handy fellow. He couldn’t fix things or build things. He had many skills and many accomplishments, but being able to repair or construct things was not one of them. When stuff broke or he needed things made, he called somebody. Whether it was servicing a car, building a fence, painting a room, or fixing a light switch, dad relied on somebody else. As a result, he never taught me to be handy. In that regard, I am ...Continue reading

10.01.2022 As a horse person interested in horsemanship, I struggle with the prevalent use of spurs I see in the horse world. When I was a kid learning about dressage and jumping, it was drummed into me that spurs were only to be used when a horse and rider reached a fairly high degree of togetherness. As I have gotten older and more experienced that principle is even more firmly embedded in my thinking. I only learned to use dummy or blunt spurs after many years of training and only to...Continue reading

10.01.2022 Horses speak silently, but communicate loudly. Some people believe horses do not process thoughts and make choices based on their thoughts. In this video I break down the decision making process my mare, Six experiences when making a decision. I hope it helps people become more aware of how busy their brains are and how to better read their thoughts. https://youtu.be/I1mrx-02ma4

09.01.2022 This so reminds me of student's reaction while I'm teaching at my clinics.

09.01.2022 PET PEEVE Michèle and I were watching a movie last night and I had to complain about sound engineers who always feel the need to dub in horse sounds (whiny, nicker, snort, etc) whenever a horse appears on the screen. It drives me bonkers. Why is it necessary? It’s not as if we don’t know it is a horse. I know this is a very petty complaint considering some of the far worse things horses are subjected to by the movie industry. But I can be petty.... What is your pet peeve regarding horses in movies? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTTmCc0ANEY

08.01.2022 It was great to get back to teaching with a 4 day clinic in Canberra, ACT. Thanks to Alex Wickham for organizing it and to everyone who came along - both regulars and new inductees.

08.01.2022 Michèle and I want to express our deep sympathy for our friends and their friends who are experiencing the fires raging across California. We know many will lose their homes. We know native wildlife will be decimated. It is so horrific. Please do everything to keep yourselves safe. Stuff can be replaced. Homes can be re-built. But you and your animals are irreplaceable.

08.01.2022 I have a question, a theoretical question. Before we begin I should say that I don't believe there is a right or wrong answer. So my question is ... Do methods matter? Or if you want to broaden the question, does the end justify the means? When I see a horse working in an arena that is soft, relaxed, and doing its best with a minimum of anxiety and feeling no worse than it did grazing in the paddock with friends, does it matter what training methods were used to train that ho...rse? Conversely, when I see a horse being worked that is well educated but hates the work, shows a fair degree of anxiety, is trying to do the minimum to keep out of trouble, does it matter what training methods were used to train that horse. What if I told you the soft, relaxed horse was trained using methods that are counter to every principle of good horsemanship and every rule of our understanding of how horses learn and operate and by a harsh and inconsiderate trainer who used punishment as his key training tool? And does it matter, if the troubled horse was trained with methods widely regarded as the kindest, gentlest, and most effective approach and by a trainer with immense skill and widely considered the best in the business? I am often asked my opinion of other trainers. My opinion is never shaped by the methods that another horse person applies. Never. It is always on how I see the horse responding. I am less concerned about the precision of the performance than I am about what the horse is thinking and feeling. The thoughts and the emotions of the horse is the most important indicator of the quality of the training. Anybody can learn to teach a horse how to do stuff. But it takes real skill to teach them what to think and how to feel okay about the work. Many people seem so pre-occupied with methods. They love the trainers who have the "right" method and direct hate and venom toward trainers who advocate alternative methods. So I ask. Is the end result less important than the journey? Or does the end justify the means? Do methods matter? Photo: At a clinic in California, Peggy is teaching Bella Rose to trailer load.

08.01.2022 Reward the smallest try. That is a common mantra recited over and over in the horse training world. It’s a good concept that if followed can lead to a happy and contented horse. But what is a reward? Is it even a concept horses understand? I’m not so sure reward is the right term. Mostly when I think of rewards I think of food rewards because they are easy to understand, but I think the ideas bouncing around in my head can equally pertain to other forms of reward such as ...Continue reading

08.01.2022 In horsemanship, we think of the importance of timing in regards to when to apply a feel or remove a feel. But there is another very important type of timing. When I was a young, cocky horse guy I was pretty handy with horses. People paid me to compete on their horses. I could sit any bucking storm longer than most horses could buck. I hadn’t met too many horses that could humble me. And then I met an old bloke from Finland who showed me there was more to being handy with hor...Continue reading

07.01.2022 The clinic at Guildford was deliberately a small affair. Because of the outbreak of covid in Victoria we decided to keep the event to just a few local people. Next year I hope to be back to normal and opening it to all participants far and wide. Nevertheless, it was a great clinic and a huge thanks goes to Sally Foran to pulling it together in such uncertain times. I also want to thank the people of Victoria in general for the sacrifices they have made in adhering to strict covid rules and helping contain the virus. You guys did brilliant and it is truly appreciated. Thank you.

07.01.2022 Many people get necking reining wrong and think it is just about the shoulders moving. This is a short clip by Tristen Baroni with an excellent explanation of using the neck rein to get a horse to follow the turn with its thought.

07.01.2022 Today’s essay is not particularly mind-blowing or educational. Thinking about my friend Luke simply got me in a mood to blab on about personal growth and horses. Luke was a 4-year-old Percheron/Arab gelding that I first saw at an auction in Geelong. The country was suffering through a long drought and he had been trucked many thousands of kilometres from the Northern Territory to Victoria to be sold at auction, along with about 50 other horses. He had a reserve price of $600,...Continue reading

06.01.2022 Jim Gaffigan knows nothing about horses, but this is still very funny. Do you have a favourite horse joke? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8n776ozpyA

06.01.2022 Some people talk about training equipment in terms of its ability to communicate an idea in a soft or harsh way. For example, some people think of bridles with bits as being harsh and bridles without bits as being gentle. But experienced people know that the severity or otherwise of any training device is mostly in the way it is used. A bit is not severe until somebody pulls on the reins too strongly. But let’s be clear here about what it means for our training to be harsh or...Continue reading

04.01.2022 Separation anxiety is probably the most common issue people deal with when it comes to working with horses. Sometimes it shows up as a horse being stuck by the arena gate. Sometimes it rears its head when we remove a friend from the paddock. Other times it’s when a horse leaves a friend in the paddock. It can be seen in horses grieving for the loss of a friend and it can be seen when moving to a new herd. It can lead to a lack of forward or bucking or rearing or trailer load...ing problems or mental distraction or crookedness or bit chomping or whatever. It has various triggers with different forms of expression on a scale from hardly noticeable to seriously dangerous. But what is separation anxiety? Separation anxiety is a loss of feeling secure and safe. We often think of it as anxiety from separating a horse from the herd or another horse. But it can be just separating a horse from whatever is helping it feel safe and secure. This can be its environment like a home paddock or a familiar arena or a new rider or the horse trailer it has become accustomed to. What does it mean when we ride a horse down the road and it wants to go back to its friends? What does it mean when every time we ride past the arena gate, our horse slows down and drifts towards the gate? What does it mean when we take a horse away and the horse left behind has a meltdown? It means we have not yet become a reliable and trusting friend to our horse. We either do not have their trust and confidence or we have failed to instill self-confidence. It means that our horse does not see us as the solution to their trouble, but more likely the cause of their anxiety. Separation anxiety is a barometer of the strength and quality of our relationship. The greater the anxiety the more work we have to do. Most people see separation anxiety as a problem in itself rather than a symptom of much bigger issues. A lot of training is focused on addressing separation anxiety by making the horse’s idea more troubling to a horse than our idea. For example, when a horse wants to drift to the arena gate and avoid the opposite end of the arena, trainers will often make the horse work harder near the gate and give them more rest at the furthest end of the arena. This will achieve the desired result of stopping the horse from being resistant to going to the opposite end of the arena. However, it does nothing to address the underlying issue of our relationship. It only focuses on making being by the gate harder. Obedience is the winner and the relationship is the loser. Separation anxiety is not a problem that needs fixing. It’s the relationship that needs fixing. It’s the trust and confidence in being with us that needs fixing. Any approach that does not include building trust and confidence in us and eventually in the horse itself is a bandaid, not a solution. Separation anxiety is an important metric we can use to gauge our relationship. Photo: What’s separation anxiety?

04.01.2022 I was visiting a friend, a good horseman and trainer, that I have known for a few years and have always got along with very well. We share a similar philosophy about horsemanship and know a lot of the same people. As we sat in his living room sipping tea on a 40 deg C (104F) day it took hardly any time at all before we started talking about our experiences training horses. My friend is a pretty smart fellow and I wanted his opinion on something that I feel I have never really...Continue reading

04.01.2022 You will often read these days a description of a particular horse person as a true horseman. I realize it is supposed to be a compliment, but sometimes in my view, the subject of the compliment is a mediocre or even horrible horse person. It seems the term true horseman is very subjective and means different things to different people. What does true horseman really mean? A friend advertised a clinic she was hosting for me on a forum. Somebody (who had no firsthand kno...Continue reading

03.01.2022 I watched a video where the trainer was instructing how to calm a hyperactive and emotional horse through groundwork. The horse couldn’t stand still for more than a couple of seconds and kept trying to pull away whenever the trainer put a feel in the lead rope. It kept calling out and was super reactive to every little movement or noise. The trainer said that to get the horse’s attention and calm him down, he needed to get the feet busy (his words, not mine). He proceeded t...Continue reading

03.01.2022 Every time we do something with a horse and there is resistance or avoidance or it causes their thought to go somewhere else, it is an indication of the ill feelings they carry. Any time we don’t fix it, we leave those ill feelings inside our horse. It doesn’t matter if it is something as small as they look away when being haltered or something has humongous as bolting when the neighbour starts their chainsaw. They are all signs of trouble inside a horse and leaving them ther...Continue reading

02.01.2022 There is 1 spot still available in the clinic in Canberra, ACT. Time is running out. Contact Alex Wickham for booking and all details.

01.01.2022 Often there are people who attend my clinics with considerable experience of other trainers and clinicians. At my clinics, they often come across ideas and concepts that are either new or contradict or challenge views they have already been taught. For some, this means I never see them again and for others they choose to become regulars at my clinics. A fellow came to ride at a clinic. He was good horseman and had plenty of skills to offer. His horse was well educated and goi...Continue reading