Category: The Journey – Dancer

Tai Chi For Equestrians With James Shaw Witten by: Cynthia McFarland “‘Head up!’ ‘Heels down!’ ‘Shoulders back!’ ‘Drop your hands!’ ‘Don’t look down!’ ‘Relax!’ Your trainer’s words ring in your head as you strive to perfect your form. Yet somehow the harder you try, the more tense you feel. Make no mistake, your horse feels […]

This is quite an incredible case study, who was horribly lame and who had serious ringbone. The changes in her joint ossification, as shown by the radiographs, after her rehab are simply amazing! It begs the question, and one which I have asked many times over the past year myself in relation to Dancer’s ringbone, can […]

A huge thank you to Heather Richardson of Amberley Aromatics for kindly allowing me to publish her article on IR. Heather provides a fabulous service of balancing horses diets precisely to your individual hay and pasture analysis. This is the only way to be absolutely 100% sure your horse is getting absolutely everything they need in terms of the […]

Building emotional control, body awareness and trust Spring is officially here in the UK! It’s beautiful, warm and the sun just has this amazing way of lifting ones spirits after the long and very cold winter we have had this year. The smell of fresh growth beginning to spring back into all living things, little […]

A big thank you to everyone who has signed up to receive notification of new blogs and posts from Equi-libre Horses! As anyone who has studied classical dressage (French as opposed to German) will know…the release of the jaw is the key to everything else! Its central to everything, since without it we don’t have […]

Dancer is a grey 16hh ID x TB, 16 years old. I bought her as a 6 year old whose history was largely unknown, but clearly quite pretty turbulent. She has always enjoyed being around humans although it was clear from the day I got her home she had suffered psychologically and physically in the […]

We are once again back to that time of year when we find ourselves needing to find the freshly cleaned, re-proofed rugs from their polythene bags, preparing ourselves once more for the cold, wet, muddy winter ahead. Whether our horses have been clipped already, are getting older in their years, feel the cold or we […]

Welcome to Equi-libre Horses! This blog is our journey towards natural, bitless balance and collection. The goal – to combine natural movements and classical dressage with an understanding of equine psychology and Behavioural Learning Theory. The result – a means of training bitless balance and eventually collection which empowers the horse. I cannot recall the […]