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 | As you may have guessed I have always had an interest of and a love for horses. I started riding at 5 yrs old and have been besotted ever since. I first became interested in natural horsemanship by default when my step mother rescued an Arab stallion who came to us in quite a state. We lived in a 3 bed semi in a small town and Vesubion lived in the back garden whilst he recouperated, much to the neighbours amusement! I would spend hours out there in his stable reading stories to him and grooming him. For a girl of 11 this was a dream come true. |
When the time came to turn Vesubion out in a paddock he would look for and follow me about. If I ran, stopped, turned, rested then he would too and he really seemed to enjoy it. We had moments of great fun, those are memories that I treasure.
So when Monty Roberts book came out 10years later I decided to follow his methods and learn about Join-Up.
I completed his course with Kellp Marks in 98 and went on to travel with the Join-Up Team in 2000/2001 in both the USA and in Europe.
However I'm not a horse trainer at heart and whilst at Flag is Up my attention was drawn more to the Mustang sanctuary down the road!
I volunteered some spare time at Return to Freedom American Wild Horse Sanctuaryand whilst I was there I whitnessed something that blew me away. ~ The horses were healthy!! I had never met self maintaining horses before. Infact i had spent my entire life worrying about them and if I was doing a good enough job taking care of them. So to meet horses that had never been looked after by anyone, ever both confused, surprised and inspired me at once.
I came home and continued my work as a groom but this time with a mission, and luckily enough I found the perfect job running a barefoot hunt yard in Dorset. Sarah and Micheal Bell and their three wonderful girls gave me the prefect opportunity to apply my new ideas and be brave about what I had whitnessed in the mustangs. It was an incredibly enducating time. Sarah has her own website dedicated to their unique yard and helping others to implement Sucessful-Natural-HorseCare. It's well worth a visit. There are images showing the Bells Paddock Paradise in the Free Roaming Horse Gallery
Taking ten horses of varying breeds and backgrounds barefoot was an incredibly trying time as we had no idea about the type of trim we needed or about the calatogue of other factors that we would come across. Needless to say we learnt as we went bringing in specialists and educating ourselves. It was but no means smooth but when we found something that worked we stuck to it.
I was so amazed at how the horses benefited and the knock on effect it had in the rest of their bodies that i soon became a real bearfoot advocate and decided to look into it further. I wanted to reach more horses and spread the word. The only books that made sense to me and spoke of the mustangs in the same light i had seen them beeming through I found in the words and works of Jaime Jackson.
I decided to go self employed. I had no idea what exactly i was going to do and I was leaving a factastic job for an uncertain and very bumpy road. It didn't make sense but I did it anyway. It took me 6 months before I decided to apply to do the AANHCP training as I knew that it required travel to the states and I had no cash but where there is a will there is a way so it hapened anyway! I have been trimming horses ever since.
I live in Wadhurst, East Sussex though am originally from Cornwall. I live here with my four horses Flinzle, Casper, Sky and Rain.
