Talk for the Shebbear Womens' Institute

On 12th January, I was invited to be the evening guest speaker for the Womens' Institute group in Shebbear. I had been asked to give a talk about my work as a "horse whisperer", which I was very pleased to do. I always aim to keep my talks as interactive and interesting as possible. The talk was about how my training and experience working with horses and ponies, and a special group of once wild ponies came together to provide specialist training for the firefighters. There was a slideshow and little video to accompany the talk...there was even a mini quiz in the middle. It was lovely to meet the ladies and it was quite tricky judging the "Best Picture of a Horse" competition because there were so many lovely drawings, paintings and photos!


There was lots of lovely feedback from the ladies, including this email - "Dear Faye, Thank you so much for our interesting talk. As one member said ‘ I’ll never look at horses the same way again.’ We really admired your enthusiasm and commitment".

We're featured in Devon Life magazine...and we've had excellent feedback for our training

Take a peek at the newly published January 2011 edition of Devon Life magazine...and you'll find a 3 page feature (from page 72) entitled "Training on the Hoof". It's an article about the Animal Rescue Unit of the Devon and Somerset Fire Service, and features the training day we held for them in September...

...And we are delighted to report that we had excellent official feedback about our first Equine Animal Rescue training day. We received 100% ratings for the quality of the staff, and the relevancy of the training for their role...closely followed by 27/28 for participants feeling equipped to directly apply knowledge gained on the course.

The Unit gets called out to some extremely dangerous situations, many of which are nightmare situations for horse owners. It's great to know that there are people you can call on for help in an emergency.

Merry Christmas!

Well, we've certainly had festive weather! With two separate fallings of snow over a couple of weeks and multiple nights when it was -10°C by 7pm, conditions have been somewhat challenging! Getting to the farm has been rather like going on an arctic expedition, but the ponies are so well equipped for the conditions. Their thick, woolly coats have done a brilliant job of keeping them warm and extra rations of hay have kept them busy. This time the snow was a "non-clingy" type so we didn't need to rescue them from snowballs accumulating on the ends of their tails!

We (myself and the ponies) would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a very happy and healthy 2011. We've had great fun in 2010 and have really enjoyed meeting so many lovely people and equines.

Understanding Horses plans for next year are currently in progress and will be posted here very soon!

The magic of wild ponies

I must say that wild ponies are very special, and will always have a special place in my heart. Much of our work is based on what we learn from them and their instincts, and for that I am very grateful.

Rocky goes to church!

Last weekend our local church in East Worlington was having a pet service, welcoming all creatures great and small. We were invited to attend alongside the cats, dogs, chickens and rabbits...which was quite lucky really, as 2 years ago Rocky mistook a church floral decoration of marram grass to be a rather conveniently, and thoughtfully placed, snack...and scoffed a mouthful of it! This year we were more careful about the floral decorations and all were left intact! Actually, the parishioners were rather grateful to Rocky and Frodo for doing some lawn trimming in the graveyard, as they carefully tidied up some of the areas of longer grass.

Rocky and Frodo were very well behaved. They greeted the parishioners nicely, and were both rewarded with some carrot.

Equine Body Language and Behaviour course

Having a fairly dry October and November has allowed us to continue running our outdoors courses into the autumn. We had perfect weather for our Understanding Horses "Body Language and Behaviour" course on 12th October. Next year we are going to run this course over a weekend, as our clients often say that they would like more time observing the herd.

On this occasion there was a bit of a slow start to the behaviour as the ponies had just changed fields!! They were so pleased at the sight of extra grass, that was their initial priority!

As it happened, a kite was being launched in the adjoining field, something our ponies had never seen before and that changed the situation. Little Frodo learnt a lesson this day...he had already chosen to leave the herd and escape through the electric fence into an area with more grass (escaping through electric fences is one of his specialities!). Some of the ponies weren't that frightened of the kite, and didn't move far from their grazing. Frodo was initially not that bothered about the kite flying around him, but once his companions on the other side of the fence moved away to better grazing, he was left on his own with the kite, he had a bit of a panic. After a short bout of running around, he came back through the fence (leaving it all perfectly intact) and back to the herd. He didn't leave them again for the rest of the day, so he learnt an important lesson that day, even if it was short lived!

Our course participants were able to interact with our herd of ponies, learning how to communicate with them, how to move them around, how to catch "difficult" horses and, as always, we included important aspects of horse psychology.

We had excellent feedback ratings about our course:

"Overall a most enjoyable day. Thank you."

"The practical experience with the ponies in the field was the most enjoyable for me. Would love to learn more - particularly about handling and relating to traumatised horses."

Talk for Tiverton Saddle Club

On the 6th of October, I made a special visit to Morebath, as I was invited to be a guest speaker for Tiverton Saddle Club. The club were particularly interested in having a talk about horse behaviour and psychology. There are so many interesting aspects that could be covered, and my aim was to keep the talk as interactive as possible. As part of the talk, I included a friendly quiz for members to test their knowledge on horse psychology, how their horses see the world around them, and some of the myths that have grown up in the ways we interact with and manage horses.