Horsemanship Showcase 2025

[daydreamer]

If anyone is going to the Horsemanship Showcase next weekend I (well, mainly AI) made a combined schedule so it is easy to compare what is on when and thought I might as well change it. It is correct as of now but obviously they might make changes. Also it assumes everything will run to time!

If anyone wants the .docx files send me a pm, I could only upload pdf's here. I'm afraid I didn't spend ages formatting!

If anyone has any recommendations on what to see that would be good!

 

[stangs]

Wish I'd seen this sooner, would have saved me a lot of hassle flicking through the various schedules.

Last year, Philippe Karl stole the show by far imo, so I'm still mourning the fact that he's retired and won't be coming.

I am interested to see how the 3 trainers/3 horses/3 days goes. Last year, I felt the colt-starting stuff was a bit much for the horses in question and just encouraging them into shutting down a bit. Hopefully, this doesn't turn out the same way but, still, I don't like the American colt-starting competition thing, even if it is educational.

Also interested to see Feather Light Horsemanship, as I have many opinions on her but all based on her edited Instagram videos. Be curious to see what the demos are like in person.

Re recommendations, I found Wendy Winn interesting to listen to last year, even though I'm not a Western rider, so would recommend finding the time to attend her talk.

 

[Alibear]

I’m going on the Sunday.

 

[Boulty]

I’m going Sat / Sun. Despite hating myself last year when I had to get up at 5am I am once again not staying over Friday night . Not quite so fussed for getting there on the dot of it opening this year as reason I did that last year was to see Phillipe Karl.

Once again I’ll be driving the box despite not having a horse with me as my little leccy car would need a few charges en route (last year I was worried about my old car breaking down… quite rightly as it turned out!) If you see a little red van conversion whose “horses” sticker stops at roughly the first “s” give me a wave

Still in the planning phase of who I’d actually like to see!

 

[fjp]

Thanks for sharing this - I’d started the process today but you’ve saved me the rest of the job!

 

[daydreamer]

Thanks for sharing this - I’d started the process today but you’ve saved me the rest of the job!

You're welcome. I think they have made some last minute changes so you might just have to check it and edit a few bits. I just remember when i went a few years ago I really struggled to work out what was on when!

 

[stangs]

Procrastinating typing up my notes from Saturday (too many pages, too little energy) so here’s an abridged version in case anyone’s interested:

Thought the 3 trainer challenge was a lot to look at at once but you soon get used to it. It helped that I watched David Zuend’s colt starting demo last year, and he was essentially following the same process here, so that made sense to me. I do wish Sean Coleman could have talked a little bit about why he was working on leading with the foot, because that’s something I’m not so familiar with.

As a fluffy clicker person, it felt surreal hearing Ben Atkinson talk about consent (in the context of his horse not liking being touched - so he uses her touching his ball on a stick as her consenting to being touched with the object) "on the big stage" so to speak. Having said that, he talks about treat hygiene but in practice, the horse was nuzzling his right hand and pocket a lot… and what hand does he treat with: his right hand… and what side does he put his treat pouch on when he uses it (he used it in his later demo, not the roundpen challenge) - the right. But it’s easy for me to judge him harsher than the others, because judging people’s clicker training is my bread and butter.

Anyway, if they do the round pen challenge again next year, I think I’ll probably try to attend on the first day because it’s difficult to compare trainers when you don’t know what the horses were like to begin with.

Otherwise, I really liked JM’s demo on ponying. It was based on the same building blocks as everything else (being able to move the shoulders and the hind, solid groundwork foundations, etc), but it was nice to think about those building blocks in a different context, especially because I don’t think much about ponying for training instead of for bog-standard exercising two horses.

Ben Atkinson’s BTS Movie Magic was good too - talked about training horses to follow cars as part of desensitising them to vehicles on set, as well as a lot on mark training (teaching film horses to go to a target wooden board. Interestingly, he trains this by teaching horses to ‘Spanish stomp’ onto the board, so the sound tells them they’ve arrived, but plenty of people train a place with dogs or horses or all sorts of zoo animals without needing a Spanish walk or anything like that, so it does seem a bit redundant, unless you want that extra flair in the step for a film horse? It's effectively more a behaviour chain - certainly was in the demo horse - rather than being necessary to get the placement… I’ll stop rambling now.)

Parelli was similar to what it was last year, but, once again, was a good reminder to generalise behaviours. It is weird that, in dog training, for example, people generally understand that they need to give the cue from different positions (with us sitting, standing, turning away, etc) to generalise it, whereas we don’t really do that with horses. And, as much as I’m not a Parelli fan, the idea of the zones is a good starting point to help you think about proofing behaviours.

Featherlight Horsemanship was another interesting one. I went into her demo not really knowing anything about her method, just having occasionally stumbled onto clips of her demos on Instagram, which often seemed to have pushed the horse too far to me, but, in practice, her stuff was pretty 'featherlight' - e.g., she talked about taking a few steps with the horse and then stopping, to see if they’re in the mental space to stop as well, or rewarding thinking rather than a specific right or wrong answer.

She also talked about how she does a lot of work from the side of the saddle (as in, one foot in the stirrup, leaning over the horse), partially because she thinks it’s important you’re able to access/connect with the horse in all stages of the mounting process, and partially because it’s safer (if the horse explodes, you can come off right away and land on your feet ready to keep working with them). Food for thought.

There’s a lot more I could write, but I need to start typing up my notes first!

As an aside, did anyone manage to catch Tori Jeffress’ in-hand demo? I really wanted to watch it, but I had a horrific migraine most of the day, and couldn’t really stomach leaving my seat.

 

[Matafleur]

Procrastinating typing up my notes from Saturday (too many pages, too little energy) so here’s an abridged version in case anyone’s interested:

Thought the 3 trainer challenge was a lot to look at at once but you soon get used to it. It helped that I watched David Zuend’s colt starting demo last year, and he was essentially following the same process here, so that made sense to me. I do wish Sean Coleman could have talked a little bit about why he was working on leading with the foot, because that’s something I’m not so familiar with.

As a fluffy clicker person, it felt surreal hearing Ben Atkinson talk about consent (in the context of his horse not liking being touched - so he uses her touching his ball on a stick as her consenting to being touched with the object) "on the big stage" so to speak. Having said that, he talks about treat hygiene but in practice, the horse was nuzzling his right hand and pocket a lot… and what hand does he treat with: his right hand… and what side does he put his treat pouch on when he uses it (he used it in his later demo, not the roundpen challenge) - the right. But it’s easy for me to judge him harsher than the others, because judging people’s clicker training is my bread and butter.

Anyway, if they do the round pen challenge again next year, I think I’ll probably try to attend on the first day because it’s difficult to compare trainers when you don’t know what the horses were like to begin with.

Otherwise, I really liked JM’s demo on ponying. It was based on the same building blocks as everything else (being able to move the shoulders and the hind, solid groundwork foundations, etc), but it was nice to think about those building blocks in a different context, especially because I don’t think much about ponying for training instead of for bog-standard exercising two horses.

Ben Atkinson’s BTS Movie Magic was good too - talked about training horses to follow cars as part of desensitising them to vehicles on set, as well as a lot on mark training (teaching film horses to go to a target wooden board. Interestingly, he trains this by teaching horses to ‘Spanish stomp’ onto the board, so the sound tells them they’ve arrived, but plenty of people train a place with dogs or horses or all sorts of zoo animals without needing a Spanish walk or anything like that, so it does seem a bit redundant, unless you want that extra flair in the step for a film horse? It's effectively more a behaviour chain - certainly was in the demo horse - rather than being necessary to get the placement… I’ll stop rambling now.)

Parelli was similar to what it was last year, but, once again, was a good reminder to generalise behaviours. It is weird that, in dog training, for example, people generally understand that they need to give the cue from different positions (with us sitting, standing, turning away, etc) to generalise it, whereas we don’t really do that with horses. And, as much as I’m not a Parelli fan, the idea of the zones is a good starting point to help you think about proofing behaviours.

Featherlight Horsemanship was another interesting one. I went into her demo not really knowing anything about her method, just having occasionally stumbled onto clips of her demos on Instagram, which often seemed to have pushed the horse too far to me, but, in practice, her stuff was pretty 'featherlight' - e.g., she talked about taking a few steps with the horse and then stopping, to see if they’re in the mental space to stop as well, or rewarding thinking rather than a specific right or wrong answer.

She also talked about how she does a lot of work from the side of the saddle (as in, one foot in the stirrup, leaning over the horse), partially because she thinks it’s important you’re able to access/connect with the horse in all stages of the mounting process, and partially because it’s safer (if the horse explodes, you can come off right away and land on your feet ready to keep working with them). Food for thought.

There’s a lot more I could write, but I need to start typing up my notes first!

As an aside, did anyone manage to catch Tori Jeffress’ in-hand demo? I really wanted to watch it, but I had a horrific migraine most of the day, and couldn’t really stomach leaving my seat.

Thanks for writing this up, I'd love to hear more! I did think about going but life is so busy currently that I wasn't organised enough.

I'd be interested to hear more about Ben A, I'd suspected he was using clicker which is great to see, even if he is perhaps not a geeky purist with it. I think it is quite a forgiving method in that way, although of course best results come from best technique. He is clearly an effective trainer regardless.

 

[Jambarissa]

I considered buying a ticket to the livestream but wondered how good it'd be, would they be mindful of positioning themselves for the camera when they've got a crowd to please? Also whether I'd ever get to watch it and whether I'd be better buying a month's subscription to a few of the trainers who are online.

I see I can still buy a ticket, and watch until end if January. Do you think itd be worthwhile? Only the main arena I think.

 

[daydreamer]

Thanks for the writeup @stangs. I will try and write mine up tomorrow as I only just got home and need some tea! I didn't see Tori Jeffress. My favourite demo was by Rebecca Harris of Balance Horsemanship on improving the canter. I have seen her do demo's in the past and she is just so clear and logical. I also stayed for the gala and really enjoyed the last couple of acts - bridleless jumping by people I had never heard of which I found inspiring. I didn't think it was as busy as when i went a few years ago.

 

[Boulty]

I don’t write notes as I’m too lazy (& can’t do it with gloves on if anyone human needs to be able to read it!)

From watching some of what David Zuend was doing and catching the tail end of Joe’s ponying demo have concluded that ponying a youngster from another horse is only useful if you have the RIGHT horse (as they obviously both did) to do it from. Have always felt a bit bad as a one horse owner that it’s not a thing I can do (as can totally see the usefulness) but now actually feel there’s only really Fuzzball who I’ve owned that would have had the right mindset for it and that it’s really difficult to do well.

Have also come to the conclusion that if I would like to progress my horse at a pace slightly faster than that of a snail it is in fact totally ok to give him a short break after he does something well and then come back and ask him to do something else. He doesn’t have to get turned out after 10 minutes every single time he gets something quickly and that we don’t need to be doing one thing perfectly to move onto something else.

I also now have yoga ball envy and am motivated to blow up my rather small one (that currently identifies as a pumpkin) for more play sometime soon as it appears that teaching him to control it rather than touch it randomly may actually have useful future applications.

After the number of gate demos I’ve watched this weekend it shall be highly embarrassing if I STILL fail to teach current pony how to do it properly one day…

Sat on a few saddles at few different stands of brands I’m considering for when I’m at that point and erm actually really didn’t like any of them. Assuming that they may feel slightly different on a horse but am determined I’m never buying another saddle that I have to fight with / that I don’t feel comfortable sat in.

Will possibly post more seriously tomorrow when have had sleep (I got home at around 10pm and that was without staying for gala)

 

[Ample Prosecco]

Featherlight Horsemanship talked about how she does a lot of work from the side of the saddle (as in, one foot in the stirrup, leaning over the horse), partially because she thinks it’s important you’re able to access/connect with the horse in all stages of the mounting process, and partially because it’s safer (if the horse explodes, you can come off right away and land on your feet ready to keep working with them). Food for thought.

Joe taught my to mount Myka like that. That's how he always starts them initially. From that position I can run my hand down where the leg is going to be to make sure she is not goting to react to it appearing. He asks them to move away from the mounting blocks, steps hinds over each way, flexing both ways, softening to the rein contact all while in a very safe position to step or jump down. The rider weight is further over than it looks, more central over the saddle not dragging the saddle to one side.

 

[sbloom]

Joe taught my to mount Myka like that. That's how he always starts them initially. From that position I can run my hand down where the leg is going to be to make sure she is not goting to react to it appearing. He asks them to move away from the mounting blocks, steps hinds over each way, flexing both ways, softening to the rein contact all while in a very safe position to step or jump down. The rider weight is further over than it looks, more central over the saddle not dragging the saddle to one side.

It can slightly depend on the saddle, most English saddles won't stay straight (and comfortable for the horse) with weight only in one stirrup and the right hand not at least partly balancing the weight across to the off side.

 

[stangs]

I'd be interested to hear more about Ben A, I'd suspected he was using clicker which is great to see, even if he is perhaps not a geeky purist with it. I think it is quite a forgiving method in that way, although of course best results come from best technique. He is clearly an effective trainer regardless.

When I get a moment, I'll add my clicker-related notes from the showcase to the R+ thread, as there were a couple people using food there and a few worth-discussing comments came up.

He's definitely not a clicker purist, but I presume the fact he's currently 'grounded' with a knee issue means he might be using it more than he did before. Either way, it's good to hear a relatively big name talking about treats and consent and all that so openly.