HorseTalk®
Following HorseTalk®- principles assures that your students will get the horsemanship and psychological knowledge needed for everyone’s safety and pleasure. You don’t have to be guessing what the rider does or doesn’t know and you don’t have to justify giving an introductory talk instead of the kind of superficial riding lesson some busy urban recreational rider might seem to be expecting. Most of all, you keep your horses feeling safe, content, sensitive yet calm, and willing partners in your work. Consequently, they will be able to teach your students the right things, the correct feel and, most importantly, the true communication and connection that draw your clients to horses and riding in the first place.
I synthesized HorseTalk® - pedagogy in late 90’s from everything I had learned by then. I had been a British Horse Society certified riding instructor for some 15 years and a riding student myself for three decades, with exposure to instructors and trainers of many different nationalities, interests, philosophies and skills. As I also have degrees in science and education, by then I had been teaching, in addition to riders and their instructors, highly successful young people at university as well as at risk teens in middle school. I realized that my riding instruction and work with horses improved the more I developed ways to combine together all my knowledge, skills and my interests in the fields of alternative education.
As I did that, I also set out on a personal riding journey to greater inner balance and integration, I learned to listen to the startling wisdom of intuition inherent in all of us and I fell in love with horses all over again. I discovered far more layers in interspecies communication than I had ever thought possible and I am just beginning to understand why some old riding masters talked about riding as meditating with their horses. Being the mother of three riding children helped me to truly realize what kind of responsibility we instructors have when we teach other adults’ most precious people, their children. That and the gratitude I feel towards horses for all they have taught me have prompted me to share HorseTalk® with others.
HorseTalk® was designed to be a pedagogically sound curriculum with a diagnostic aspect built in to it. It had to meet the needs of any commercial riding establishment while guaranteeing maximum possible physical and emotional safety for horses and riders. Over the years HorseTalk® - pedagogy has developed further and provides riding instructors a progressive set of activities and lesson plans that help give clients, in addition to correct skills in riding, a well-rounded equestrian experience and good understanding of sound horsemanship based on the principles of classical riding and natural horsemanship.
Riding schools today are in essence teaching children and teens multiple life skills, emotional intelligence and a whole set of values. HorseTalk® - workshops aim at providing young instructors with tools to confidently meet the educational and emotional needs of their young clients. Experienced instructors hopefully get some new ideas on how to present something they already do in another way. All HorseTalk®- activities target the rider’s holistic development and aim at providing riders with an experience of true communication and emotional connection with the horse. The key is, like in all riding instruction, to build everything layer by layer from the ground up. But HorseTalk® - pedagogy differs from ‘standard’ riding instruction in that it helps to integrate to it the emotional and psychological aspects of riding that are often considered difficult to teach in a normal riding school context.
When the rider improves the horse gladly will too. Teaching becomes easier when the feedback comes from the horse and the instructor is specifically trained to act as an interpreter between the horse and the rider. The progressive curriculum allows the instructor to assess a new client’s and horse’s present level, any gabs in skill and theory base, and gives a clear program to start fixing them without neglecting the key emotional and spiritual elements that draw people to horses and riding in the first place.
The program was successfully tested over four years in Beijing in teaching Chinese stable staff, riding instructors and a couple of hundred riding school clients representing some twenty different nationalities. The students’ skill levels ranged from total beginner to Prix St. George and 130cm competition jumping. Oy Cavesson Ltd. is now offering training in HorseTalk® - pedagogy to instructors, trainers and interested horse owners all over the world. Workshops are arranged at Cavesson’s training facilities in Vidafält , southern Finland, and in other countries at riding centres interested in hosting such a workshop.
See HorseTalk® in action here!
Principles Of Ethical Horsemanship
HorseTalk® - everything towards true communication
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