In the world of horses there are many areas to explore, many disciplines to exercise and many ideas to learn.
We believe horsemanship is like the path of life.… The path to horsemanship isn’t just one way, there are many ways you can go down, and they all lead somewhere a little different but are all based on the love for horses.
At MBHT an important and large part of our business is training and working with horses, we make a plan each year to spend time training horses and also ourselves.
The MBHT team have come from varied backgrounds in horses from show jumping, pony club, trekking, dressage, western riding, hunting, self taught etc so we all have different skills and ideas to contribute, the key here is adding all this experience to the business and applying it where needed, learning from each other and building on our knowledge, as well as having some fun together and building a fantastic supportive team environment.
We have been incredibly lucky to work with some pretty amazing trainers from all over the world allowing us to add to our ever growing skill sets and shape our philosophy, from working with wild horses and bringing a few home to rehabilitate and train to re training problem horses and keeping our trekking horses in tip top shape for the job. It’s a busy life with never one day the same as the next.
Over the years our approach to horsemanship has changed and developed and we find ourselves at a point where we often say“less is more” We wouldn’t go as far as saying we are natural horsemanship people as this term generally leads to very specific training methods but instead we say we are learning and practising better horsemanship. Ensuring we start at the beginning as in the very beginning…. on the ground.
Building trust, connections and confidence through varied exercises all based on soft pressure and lots of release. We know horses learn from the release and finding the calm safe zone, they actively look for this space and when they look for it and find it we release and this is the reward, all our training exercises are based on this method and teaching our horses safe boundaries.
By letting our horses display characteristics of their natural behaviours as if they lived like they do in the wild, such as living in herds together and having large areas to graze, play, roam and rest really helps with the horses’ communication amongst the herd as well as in a work environment. We find our horses’ mental state to be alot happier also, they have the chance to interact with other horses, graze and stretch their legs or rest and lie down and sleep.
The balance the horses have in their lives in terms of work, play rest and training is really important and that’s why we have enough horses to rotate them regularly in the treks so they all get days off, our horses only work 2-4 days each out of a whole 7 days meaning they all get at least 3 days off each week.
Horses are instinctual creatures and while many of our horses are born into domesticated life we believe they still harvest behaviors driven by instinct, the more we understand these instinct and the way a horse’s brain works the more we can be beneficial to our horses when training them and communicating with them in a language they can understand.
Understanding energys, use of energy and reading expressions can give us a huge amount of insight to how a horse is feeling and what they are trying to say, the more we practice the more we can use these skills during our training process.
We would like to thank the following for inspiring us to keep learning and following our horse dreams….
Ray Hunt
Warwick Schiller
Russell Higgins
Terera Trull
Tui Teka
Mark Todd
Buck Brenanman
