11/04/2026
This has perfectly summed up my time so far with Lockie.
Understanding that shifting our approach to a kinder one is a transition, an integration.
And not being afraid of this process.
If you are a gentle horsewoman or want to transition away from the systems that no longer feel fair…
Be gentle with yourself. AND not the kind of gentle that feels like collapse, fear, and apprehension.
Be gentle by understanding that this is a learning process, an integration process and stand strong in your commitment to your horse, yourself. As you navigate new ground.
If you want to discover more tools, resources and be in a likeminded community space-
You are invited to Lockie’s first UK clinic tour, at Naturally Light Equitation on the 18th and 20th of July.
Find out more here!
https://emotionalhorsemanship.com/clinics-2722
When Gentleness is Ineffective
So, you’ve made the choice to begin training horses with less pressure. You’ve reflected on what you’ve done, what those around you do, and it has all begun to feel like people hold a constant, low-level animosity towards horses.
The horse hesitates, the pressures get bigger.
The horse disobeys, the person hustles after them.
The horse steps forward into your space, they get banged on their halter.
And so on.
Almost like horses cannot be trusted. Like they are setting up their sessions to make situations dangerous.
And the story told about this?
A horse responding to bigger pressures, 20 pounds and above, is not afraid of you. They are resilient. You are teaching courage. At least, that’s what you’re told. You’re told the world is a tough place full of hazards, and your horse needs to be prepared to respond, to move, to obey when you lay down the law. That if you don’t simulate explosions, the horse will become explosive.
This is what you’re told.
All the while, nobody, or hardly anyone, speaks to the systems that create these hazards in the first place. Any attempt at a systems-based approach is met with derision. “Incompetent.” “Snowflake.” The modern gentle horse person becomes the convenient boogieman.
Meanwhile, somewhere in an arena, a horse stands blinking in the face of waves and waves of pressure they know can only be released through immediate response.
Meanwhile, a talented young horse trainer, entering the workforce, signs a quiet contract with themselves late at night. That they too will perpetuate these practices. That they will not challenge the deeper systems. That they will carry the party line: that response under excessive and mismatched pressure is necessary for safety and the only way to get real results.
They make that decision. And they lay down their dreams of something kinder. They rebrand kindness as stoic firmness, one that is always ready to escalate if the culture demands it.
Ask me how I know this.
I am speaking about a former version of myself.
Not long ago, I made a quiet decision to not partake. To not build an illusory world where banal violence was framed as competence. Where mistrust and hostility towards the horse was branded as practical.
I chose instead to take a systems-based approach, while also revising my technical toolkit, which had been exceptionally good at gaining compliance on confused, remedial, and often dangerous horses.
Then I rebuilt my horse life around a set of principles that eventually galvanized into practices.
Here is the part I want to make clear.
I speak to both sides of this fence:
One cannot simply decide to use one or two types of monotonous soft pressure and expect a horse to understand you, or to be safe in a wide variety of situations.
When people move toward gentleness, many of them strip away the types of pressure that make them feel uncomfortable. But for most horses, that is the language they know. So now both of you are thrown into the deep end of a new kind of soft confusion, armed with one or two tools and a lot of hope.
This is where things begin to fall apart.
This is why detractors push back. This is why critics call this work dysfunctional. Because ethical intent alone is not enough. A monolithic idea of softness becomes just as abstract and ungrounded as the systems it is trying to replace.
Meanwhile, the horse is standing right there, simply trying to understand.
The solution is not to erase gentle practices. Nor is it to swing back toward excessive pressure and call it resilience.
Neither of these approaches holds long term.
The solution is integration.
Expansive, informed, resourced, adaptable work.
You need to be able to use many different types of pressure to communicate clearly with a horse. To become gentle is not to become empty-handed. It is to become more precise, more aware, more capable.
You cannot abandon your identity and your toolkit overnight and expect clarity to emerge.
You need structure. A process. Step by step techniques that help you listen, adjust, and respond to what is actually happening for the horse, rather than the stories you’ve been told.
Becoming gentle is not a decision.
It is a technical process. A demanding one.
It requires attention, coaching, community, support, and time.
Think about how many years you spent refining your whip signals. Ten? Twenty? And yet we expect whip-less training to work in two minutes.
That expectation reveals something deeper. A prejudice that gentleness requires less study, less skill. And at the same time, a quiet understanding that it could be more effective than what we have normalised.
Most of us were taught to kick, pull, and push long before we were taught to listen.
You deserve to become technical, studious, supported, and guided.
And so does your horse.
This is what I have built my life around.
I live it. I breathe it.
And I have removed anything that would distract me from this work.
