Hello everyone
I have just started liberty training with my mare Fila. We have an amazing trainer, unfortunately she lives in another city and can only fly down every other month or so. We have just done the initial at liberty work and a bit of in hand and I am absolutely loving it and have not looked back since.
I got Fila off the track almost three years ago. She came off as a 6 year old. I let her have a good two months of being a horse, while also transitioning to barefoot. When I brought her back into work I had dressage ambitions and found a very sympathetic coach (I had trained previously in a more traditional sense, "outside rein, inside leg!!" - sound familiar
, and I something inside me said I didn't want to place this upon my own horse). Fila is quite a madam when she wants to be and very mouthy with the bit, I would so much twitch a finger wrong and a head tossing fit would ensue. So we pottered on like this for over a year, I just felt like we weren't really progressing and our rides very much depended on Fila's moods. I ended up moving to a new city and Fila could only join me 6months later due to the area being an African Horse Sickness free zone.
In that time apart I learnt of straightness training, at liberty work and also made the decision to go bitless...what a difference it has made in our time spent together, not to mention Fila's work ethic. We are still in the very beginning stages but I am so excited to find this forum to help us move forward on our new journey.