Today’s episode is a really short & snappy one, dare I say, a mini-sode. Despite being short, it’s an important one, where I’m sharing 2 valuable training tips that I’ve been talking about with my students for more than a decade: farts & unicorns. These are two training tips you can take away immediately and incorporate into your training. A short episode, but one I hope you find really helpful. And now I best explain just what I mean by farts & unicorns. Listen to find out. In this ...
Oct 31, 2023•13 min•Season 3Ep. 5
It was a few years back now when I first heard about Dr Michaela Hempen’s Masters Research on Crib-biting, which, for those uninitiated, is a stereotypic behaviour that horses can develop. I heard about the research and then had the good fortune to see some of the timeline film of the project thanks to Alexandra Kurland. There is not much now, after so long in the horse world that really captures my attention strongly, but wow, Michaela’s research blew my mind – it still does. I was captivated w...
Oct 24, 2023•1 hr 55 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Having young and or green horses is awesome. But also, it can be confusing and overwhelming. We hear conflicting information on young horses – that we shouldn’t start them under saddle too early because their bodies need to develop. But then we also hear that they need a job to do and we often see that in the busy, exploratory behaviour we see from them. For many people it’s a rock and a hard place and we too often end up with young horses started under saddle too soon because they need a job to...
Oct 17, 2023•22 min•Season 3Ep. 3
I am ridiculously excited to have Hannah Branigan as our guest on An Equine Conversation this episode. If you don’t know Hannah’s work, you should make a point of getting to know it. Hannah’s education programs and content in the animal training space with a focus on dogs is next level excellent. Her podcast, Drinking from the Toilet that I’ve mentioned a couple of times in the past on An Equine Conversation and have recommended to many people, is one of my favourites for insightful training inf...
Oct 10, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 3Ep. 2
This episode of An Equine Conversation is quite a different one: In late 2015, Benn & I moved to the country, from the outer suburbs of Melbourne. Yep, we did eat a lot of peaches initially (we knew people with a prolifically producing tree), and have since planted 2 peach trees of our own LOL. For me, moving to the country had been a dream since I can remember (I can’t remember a time I didn’t want my own ‘farm’) and for Benn who grew up on a hobby-farm but then moved into town for study &a...
Oct 03, 2023•1 hr 35 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Hello lovely listener! We are delighted to be back with Season 3 of An Equine Conversation, a podcast brought to you by Abbey’s Run Equestrian. I’m your host, Sarah Nickels. Just like the previous Seasons, Season 3 includes 8 episodes (plus this trailer). Episodes will drop on a Wednesday morning, Melbourne/Sydney time. We’re dropping our first episode next Wednesday, October 4th. Check out this trailer for a glimpse of what’s coming up this Season & to find out about the free challenge we h...
Sep 26, 2023•11 min
I’m delighted to welcome our good friend, Julia Inglis back to An Equine Conversation. We first met Julia in Series 1, Episode 8 ‘Julia’s story - a tale to learn from’. If you want to hear Julia’s story, you can jump back and listen to that episode. Julia & I talk so much about training, so we thought we’d start to share some of these conversations with you. In this episode, we start by catching up on how Julia’s horse Maddy, who has Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS) went over last Spring and ...
Jun 13, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 2Ep. 8
*Please note: this episode does contain profanity* I first encountered Canadian-based Erin Moore when a friend pointed me to a podcast episode Erin had done last year on running a successful dog training business and I immediately resonated with Erin’s work. I loved what Erin was all about & since that time have been working with Erin on my business, Abbey’s Run Equestrian. Cut to earlier this year & Erin was on the ‘Drinking from the Toilet’ podcast , which is a fabulous podcast about a...
Jun 06, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Season 2Ep. 7
We want your training with your horse to be fun & enjoyable for your both – in short, we want you to be really successful in your training. When we think about training with our horses & being successful with our training, we often think about the time when we're actively training 1:1 with our horse... but there is a whole bunch of stuff that comes before the active training part that is inextricably connected to how successful any active training will be or not. Some of the things that ...
May 31, 2023•23 min•Season 2Ep. 6
In early 2022, I started to become a more ardent feminist as I became increasingly exposed to staggering statistics and information around the gender inequality still facing women. This isn’t to say I was ignorant or not a feminist beforehand; it’s more that my focus has become even sharper the more I’ve been exposed to. I’m very grateful to the friends who introduced me to some excellent resources including: Annabel Crabb’s book ‘The Wife Drought’ , ‘The Guilty Feminist’ podcast and book by Deb...
May 23, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In my almost 3 decades of teaching people with horses, there are some things I have been asked about many times. Questions around or support in buying a new horse has been one of these. Horse shopping, much like property shopping, can be an emotional roller-coaster of an experience. Then when you finally land on which equine and have your new partner home, things may not go, in fact often they don’t go, quite as you imagined they would. In this episode I’m going to speak to the ‘truth’ in buying...
May 16, 2023•17 min•Season 2Ep. 4
How many people do you know who’ve had some kind of pain or illness that the human medical professionals have not been able to get to the bottom of or provide relief from? Or where it’s taken some time and robust investigations, often driven by the person or their family to figure out what’s going on? I know quite a few & have experienced this myself, and this is with the diagnostics available to human medicine. Almost daily I see equine-owning humans asking for training help online with a h...
May 09, 2023•53 min•Season 2Ep. 3
We recently released our brand new and long-awaited logo for our business Abbey’s Run Equestrian. The bones of this logo have been rattling around my head for more than 2.5 years and we were finally in a position to bring it to life with the help of Evie Francesca Design Studio. While the logo itself is physically 2-dimensional, each element holds a purpose or a story about our business, what we do and why we do it. This episode is to share with you the meaning behind each of the logo elements a...
May 02, 2023•20 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Late last year I started seeing promotions for the film The Banshees of Inisherin, an Irish film that included a miniature donkey Jenny as one of the stars alongside a cast of several other animals and the human actors including Kerry Condon, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. I’m not always a fan of animals in films but frankly, Jenny was just gorgeous and as my partner Benn is a fan of miniature donkeys, I was paying more attention. I was so delighted to know that Jenny had been trained using ...
Apr 25, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Season 2Ep. 1
We are super excited to be back with Season 2 of An Equine Conversation. Check out the trailer for a glimpse of Episode 1 & some fun training action we’ve got going on. As with Season 1, Season 2 episodes will drop on a Wednesday morning, Melbourne/Sydney time. The season consists of 8 episodes (episodes we are so excited about bringing to your ears) plus this trailer. Episode 1 will be released on Wednesday, April 26. Thank you to Matthew Bliss for podcast production & consultation. You...
Apr 18, 2023•7 min
In today’s episode, I’m speaking with Julia Inglis, a very good friend of mine who I met virtually through a mutual friend. Julia lives over in Western Australia, the other side of the country from me, and we’re actually yet to meet in real life. Julia and I are messaging one another and sometimes talking, almost daily about horse training and management. While we had so much we talked about discussing on this episode, we decided that actually the best place to start, was with Julia’s story – or...
Jan 24, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In the previous podcast episode with Sara Jackson, and in the next episode with Julia Inglis, you’ll hear mention of ‘positive reinforcement’ as a training approach. We’ve mentioned it ourselves too in talking about our Start Your Engines course+workshop. I suspect that some of you listening will be well familiar with training using positive reinforcement, but there are likely others listening who are not so sure. So in this episode, we’re going to touch on what training with positive reinforcem...
Jan 17, 2023•17 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In this episode, I’m speaking with Sara Jackson who is across the other side of the Country from me, over in Western Australia. For those unfamiliar with Australia, that’s a 4-hour flight, plus the drive at each end to the airport, which at my end is over 3 hours. We’re speaking about Sara's her own, quite colourful journey with horses and how this has brought her to sharing with other people about equine body language, equine behaviour & how important understanding this is for having a 2-wa...
Jan 10, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 6
It is so easy to fall into the trap of assuming that because it says horse on the label, or comes from a saddlery, or produce store, that your horse will know what to do with, whatever the thing is. Especially if you believe that your horse had some life experience before it came to be with you. This episode could be a super short one, where I just tell you that your horse DID NOT get the memo that they are supposed to know about things we humans have created for them, and that for all the thing...
Jan 03, 2023•18 min•Season 1Ep. 5
In this week’s episode, I chat with Sharon Merritt from Victoria’s Country Fire Authority, better known here as the CFA, on preparing for bushfire (or you might know it as wildfire events) when we own horses. This is something we feel strongly about having had friends and family impacted in some of the more recent major fire events in our Country and having had fire come close to where our horses live a number of times. While we had a very wet Spring in our part of the world, fires still happen,...
Dec 28, 2022•58 min•Season 1Ep. 4
I’m not sure about you, but I’m pretty sure that more often than not, my horsie ducks have waddled off to a rave party, even with my horses that have been with me for many years. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s rare that my ducks are in a row – in the row I actually want them in. Sometimes they’re in a row in aisle 3, except I’m in aisle 5 and wanting them there. This can be a frustrating experience, having our horsie ducks waddling off. It can feel like we’re taking 3 steps forward then 2...
Dec 20, 2022•16 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In this episode I’m talking with Dr Lizzie McCready who has taken her profession from on the road Equine Veterinary practice to working with horse owners to improve their emergency response skills. Find out some top tips to improve your own skills & be better prepared for those inevitable emergencies that arise when we have horses. Dr Lizzie McCready: Dr Lizzie, an equine vet based in Melbourne is bringing invaluable vet-taught education to the horse owner world. She started Empowering Equin...
Dec 13, 2022•44 min•Season 1Ep. 2
The prevailing dogma for humans working with horses for 1000’s of years has been that the horse is there to serve us and fulfil our needs – from horses going into battle, to ploughing the fields, pulling the cart and working in mines. Despite the industrialisation of the Western World to a place where horses are now not so much a necessity as a luxury, a fun hobby, and us knowing that they are a sentient being, the dogma of the horse being there to serve us and fulfil our needs has, in a large p...
Dec 06, 2022•22 min•Season 1Ep. 1
This podcast aims to help you, the horse owner, improve your knowledge by giving you access to top quality information that will help you be the best horse owner you can be so that you can give your horses the best life possible. Through An Equine Conversation, I’ll share my expertise with you along with helping you connect to and hear from some amazing experts in their own fields – because while I have a lot of knowledge, I am by no means the expert in all of the things. We’ll also be talking w...
Dec 06, 2022•8 min
