How can Kailie help you?

Kailie helps people to develop a harmonious, mutual understanding with their horse through trust and confidence and without exploitation.

Would you like: –
• Your horse to look to you for direction?
• Your horse to willingly respond to you, with calmness, confidence and joy?
• A better way to communicate with your horse?
• To work without force, fuss and fear?
• The attributes and skills that make you safe and effective with horses?
• Your horse to enjoy your company and activities as much as you do?
• To be kind to your horse at all times?
• To be a safe and effective rider?
• To set off on the right footing with horses and riding?
• To improve your performance?
• To improve your horse’s performance?
• To understand what you need to do, and why?
• Your instructor to listen to you?
• To share ideas and insights with your instructor?
• To overcome your fears?
• Your lessons to be customised to your needs and those of your horse?
• To help your horse overcome its fears and concerns?
• To build a positive relationship with a new, young or troubled horse?
• To learn to ride and handle horses with skill, sensitivity, safety, balance and control?
• Your horse to remain sound in body and mind for its lifetime?
• Your work to help your horse, not hinder it?

Kailie has been helping people with all of these things for over 35 years. Her students range from 8 years old to retirees, with interests ranging from dressage, jumping, trail riding, Western, hunting, harness, to simply pleasure and leisure time with horses. She has helped people learn to start their own horses, re-educate bolters and troubled horses, and create more agile and athletic horses better able to perform the tasks asked of them.

What do lessons look like?
Kailie will listen to your needs, aspirations and limitations and customise her lessons to suit you and your horse. The relationship you have with your horse, the way you interact, is paramount. Nothing beautiful can be created out of force and exploitation.

Horses are not forced, tricked or blackmailed to cooperate, rather, they are helped to relax and learn for themselves. Kailie’s students learn how to safely communicate with their horses, both horse and human listening to each other.

You will not be put through a standardised program; rather, Kailie adapts the lesson to deal with the most important thing to be addressed at that time. Short cuts and quick fixes do not work or last, but dealing with the most important issue in the moment without losing sight of the goal builds a solid foundation upon which later work is easily placed. The work may be mounted or unmounted, depending on the situation.

Kailie helps you become self-sufficient by explaining the ‘what’s’ and ‘whys’ so that you acquire the thinking and behavioural tools to solve your own problems.

Kailie’s students are ordinary people doing extraordinary things
They also do ordinary things in an extraordinary way

You may want only enough skills to safely enjoy pleasure riding, or you may be ambitious for such things as high school dressage movements. Kailie can help you develop and build upon a solid foundation of ridden and groundwork, taking you to a high level of communication and skill.

Unmounted lessons may deal with anything from general maintenance; tacking up; relationship building; developing confidence; improving communication; body awareness and control; rider dynamics; horse physiology and movement, to much more. All this helps you have a trusting, safe and understanding relationship with your horse so that you enjoy each other’s company, and your horse will help you with things such as hoof cleaning and trimming, mounting, placing or removing gear, float loading and leading. This is where you develop the rapport to do whatever you want or need to do when not mounted, and prepares the horse for when you are (if riding is your goal).

Riders learn to sit with an independent seat i.e. without needing their hands or stirrups for balance, and being able to stay with the horse’s movement without bouncing or losing their balance. Apart from the safety benefits, this allows the rider to feel the horse’s movements and thoughts and to communicate clearly, subtly and in a controlled manner, bringing the best out in their horse.

How long will it take me and my horse to improve?
Some people are experienced equestrians but are having difficulties with a particular horse, or getting back to riding after a break or injury, or they may need someone else to teach their child. Others have green horses or are beginners themselves. Or perhaps they are keen to improve for personal or competition reasons.

Because every person, horse and combination is different, the time it takes to achieve your goals will be specific to you. Many people find that as their relationship with their horse improves, their goals change, often in unexpected directions. Many students continue with Kailie for years, not because they don’t improve, but rather because they do and because they find the journey so interesting.

The horse’s feelings matter
Developing trusting and co-operative relationships is so important to Kailie that it led her to inventing the Gydle. This headpiece is to help riders communicate with their horse without any of the disadvantages of slipping, force or pain generally associated with more regular forms of headgear. The horse is free to use his jaws without the rider losing communication or control, or worrying about causing pain, which is especially good for less experienced riders. For more experienced riders the Gydle can give precise aids like a bit, which enables you be subtle and to help your horse carry you with better balance. A balanced horse is a more confident, co-operative and capable one, with the bonus side effect of being more beautiful to watch and ride. The Gydle is a tool that benefits beginner and advanced riders and horses.