The Paddocks Equine

🐴✨ Make a Simple “Sniff Pot” for Your Horse

One of the easiest ways to add a little curiosity and enrichment to your horse’s day is with something we call a Sniff Pot.

It’s simple to make, inexpensive, and surprisingly interesting for many horses.

All you need is:

• A strong plastic container with a lid
• A few small holes drilled into the top
• Something interesting for your horse to smell

That’s it. 😊

Horses naturally explore the world through scent, and many really enjoy investigating new smells when they’re introduced gently and safely.

Some horses become very curious.
Some sniff thoughtfully and quietly.
Some clearly have opinions about which scents they like… and which ones they definitely do not. 😄

It’s a lovely way to encourage calm investigation, curiosity, and thinking.

You may even notice your horse becoming more confident about exploring new things over time.

Here are a few interesting things you can try inside your Sniff Pot:

🌿 Herbs
• Fenugreek (many horses seem to love this one)
• Peppermint
• Chamomile
• Lavender
• Basil
• Rosemary
• Dried mint leaves

🍎 Food scents
• Banana peel
• Cinnamon stick
• Cloves (very small amount)
• Vanilla essence on cotton wool

🌸 Nature smells
• Pine needles
• Eucalyptus leaves
• Flowers such as roses or marigolds
• Safe leaves or bark from horse-safe trees

✨ Essential oils (very tiny amounts only)
Place a drop or two on a cotton ball inside the container.

Some horses enjoy:
• Lavender
• Peppermint
• Frankincense
• Chamomile

The important thing is to let your horse choose.

Some horses will be fascinated by certain smells and completely uninterested in others.

That’s part of the fun.

You’re learning more about what your horse enjoys while also giving them something new and interesting to explore.

And watching your horse carefully investigate a new scent with those soft whiskers twitching will give you a smile. 😊🐴

If you’d like more simple ideas like this to enjoy with your horse, I’ve left a link in the comments below. ✨

The invisible weight that no one prepares you for in midlife riding.

When riding begins to feel different, confidence is often the first thing questioned.
But for many women, what’s happening has very little to do with confidence in the way it’s usually understood.

It’s a physiological shift that is not often spoken about in riding, but has a very real impact on how safe, capable, and steady you feel in the saddle.

Hormonal change alters more than just mood.

As oestrogen levels fluctuate and decline, the nervous system becomes more reactive and less buffered. Stress responses can become quicker, stronger, and harder to settle. Situations that once felt manageable can begin to feel sharper, more intense, and less predictable — not because the rider has changed in ability, but because the system regulating those responses has become more reactive.

And something else that comes hand in hand at this stage of life is sleep disruption, which plays a significant role.

When sleep quality drops, resilience drops even further. The ability to process pressure, regulate emotion, and recover from a difficult ride becomes compromised. What might once have been a small wobble can start to carry over, linger, and build.

There are also physical changes to navigate too.🫣

Weight distribution shifts, muscle tone starts to diminish, meaning the way you feel in your body — your balance, your connection, your sense of control — may no longer feel as instinctive as it once did. Even subtle changes here can affect confidence in a way that is difficult to articulate but very easy to feel.

So the experience becomes layered.

There is the riding itself, but also a body that feels different, a system that over-reacts more quickly, and a baseline level of anxiety that is harder to shake. Together, these can create a sense that something is “off,” even when nothing obvious has gone wrong.

From the outside, this is often labelled as a loss of confidence.
From the inside, you just know that it’s more complex than that.

And because this conversation isn’t had openly enough, many women assume it is something they should be able to push through, manage better, or simply ignore.

But riding, as always, has a way of reflecting what is actually happening.

A horse introduces uncertainty by nature. That uncertainty may once have felt manageable, even enjoyable. But when the system is already working harder to regulate itself, the tolerance for that unpredictability narrows.

What feels like you are not quite who you used to be in the saddle is often the system trying to create safety with fewer available resources.

Not because you are no longer a good rider, but because something has changed.

Understanding that matters.

Because it shifts the narrative away from blame, and towards working with the body you are in now — not the one you had ten or twenty years ago - which is why some riders barely recognise themselves anymore.

Your physiology has changed, and accounting for that and starting to work with it instead of against it is the way forward.

Just know that you are not alone.

Anna

If you are ready to get back to the rider that you used to be and start enjoying it again - message me RESET.

I'll never stop pushing this until the cows come home! Unless for serious safety reasons, your horse shouldn't live alone. They are herd animals, whether you like it or not. I got this video today of all of our mares (and one gelding) herd snoozing together. The two horses nearest the door have only been in this herd for two weeks, after a couple of months of slow and careful introductions. We owe it to horses to meet their basic needs, which includes living with other horses. You can make small changes to have a huge positive impact on your horse; even allowing them to have a more turnout and a friend they can groom over the fence are all steps in the right direction 🙏

🐴 MENTAL DEFICITS IN HORSES
A topic I have not yet encountered in the equestrian world, yet I believe it is extremely important to talk about.

In human society, we have defined a wide spectrum of cognitive and intellectual disorders—reduced intelligence, attention disorders, or learning difficulties. We understand that individuals with such diagnoses face certain limitations and (ideally) we adapt to their abilities and provide support.

For some mysterious reason, however, we tend to assume that every horse is born fully functional and ready to perform for humans. In my therapeutic practice, I have worked with horses who showed signs of various mental or cognitive deficits. I have met horses I would certainly place somewhere on the autistic spectrum, as well as horses that displayed clear signs of intellectual disability.

These horses are not to blame for their condition. They are not capable of performing at the same level as their healthy peers. They may struggle with focus, attention, and learning, have difficulties forming social bonds with horses or humans, or be emotionally unstable and unpredictable. This does not mean they are “bad.” They are simply different.

Owners of such horses are often under extreme pressure from their surroundings. They are criticized for not training or disciplining their horse properly, they move from trainer to trainer, trying every possible approach and level of pressure to make the horse behave “normally.” But such a horse will never be “normal.” The only way forward is to accept this reality and offer support.

💡 Not every horse with unusual behavior necessarily suffers from a congenital mental deficit. Cognitive function can also be influenced by:

👉 Aging – degenerative changes in the brain or nervous system
👉 Chronic pain / physical discomfort – pain can take up attention and reduce focus
👉 Neurological disorders – infections or degenerative diseases of the central nervous system
👉 Metabolic disorders – diabetes, Cushing’s syndrome, or hormonal changes affecting the brain
👉 Lack of stimulation – horses kept long-term without proper enrichment
👉 Stress / anxiety / depression – psychological factors that slow reactions and reduce concentration

❓What can we do? Let’s talk about it! Let’s explore and study it. Let’s support such horses and their owners instead of blaming or shaming them. Every horse has its place in this world—though it might not be the one we imagined for ourselves.

K.

Turn Spooks into Curiosity 👻❓🔍🐴 Teach your horse to approach new things with curiosity—not fear.

👣When your weight isn’t in your pelvis, your feet become your base of support. That’s where a lot of riders run into problems. Instead of learning how to interact with the stirrups, many riders: 👉Grip with their knee. 👉Try to hold themselves above the saddle (like no-stirrups rising trot or half seat). 👉Push the stirrup away with a straightened knee, which leaves the lower leg swinging. But the stirrup changes everything – it makes the leg a closed-chain exercise (your foot is pressing into a surface). To stabilise it, you need to co-contract the muscles at the front and back of the leg and coordinate that with your pelvis and core. That’s why, no matter the rider’s level or ability, if stirrups are causing problems we always go back to basics: ✅ Finding the right balance between seat and stirrup load. ✅ Learning how to stabilise the stirrup without gripping. ✅ Building the strength and awareness to make the stirrup a supportive base – not a swinging one. 🙌 Mastering this is a game-changer for balance, stability, and feel, even when sitting in the saddle. And just to be clear – this isn’t about relying on the stirrups for balance. It’s about understanding where lower leg stability actually comes from when there’s weight in the stirrup. If you lose a stirrup, your body has to call on different muscles to stay stable – which is why it’s so important to train and develop both components. It’s also why doing no stirrup work doesn’t often fix stirrup/leg problems unless the problem was stemming from the seat. 🔗www.pegasusphysio.co.uk Book in for your Rider Physio session on the @RACEWOOD simulator in Cheshire! #RiderPhysio #RiderBiomechanics #pegasusphysio #riderbalance

You *can* become a more effective, softer, more capable rider just by riding more. You’ll get there eventually. But… it’ll be at the expense of your horse putting up with you pulling them off balance, slamming their back, or dominating one rein until you figure it out. Or...you COULD take the closest thing we have to a shortcut, and train your strength, mobility, and body awareness out of the saddle🤷‍♀️ Here's a little example of why it matters. I used a 17lb water bag in this video to represent a rider who isn’t strong enough to match their horse’s movement. Like the water sloshing around, that rider’s body is always a step behind or ahead. Flapping legs, bouncing seats, pumping torsos. The horse has to waste energy just managing them. BUT WHAT IF I swap it for a 20lb solid weight? Even though it was actually a bit heavierheavier, it moved with me. Like a rider who can sit quietly, match the horse’s rhythm, and support without conflicting their movement. That rider is WAY easier for the horse to carry, allowing them to go faster, jump higher, and stay sounder. Yes, timing, feel, and skill come from saddle time. That is very true. But without the physical CAPACITY to hold your position, follow the movement, and generate power when needed, your timing means nothing. And the fastest, most effective way to build those qualities? The gym. If you're looking for some help in that lane, but don't know where to start, that's EXACTLY what I've built the TEP Training System for. It's a comprehensive training program, hosted by Everfit, with discipline specific training program, a comprehensive onboarding process to help you build new habits and confidence in the gym, on-demand resources including riding biomechanics, training and rehab principles, and more. If anything is your shortcut, it's this. Doors open again this September. If you want more than just workouts, and you’re ready for a lifestyle change, comment TRAINING to join the waitlist and get first access.

This totally changed the way I rode the canter. 🐴👇 I was already an experienced rider, I was secure at the canter, but I couldn’t get a good collected canter from any horse I rode… because I was doing something funny with my seat that prevented them from going truly round. I had to understand this concept from the skeleton before I could finally nail a great canter. ❤️🙌 If you’d like the full video of this (9 minutes of skeleton learning) comment “canter” below and I’ll send it right over! Canter like this and your horse will thank you! ❤️👍 #equestrian #horsesofinstagram #horsebackriding #equinelife #showjumping #dressage #eventing #hunterjumper #equestrianlife #horserider #ridersofinstagram #equestrianbusiness #equinetrainer #horsetraining #trailriding, #trailhorse, #outontrail

Do your legs shoot forward in the rising trot? There are a lot of reasons this can happen, and like most things in riding, it’s not black and white. It’s not just a single muscle group responsible…everything is firing in different proportions and constantly adapting to the movement of the horse. But with the riders I work with, I often find that shifting their mental model of the rising trot from a squat pattern (where the knees travel forward and back) to a hinge pattern (where the hips initiate the rise) can make a big difference. When you squat, your quads extend the knee, which works well on the ground—but in the saddle, with the knee acting as a pivot point, this can cause the lower leg to shoot forward. A hinge movement (think deadlift mechanics) allows the glutes and hamstrings to drive the rise, helping the knee stay more stable while the upper body moves up and down. Of course, things will look different on a moving horse, but off-horse practice with a hinge or band-resisted hip movement can help build awareness. If this sounds familiar, try experimenting: think of your rising trot as a hip hinge instead of a squat, do some movement prep before you ride, and see if it helps your lower leg stay quieter. Bonus points if you video yourself before and after! And a reminder this is just ONE way to conceptualize the movement that might work for some people. If it doesn’t make sense or is confusing to you, feel free to ignore it! Do you enjoy this type of content? This, plus more biomechanics content is available in The Equestrian Physio Training app! And we take it one step further to provide you with a well rounded training program, specific to your discipline, which will help you address these issues! Check out the link in my bio to join the waitlist for the next enrollment!