It is important to allow horses freedom to experiment with postures. However, I didn’t just abandon Flicker to do this: when I first lunged her, her posture was very detrimental to her body so I brought her back to walk to work on a few things.

Coming back after months of in-hand in slow walk interspersed with frequent stretching, it’s lovely to see that she is now balanced enough to choose a more healthy posture in trot. This gives us freedom to play around. Uphill, downhill, transitions and speeds, finding her balance in different scenarios. I also ditched the expensive Cavesson and lunge rein on Flicker’s request and returned to a simple headcollar with thin leather reins attached to both sides.