I was home from France for only a few days before Equidays was held at Mystery Creek in Hamilton. WOW, what a spectacular that proved to be! I had a great time there presenting clinics and catching up with sponsors, clients and long lost friends. Andrew and Manu McLean flew in along with their daughter Sophie, and the Equitation Science message was spread far and wide. My first lecture Demo was out in the Natural Horsemanship Arena, it was a trailer loading demo that I entitled "It's not about Leadership - its about Leading" - a bit of a dig at my Natural Horsemanship counterparts who talk about being the "Alpha Mare" and making the horse trust and respect you. Those of you who understand Equine Learning Theory will know that its simply about training the horse to respond correctly to the leading pressures. I was a bit nervous at the start - I love performing to an audience, but this audience included two very special guests - my parents John and Christine... I don't think they have ever seen me at work as a trainer / coach so I was thrilled they could make it along.

My second demo was on the evergreen stallion Donnerwind - we were in the indoor school and I did a mounted lecture demo on the principles of training using Equitation Science. This one I really enjoyed - running through all the basic responses that a horse needs to know - and showing how simple life can be for you and your horse if you stick to basic training principles such as one aid at a time and one response for each aid. I had a lot of fun with the audience and Donnerwind was simply super. Later that evening Dr McLean and I did a demo at the night show "A Touch of the Classics" - once again Donnerwind did me proud in front of a huge audience under lights.

Its always a pleasure to work alongside Andrew McLean - the man that boosted by riding career to places it was never destined to go before we met. On the second day of Equidays I presented a lecture in the indoor arena again, this time I was on foot and was ably assisted by my long time friend Nikki Hallen riding her 6yo Landioso daughter "Foxy". We covered such topics as how to get your horse to relax, training a horse to not be spooky, and I finished off with a demonstration of approach conditioning where I taught Foxy to "chase" the Swiss ball to make her braver... That was definately a highlight for the audience - techniques like this are commonplace in my training, but never before have they been demonstrated to the public of New Zealand in a "dressage" setting.

My final session was on training a horse to come up to the mounting block - and again I used Foxy as a demo. We had great feedback from this session - I even had emails from strangers who had gone home and trained their own horses - one lady in particular was astonished that after literally years of battling with her horse at mounting time, she could now get on hassle free! Hearing feedback like that makes my day... If the life of the horse and rider are made easier, my job is well done!

One of the highlights of Equidays was getting to watch the professionals in many other disciplines - it gave me great insight into their techniques and we met some lovely people. A highlight for me (and most females!) was getting to meet the famous Double Dan's. What great guys - check them out on you tube, funny, entertaining, and great horsemen! Next year they want to use Donnerwind for their jumping through fire routine - Bring it on!