Why observing your horse will always tell you more than opinions ever will

I arrived at a new yard here in Dubai recently and, after a brief introduction, I asked to see the horse walk and trot on the hard ground before doing anything else.

The response I received was, “I don’t believe in chiropractic, just so you know.”

It’s a statement I’ve heard before, and if I reflect honestly, there was a time earlier in my career where a comment like that would have unsettled me. I would have questioned myself, wondered whether I needed to explain what I do, or felt a subtle pressure to justify my presence before I had even had the opportunity to assess the horse.

That response comes from a place of feeling like you need to prove something.

Over time, that has changed, not because those comments have stopped, but because my understanding of my role has become much clearer.

Every rider brings their own beliefs, past experiences, and interpretations into a session, and those beliefs are not something that need to be challenged or corrected in that moment. They exist independently of what the horse is physically doing, and they do not alter the information that is available when you take the time to observe movement properly.

So rather than engaging with the comment, I continued with what I always do and asked to see the horse move.

Within a few minutes of observing the horse in walk and trot, the movement pattern began to reveal itself, and as I talked through what I was seeing, the dynamic shifted. The rider became more attentive, more thoughtful, and you could see that something was starting to make sense in a way that it hadn’t before. This was not because I had challenged her opinion, but because she was being shown something through the horse that she could recognise for herself.

This particular horse was struggling with a left to right canter lead change, something that is often approached from a training perspective, with more repetition, more correction, or more input from the rider. However, when you take a step back and look at the fundamentals, these issues are rarely just about training, they are about how the horse is able to use its body to perform the movement being asked of it.

Having ridden at Prix St. George level and continuing to train as an athlete myself, I understand both the feel of these movements under saddle and the physical requirements needed to build them correctly. That combination allows me to look at a horse’s basic movement patterns and begin to identify where compensation is occurring, where restriction is present, and how that might translate into the problems the rider is experiencing at a higher level.

This is where I believe many riders become stuck.

We are surrounded by opinions, advice, and different approaches, all of which can be useful in the right context, but they can also create a level of noise that pulls attention away from the one place that consistently provides accurate and honest information, which is the horse itself.

The way a horse moves will always reflect what is happening within its body, and when you learn how to observe that properly, you begin to rely less on external opinions and more on what is actually in front of you.

By the end of this particular session, there was no need for persuasion or explanation. We had a clear plan moving forward, a follow-up appointment booked, and another horse to assess, and the shift came not from changing a belief, but from observing the horse with clarity and understanding.

If there is one takeaway from this, it is that when you feel stuck or unsure, the answer is very rarely found in adding more opinions into the mix. It is found in going back to the horse, slowing things down, and learning how to see what is already there.

Because your horse is already telling you everything you need to know.