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Charlotte, Bella, Nan & Galupy 🌿 in tribute to Bo

@hoofprintsofher

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🐴 Holistic horsemanship rooted in horse listening, supported by science
🌿 Exploring deep connection, barefoot, 24/7 outside
🛖 Browsing paddock at home

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I promised to share Bella’s diagnosis today... So with a tear rolling down my face, here goes. Two weeks ago, Bella misstepped in the paddock. A few steps later I noticed a weird pace. “It’s her knee” was my first thought - this knee always gave me doubts as she seemed to put less weight on it. I just wished my intuition was wrong.

But today it was confirmed. After a clean x-ray, the ultrasounds showed damage in Bella’s meniscus. Not only that, it was also slightly bulging outwards, and there is calcification signaling an older injury. Not surprised but still dejectedly I listened to the vet talking through options... But there’s hardly one - except for an expensive surgery without much guarantee for a better quality of life. “The meniscus is a very passive structure, at this age it barely heals”. We can only be patient, move within her comfort zone to strengthen the muscles and hope for the best. To be comfortable in all gaits, so she can live the happy painfree life she deserves. 🤍 But I don’t believe that will include many of the adventures I had wished for her. The most painful is that there’s no guarantee that we’ll actually reach that painfree life.

Through the pain, I am still oddly positive. She’s still Bella, I’m still me. We can still walk, we can still enjoy time together. We can still grow as a team. I can read in the sun while she munches hay... I believe in her and her body. We’re good.

If anything I only love her more which, some bad day, will make this all worse. My only hope is that we can escape that day for many many more years♥️ by @hoofprintsofher

When trust starts to crack, it’s love that keeps you going.🌙

Hi guys, it’s been a while since I posted anything here. The past couple of months with Bella have been quite difficult. Ever since I moved away and we are “long distancing”, seeing each other only once a week, our relationship shifted and some things happened that weakened my trust.

As I moved into a city mindset/higher energy/more disregulated state, Bella and my energies haven’t matched all too well. I think she has struggled with her body as well. That led to a couple of accidents following each other, that ultimately made me a bit scared. We went from riding bit- and saddleless in the forest to me not even daring to walk outside the paddock with her…

That’s why I’ve been so absent here. And why haven’t gotten to share these beautiful pictures @kingaluberda took of us a few months ago, back when we were at a high instead of a low🥰😌

It’s by looking back at pictures like these that I keep on wanting to restore what we had and make each other happy again🤍

How is your relationship with your horse? Have you ever had breaks of trust and how did you restore it?🫶🏼 by @hoofprintsofher

So often horses are bought and cared for with a purpose in mind. To be a sports prospect, the new medal winner or future star. And these horses are really loved, until the horse can’t perform or live up to these hopes and dreams. That’s when owners try everything to get their horses to perform again, and when they don’t.. they slowly lose interest. And I get it.

When I learned my horse Bo could and would never be happy in competitive sports because of her emotional bagage and physical impairments, I didn’t know how to move on. But I knew I loved her, and I knew she deserved the world. And so I gave her that to the best of my ability. I challenged myself to alter my dreams, into dreams we could have together. It wasn’t easy, but it felt right. It forced me to open my perspective and try alternative ways, bringing me so many new insights.

It’s hard work, it’s expensive, and caring for a horse without results can feel like a never ending cycle. But there is so much to learn and experience. So much love can grow.

I’ve felt strongly that I don’t want to be the only one getting something out of our relationship. I’m quite incapable of reducing a horse to something that should serve me or make my dreams come true. I do have goals and dreams with horses in my life, but I don’t expect my horses to perfectly fit these expectations, and I’d be happy to alter my plans. I care for my horses not with the hopes to get something gigantic in return. Their presence, the amazing privilege to live alongside them, learn with them and experience live with them is a gift in itself. 🫶🏼

#horsemanship #loveofthehorse #horse #horseriding #positivereinforcementhorsetraining #holistichorsecare by @hoofprintsofher

A lot has been said about the need for Friends, Forage, and Freedom to ensure horsewelfare. But what exactly are the benefits, and why doesn’t it always work?

🌾Meeting the horses innate, natural needs, these principles aim to promote a more ethical and holistic approach to horse care. It is also referred to as species or horse-appropriate husbandry.

💭 There is so much more to say about these 3F’s, for starters, they are not the only needs a horse has, just the basics. Personally I don’t think we should stop at offering just these 3. There are more needs and factors that come into play.

‼️ Yet, unfortunately many horses are still not met in these three needs. And many horse caretakers still think a horse is happiest in a golden stable, with a few portions of hard feed and a few hours of (solo) paddock time each day. This is simply not the truth, it would have been easier though, but it’s not right. Not even for sport horses, or old horses, or expensive horses, or clumsy horses, or a-social horses…. All horses share these basic needs for the mere fact that they are: a horse. Evolution did not change the core of these needs.

🐴 And yet there are plenty of instances where offering these 3F’s fails and that’s where most people give up or try to argument why their horse is the exception. Personally, I still have to meet the horse who really can not live with the 3F’s. That is not because I’ve never seen it fail, but because I know that with better, slower, more careful transitioning, in a better suited environment, it would have worked. It is not the horse responding abnormal, it is the horse responding normal to an abnormal situation.

- Charlotte, Hoofprints of Her
#horsemanship #friendsforagefreedom #horse #horsewelfare #paardenwelzijn #paard #paddockparadise #hitactief #247outside #ethicalhorsemanship #holistichorse #holistichorsecare #natuurlijkpaardenhouden #naturalhorsemanship #naturalhorsecare by @hoofprintsofher

Whilst opening a new book yesterday, my eye fell on this beautiful sentence. “Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the point in seeing?”.

Ouch, that hit me. I am observant, I see many things. Am I putting what I’m seeing into action? Have I implemented all important lessons the horses taught me? It made me think about my learning journey with horses.🍃

Learning is…scary
It’s confronting and confusing, sometimes even frustrating.
But it is also important and fun.

Recently I’ve been deep diving into the world of holistic equine nutrition again, for the first time since Bo past away.

Bo taught me, among many other enquiries, the importance of nurturing over feeding. I learned all the basics about healthier equine nutrition, letting food be the medicine, all because of her.
And when I had to let her go in a severe colic attack, some part of me knew that I would have to go back to seeing and acting at some point. I’d have to face the truth, revisit what is known about colics, about nutrition. I needed to learn from this lesson now, I needed to implement it. So that this teaching won’t have to repeat itself.

It took me about a year, but here I am. Revisiting the knowledge, rejoining courses about nutrition, finding my passion to help so many others to not only learn, but implement what they have learned.

Because I think cognitive dissonance can often lead us to think that we have grown, while we are essentialy still in a loop of doing the same thing. And we can only get out of this loop by taking action on what we have seen.💭

#herdwisdom #equineassistedlearning #equineassistedtherapy #horsemanship #ethicalhorsemanship #mindfulhorsemanship #intrinzen #appaloosa #paard #paardencoaching #paardrijden #zenbuddhism #natuurlijkpaardenhouden #horse #learning #equinelearning by @hoofprintsofher

Being a neutral observer🧘🏽
One theme the horses thought me about over the past year, is about the mindset with whom we approach our horse. There is a great shift happening in the equestrian world, where people are becoming aware of their horse’s signals of discomfort and take these very seriously… And while this is a necessary and profound insight, there is one lesson I found myself learning again and again.
We can not come up to our horses every day and notice all the things that are off, or incorrect, or unhealthy.

🫶🏻 Because when we do this, we start seeing them not as the fierce and capable horses they are, but as puzzles to be solved, problems to be fixed, or we can only see them with pity… And the thing is, no horse has ever felt better because of our pity. They rather feel better because of our empathy.

💭 When we share our understanding for their situation, without constantly trying to change it, we start giving ourselves and our horses the space to be ourselves unconditionally. We can move to a place away from right and wrong, correct and incorrect. We can move to a place that welcomes variability, a place where we let go of control and insecurities.
We give ourselves time to evaluate the solutions we are trying to find, and it gives our horses time to restore.

🍂 Horses want to be seen in their wholeness. And so do we. In our weaknesses and strengths. Bella has a funny but powerful way to tell this story, as she moves away from me every time I observe some part of her with judgement. If I approach or touch her in a way that feels like vet-touch instead of kind-touch, she moves away. Teaching me a lesson about enjoying each others company in neutrality.

🌱 And so, I try to stay neutral. I observe the signals, I acknowledge their presence, their importance. I may write them down to check later on… And sometimes I share my worries with her. Yet I try to let go of everything that I do notice, but can not directly change. Sometimes the best support we can give, is to see, acknowledge and then find joy in something else. Together. by @hoofprintsofher

Lately I find myself drifting off into worries and limiting believes. Unrooted, searching for a vision or someone to show me the way.
It is in these moments that the horses can take me back to the present, and show me that I already know what way to go.
And I think, deep down we all know what we really want in life, but sometimes our visions are blurried by our ego, by worries, opinions and thoughts.
These can carry us so so far away from our core.
In these moments, all we need is to block out the noise, calm down the voices inside and around you, return to your true self, and then, simply trust the process.🤍
#herdwisdom #listentoyourhorse #horsewhisperer #horselistener #horsemanship #equine #horseriding by @hoofprintsofher

Your horse deserves someone who is there for them. You deserve someone who is there for you🤍 We all deserve to be heard and seen for who we truly are in the present moment. Not for the mistakes we made yesterday, not for who we could be in the future… But who we are and what we feel right now.🌼

#horsemanship #mentalhealth #ethicalhorsemanship #appaloosa #horse #paard #paardrijden #loveyourhorse #loveyourself by @hoofprintsofher

Re-training a “well trained” horse💭
If you’ve followed Bella’s journey from the start, you may know I started her from the ground up: rehabilitating haltering, touch, saddling, leading...
I’ve done this before with Bo, since she was a “dangerous horse”… But Bella was a perfectly rideable, cooperative horse when we bought her. So, why the ‘re-training’?

🏅Traditional training is mostly focussed on riding: when the horse is cooperative and nice to ride, training is successful.
However… cooperation does not equal emotional balance. Just like toleration does not equal acceptance.
For Bella, this turned to: being hesitant about brushing, walking or running away when trying to halter, freezing when saddling… And when leading her outside she would have a lot of trigger stacking, which led to dangerous behavior. Once you caught and saddled her - if you’d wanted to, you could perfectly ride her…

🍃 But that’s not what I wanted our foundation to be. These are all quite big and common signs that the horse is not fully comfortable with us and what we bring along. I don’t want to ignore, silence or mask these signs.
The thing is, within traditional training, we are not giving the horse much reason to truly trust us. There is always: “I love you but when you do…. there will be a consequence.” That doesn’t create a sense of safety.

🫶🏼 So for me, re-training or rehabilitating a horse is not just for green or “problem” horses… It is something that benefits any horse who was not given enough reason to trust people (and what they bring along) for the full 100%. It is a chance at righting the wrongs that these horses endured in the past. It is about creating a new and solid base.

That is why we have given Bella a decompression period; a period to let go of the everyday stressors she was used to, and to gently settle into her new lifestyle. And that is why I have been, and still am rehabilitating Bella step by step. So everything we do together becomes not just something she tolerates, but something she can accept.

Do you want to know whether rehabilitation could be helpful for your (new) horse, and want support in this process? Contact me to plan a session🤍 by @hoofprintsofher

One thing the horses showed me about relationships, is that we are definitely allowed to make mistakes.

😌We are allowed to feel our feelings with them, just like we can feel our feelings with friends: we can feel them without projecting them onto the other.

🌿And one thing is important: that overall, the interactions we have, feel good. It doesn’t matter whether a training was perfect, or whether the horses technique is great… But it does matter that the horse feels safe. Safe to express themselves and safe with a deep sense of care.

💭 So while we can make mistakes, just like in a friendship with people, we can’t hurt the other each interaction. We can’t say “you’ll just have to go through this stupid thing but I’ll gift you something afterwards”, and we can’t have high expectations of the other while we don’t set such standards for ourselves.

🫶🏼 If time after time, our riding, our handling or our attitude towards our horse is not giving a sense of safety, our relationship might shift into the wrong direction. And just like in friendships, someone who starts disliking to interact with you, won’t be so willing to meet up…

That’s why no matter the goal, we should always focus on building a friendship, every day again.

Do you want to take action in your relationship with your horse? Feel free to contact me to plan an (online) session. #horsemanship #herdwisdom #holistichorsemanship #postivehorsemanship
#horse #appaloosa #horsewhisperer #horsecommunication #naturalhorsemanship #positivetraining #paard #paddockparadise #listentoyourhorse by @hoofprintsofher

Welcome dear horse lover, owner, professional...
I am Charlotte, and ever since I was a little kid, I have one mission:
I want to help (traumatized) horses feel heard, seen, understood and loved.🤍
Partly by helping them become emotionally and physically balanced - with a passion for natural and holistic horse keeping, holistic equine nutrition and hooves. But mostly by educating and inspiring caretakers. So we can build a kinder horse world together! And all of that in a gentle, holistic, science based and natural way.
With that, our horses can become an authentic and empowered version of themselves... and we will learn to be that too!

The way I train, keep and ‘am’ with horses is focused on helping the horse to become self-confident: curious, resilient, trusting and relaxed. So they feel save to communicate with us, and feel good in their body, mind and emotions.

All of this is inspired by one special horse, Bo, who completely turned my life around… and from that moment on, we helped each other grow up and overcome our traumas.

Thank you for following our journey and learning with us,

- Hoofprints of Her, by Charlotte Bakker🐴 by @hoofprintsofher

One thing I learned through the years, is that the quality of a trainer/coach is not found in years of experience, levels or number of certificates.

🤠I've had a trainer that rode on the highest level but resorted to have me "pull on the bit" to reach "collectedness" - their horse also showed no true collection. I've had a NH trainer that talked about connection and love for the horse, while flooding them - their horse gave a shut down impression.
I’ve had a teacher with years of experience and certificates, that told me to push through when my horse showed signs of pain. Their horse was extremely tense and they laughed it away, saying the horse was just a bit crazy.
I saw an R+ trainer stressing how ethical their training was, while their horse was never allowed to say no.

🥺And after training with these trainers, I always felt bad, even cried sometimes and soon I decided to quit lessons with them.

💬 This taught me two things: one, sometimes it is better to have no trainer than to listen to someone whose values don’t align with yours - a trainer that makes you feel bad and/or makes you treat your horse worse than you did by yourself, should not be near you or your horse.

Two: the trainer’s horse is a really good representation of what their training style leads to, and what they strive for. If what you see in their horse is not what you want for yours, they are not the right fit for you.

💭How do you feel about this? Are you inspired by your coaches’ horse? Have you ever had a bad experience with a trainer?

*this post includes stereotypes, these are purely used for a clear explanation, not to blame or bash anyone.

#horsemanship #herdwisdom #holistichorsemanship #postivehorsemanship
#horse #appaloosa #positivetraining #paard by @hoofprintsofher