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Shelby Dennis, CEBC

@sdequus

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The life of an AuDHD horse behaviour specialist
& her horses 🐴 , cats 🐱& dog 🐶
BC 🇨🇦
@shelbyinthewild
Collab 📩 [email protected]
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2026 has been rough. But here’s to hoping it takes me where I need to go.

Follow along to see the moving journey and journey through my grief. by @sdequus

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3 months ago

Over the last while, this page has gained thousands of followers, so allow me to reintroduce myself:

I’m Shelby Dennis, an (almost) 28 year old professional horse trainer & certified equine behavioural consultant based in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia.

I have over 23 years of experience with horses, I started riding at 4 years old. I have been training professionally since 2017 & in 2021 got my certification as a behavioural consultant from the International Association of Animal Behaviour Consultants (IAABC).

I’ve been studying equine sciences at the University of Guelph for the last few years, specializing in behaviour & working towards my certificate of equine sciences, which I will complete this semester.

I’ve had a varied experience in the horse world, starting out showing Arabian horses before moving into the hunter/jumper & dressage realm, I also galloped Thoroughbred racehorses for a number of years and have retrained many OTTBs.

More recently, my focus has been working with feral horses, gentling them with positive reinforcement. My recent case study on 2 BLM mustangs I got untouched from the Palomino Valley corral involved gentling them with R+ while they had 4 acres of free roaming space.

In 2023, alongside several other passionate horse welfare advocates, I cofounded @uniteforhorses, an organization working towards policy change in competitive horse sports to promote better welfare practices.

Future goals include one day being able to purchase & run my own facility to do R+ behavioural modification for troubled horses as well as full body rehabs on a track system with a holistic care and training program to help horses reset physically & mentally.

Long term, I would love to link horse & human rehab, helping people struggling with addiction & other mental health issues by connecting them with horses, but this is a far in the future goal.

Thank you for supporting me and my work on this page.

You can check out my other learning resources, podcast and more at the link in my bio! by @sdequus

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3 years ago

There is something to be said about the diamond in the rough.

Not all horses are going to be immediately beautiful, breathtaking or exuding with clearly visible talent.

Some need to be buffed out a little, fed a nutritious diet and given the opportunity and environment to blossom.

Sometimes the horse that you need isn’t the most expensive one or the most talented.

They may not take you to the heights that you’ve dreamed of, but they’ll teach you lessons you could never access without their influence.

My diamond in the rough is my horse Milo, who I adopted from the SPCA as a 2 year old for just $400.

He has surpassed every expectation I’ve had for him and certainly doesn’t look like he came from such humble beginnings.

Sometimes you’ve just got to give that horse a chance and foster their growth by creating the environment that they can thrive in.

I am so thankful that I’ve gotten to watch Milo grow up for the last 9 years. by @sdequus

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3 years ago

I used to be the person who thought that I needed to chase horses around to punish them when they were hard to catch

I distinctly remember a particularly embarrassing time in which I try to run my Arabian around 20 acres as punishment.

It ended with me being sweaty, panting and angry, and him not being caught.

There are so many ways to improve our relationship relationships with horses and make them easier to catch and handle that do not involve making their experience with us even more unpleasant.

We can all do better, we are all capable of changing our ways.

I say this is the one who deeply used to buy into a dominant based rhetoric.

Change is possible, we just need to be open to it by @sdequus

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3 days ago

The sad thing is a lot of horse people won’t even clock this as abusive.

But it is. You are literally chasing down a flight animal and making them fear for their life and run to the point where they are soaking wet and lathered in sweat and panting.

The fact that you know you aren’t actually going to kill them doesn’t change their experience. It is cruel and abusive to deliberately terrify an animal for a prolonged period of time simply because you perceived them as disobedient.

Abuse is so normalized in the Horse industry that so many abusive acts are just considered another normal day.

People get extremely defensive about the term abuse, even being used because there is this perspective that in order to behave abusively, you need to be a malicious and evil person doing it with ill intent.

But that’s far from the case. A lot of people commit abusive actions due to their own lack of emotional intelligence, lack of emotional regulation, ignorance, of what they are actually doing or societal pressure and conditioning.

And we all have the opportunity to reflect, change and grow.

Many of us start riding as children and have abusive behaviour normalized to us by adult role models.

Then we take those belief systems with us into adulthood.

We are all capable of changing our actions, even if we have held certain belief systems for years. You can grow. You can change. And you can move past what you did.

Don’t be so afraid of feeling like a terrible person that you continue to justify the unjustifiable.

I say this as someone who grew up having so much violence towards horses normalized to me and I repeated it, too.

it is awful to have to sit with harm that we have caused unintentionally, but it is so much better than continuing to commit the harm out of fear of the vulnerability that comes with making necessary change.

Petting a horse after running them around till exhaustion isn’t kindness. It isn’t training. It’s cruelty. Abusive relationships of any sort involve cruelty and “nice” moments. But the over shadowing issue is the cruelty. by @sdequus

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4 days ago

Milo told me that it’s time to remind people who he used to be to make a point about horse training.

This industry is a multimillion dollar industry that makes a ton of money selling you quick fix solutions.

It is extremely profitable to market to people miracle fixes through bits, training aids, calming supplements and more…

It would be a lot less profitable to teach people that all stress behaviour stems from underlying emotions, and that if we address the cause, the behaviour is resolve themselves.

A lot of “hot” horses are just misunderstood and in need of actually being heard so that they don’t need to get loud.

it will always be safer to address why a horse is responding in a certain way and work to help them feel safer and more regulated than it will be to learn how to respond reactively as they are already exploding.

What makes horses dangerous is their stress.

Yet, still, in the modern year of 2026, so much of Horse training is directly reliant on causing horses stress and forcing them to work through it. by @sdequus

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4 days ago

Milo and I go on a crisp ride and he was a fresh bean ❤️ .

Check out my YouTube channel at the link in my bio if you want to see the full video ❤️ by @sdequus

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5 days ago

The Horse industry has such a problem with what they perceive as dangerous.

A lot of of the factors that people attribute to safety are what creates their danger. On a daily basis, when I was working at the racetrack, we used things like nose and lip chains “for safety.”

But, the horses still behaved dangerously.

Painful equipment can gag their response to a certain extent, but when adrenaline hits a point where the pain is numbed, it does not matter.

And then, equipment fails, and everything to. Behaviour becomes exceptionally dangerous.

On a daily basis, I was riding fully tacked horses and I was experiencing an awful lot more dangerous behaviour than I ever have when riding bridleless.

Why?

Because I would not get on a horse bridleless without preparing for it.

With harsher equipment, you don’t need to prepare as much because you can rely on being able to manhandle the Horse more.

This works until they are panicked enough that they just run completely through equipment.

Which happens repeatedly across this industry. We see videos all over the Internet of this happening.

If equipment was what was keeping people safe and avoiding danger, we would not see horses at the top level of sport behaving dangerously.

We wouldn’t see horses running through the harshest equipment.

We wouldn’t see “trained” horses struggling to cope with the most basic things.

The call is coming from inside the house.

Turn your horses out. Let them actually be horses. Let them have space to run, play, and observe the environment on their own.

And, then, actually train them to emotionally regulate.

When they show that they’re afraid of something, work with them. Help them relieve the fear.

Help them feel safe. Don’t leverage equipment to force them through the process.

When you do all of these things, you create a structure, built on communication, safety, and trust.

Instead of being desperate to run away from you, unload you and get away from you as a stressor, your horse is willing to turn to you and look to you for safety & guidance.

I understand that this can feel unsafe and dangerous to people who’ve relied extensively on force. Continued ⬇� by @sdequus

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7 days ago

“What happens if he spooks?”

The exact same thing that happens if we are in a bridle… we manage it and regulate.

I think one of the most consistently concerning themes I see in the Horse world is this belief that we can fully control horses with enough equipment and that it creates safety.

Having been on many horses who are tacked to the nines and fully losing control because they’re that chronically anxious, it simply is not true.

I would rather be on Milo any day of the week and have the safety of knowing that he trusts me enough to think through things and that even in the worst case scenario of me falling for whatever reason that I can catch, lead and maneuver him without a halter or bridle.

If equipment was solely responsible for creating safety, we would not see so many videos of people desperately trying to stop bolting horses who are bridled.

I think we should train to rely on equipment as little as possible because that is what makes you safe, even if you keep the bridle on.

Any Horse who cannot stop without rein pressure is much more liable to lose control in a pinch.

Work on your seat aids, steering and neck rein cues and teach your horse to be responsive to your body instead of utilizing the bridle as a primary mechanism for brakes and steering. by @sdequus

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8 days ago

Milo and I finally did our first bridleless trail ride since we moved a month ago.

How do you think he did? 🥰 by @sdequus

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9 days ago

When I saw Juniper rubbing her mane like this, I thought about how much hair she was going to lose from her beautiful mane but, then, I immediately thought of how lucky she is to have so many natural scratching options to itch on. ❤️ by @sdequus

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10 days ago

I have a playlist of songs called “fresh start” and it’s filled with songs that serve as a reminder of the stage that I’m at in my life. This is one of them.

I haven’t kept it a secret that this year has been one of the most mentally and emotionally challenging years of my life.

Between losing my dad, ending a relationship and making a big move, it feels like my life has been entirely dismantled and fallen apart.

There is a lot of grief in this. But there is also a beauty in knowing that there is a capacity to build a fresh start.

I often find it hard to sit with myself and exist in this uncomfortable in between stage. I find it hard, not to beat myself up. Not to guilt trip myself for resting. Not to be hard on myself for struggling still.

So, while I remind myself of this, hopefully it will serve as a reminder for you.

You have accomplished more than you think.

And, many of us have done so in the midst of trauma.

Getting out of bed every day is an accomplishment when you are struggling.

Doing so day after day, month after a month and year after year is an enormous feat.

existing in the in-between is hard.

But, it is where a lot of the work is done for the parts of our lives that people look at with wonder. The beautiful parts once we have healed more and figured out more of what we want.

So, embrace the in-between. Slow down, you’re doing fine. by @sdequus

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14 days ago