About Lara Beth
From a young age Lara’s horse obsession inspired her to a life of connecting people and horses. Lara learned the hard way, working for an old school breaker. A dramatic accident led to a 12 month recovery with a broken back. This turning point enlightened Lara to put safety first.
With so much time away from horses, and so much to reflect on, it was the beginning of a new method and a new way. Now Lara has set her sights high, taking on the responsibility of changing the standards of horse management around the world. Lara questions everything. In her enthusiastic push to help people, Lara has ruffled feathers and defied contemporary ways of thinking. She consistently achieves ten times the results in a tenth of the time, and is now sharing her passion with the world.
“Stay true to your principles, take responsibility, and everything in the world of horses becomes possible.”
Lara is now a qualified senior instructor. She trains and competes full time and owns the business, Peninsula Equine Development. She is building an online community via multiple platforms in order to help as many people, worldwide, as possible. She competes in a wide range of sports from dressage to endurance believing that a strong foundation applies to any discipline. Lara starts young horses under saddle, re-trains rogue racehorses, from early in the morning to late into the night and has endless energy teaching people how to better educate their horses
Lara’s Blog
Australian Brumby Challenge (Week 3)
Lara and Sansa – Week 3
Watching the sun go down with Sansa on Friday marked the end of school holidays. The past two weeks have been a busy time at Tubbarubba, and has not left a lot of time for working Brumbies. The best part of school holidays however is that so many kids put in, to help build Sansas confidence with new people.
The value of brushing, scratching, leading, noodling, schooling and patting, from everyone who came down to help, can not be underrated. Until this week Sansa has only really been trained by myself, so I need to say a big thank you to everyone, as Sansa is now far less reactive to the differences in body language of others.
Week three and Sansa has finally developed an appetite for hard feed. Obviously wild Brumbies haven’t grown up eating pellets and chaff. Until this week Sansa would not touch a bucket or feed.
At the start of the week I was noticing that Sansa was nibbling at the Breed and Grow I was leaving for her each night. So I decided to introduce her to Low GI cubes, that Kentucky Equine Research recommended, as part of our feeding program for the challenge.
Although the large pellets already have all of her required salts and minerals , I found that by adding some table salt to the first few feeds made Sansa take more notice.
Nigel and I have been jokingly pushing each other, as to who will saddle up, and ride first. While we joke around, Nigel is also very supportive and good at reminding me, that our training values and methods are what set our horses up for success. Riding Sansa before she understands the foundations will affect her later when we work on refinement and advancement.
The goal for next week will be to have Sansa work on the patterns and exercises while wearing gear. This is the next step to her education, adding gear is just another way of testing Sansas response to my cues. Whether the distraction is on her back or an object on the ground, the most important lesson is that Sansa looks to me for leadership when I introduce new things.
Photo Credit to Rupert Laycock Photography. Thank you for a fantastic shoot this week.
Australian Brumby Challenge (Week 2)
Lara and Sansa – Week 2
Sansa has built up confidence this week, for me to walk straight up to her and pat her face. I must say that the first few times I patted her head she was less than impressed.
The solution was, teach Sansa to bend her head and neck toward me, then pat her until she looked 1% happier. When her nostrils were a little less scrunched up, I would reward her with release of the pat, release of the bend and then walk away.
This week Sansa is learning to associate all pats with the release of pressure.
I had to be mindful in early stages of training, not to run in with a pat every time Sansa found a solution. A pat would have been inadvertent pressure right at the moment when she needed time to think through her response to my cues.
Sansa has also learnt to “follow the feel” on the lead. This is the beginning of next week’s goal of being able to independently train Sansa’s head and neck, shoulders, ribs and her hindquarter. Once I have full control of these components on the ground, translation of the cues to riding will be made simple.
The repetitive, short sessions with Sansa have been captured so well by Lisa Sultana Photography this week. From first cuddles to first leading session out and about. Check out all the best shots at “Brumby diaries” on Facebook.
Nigel and I have noticed that every now and then we walk into the brumby stable and it is almost as though my Brumby is right back at square one, “forgotten me”. My support team, experienced and patient people, remind me that it is ok to take a few steps back, start again and not get greedy. Nigel and I are definitely finding that a consistently patient approach gets results.
Australian Brumby Challenge (Week 1)
Lara and Sansa – Week 1
I was excited to bring home another flaxen mare, I already own Sansa’s twin. After traveling well, and unloading as though she’d done it a million times before, I was even more excited to see how deep the similarity really were.
Sensible, sensitive and independent, are all words I use to describe Rain horse, Sansa’s look alike. By the end of week one I can comfortably say that all three now apply perfectly to Sansa as well.
I needed to be very careful this week, not to put too much pressure on my new friend. Approaching an untouched Brumby, is different to many of the horses I deal with day to day. Sansa was incredibly sensitive to my body language and my presence. The last thing I wanted was to send her over the round yard fence and have her lost to the Peninsula.
Join up and liberty work allowed me to teach my training principles and cues from a distance. Sansa’s sensible nature, made teaching a breeze. I found that by giving her a little extra space, she would think through what I was asking for.
This work translated perfectly on Friday, when Sansa tried on her brand new Nungar Knots halter for the first time. Turns out Sansa the Barbie horse looks great in limited edition green.
As the weather went from rain to hail we took our training indoors. Sansa has been looking on, benefiting from Nigel’s calm balanced approach to sensitising and desensitising her neighbor, VBA Alpine Daisy.
We have recorded videos of our first week, which are all up on the facebook page “Brumby Dairies with Lara and Sansa”. Most of these have been filmed on a nifty little helmet cam, supplied by Hastings produce for the challenge.
This week I have been using my favorite touch cue.
The cue involves holding out a motivator or hand. If Sansa doesn’t reach for, or touch the target, I would look toward her hindquarter, Motivate and “move her feet”.
Sansa found Release any time she looked toward or reached for the motivator. As a reward I lower my energy and give her space.
This game was fantastic as she now looks to touch everything with her nose. Including photographer’s, random objects even new people. With every touch she is noticeably more confident.
I am looking forward establishing leading, and foundation ground cues next week.