Tea Time with Elsa

Teatime with Elsa - Episode 152

Chatting about: Thoughts, words, actions, habits, character, destiny…
In this episode I talk about the saying that goes: “Watch your thoughts, they become your words, watch your words they become your actions, watch your actions, they become your habits, watch your habits, they become your character, watch your character, it becomes your destiny” in the context of working with our horses.
Originally aired on: September 7th, 2023

Teatime with Elsa - Episode 151

Chatting about: Play versus fight…
In this episode I talk about the differences between play and fight on a spectrum, and how to tell the difference even when the behaviors are subtle, so that we can respond to the horse to prevent them from feeling unheard and escalating to higher stress actions that may compromise our sense of safety. Fight is when a horse pushes into another's space while feeling worse, in a way that the other individual does not appreciate. Play is when a horse pushes into another’s space while feeling better in a way that the other individual does appreciate and has the opportunity to reciprocate the interaction. Fight is an attempt to cause change in another individual and play is an attempt to enjoy an action with another individual. In this Tea Time we go deeper into the theory of the differences in body language and the desired outcomes of play and fight.
Originally aired on: April 11th, 2023

Teatime with Elsa - Episode 150

Chatting about: Rest…
In this episode I talk about the importance of rest for our horses and what the different forms of rest can look like. Rest for horses can be as obvious as laying flat out on their side, deep in a dream state, or it can be as subtle as a pause in the use of their senses. We talk about the dynamic that rest has in our training and the differences in the ways that we respond to rest and relaxation in Freedom Based Training® versus in pressure based training methods.
Originally aired on: February 11th, 2023

Teatime with Elsa - Episode 149

Chatting about: Priorities …
In this episode I talk about the priority of Freedom Based Training® being to develop our horses’ emotional maturity and improve the feelings that our horse has in association with us, our leadership and any activities we want to do together. We talk about how we have the freedom to shape our training and our relationship with our horse however we want to and how we can take into consideration our horse’s individual learning style and speed of learning so we can gracefully integrate our personal priorities to reach the goals that we choose for our relationship.
Originally aired on: October 11th, 2022

Teatime with Elsa - Episode 148

Chatting about: Focus versus distraction…
In this episode I talk about being aware of whether our horses’ feelings are getting better or getting worse from an emotional standpoint and then being able to hone our feel and timing to offer the right kinds of distractions that we know are likely to help our horse feel better before they start to feel worse, or flowing with what they have chosen to focus on. We talk about how much value there is in the skill of reading our horse’s emotional state and then being able to choose whether we want to support and flow on how they are feeling, or whether we want to offer a distraction to help prevent the feeling getting worse.
Originally aired on: September 13th, 2022

Teatime with Elsa - Episode 147

Chatting about: How much freedom can your horse handle…
In this episode I talk about the idea that some horses can handle freedom better than others. A horse’s ability to handle freedom is dependent on multiple factors such as their emotional maturity, the environment they live in, the quality of the decisions they make in their ability to keep them safe and gain them friends, their ability to cope with stress, and the associations they have with their own decision making skills. We talk about making decisions for our horses based on their capacity for freedom and how we can help set horses up to develop their decision making skills and emotional maturity to find safety, comfort and enjoyment.
Originally aired on: September 9th, 2022

Teatime with Elsa - Episode 146

Chatting about: Underprepared or over-prepared…
In this episode I talk about the feelings and dynamics of being underprepared versus over-prepared on a spectrum. We talk about the effects the level of preparedness we feel we have has on our stress levels as well as what we can do with horses we don’t know when we enter situations unprepared to maintain a level of confidence and comfort in ourselves.
Originally aired on: July 28th, 2022

Teatime with Elsa - Episode 145

Chatting about: Right and wrong…
In this episode I talk about the controversy of deciding what is right and wrong for our horses. We all have our own opinions of what is right and wrong and one person's opinion may differ from another person’s and that is okay. We can all only do the best that we can, with what we know and what we have and we can weigh up the pros and cons and understand all of the risks involved in our choices. More often than not, that really is the most that we can do in any one moment. From there we can analyze the choices we made in the moment and see how they feel to us and how they made the relationship feel.
Originally aired on: July 12th, 2022