One of our listeners from Canada got in touch with a question that seems to be everywhere at the moment "How can we help horses feel calmer without relying on calming supplements?"

With calming supplements all over social media, it can feel like there's a powder, paste, cookie, or magic solution for every anxious horse. But how much evidence is actually behind these products?

In this episode, Jen and Barbara dive into the world of calming supplements, marketing claims, FEI regulations, ingredient lists, and why "contains" doesn't necessarily mean "works."

We talk about:

• the difference between supplements and medications
• why the language used in marketing is often very carefully chosen
• dose, delivery, and why ingredient lists don't tell the whole story
• tryptophan, serotonin, and some of the science behind common calming ingredients
• why products can be sold without strong evidence of effectiveness
• and how Barbara's background in pharma and clinical research has made her deeply suspicious of the supplement industry

But more importantly, we talk about the horse.

Because if you're looking for a calming supplement, you're probably already asking a really important question: "How can I help my horse feel better?"

Behavioural challenges are rarely caused by one thing, and they're rarely solved by one thing either. We explore what we can do to genuinely support our horses, set them up for success, and look beyond the idea that calm can simply be scooped into a feed bucket.

—

Got a question you'd like us to tackle?

Send us a voice note.

Your horse. Your question. Your training dilemma.

And we'll work through it in a future episode.

Real cases. Real answers. Real madness.

Voice note your questions on WhatsApp to +353 85 143 8688 to have your questions answered on the Podcast.

Meet Your Hosts

Barbara Hardman (Bright Horse Equiation)
www.brighthorse.ie

📧barbara.j.hardman@brighthorse.ie ☎️+353 85 143 8688

Jen Nash (The Equine Method)
www.theequinemethod.co.uk

📧 Info@TheEquineMethod.co.uk ☎️+44 7902920923

One of our listeners got in touch with a question that comes up a lot when people start exploring positive reinforcement training:

"When do I know when it's time to stop giving food rewards?"

It seems like a simple question. But the more we talked about it, the more we found ourselves asking: Why do we want to stop?

If reinforcement maintains behaviour, what happens when reinforcement disappears?

And why are we so keen to remove a tool from the toolbox when it's working?

In this episode, Jen and Barbara get into:

• why behaviours stop when reinforcement stops
• when behaviours can become self-reinforcing
• intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
• antecedents and how reinforcement changes over time
• how our animals are often training us as much as we're training them
• why we don't ask the same questions about reins, leg aids, or other training tools
• and whether the real question is not when can I stop reinforcing? but what is maintaining the behaviour now?

Along the way, Barbara talks about living in the "clicker closet", why she owns more treat pouches than any reasonable person should, and how this is apparently balanced out by Jen's rug-buying habit. (We're not convinced either.)

Because sometimes the answer isn't to stop using reinforcement. Sometimes it's understanding what reinforcement is doing in the first place.

—

Got a question you are burning to asking us, nothing is off limitis, or do you have a behaviour issues you’re trying to figure out? Send us a voice note. Your voice, your question, your community is here.

Real cases. Real answers. All madness (guaranteed, the madness bit anyway).

Voice note your questions on WhatsApp to +353 85 143 8688 to have your questions answered on the Podcast.

Meet Your Hosts

Barbara Hardman (Bright Horse Equiation)
www.brighthorse.ie

📧barbara.j.hardman@brighthorse.ie ☎️+353 85 143 8688

Jen Nash (The Equine Method)
www.theequinemethod.co.uk

📧 Info@TheEquineMethod.co.uk ☎️+44 7902920923

It’s hot.

The horses are sweating.

And once again, the yearly horse-world civil war has begun: “To scrape or not to scrape?”

Every summer this debate comes back around social media like clockwork. Hose the horse down and scrape the water off immediately… or leave the water on because it actually helps cool them?

Apparently, according to some corners of the internet, if you leave water on your horse they will immediately boil alive.

So naturally… we decided to talk about the physics.

In this episode, Jen and Barbara get into:

• thermoregulation in horses
• how horses manage heat in both summer and winter
• convection, evaporation, airflow, and why moving air matters
• why cold hosing works on injuries (and why that same logic matters here)
• what humidity actually does to cooling
• wet bulb vs dry bulb temperatures
• why high humidity and no airflow is the real danger zone
• climate change, hotter summers, and why Ireland and the UK are particularly bad at handling heat
• misting systems, fans, and cooling strategies used in high-level competition horses
• kangaroos licking their forearms
• and somehow… the Titanic

Because no episode stays on track for long around here. We had to talk about one of the biggest myths around cooling horses: that leaving water on the body somehow “heats” the horse up. Spoiler: that’s not how thermodynamics works.

The film of water absorbs heat from the horse, airflow helps remove heat through convection and evaporation, and moving water continuously increases cooling efficiency.

Science. Not Facebook comments.

This episode is part horse welfare, part biology lesson, part weather forecast, and part public service announcement during the Irish & UK heatwave.

Stay hydrated.
Mind yourselves.
And maybe stop arguing with strangers on the internet about scrapers.

—

Some of the science we talk about in this episode:

Thermoregulation
The body’s ability to maintain a stable internal temperature despite environmental changes.

Thermoneutral Zone (TNZ)
The temperature range where the horse does not need to use extra energy to stay warm or cool. For horses this is commonly estimated around 5°C–25°C, though this varies with breed, coat, age, body condition, and acclimation.

Convection
The transfer of heat through moving air or water. Airflow over wet skin helps remove heat from the horse’s body.

Evaporation
When water changes from liquid to vapour, removing heat energy in the process. Sweating and water left on the horse both cool through evaporation.

Humidity
The amount of water vapour already present in the air. High humidity reduces evaporation efficiency, making it harder for both humans and horses to cool themselves.

Wet Bulb Temperature
A measure that combines heat and humidity to reflect how effectively evaporation can occur. High wet bulb temperatures are dangerous because sweating becomes less effective.

Homeostasis
The body’s process of maintaining stable internal conditions, including temperature, hydration, and metabolism.

Cold Hosing
Using running water to remove heat and reduce inflammation in tissues by transferring heat away from the body.

Got a question you are burning to asking us, nothing is off limitis, or do you have a behaviour issues you’re trying to figure out? Send us a voice note. Your voice, your question, your community is here.

Real cases. Real answers. All madness (guaranteed, the madness bit anyway).

Voice note your questions on WhatsApp to +353 85 143 8688 to have your questions answered on the Podcast.

Meet Your Hosts

Barbara Hardman (Bright Horse Equiation)
www.brighthorse.ie

📧barbara.j.hardman@brighthorse.ie ☎️+353 85 143 8688

Jen Nash (The Equine Method)
www.theequinemethod.co.uk

📧 Info@TheEquineMethod.co.uk ☎️+44 7902920923

“I feel like I am rushing through steps with my training, do you have any advice for me on how I can set my animals up for success?”

And honestly? If you’re asking yourself that question… you’re probably already doing better than you think.

Because the people worrying about going too fast are usually the people trying hardest to listen to the animal in front of them.

In this episode, we get into:

• Why trainers need to set themselves up for success too
• Why reducing your training days can sometimes improve progress
• Why training the environment matters just as much as training the task
• Person, Environment, Task (PET)
• How to know when to stop before excitement turns into greed
• The “Drop, Stick and Go” framework
• The 3 D’s (or 5 D’s depending on who you ask)
• And what to do when progress slips during shaping plans, without just endlessly repeating old ground

Because good training isn’t about cramming more in.

It’s about knowing when to pause. When to simplify. When to support. And when to stop chasing progress for the sake of feeling productive.

—

Got a question or training situation you want us to unpack? Send us a voice note.

Your animal. Your question. Your chaos. And we’ll work through it in a future episode.

Real cases. Real answers. Real madness.

Meet Your Hosts

Barbara Hardman (Bright Horse Equiation)
www.brighthorse.ie

📧barbara.j.hardman@brighthorse.ie ☎️+353 85 143 8688

Jen Nash (The Equine Method)
www.theequinemethod.co.uk

📧 Info@TheEquineMethod.co.uk ☎️+44 7902920923

Hi All,

We’ve lots of B-roll and outtakes… mainly because me and Jen will talk for about three hours... The podcasts go up and somehow become an hour long through editing magic, somewhere in the middle!

But this is our downtime too. We’ll sit and talk absolute nonsense to each other for 45 minutes before & after recording, and sometimes there are little snippets left at the end of the timeline that I never quite know whether to include or not.

So here is how the sausage is made, why Jen insists she isn’t competitive (we don’t believe her), why we both enjoy playing golf despite being terrible at it, and how Barbara accidentally killed a rabbit while playing golf.

Enjoy this little bit of madness and behind-the-scenes chaos from our inner workings. We genuinely love doing these podcasts. It’s time we get to spend together, chat nonsense, argue about things, laugh at ourselves… and hopefully you enjoy some of the madness that comes with it too.

Got a question you are burning to asking us, nothing is off limitis, or do you have a behaviour issues you’re trying to figure out? Send us a voice note. Your voice, your question, your community is here.

Real cases. Real answers. All madness (guaranteed, the madness bit anyway).

Voice note your questions on WhatsApp to +353 85 143 8688 to have your questions answered on the Podcast.

Meet Your Hosts

Barbara Hardman (Bright Horse Equiation)
www.brighthorse.ie

📧barbara.j.hardman@brighthorse.ie ☎️+353 85 143 8688

Jen Nash (The Equine Method)
www.theequinemethod.co.uk

📧 Info@TheEquineMethod.co.uk ☎️+44 7902920923

This episode starts with sneezing. Naturally. "I expect nothing less from you lot ..."

#JellyfishDontSneeze which somehow becomes important enough to deserve its own hashtag.

Then one of our listeners from Canada asked us: “What is your biggest hot take on anything equine or animal related?”

Which immediately exposed the fact that Barbara didn’t actually know what a “hot take” was. Or for us Irish/UK folks… “an unpopular opinion“.

So Jen had to explain it to Barbara... And from there… honestly, things escalated.

We got into:

• why travelling horses alone in single trailers might be far worse than we admit
• why cribbing collars should probably be set on fire
• why “moving the feet” is often punishment dressed up as training
• why emotional regulation cannot be created through pressure and movement
• why allostatic load is massively oversimplified in horse training
• why behaviour is diagnostic information, not inconvenience
• why cutting things out of bodies rarely “fixes” the actual problem
• why separating the brain from the body makes absolutely no sense
• why confidence and competence are very, very different things

Also: Barbara says Beyoncé isn’t very good. #YouAreCanceled

This episode goes everywhere, horse welfare, behaviour, medicine, Beyoncé, training culture, critical thinking, a dead rabbit (see bonus Ep.) and the very human habit of accepting the first answer we’re given because it sounds confident.

Some of these opinions might annoy people. Good. Sure why not.
The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

Got a question you are burning to asking us, nothing is off limitis, or do you have a behaviour issues you’re trying to figure out? Send us a voice note. Your voice, your question, your community is here.

Real cases. Real answers. All madness (guaranteed, the madness bit anyway).

Voice note your questions on WhatsApp to +353 85 143 8688 to have your questions answered on the Podcast.

Meet Your Hosts

Barbara Hardman (Bright Horse Equiation)
www.brighthorse.ie

📧barbara.j.hardman@brighthorse.ie ☎️+353 85 143 8688

Jen Nash (The Equine Method)
www.theequinemethod.co.uk

📧 Info@TheEquineMethod.co.uk ☎️+44 7902920923

What does good actually look like for horses?

Not the version we’ve inherited. Not the version that’s easiest to manage. The version that actually meets their needs. It's tricky,

In this episode, Jen and Barbara dig into enrichment for horses.

We’re talking ethology. What horses are built for. What they’re missing. Why that matters more than any system label, plus how you can find the gaps and fill them Because this isn’t just “track vs traditional livery.” It’s about whether the life we’re offering lines up with the animal in front of us. The individual needs of your animal.

We pull in lessons from other industries, zoological collections/gardens (also caled zoos), cattle systems, places where thinking around individual needs and population-level welfare has moved on.

And then we bring it back to real life. Our horses. Our setups. Very different environments, where we all struggle to find that balance. And how we each tweak, adapt, and work with what we’ve got, by understanding what needs are being met… and what still needs filling.

Because there’s no perfect system. But there is better thinking for us as humans.

Got a situation you’re trying to figure out? Send us a voice note. Your horse. Your question. And we’ll work through it in a future episode.

Real cases. Real answers.

Voice note your questions on WhatsApp to +353 85 143 8688 to have your questions answered on the Podcast.

Meet Your Hosts

Barbara Hardman (Bright Horse Equiation)
www.brighthorse.ie

📧barbara.j.hardman@brighthorse.ie ☎️+353 85 143 8688

Jen Nash (The Equine Method)
www.theequinemethod.co.uk

📧 Info@TheEquineMethod.co.uk ☎️+44 7902920923

In this episode, Jen and Barbara revisit a conversation that’s come back into the spotlight, one that clearly still needs to be had. We’ve reimagined our original pilot episode and asked the big question again: does positive reinforcement lead to biting in horses?

While the original pilot is still available, this episode takes the discussion further. We dive much deeper into what actually causes biting in horses, unpacking the difference between correlation and causation, and clarifying why positive reinforcement itself isn’t the culprit it’s often made out to be.

This reimagined pilot is packed with new insights, updated perspectives, and fresh examples. You can absolutely listen to the original pilot and this episode together, they complement each other beautifully and offer plenty of new and interesting takeaways.

Enjoy the conversation.

Voice note your questions on WhatsApp to +353 85 143 8688 to have your questions answered on the Podcast.

Meet Your Hosts

Barbara Hardman (Bright Horse Equiation)
www.brighthorse.ie

📧barbara.j.hardman@brighthorse.ie ☎️+353 85 143 8688

Jen Nash (The Equine Method)
www.theequinemethod.co.uk

📧 Info@TheEquineMethod.co.uk ☎️+44 7902920923