Who is this Dr Shelley Appleton person…?

Every now and then, one of my posts goes viral, and I receive a lot of questions about who I am. I have an interesting story of how I transitioned from a quintessential amateur rider and university academic in pharmacy to a full-time horse trainer, coach, clinician, author, and podcast presenter of a popular equestrian podcast.

I had no desire to do what I do today; it just happened by accident. I was a dedicated amateur dressage rider, but in my university role, my research area of interest was in medical education and human learning. I was fascinated by how health professionals learned and developed their expertise, particularly how they learned to develop their critical thinking skills. How they combined their knowledge and skills to make decisions crucial to patients' lives. The two worlds of my life - my expertise in learning and my equestrian life - lived in two separate silos, most likely because my equestrian world had been there since I was a child. So, I had a lot of knowledge about all things learning, yet never transferred it into my equestrian life. It is weird when I look back at how it remained so separate. That was until I made my horse's mouth bleed, and it upset my equestrian beliefs so much that I listened to a voice I had never thought of listening to before - a guy in a cowboy hat!

I thought I had a “hard-mouthed” horse and was always shopping for different bits to try and help. That was the advice I got from my dressage silo at the time. Then when I made his mouth bleed and my world was rocked, I heard the phrase “horses learn from the release of pressure” and saw a demonstration of lateral flexion by a horsemanship clinician. I went and saddled up my horse, flexed him to the right, he turned LEFT, and for the first time in my life, I saw my hard-mouthed horse just didn’t understand the bit. In 45 minutes, with just this one idea, I transformed my “hard-mouthed horse” to a “soft-mouthed horse” by TEACHING him because he just didn’t know how to respond to the bit. I was blown away by how, in my almost 30 years of riding horses and regularly coaching, no one had ever told me that or showed me how to check whether or not my horse actually understood what I was expecting him to do!

That moment caused the floodgates to open between my equestrian world and the world where I was an expert on learning. This, along with an exceptional horseman as a mentor, exposure to many horses, and many hours practising my skills, experimenting, and studying everything I could lay my hands on. Even at this stage, I had no intention of helping anyone. It was very personal quest. While some people tinker with cars, I went around finding horses with different behaviour issues and stretched my skills by learning how to unpick the behaviour and transform them. It is purely what I did for my own curiosity. It was my own personal quest.

Then one day, I helped a friend - then another and another - then their friend…and within a short space of time it snowballed until every evening and weekend, I was training horses and coaching people. While I was doing this, I was blogging and posting about what I had learnt and was working out. I was both intrigued and frustrated by what I had worked out and why I had never been told or shown it. It was what made me so effective at helping people because I had worked out what I had been ignorant about and was just showing them what I had discovered and wished someone had told me sooner.

I have been coaching, delivering clinics, and training professionally for nearly 10 years. Five years ago, I left my 25-year academic career and started Calm Willing Confident Horses. I have never stopped learning, experimenting, and working things out. I discovered that the horse is actually not that difficult to train and influence. The only thing that can complicate a horse is its soundness, and experience has made me very good at identifying quickly when I need to refer a horse to an equine health professional. The tricky part of training horses and influencing them is the human hanging onto their lead rope or sitting on their back. What gives me an edge in the industry is that my research interest and PhD is centred around how humans learn and develop expertise, and I apply my deep knowledge of this to how people learn to work with horses. I have also first hand experience at being a human hanging onto a lead rope or sitting in the saddle that was missing key information that was causing me frustration with my horses.

Therefore, I am a very effective horse trainer, but I am also an expert in how people master their equestrian knowledge and skills.

If you are reading this blog, you may be interested in how I might be able to help you. While I do give clinics and workshops, I am restricted to the places I can get to, and my clinics tend to be pre-filled with long-term clients. The reality is my face-to-face coaching is limited. Therefore, to support both riders and professionals worldwide, I have created various resources and a community. For owners and riders, I have educational resources such as books and online courses where I share my insights and ways of understanding and working with horses while being aware of what we bring to the partnership with a horse. I identify three realms of horsemanship - we need a knowledge base, skill set, and self-awareness of our inherent humanness that is key for success.

For professionals, I share my insights into the human education side of equestrian pursuits to lift their teaching skills and ability to build resources to be more effective teachers to their clients. I also have a membership society where I unite owners, riders, and professionals. I am proud of this community; it is a special online space. It is backed up with resources and a positive, supportive, and interesting place where people share their knowledge and stories.

Membership Society and Community

If you want to engage with me and get my help, I am very active in my membership community. It is called the Calm Willing Confident Horse Society (CWCH Society Members group on Facebook). We have regular challenge weeks where we focus on learning about an interesting topic or skill, a suite of resources, weekly group Zoom chats which are really fun, plus I am always there to answer questions and give feedback and advice.

Here is the link to find out more and how to sign up and become part of our community. It is only $19.95 AUD per month; however if you are reading this blog join up with the coupon code FREEMONTH and you won’t get charged for the first month. It is one of those subscriptions you can cancel any time, so if I am not your cup of tea you can find out without having to spend any money:

https://www.calmwillingconfidenthorses.com.au/members

Online Courses

If you want to work with me privately one-on-one, then you can enrol in my online courses. These can be purchased as a bundle called my Complete Reboot program, or you can buy the courses one by one. All allow you to make a one-off payment for a discount or pay by instalment. Below is the roadmap and the way they have been designed to be worked through.

Image: The recommended way to engage with my learning resources.

Here is the link to my course site:

https://calmwillingandconfidenthorses.thinkific.com/collections

Books

If you are interested in checking out the books I have written, I have three books that are available:

1. Confidence & Trust - Solving the horse + human equation: It is available as an ebook, or for residents of Australia, it can be purchased as a hard copy. Here is a link to purchase this book:

https://www.calmwillingconfidenthorses.com.au/shop

2. Buying and Supporting a New Horse - The essential guide: It is only available as an ebook that can be purchased from these ebook suppliers:

https://books2read.com/u/bPQydR

3. *A Difficult Horse - A tribute to the horses that changed us*: It is a tremendous and heartwarming compilation of stories about horses that have touched people's lives. It is only available as an ebook for FREE from these ebook suppliers:

https://books2read.com/u/3L5Mzw

I also have a stack of resources such as blogs and links to my popular podcast *Canter Therapy* on my website:

www.calmwillingconfidenthorses.com.au

Equestrian Educators Program

There is one thing I am very sure about, and that is that there exists a big demand in the equestrian world for what I do. Everywhere I go, people are desperately seeking the kind of support that I can provide. Therefore, I need help. I have no intention of recreating myself in some kind of trainers' program, as I respect individual creativity and all the different ways horses can be helped. I decided to create a program that had two phases. The first phase was to share my insights into how to teach people to work with horses well. This course is for coaches, instructors, trainers, equine professionals, and those interested equestrians who are interested in the human learning side of equestrian pursuits. The second phase, which is optional, is to become trainers that I can refer people to who can help them with my courses.

If this interests you, here are links to more information. Firstly, the program:

https://www.calmwillingconfidenthorses.com.au/equestrian-educators

If you are interested in the first phase that just focuses on the human learning side, here is a link to the course Teaching People How to Work with Horses:

https://calmwillingandconfidenthorses.thinkific.com/courses/teaching-people-to-work-with-horses

I hope that I can share with you ideas that help you see both yourself and your horse in a different way. A perspective where you can see what I have discovered, that the horse is the most trainable and gentle animal on the planet. That you do not need to be brave or strong to work with them (I am neither of these!), you just need to understand how they perceive the world and be smart. Finally, I also hope I can reveal to you that you have way more capacity to learn to work with horses than you can ever imagine!

Thank you for your interest in my story and my life’s work, work that I will continue to build on as I delve deeper and

deeper into understanding the connection that can be nurtured between horse and human.

If you have any queries, you are welcome to contact me via email at admin@calmwillingconfidenthorses.com.au

Dr Shelley Appleton

Calm Willing Confident Horses