Lucinda has a deep connection to the horse through her decades of hands-on experience, study, and in-depth research on what makes them tick. As much as anything, she is a researcher and teacher, always eager to share what she's learned.
Her presentations and clinics are enthusiastically reviewed by her students (see Quotes).
As an early adopter of Horse Speak®, she is a Certified Horse Speak® Practitioner, and is highly qualified to teach this fascinating new evidence-based science it to her students.
She has experience with BLM mustangs through the TIP Trainer Program and has worked with psychologically compromised rescue horses.
Her philosophy is, "A calm and alert horse is ready to learn- regardless of training technique."
A quote that explains it well:
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"Lucinda ties Ethology (the study of animal behavior, in this case horses), with human/horse brain science, Neuroscience, Parasympathetic and Sympathetic body systems, and Horse Speak into a wonderful, clear, understandable PowerPoint presentation. She is funny, has stories to help with the understanding, uses 3 blow-up horses to show the activation buttons of Horse Speak in 3D so you can clearly see where they are. She explains things for folks who have never heard any of this kind of stuff- and deepens your understanding if you are already on a journey in this direction! She used her blow-up horses for hands-on experience before we brought the living horses to the arena. This gave confidence to folks as she coached them through the parts of Horse Speak that would be practiced that day in her clinic.”
Lucinda B.
My First Memory of a Horse-
Bit by a pony named Ginger-
I am told that this story happened when I was 4 years old. My dad was an avid hunter/jumper, and he took me with him to the barn one day. The barn manager was holding a little black pony named Ginger on a lead rope, in the aisleway and chatting with my father. I was fascinated and gravitated over toward her. She seemed huge but, in a photo I’ve seen since, she appears to have been maybe 10 hands tall.
I don’t remember exactly how she did it, but she ever so gently, took my little arm in her teeth. She didn’t bite, she just held it, and I wasn’t afraid at all. Quickly my dad noticed and gently removed my arm. I was completely uninjured, but the damage was done. My young brain had been flooded with those “feel good” neurochemicals and I had a powerful positive experience. From then on, I was helplessly in love with anything equine. Ponies, horses, donkeys, mules- it didn’t matter.
From then on, my connection, I call it a “soul connection”, to all living creatures became my hope and my sanity. It didn’t matter if was an animal, insect, or amoeba- I started relating to all life on earth.
Animals seemed the most natural thing to me to have around. They offer themselves as nothing more and nothing less- just themselves as they are.
The tools I use to teach/coach are based in the idea that you can learn better by actively doing a task or job.
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If you and the horse can do a task together you will learn how to move yourself around the horse and the horse will learn how to move around you.
If I had to sum up my teaching in one sentence, it would be, "Never leave your horse behind, not even for a moment."
To accomplish this, I break up the task into little chunks to accommodate for the human learning process- which can be very slow. My goal is to get the human to feel the horse's World View.
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Once we accomplish this, learning anything new, going anywhere together or just enjoying each other's company is all there for you to have."
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Lucinda B.