The Shiift Method by Mandy McConechy

Myth: pulling ragwort destroys cinnabar moth habitat.

Reality: it's not about whether you pull it, it's when.

If yesterday's post taught me anything, it is that there is alot of passionate, but uneducated, opinions on ragwort.

Here's the part people just don't get — the lifecycle of the cinnabar moth. Moths lay eggs on the plant, which hatch into caterpillars after 1–2 weeks. The caterpillars then feed for about a month, often stripping one plant bare before moving to the next - not hat I have ever seen that happen.

Once fully grown, they drop into the soil to pupate and overwinter underground, emerging as moths the following spring.

So for most of the year, there are no caterpillars on the plant at all — just that roughly month-long window, usually early July where I live.

I checked my ragwort today: approximately 3 acres of ragwort - no caterpillars. Three weeks ago there were though, so I left those plants alone and I'm only pulling now that they've moved on.

You don't have to choose between the moths and horse safety. Check first, leave what's still hosting caterpillars, pull the rest before it seeds. Symbiosis is best.

Sources:

Cinnabar caterpillars — Sussex Wildlife Trust
Ragwort cinnabar moth — Manaaki Whenua / Landcare Research
Insect Fauna in Detail — Buglife

Simba loves this jam!

Build them a rubbing post - great idea!

Now - how do I get them to use it???

"She’d be cruisin ’ for a bruisin’ if she were my foal!" Commenter.

She's sassy/spicy/having a temper tantrum/naughty/wants the milk bar/learning how to be a red mare/a stinker/has an attitude.

Or is she just being a foal?

How does the story we attach to what we see and anthropomorphising what we see horses do affect the outcome we want?

And why is everyone's judgement different? Because we judge others the same way we judge ourselves, from our core traumas and life experience.

If you took "needs a spanking" or "needs discipline" literally, you'd intervene in a completely inappropriate way for what's actually happening — a nursing/coordination/irritation issue, not a training or behavioural one.

The mares deal with it between them though - not-mum pins her ears and mum moves away. That is all that needs to be done, becasue body language speaks a thousand words. They show the foal - that is not what we do - and if you are doing that I am going to remove myself from you.

But we have a tendency to make meaning and attach feeling - if the horse misbehaves, that means I am failing. The horse "did that to me", so I need to retaliate and 'show them I am boss".

Then we carry the story from day to day. We focus on it. We expect it.

The dysregulated nervous system jumps into action - and we revert to dominance because dominance makes us feel safe - momentarily.

"I need to show her I'm boss" isn't actually a response to the foal — it's a person's activated nervous system generating a threat story and then justifying the action that story calls for.

The regulated nervous system just moves away or moves the foal away because they don't see the 'threat', they see a foal being a foal.

The mares show us that the response just needs to be proportionate, it doesn't have to be physical contact / retaliation.

That's not because horses are simple; it's because they're not running a narrative track alongside the behaviour.

And this is why our habit of attaching story is so costly to our relationships with our animals - our story becomes an expectation. Our expectation becomes our reality because it changes how we show up - muscle tension, heart rate and breathing rate - and the horse reads this.

The person arrives with tension and the horse braces against it and reacts to it. The story becomes evidence.

The story gets written by whoever's nervous system is least regulated in the interaction, and then everyone downstream, including the horse, ends up responding to the story instead of what actually happened.

This isn't really about foals. It's about every relationship where we've mistaken our own activation for someone else's misbehaviour — our kids, our partners, ourselves. The horse just makes it visible faster, because they can't pretend not to notice.

This is the whole premise behind the Saddle the Mind 7 day nervous system course — the horse was never the one who needed to change. It's why we start with the nervous system, not the behaviour. Yours, first.

If you would like to find out more drop a SADDLE in the comments.

Everyone's talking about nervous system regulation. But how do you actually do it?

Regulation isn't a vibe. It's not "stay calm," it's not "breathe." It's measurable — heart rate, breathing, muscle tension. And your horse is reading it off you in real time, whether you mean it to or not.

So "regulate your nervous system" with no mechanism behind it is just another instruction with nothing underneath it.

The response chain mechanism explains that what is often missed is that you and your horse are both running the exact same chain:

Trigger → Automatic Response → Compensation Behaviour → Result.

A horse weaving: Something triggers it, the weaving is the output.

Fit anti-weave bars, the weaving stops. Everyone calls it fixed.

It isn't. The stressor's still there. So the horse finds a new output for it — or shuts down instead.

I saw this with my own horse who weaved when I bought him - I fitted anti-weave bars and instead he walked round his box and weaved within his stable.

What people miss though, is that you are not immune to the same chain. You see the weaving, you feel the stress, you fit the bars. The behaviour changes. You don't — because the actual trigger never moved.

The secret, I have found, is to stop managing the response after it fires. Instead, work at the level where it gets built in the first place.

That's exactly what Saddle The Mind — my 7-day course teaches. Not theory. The actual mechanism, in you and in your horse.

Comment SADDLE and I'll send you the details and special offer for early registration.

What does it mean if your horse walks away when you go to catch him? Probably not what you think.

This happened to me yesterday. In this video, Simba, who normally would come to call has already turned and walked away to the furthest point of the field when I was still a way out from him. So I thought I would film me catching him when he clearly does not want to be caught and the strategy I use and teach others to employ.

When he initially walked away I thought- interesting. Now - I absolutely could catch him by force so very easily, despite him doing this. I could block him with my body, I could clap my hands and make him think I have a treat for him, I could run and catch up with him, but none of these actions answer the question we should all be asking when we see this - why does my horse not want to come to me?

Regulation and depletion have been on my mind as I have been creating a 7 day equine and human mindset process to work through with our horses. In my course, I encourage noting if we are regulated or depleted and as I saw him walk away, I reflected into myself - am I feeling regulated or depleted?

I was, in fact, feeling quite emotionally dysregulated. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, the tension in my body and shallowness of my breathing. So I chose to take the time Simba was giving me to regulate.

Breath in for 4, hold for 4 and breath out for 4. I noticed as I breathed and stood there that my shoulders started to drop and my heart rate started to slow. My breathing became deeper.

So I walked toward Simba - and he walked off again. I stopped and breathed again, over and over, feeling the wind on my cheeks and my feet on the ground, the clothes on my skin and bringing myself into the present moment and away from the thoughts that were running through my mind.

Then Simba walked a full circle around me and stopped int he same place. I took a step or 2 towards him and saw his ear flicked back and so I stopped - he walked a few strides and stopped.

Merlin (who I would say is my most dysregulated horse) then tried to get involved and scratch Simba and was given a very abrupt 'P**s off' from Simba - so interesting - Simba was completely focused on me and what I was doing and now was NOT scratch time!

Interestingly, a story many people tell themselves when their horse will not catch is that "they just want to stay with their friends" but this was so clearly not the case here, watching this interaction with Simba and his bestie.

I breathed, watching this all unfold, took a step or 2 towards him, saw the ear flick, stopped breathed more - and then, like magic, Simba walked towards me.

The highest stamp of approval, in my book. A horse who didn't want to feel my dysregulation taking notice of me becoming regulated to a point that he could approach and be in my presence.

There was no force, no insistence, just reflection and taking responsibility for my side of the partnership. I remember in my younger years spending from 30minutes to an hour+ to catch a horse that did not want to be caught. Sometimes even needing lunge lines and multiple people to corral them into a corner. It was a whole thing that I only had force as an answer to.

I was so busy doing that I could not just be.

I felt like a failure because I could not even catch the horse. But I was not failing, I was just dysregulated, and the horse can feel that from long before we get near them.

The main problem is that our dysregulation causes our horses become dysregulated and when we force the issue or apply a story to explain the behaviour without addressing our own part in it, the issue just gets worse and the avoidance behaviour spills out further than not catching, until at one point the whole deck of cards falls down.

But when we address it - in this case in the space of 3 minutes - we create a moment that positively impacts the horse (and ourselves) moving forward.