Online resources

However, perhaps it is time to look for better ways of learning. I am not saying having someone you trust work with you and your horse face-to-face isn’t a fabulous way to learn. I am not saying that spending a weekend with me exploring behaviour isn’t a great, fun, educational experience, but there are other ways to look at learning.

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I like meeting people and being part of their journey. However, no matter how far I drove or how many flights I took, I was only meeting a few people at a time, those who were local to the event and had the time, money, or support to attend. I contributed to climate change by traveling thousands of miles by car and plane.

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People bringing horses to events is always stressful, even if the horses are used to travelling. I was at the edge of my comfort zone, bringing horses to strange environments and working with whatever issue or behaviour an owner had brought the horse for. After all, I would never say to an owner that the best way to work with this issue is to load up your horse, travel them a couple of hours, and put them in a strange environment, probably near other horses they had never met before, then have a stranger try to fix an issue that might be specific to their normal home environment or handler.

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A horse guardian in Australia isn’t going to fly to the UK to spend a weekend on a workshop with me, or at least 99.9% of them aren’t. The cost and organisation are just too much. I have travelled to Australia twice to work with people and worked with 200 -300 people.  Online resources have allowed me to reach out to and help more donkeys, horses, and mules across the globe. I can help horses, donkeys, and mules worldwide when those owners don’t have the local advice or support that is right for their journey. No matter where you are in the world, if you have internet access, you can access quality resources at a fraction of the cost of travelling to an event. As a result, I can reach more equines.

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Online resources have some distinct advantages:

• Your learning experience is personal to you. You control the speed and pace of learning.

• You choose when you learn, small sessions fitted into the normal life, dedicated time set aside, or the whole day, “I am on a workshop option from your own living room or kitchen table.”

• You can pause, rewind, replay, fast forward to suit you, and gain insights into complex topics that you miss with just one pass, and without feeling you are impacting anyone else.

• Revisit different elements when you want or need to, allowing better understanding as you practise.

• Ask questions, interact and discuss without social concerns or nerves

• You get the whole picture of a topic carefully thought out by the trainer, no relying on the horse in a clinic to show what you wanted to learn or a trainer remembering to talk about the one aspect you wanted to cover

• No social anxiety meeting new people; you can keep your camera off

• No travel costs

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Yes, it takes a new mindset and a little discipline, but the advantages of online resources and courses are clear for you as the learner, the horse, and the environment.  There are good and bad learning experiences and online learning so I like to include courses recorded during a live course or demonstration as part of the learning experience. It's like being there, but without waiting for a break for a wee and a cup of tea.

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Online courses and resources are not designed to replace the practical application, "learning by doing." If you learn in a classroom face to face you still have to go out and practise, you apply the theory you learnt in a classroom. Online courses are just a classroom you can access whenever you want, control the pace of learning and have access to the content for months or years, not having to remember what was said at 10.30 on a Saturday morning or rely on those notes you thought made sense at the time!

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Watch the video on this page to understand why I think online learning should be part of your educational mix, and why learning the theory is vital to good application and safety.

 

Like all my shaping plans, ebooks courses come with a money-back guarantee. Use them and if they aren’t for you and you don’t learn I will give you your money back. No risk.