Light Touch Equine
Helping with behaviour issues, training and management, with the aim of transforming the relationship between human and equine partners.
My Background
Dorothy Heffernan, Ph.D. (Strath.), C.Psychol. is the person behind Light Touch Equine. With a background in Psychology, Dorothy has specialised in working in the field of equine behaviour since 2005. Light Touch Equine is the point of contact for anybody looking for insight, training and advice on improving the rapport between humans and their equid friends.
The whole range of issues that people encounter when working with their horses come down to a few fundamental things. People often wish their horses could talk, but being able to understand what the horse is communicating is not so far out of reach as it might seem. Horses communicate through behaviour, and understanding the behaviour helps us improve that rapport.
Being able to recognise whether an issue is due to a missing step in training, a physical or veterinary problem or something in the horse’s day to day life makes solving what seem insurmountable issues much more accessible.
I would love to show you how to create a rapport with your equid friend, whether that’s a horse, pony, donkey or mule, that will help you overcome obstacles in getting where you want to be and that is built on trust and cooperation.
The range of challenges my approach can help you address includes
Day to day care and handling, including hoof handling, clipping, grooming, tacking up, loading…
Relationships between horses, including helping with issues around food, concerns about separation from other horses, helping horses feel more comfortable away from their friends.
Ridden issues, including napping, resistance to ridden aids, rushing jumps.
Fear issues, and aggression directed at other equids and humans.
How I work
My approach to working with horses and other equids is based on decades of study of ethology (the scientific and objective study of animal behavior especially under natural conditions), psychology and neuroscience. To work with an animal effectively, we need to know what behaviours are normal for that animal, how to recognize how they are feeling, and how they learn about the world they live in.
This helps us to choose the approach that works with the horse - and that’s how Light Touch Equine came about. My way of working with horses is light touch - sometimes, you can change the way an animal acts without needing to train them at all. You just need to look at what they instinctively want to do, and use that to create the behaviour and emotional response you seek, If you do need to train specific behaviours (lifting hooves to be cleaning and trimmed for example), the light touch approach focusses on making it easy and enjoyable to cooperate, rather than the heavy handed methods that coerce and micro-manage.
This simple change in how we view creating the behaviours that help us and our horses get along together makes working with horses more enjoyable and safer. We all know, in our hearts, that getting louder, scarier and more insistent isn’t the way we want to be with our horses - if we have to keep them engaged in the training by stopping them leaving, our touch is too heavy.
What I offer
In person Training
I can work with you and your horses, ponies, donkeys and mules to help train new things, to help retrain behaviours, to help resolve fear issues and to help you learn new ways of working with them.
I’m happy to help with training foals and youngsters from scratch for everything from first head collar and leading right up to working to introduce a rider. I’m also happy to help develop training plans to deal with equines who have worries about things including but not limited to loading, travelling, separation from friends, clipping, handling and ridden work.
Clients within about an hour’s travel of PA12 are within my range for in-person training. I do occasional trips to Dumbartonshire, Stirlingshire, Ayrshire, Lothian and Borders.
Online Coaching
I can work remotely with you to help you learn about force free, positive reinforcement based training. I’m happy to start at the very beginning, making sure your training goes smoothly and your equine friend enjoys every part of the process - avoiding fear, frustration and confusion.
I can also help with troubleshooting, where previous positive reinforcement training has missed the mark.
Group sessions
I can offer group training days on a range of topics from “Equine Behaviour 101” through “Safe Use of Food in Training”, “Using Positive Reinforcement to improve ridden work” and “Introduction to Bitfree Riding”. I’ve also offered “Enrich Your Horse’s Life” at livery yards where groups of owners get together to look at how to work to create a more stimulating and enriched living environment for their horses, whether this is over winter, for box rest or just for fun! Contact me if you have specific ideas you’d like to chat about.
British Psychological Society
Being a Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society since 2001 means I have been assessed as meeting high standards of education and training, I am committed to ongoing continued professional development and I adhere to their standards of professional conduct.
Pet Professional Guild
I am a member of the Pet Professional Guild and a member of the Guild’s Equid Committee. The PPG values of a holistic, force free approach to training and management echo my own approach and I am very happy to work with this group of like minded trainers and behaviour consultants.
World Bitless Association
As a member of the WBA, I believe in applying high welfare standards to ridden interactions with equids. Current research on equid welfare suggests that bit free riding should be an option for all equestrians, and I promote this and help people to transition from riding with a bit to bit free.
International Equine Professionals
IEP is a supportive network of equine professionals whose aim is to help the equines that we work with to live enriched, happy lives with their emotional and physical needs met.
Professional Insurance
I am fully insured for equine behaviour and training work with SEIB.
Research and Education
I greatly value the continued research on equid behaviour and the training of new equid professionals and work with the University of Edinburgh supervising Masters students on their Clinical Animal Behaviour course:
Harvey, E., Chase-Topping, M., Bowell, V. A., Heffernan, D., & Moxon, R. (2023). Guiding Principles: effect of a science-based staff training program on knowledge and application of assistance dog training techniques. Journal of Veterinary Behavior.
