About | Equality Coaching

My First Pony

Wendy Hill

Dual Equestrian Coach and Life Coach

I grew up in inner Melbourne and started riding in the riding school of hard knocks. There was little knowledge imparted, you learned by your mistakes (or the mistakes of others) and you were similar to a human version of a crash test dummy. It was a painful experience and not the best way to learn.

I am a complete lover of horses and always have been. I have a combined total of over 50 years of experience with horses across many of the horse sports and disciplines.

I spent the first 20+ years of my life as a successful competitor in pony club, which followed onto the Victorian and South Australian show circuits for many great successes.

In my early thirties, I had a negative experience in a dressage lesson with my best show horse. I literally got thrown into changing my primary focus of competitions to studying horse behaviour instead. Even though I was already a prolific winner in the show ring, through one single lesson with an abrasive coach, my horse’s confidence was shattered by what I was asked to do. From that day onwards I was bucked off almost daily, and sometimes several times a day as she had turned into a reactive fear bucker. I had no previous problems before this day.

I sought other coaches for no improvement, just showing in hand for Champion led Galloway mare at the Royal Melbourne Show. I then sent her away to be trained by a more confident and experienced eventing rider, that didn’t work either. She came home physically broken down in need of paddock rest. With her emotionally and physically broken down, I couldn’t have felt more like a failure and like my hopes and dreams were shattered.

I had no idea about what to do until a few months later when I read an article in a horse magazine. “The bigger bit or the bigger brain approach to horses”. I didn’t want to give up, so I decided to send myself away for training and I flew to the U.S.A. to study horse behaviour.

When I returned to Australia with my newfound knowledge and approach to horses, the course of my life changed forever. Within the next 12 months I was only bucked off 3 times and after a further 2 years we returned to show competitions. We attended 3 shows for 3 champion ridden sashes and 3 well-earned first places in the pleasure mount. (If only they knew her past). That was enough proof for me that what I had learned and applied had worked! Unfortunately, a cancerous tumour and major surgery ended up halting her show career. However, she was then a tremendous riding horse for the next 20 years of her life.

The horse that made me change

A happy combination

From there I thought I would further test out what I had learned with different horses with different problems to see if it would work as well for them, as it did for my mare, and yes it did!

I chose to stay with my new learning as it worked so well and improved the lives of other horses and people that I have helped across the racing industry, the competitive disciplines and trail riders. It was so much more personally fulfilling to help horses labelled as useless watching their lives turn around into well performing horses just by having them more understood by their owners. Then we had happy people and happy horses who could show so much more of their true potential due to the clarity of their communication.

In the last 30 years I have been solving problems for horse handlers and riders and have added other training to my knowledge as below:
I have 15 years of experience as an Equestrian Australia Introductory Level Dressage Coach and my passion is developing great relationships between people and their horses. I use horse friendly techniques and support riders to keep their self-esteem through the learning process.

I have 12 years of experience as a life management coach for people to help people not only make changes in their horse lives as well as their personal lives. How people handle their lives will reflect over into their horse’s behaviour as well. It’s not always just the horse that needs to change, all changes to the horse come through the person.
I am a level 2 reiki energy healing practitioner as horses and people share energy and emotions.
I also have an added further 2 years of relationship training for people.

Contact Wendy