Blog - Talk about whips

My Personal Journey With Whips

Dear friends,

If you had asked me years ago, I would have told you:
👉 A whip is just a tool. It’s how you use it that matters.

And I believed that.

But what I now understand is that the whip — like so many things in the horse world — carries the long history of coercive control.

Because for so many years, that is exactly how I used it.

Growing up on a farm, I used a stock whip daily — to move cattle, to force movement.

At pony club, a whip was used to make my pony do what he was told — to teach obedience.

In dressage, I used a lunge whip to drive the horse forward — circling, pushing, building fitness, trying to make him “safe” to ride.

And sometimes, when things didn’t go as I wanted — the whip became punishment.

Later, in the natural horsemanship world, I became highly skilled with the carrot stick — a stiff stick whip with a rope — and I could make my horses do many things.

And always — beneath every method, every technique — the purpose was the same:
👉 To get what I wanted.
👉 To shape the horse’s behaviour.
👉 To control the outcome.

That is what coercive control looks like.

It is not about kindness.
It is not about technique.
It is not about skill.

It is about intention.

And when the intention is:
👉 I want the horse to do what I want,
👉 I want them to move when I say, how I say,
👉 I want to control the result,

— then it is coercive.
No matter how softly it is done.

And the whip is only one example.

The same dynamic lives in:
Using a bit — to control the horse’s body.
Using spurs — to sharpen response.
Using food — to reinforce what pleases us.
Using pressure — to push, block, drive.
Managing their space, their choices, their movements.

All of it is power over.

And all of it shapes the horse into a version that pleases us — not a relationship where they are free to be themselves.

When I look back at my own journey — this is what I now see:

For years, I believed I was “training” my horses.
That I was building partnership.
That I was helping them.

But I wasn’t.

I was dominating them.

Sometimes gently, sometimes skillfully, sometimes with kindness — but always with the intention that they should do what I wanted.

And what that created — in so many horses — was not trust.
Not joy.
Not freedom.

But learned helplessness.
Polite obedience.
Shut down spirits.

Everything began to change when I finally understood this.

When I stopped focusing on training — and started focusing on relationship.

When I stopped shaping what I wanted — and started listening for who they really are.

And I know — some of you may have seen me in photos or videos — carrying a whip.
Often a dressage whip.

And this is important to say:

It is not “an extension of my arm” — as so many trainers will tell you.

That phrase still comes from a frame of control.
It is about using the whip to reach further.
To manage the horse’s body.
To shape them into the movement we want.

That is not what I am doing — and it is not what I teach.

The reason I sometimes carry a whip when training horses is this:
👉 It helps me provide clarity in my communication — so the horse can understand me more easily.
👉 And when they can understand me more easily — they feel safer, more relaxed, and freer to choose.

It is never used to control.
It is never used to “get” a response.

And learning to use the whip this way — in full awareness, with full intention FOR the horse — takes real practice.
It is part of my physical expression now — not an extension of power, but a quiet tool of support.

This is what we teach now — in the Learn To Speak Horse course:
How to recognise when old patterns of coercion are still living in our work.
How to shift intention.
How to stop managing the horse — and start meeting them in truth.

And when you do this — what returns is extraordinary.

Not just softer movement.
Not just quieter behaviour.

But the horse’s spirit.

Their truth.

The relationship you always longed for — without force, without shaping, without control.

If this speaks to you — you are so welcome to explore this work with us.
It will change your horse’s experience. And it will change you.

With love,
Paulette