Silversand Horsemanship

Silversand Horsemanship is a new way of presenting Horsemanship and is gaining popularity in Australia, UK, Europe and Africa.

The system has been developed by Steve and Irena Halfpenny who started teaching horsemanship in 1995 as Parelli Natural Horsemanship Instructors.

Their decision to resign from the Parelli organisation in November 2002 came from a desire to develop their own personal style of teaching based not just on the Parelli system but from the influence of other Horsemen.

The first and second part of the programme is now available. The first is a three DVD set with pdf manual and covers the Foundation 1, 2 and 3 set of skills. This is available in English, German and Polish (all on the same DVD set). The second part, the Advancing Skills, is a single DVD. These are available in our online shop as well as from our Instructor team and Distributors (English only at this time).

The main goal of Silversand Horsemanship is to help horse owners to learn how to develop their horses to be confident, soft and reliable under saddle. While this goal seems very simple it is not commonly achieved.

The programme is designed to show horse owners how to achieve this goal by understanding that horses cannot become soft physically if they have mental and emotional problems. It works on expanding the horse's confidence first, before working on teaching the horse how to respond to pressure (yield) and then on to do more complex maneuvers (accurate patterns). The goal is also to build the rider's confidence and skill at the same time.

The Foundation programme covers such subjects as teaching your horse to load into a trailer, how to saddle for the first time all the way up to controlling the horse by using hindquarter disengagement and then using two reins when the horse is ready for more refined communication. It is designed to help any horse owner whether they want to have more control of their horse on the ground, have a braver trail riding horse or the foundation required for a willing competition horse.

Steve has competed successfully in the Western area for several years at State level in South Australia and is also interested in all forms of Equestrian sport both English and Western. He has had extensive experience in starting young horses and with so called problem horses. This is where he learnt to pay great attention to how the horse was mentally and emotionally. He has great respect for the horse and believes that the horse is always trying to cope in the human environment the best way he can. He believes that if we can just begin to understand the way horse's think and deal with situations they find themselves in we will be better equipped to deal with potential problems. If a horse is put in a situation that he feels is dangerous (life threatening) he will feel the need to do something to save his life. Steve believes that the need the horse has for self preservation causes many problems for people. They do not understand what is happening and cannot see that it is their responsibility to help the horse mentally and emotionally to cope with situations they encounter everyday.  Everything we teach the horse has the potential to frighten him and if we are not careful about how we present things to him there is a chance that we could unintentionally trigger his instinct to flee to save his life. This is a situation that we endeavor to avoid as it can be very dangerous for both horse and rider.

This process of self preservation is something that Steve believes causes most of the resistances that we may have in our horses.  He believes that we need to be a strong dependable leader for the horse, but without causing defensiveness in the process.