Applied Equine Behaviour courses came into being as an affordable and inclusive sequential learning programme, the courses were written by Sue Gardner, Rio Barrett and Lynn Henry.
The idea was to offer natural horsemanship to the wider equine market, primarily the equine education system, the colleges.
Level 1 ground skills received accreditation with the Open College Network in 2005 and rolled out at the Welsh College of Agriculture for 3 terms. It proved to be incompatible with the training methods that were still being used in the equine education system at the college and the course ceased to run in 2007. It no longer sits on the O.C.N. framework.
In 2008 Sue suggested that it could be converted into a 2 year diploma course and during the next 6 months Rio and Sue set about re-formatting it into 8 modules that ran for 3 days spread over a 15 month time frame.
Lynn Henry chose to focus her energies on her passion, teaching children. Lynn went on to develop a programme called Think Like A Pony, and wrote books on this same subject.
In 2011 Rio stepped back from teaching due to life changing circumstances and Sue decided to make further changes and improvements adding more diversity and ensuring the course kept up with ever changing technology.
The 3 changes included:
- Writing a 100 page theory based home study certificate course.
This theory course has 20 questions designed to encourage research and independent thinking. Each question requires an average of 500 word answers. It can be purchased as a stand alone course, that said, it is a prerequisite if you wish to go for Instructorship. - Applied Equine Behaviour Instructorship Course
Converting the practical learning programme into an Instructorship Course. - In 2015 It became Applied Equine Behaviour Ltd