MELANIE WATSON
BHSAI

Melanie is a positive horse trainer who uses Applied Behavioural Science, LIMA principles and Clicker Training. Her areas of speciality include trauma recovery, traffic training, behaviour modification from fear to active participation, racehorse retraining, young horse handling and starting, aggression and resource guarding in horses. She offers in house training at her yard in Skidby as well as on-site visits at your horses's location, and online consultations where applicable.

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"I am a Professional Horse Behaviour Consultant and Trainer, est 1985, here in Yorkshire. UK.  I have been in the horse industry for over 40 years. As a self employed professional for 37 years. As such I have an enormous base of experience in all fields and in all ways.  I gained my BHSAI when I was 18 because that was the only training standard available in those days.  I followed up by working outside of Vienna in Austria being taught Classical riding/dressage by members of the Spanish Riding school.  I returned to the UK where I ran a TB breeding yard, started racehorses, rode point to point races and milked cows! I started to realise the significance in understanding behaviour while working with the cow herds and their calves.

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When I left Gloucestershire I returned to Yorkshire where I was head hunted by International show jumping owner-Trevor Banks. I ran his yard for a while and met amazing people including members of the Royal family.   I left to start my own yard business in 1985 and am still here all these years later. I was traditionally trained back then. I learned and applied Natural Horsemanship techniques for some years but always felt there were times when training can be against the horse and you were in danger of becoming part of the problem.

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"My decisive and life changing moment came when I was invited to attend and present at the first International Animal trainers conference at Twycross Zoo in 2011. It was there I saw first hand how different training horses could be. I knew nothing of any of this before! I made friends within the Zoo world and was invited behind the scenes at Zoos all over the UK and abroad. I watched and participated in amazing training with wild animals who were all free to leave at any time. My journey into force free, modern, humane, positive animal training began from that time and I threw myself into learning behavioural science and the art of applying it all with horses."

 

Melanie was crowned Behavioural Trainer of the Year at the 2021 Equestrian Business Awards, and later became a judge.  She regularly performs video phone behaviour consultations for horse owners both in the UK and Internationally.  She also performs home/yard visits to where the problem is happening for behavioural, environmental and functional analysis and assessments. For many clients, it is beneficial for their horses or ponies to stay at Melanie's yard in Skidby, for dedicated behavioural rehabilitation.