HZA follows, promotes and teaches Silversand Horsemanship as a way of gaining good foundations into how a horse thinks, feels and works.  It helps students really understand more about "Equine Learning Theory" and this is the key to training horses.  Steve Halfpenny, the founder of Silversand, often reminds us that no matter what we do with our horses and no matter what discipline we enjoy doing with them, whenever we handle a horse, whenever we influence them (whether consciously or unconsciously) we are training them.  We are all trainers of the horse - even if we have not put ourselves in that category and because of this - the more knowledge and understanding we can gain, the better we will be for our horses.   

Silversand Overview - taken from their website - www.silversand.com.au

The Silversand Horsemanship Programme is designed to teach the principles of good Horsemanship to people who desire to work in a way that is more fitting to our horse's point of view.

It takes into account the horse's natural way of dealing with new situations and places, and works on the supposition that he is always trying his best to deal with what is being presented to him. It is also the awareness that some things appear to the horse to be of a life threatening nature although this is not always apparent to us.

In fact, the hardest thing for us as humans to do is to be able to see things from our horse's perspective. If we are unable to do this we will never truly get to the point where we can work together with the unity that comes from being totally tuned into each other.  The programme is divided into two parts at present, Foundation skills and Advancing skills. Foundation skills is further divided into three parts to help break things down into progressive steps.

The Foundation skills are designed to teach you how a horse thinks and learns, and has an emphasis on safety and control. There is a three DVD set available to help you with these skills.  The Advancing skills take on the concepts learned in the Foundation skills and move into more accurate patterns and body suppling exercises. In this part you will learn how to control your horse accurately in all sorts of different environments at high energy levels (speeds) while keeping your horse confident. At the end of this section you should have the knowledge to safely and confidently ride your horse anywhere.  (All Silversand DVD's are available from local distributor in South Africa - HZA)

The Advancing skills are for people with serious goals and will include advanced gymnastic exercises and collected lateral work. This is an area that we will develop in conjunction with Philip Nye who will be my mentor. The whole programme is designed to help both horse and human develop their confidence progressively and gives the horse the opportunity to respond to our cues without fear or resistance.

The purpose of the programme is to teach you skills - it is not designed to be a test. To this end our horse's needs and our own principles become more important than goals. They need to be confident about us as leaders. We never wish them to be frightened of what we are asking as this will result in a loss of confidence and ultimately hinder the softness and unity we are hoping to achieve.