The River Tiger Podcast Marianne Davies

I love all of my podcast episodes, but every now and again I get to record and be part of a conversation that I could have a profound influence on both me and other equestrians. This is one of those conversations.

My guests on this episode are Bonny Mealand and Emily Kieson:
Bonny Mealand DEP MEPA

Bonny’s niche is trimming the hooves of wild horses, combining her extensive experience as an Equine Podiatrist , fascination with equine behaviour, and her skill as a trainer of the “untrainable”.

Her award winning work with the takhi (Equus ferus ssp.Przewalskii ) of the Highland Wildlife Park has been featured on BBC Inside the Zoo. She is a regular writer for the Concordia: A Voice for Horses magazine and runs courses teaching safe, low stress and effective handling techniques. Bonny is an advocate of ethological study and alongside Dr Emily Kieson runs “Learning Wild” equine behaviour courses. Having been involved for many years with both domestic as well as wild horses she is passionate about sharing the valuable information she has learnt and showing how inextricably linked these two worlds are.

Bonny is an enthusiastic Equine Science Masters student at The University of Edinburgh (Dick Vet). She volunteers as a welfare advisor for the BHS. She is a Somatic Yoga and Mindfulness teacher and a Retained Firefighter for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

Web site - https://www.touchingwild.com/

Online Course - https://community-touchingwild.mn.co/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/touching_wild

Facebook (Learning Wild) - https://m.facebook.com/learning.wild.global/

Facebook (Touching Wild) - https://m.facebook.com/TouchingWild/


Emily Kieson PhD, MS, PgDip


Emily Kieson serves as Executive Director at Equine International, a US-based nonprofit focused on research, education, and outreach in the fields of equine behavior, welfare, and equine-human interactions. 

Emily holds a PhD in Comparative Psychology, a MS in Psychology, and a graduate degree in Equine Science. She also holds multiple certifications in various models of equine-assisted activities and recently served as Chair of the Equine Welfare Committee with the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship (PATH).
 
Her current research focuses involve looking at equine affiliative behaviors to study how horses create and maintain social bonds and how those can overlap with human
affiliative behaviors for application in management, horse ownership, equine-assisted activities, and indicators of positive welfare in horses with and without humans. 

Emily also has a passion for supporting sustainable systems of horse management an

I reached out to Sara Bref after reading a translation of one of her articles for the Swedish equestrian magazine Hippson. After a brief exchange of emails, I invited Sara to be a guest and Sara asked if she could bring Petra with her.

I know I always say that my guests are awesome (they are), but this was a very special and rich conversation that also left me feeling more hopeful and thoughtful about the future of equestrianism and equestrian sports. I hope that you enjoy listening to the conversation and please do follow my guests and their wonderful journalism (mot of it is in Swedish so google-translate might be a good companion and well worth the effort to translate).

Sara wrote an article about my concept paper 'Can’t jump, won’t jump: Affordances of the horse-rider dyad underpin skill adaptation in showjumping using a constraints-led approach. (Davies, M., Stone, J. A., Davids, K., Williams, J., & O’Sullivan, M. (2023). Can’t jump, won’t jump: Affordances of the horse-rider dyad underpin skill adaptation in showjumping using a constraints-led approach. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 18(4), 1313-1319).
Research article -
https://doi.org/10.1177/17479541221107379
Hippson article -
https://www.hippson.se/artikelarkivet/forskning/forskare-belyser-var-syn-pa-hasten.htm?fbclid=IwAR2wse5e49Wj0TyqADTsRq_wH7QwzqHQBev9VPteV5yokoT4Dtc7JiliafM

My guests on this episode were:

Sara Bref
Sara has a degree in Animal Science and is also a journalist. Sara currently works at the Swedish Farmers Association, before that she worked with science communication at a Swedish university. Sara has also been writing popular science for horse magazines (mostly hippson.se) for 15 years.

Sara can be reached on her LinkedIn, though she only posts in Swedish: Sara Bref | LinkedIn

Petra Andersson
Petra has a PhD in practical philosophy and has a position as a researcher and teacher in practical philosophy at The University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Most of Petra's teaching is in environmental ethics and animal ethics. Most of her research is about horse welfare.

Petra is on Facebook and can be contacted through her university email at petra.andersson@filosofi.gu.se

In this episode I caught up with my good friend Tyler Yearby from Emergence and US Ski and Snowboard to discuss his work in strength and conditioning, movement technique, biomechanics, and coaching.

I hope that you enjoy this episode. Please get in touch with your reflections and feedback. 


Research Papers(Re)conceptualizing movement behavior in sport as a problem-solving activity - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2023.1130131/full
ReserachGate Proflie
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tyler-Yearby

ContactingTyler
X - @TylerYearby
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-yearby-59b89b5a/

I came across Karen's research while reading up for the discussion section of one of my PhD study papers. In this conversation we explore systems thinking, how it applies to horses and equestrianism, welfare, training and lots more. I hope that you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

My guest on this episode is PhD candidate, Karen Luke.

Karen Luke researches rider motivation and safety as well as horse welfare and welfare assessment at Central Queensland University. Her work includes developing a new approach to horse welfare based on systems thinking and a new ridden horse welfare assessment tool that she used to show a connection between horse welfare and rider safety. She has also investigated equestrians’ understanding of horse welfare and most recently, why equestrians make the choices they do when it comes to horse keeping and training. Karen lives in Melbourne, Australia and when not researching, enjoys riding and training her own horses.

Recommended books:
The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi.

Ways of Being. James Bridle.

Karen's ReserachGate profile:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karen-Luke-2

Twitter/ X
@K_L_Luke

Just Equestrian Solutions Website:
https://justequestriansolutions.com/index.html

The research on rats, motivation, welfare, and learning (lego cars and fruit loops):
https://urnow.richmond.edu/video/article/-/19727/rats-who-ride-see-the-latest-from-urs-motoring-rodents-.html?utm_source=www&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=video-story

In this episode we revisit the importance of considering where an athlete or learner is focusing their attention and why focus of attention is so important for skill acquisition, retention, and transfer.

My guests bring the topic to life with an overview of the research literature to date. We also discuss some of the challenges of research, application to practice and why this area is so important for coaches to be aware of. 

Findings in the 'focus of attention' literature for the benefits of an 'external focus'  has been one of the most replicated phenomena in sports science. But, is it that simple? More recent research is challenging the simple internal vs external focus dichotomy and looking at what perceptual information might be most important for the performer to be attuning to.

We also discuss the importance of researchers learning from practitioners.

My guests on this episode are Dr Vicky Gottwald and Dr Robin Owen.

Vicky Gottwald
X @GottwaldVicky

University profile
https://www.bangor.ac.uk/staff/spss/vicky-gottwald-016917/en

Robin Owen
X @RobinOwenPsych

University profile
https://www.hope.ac.uk/si/dr-robin-owen.html

Useful Links 
Gottwald et al, (2023). Every story has two sides: evaluating information processing and ecological dynamics perspectives of focus of attention in skill acquisition
 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2023.1176635/full

Harnessing the power of attention: Exploring 'focus of attention' theories, practice, and myths. In book: Myths of Sport Performance (Due in Spring 2024). Publisher: Sequoia.
Draft version: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377416924_Harnessing_the_power_of_attention_Exploring_'focus_of_attention'_theories_practice_and_myths 

My guest Mark O'Sullivan is an associate professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and an 'A' Licence Football Coach. Mark is also a co-author on my concept paper, 'Can't jump, won't jump.'

In this conversation we explore why Mark chose to go back into academia and follow a PhD researching coaching and skill acquisition from an ecological dynamics perspective.

The conversation follows our curiosity and wanders through a variety of topics starting with Mark's motivation to 'fall into a PhD' at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK with James Rumbold and Keith Davids alongside his full time job as Head of Development for 8–12 years olds at AIK FC in Stockholm.

The conversation centres on the challenges and opportunities of trying to move from a more linear to nonlinear pedagogy in sports coaching practice. Mark challenges many of our current coaching practices, myths, coach education, and the pervasiveness of socio-cultural influences.

For those of you who are paying attention, Mark is also one of my co-authors on the paper 'Can't jump, won't jump: Affordances of the horse-rider dyad underpin skill adaptation in showjumping using a constraints-led approach.' Davies at al, 2022.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17479541221107379

Here are some of Mark's open access academic papers:
The Learning in Development Research Framework for sports organizations, O'sullivan et al, 2021. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13573322.2021.1966618

Not just to know more, but to also know better: How data analysis-synthesis can be woven into sport science practiced as an art of inquiry, O'sullivan et al, 2023.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13573322.2023.2261970

Researchgate (if you are not familiar with this site, it's a great place to search for academic researchers and often has copies of papers available as open access): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark-O-Sullivan-Phd

Twitter (X): @markstkhlm

Mark's Blog: https://footblogball.wordpress.com/