Plenty of little girls grow up with dreams of ponies and unicorns – but Robyn Moolman, owner of Equine Lingo, has been the one in a million whose dreams came true.
Robyn says that she cannot remember a time when she wasn’t crazy about horses. While most of her peers in Jeffreys Bay, where she grew up, were out soaking up the sun on the beach, she was riding bareback and bridle-less.
It wasn’t until she was about 11 that she discovered she wasn’t just a talented rider – she had a rare gift as a trainer, too. It all started with an “untrainable” horse she fell in love with, Robyn recalls. “This horse had a bad reputation because he’d thrown his owner so many times. But I used to sneak off to ride him while my mother was having tea with the yard owner after my jumping lessons. Sometimes I even went swimming in the dam with him in the moonlight.”
Although she had been able to coax the terrified horse into trusting her, his owner continued to struggle with him. One day, he decided to end the fight. The horse was to be sold to the lion park as food. Robyn wouldn’t stand for that, and so although the owner had resisted selling the horse to her, claiming that he was no horse for a girl, he became her first.
Soon, word of her success with the truculent horse reached other members of the equine community, who were fascinated by her methods and even sent their own horses to be trained – even though she had only just started high school. “When I look back, I think it’s amazing that people trusted me, this kid. But back then, my age just wasn’t an issue.” In fact, Robyn had entrenched herself in the industry in other ways, too. Because she felt guilty asking her father (who had taken a job overseas to support the family) to spend money on her horses, she took her finances in hand, selling grass bales of horse feed to stable yards and even taking over the local tack shop. Even then, she started on her mission to educate the industry by selling better-fitting tack.
By the time school was over, Robyn was more passionate about her calling as a horse trainer than ever before. Although she flirted briefly with the idea of studying veterinary science, and already injected her own horses and stitched their wounds, she knew that she could achieve more by empowering horse owners and educating them about how to help their horses live their best lives. “It’s simple really – a healthy horse is a happy horse, and that means fewer behavioural problems,” she explains. She invested long hours and consulted dozens of resources to deepen her knowledge of horsemanship methods, equine anatomy and learning theory (a habit she has maintained), studying several internationally recognised qualifications – but the path to setting up the facility she’d envisaged was far from smooth.
Robyn moved between the coast, Bloemfontein and Joburg for a long while, training horse owners in a freelance capacity, before she settled in Kyalami, almost serendipitously. “I knew the first time I travelled to this part of Joburg that I wanted to live here. It has more horses per capita than anywhere in the world besides Texas, which meant there were so many horses – and people – for me to help.”
Fast forward to 2023, and she is doing exactly that through Equine Lingo. The centre’s approach to training is based on positive and negative reinforcement, rather than attempting to establish dominance, as traditional methods do. It’s all about understanding how horses learn and appreciating what’s important to them; understanding, too, that we cannot place horses in our own environments and expect them to behave as we wish. “It’s about being able to meet their needs as best we can in a human environment, reading the horse’s body and language and responding appropriately,” Robyn says.
Because every person in the horse’s ecosystem, including owners, riders and groomers, need to be able to respond in the same way, Equine Lingo provides coaching for them, too, along with clinics and workshops. It’s rare for members of the industry to share the kind of information that Robyn makes available, but she believes that training shouldn’t be a secret.
It’s no wonder that she’s been called a horse whisperer, although she baulks at the label. “Horse whisperers appear to work magic. What I do is based on understanding body language, science, good training and coaching and communication.”
Robyn faced many disappointments before finding a home base for her facility, with property owners selling the locations she was renting. She prayed long and hard to find the right space. Along the way, she met many wonderful people who shared her vision and helped her, including well-known industry figures Dawn Mansfield and Jenku Diedrikson, whom she describes as “Y-junction role players” along her journey. “This is an industry associated with money, and lots of it. It can be difficult if you don’t have that background, but if you know that you have a God-given gift, you need to keep going. Even if you only plant seeds as you go, doors will open.” Through the journey, she’s counted on her faith, while her aunt acts as devil’s advocate and provides practical advice when she “sprouts controversial, big ideas.”
“We are excited for the future. Equine Lingo is ready. We know that there’s so much better to come for horses, and humans, in the equestrian industry.”
Details: equinelingo.co.za
The magic of equine therapy
Horses have long been known as a source of healing – but why? Robyn admits that there’s no simple answer, but guesses that it has to do with the way their brains work. Because their prefrontal cortex is less well developed than in humans, horses don’t hold grudges, she explains. They live completely in the present moment – which means that you have to do the same. What’s more, horses react to your anxiety and body language, so you need to work hard to regulate your own emotions. “A horse won’t trust you if you’re unconfident or angry. You have to acknowledge what’s going on inside yourself, and address it, to have the best version of your horse show up.”
Article by Lisa Witepski.
