Belinda Daws

Location: Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

My Story

My horsey history started with a horse-obsessed childhood, and continued through a range of different jobs, including horse manager at an agistment centre and groom for multiple FEI dressage riders. It was a childhood dream come true to actually be paid to do what I loved, particularly those jobs that involved training and riding. I worked with a variety of horses, from the first handling of foals through to schooling FEI dressage movements.

At university I majored in zoology, with my particular favourite areas being anthrozoology, animal behaviour and ethology. This sciencey background was one of the things that drew me towards evidence-based, welfare-focused horse training.

Positive reinforcement really appealed to me as soon as I first saw how much more the horses got out of it compared to their usual training. I dabbled in clicker training off and on for years, having done some with my dogs previously, but I always felt I was missing important pieces of the puzzle. Hardly anyone else around me knew about this new way of training, and there was no-one local to turn to for help and support.

Thankfully I found Connection Training. The combination of emotion-focused positive reinforcement training, good horse sense from experienced horse people, and a supportive learning environment, turned out to be exactly what I had been searching for.

I hope I can continue to pay forward what I myself have received from Connection Training, with the incredibly rewarding work of helping others as they progress on their individual learning journeys with their equines.

I wanted help in my journey to find a kinder way to help train my donkeys and ponies. The donkey I was training was a wild caught jenny and was quite timid and I didn’t want to scare her as she is very sweet. I have a much more confident donkey now who is willing to try things and is much easier to handle with her husbandry behaviours. Belinda is firstly, a very kind and empathetic person. She has immediate understanding of my situation and what I am trying achieve. She has a gentle way of suggesting alternatives and giving a different angle of a problem. She is very encouraging and when I finished speaking with her I felt motivated and postive. I have gotten a lot of confidence in myself while having support from Belinda and I think she is going to be valuable to the world of positive training. Thank you to Connection Training and to Belinda for this opportunity. I have found it to be a positive influence on my training for my animals. My jenny came a long way in a short time. Thanks again,

Fiona and Georgia