Kat’s Background
Kat Layfield is a classical riding instructor, specialising in French classical principles. She started riding in 1979 and started her teaching career in 1993. Aswell as teaching single horse owners she is highly respected by her peers and teaches a large number of equine professionals, including vets, osteopaths and other Instructors.
Kat offers gadget free training in groundwork, lungeing, in-hand work and riding and has huge experience in helping horses with remedial issues. Kat works with horses of all levels, whether it be learning foundations with young horses, rehabilitation work and/or producing horses to high school. Within everything she does Kat’s primary focus is welfare and helping every horse and their owner to be the best they can be.
In her early years Kat had a conventional experience of horses, coming through the BHS system and competing in all disciplines on both her own and her clients’ horses. Kat also judged dressage tests and was a conformation and riding judge for show hunters and riding horse classes. However, in 1996 she became disillusioned with conventional horse training and management and her passion for horse welfare and ‘horse friendly’ practices took her career in a different direction. She experimented with ‘natural living’ concepts and with bareback and bitless riding and completed a Monty Roberts young horse course, but she still had a desire to train horses to a high level in a kind way. As a result, she set about trying to find a compassionate classical high school trainer she could learn from.
In 1997 she found such a trainer and started training with the classical trainer and western dressage Judge David Dodwell. David had been a Grand Prix trainer in the 1970’s and had hated what he had to do to achieve success. He set about developing a system based on classical principles and respect for the horse and he wrote a book on his approach ‘The Dodwell Horse Morse Code’. Kat was taught by David for 12-years and under his guidance she rode and trained ‘normal’ horses in classical dressage from Prelim to Grand Prix, with respect for the horse at the forefront of everything they did.
Before his death David had mentioned how similar the workings of his and the French Classical master Philippe Karl’s systems were, so in 2011, after David’s death, Kat signed up as an auditor on Philippe Karl’s first 3-year UK teachers’ course to see how the works of these two masters combined. Philippe Karl, a former Écuyer of the Cadre Noir had created a training school for Instructors, known as the Ecole De Légèreté (EdL). This training school passed on his philosophy of training horses with lightness and respect. Kat felt the work of Philippe and David blended beautifully and she watched Philippe teach his first UK Instructors course, attending all 10 x four day clinics between 2011 & 2013. Over that time, Kat also trained with Birgit Beck Broichsitter, a licensed German EdL Trainer. Kat rode on six of Birgit’s three-day UK clinics.
In 2013 the second UK EdL Instructor training course was announced and Kat applied for a place. After a vigorous selection process Kat was one of eight instructors selected by Philippe Karl to join the school and from 2014 – 2019 she was incredibly lucky to be trained directly by Philippe on numerous horses. In 2019, Philippe stopped teaching in the UK and EdL Masta teacher Sylvia Stossel took over teaching PKs UK Advanced students. Under Sylvia’s tutelage, Kat continued to be a rider on the UK EdL Advanced CPD group and for 3-years was also part of the Advanced clinic’s organisation team. Kat passed all the EdL exams she could at the time, notably her theory and unknown student teaching exams. Kat has travelled to Germany for a week and to France twice to watch Philippe teaching and working his own horses.
In 2025, due to health issues and family responsibilities, Kat needed to reduce her external commitments and so stepped down from her rider position on the Advanced UK EdL course. Kat still advocates the principles of the school wholeheartedly and this is born out in her practical client teaching, her international theory lectures and her mentoring of UK and International EdL trainee instructors through their training and exam preparation.
In addition to her wealth of practical experience Kat is highly qualified, holding a First-Class Equine Science Degree (specialising in equine behaviour and learning theory), a Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE), British Horse Society Assistant Instructor (BHSAI) and a Monty Roberts ‘Starting the Young Horse’ certificate holder. She has also trained in rider asymmetry and straightness training using the 'Alexander Technique'.
Kat has published articles for ‘Tracking-Up’ magazine and the Equine Behaviour Forum and was a guest lecturer at De Montford University for the Equine Behaviour Forum’s 25th birthday symposium. Her pioneering dissertation on equine learning theory and training was awarded a ‘First class’ and was shortlisted for the 1999 Equvalan Thesis of the Year award. Kat regularly writes articles on training, case studies and management issues which can be viewed on both her website and her FB page ‘Kat Layfield Thinking Equitation’.
As a result of her rehabilitation work with horses, Kat became a qualified Master Saddle Fitter Consultant (MSFC). She offers both remedial saddle fitting and general saddle fit consultations.
Kat promotes keeping horses in a herd based, free choice, outdoor lifestyle whenever possible and has kept her own horses this way since 1997. In 2000, Kat designed, built and ran an 'alternative' livery yard where horses had outdoor corrals attached to their stables, a type of housing solution that proved very successful and was one of the first alternative livery housing systems in the UK. Currently, for her own herd of horses, Kat combines the use of a surfaced track, grass track and equicentral philosophies. Kat also has an interest in keeping horses barefoot and has been keeping her own horses this way since 2010.
Kat is based in East Sussex, but works across the South East with monthly clinics, lessons and saddle fitting in Kent, Surrey, London and Sussex. Kat also teaches zoom theory lectures to both national and international students, focussing on French Classical training philosophy and its application.
If you’d like to learn more about Kat’s approach, please contact her at the below email address. Kat saddle fits and teaches French classical lessons and clinics across the South East of the UK and offers online theory lectures to national and international clients.
