Equine Alternative Therapy

Willow It was great to be able to work outside today in the warm sunshine! Willow was having some difficulty keeping herself balanced for the farrier this past weekend with expressed concerns specifically the hind right leg. ... After straightening her out it was pretty apparent that she was much more relaxed and comfortable! Even to the point where her owner and I heard a couple snoring moments post treatment! Thanks for having me out today Laurel Gibson

I belong to a page for equine professionals and something caught my eye. This therapist was using cryotherapy machine on a horse. My initial thought was Oh, thats interesting I’ve never seen that done before with a direct thought after Why the hell are we using horses SO MUCH for product testing It hit me hard and honestly, it made me sad. So here I am, asking you Why are we using all these machines on these beautiful animals that we love so much? What happened to t...he basics? What happened to using our good ol’ hands to palpate and feel whats wrong with our horses over using all these added tools to do the job for us? My hands can tell me if there is a temperature change, swelling, pain, inflammation, edema, scar tissue, adhesions, atrophy muscle, hypertonic muscle, structural abnormalities, saddle fit the list goes on. You know what else my hands can do? Help fix these problems. Is this not the first step we take when our equine athletes become off? Do we not go and FEEL the area? We do a physical assessment with our HANDS. If you walked into a doctors office complaining about a really swollen foot and they didn’t ask to see it or feel it, what would you do? You would walk out the door! (Well, I sure hope you would!) Don’t get me wrong. There is a place for everything to help make our jobs easier. Adding ice or cold hosing to help with swelling Yup! Helps me a lot. Unfortunately, I don’t have x-ray or ultrasound vision, so absolutely veterinary intervention for a diagnosis is extremely important but I’m talking about the rehab aspect of it. Adding machines to help rehab. Blankets, plates, magnets MACHINES to do our jobs. Now, for you as an owner I think it’s very important to make sure you are doing your homework and research on your chosen type of therapy. Ask yourself this Would you do it to yourself? Are there proven controlled studies on it? Are the studies done on horses or humans? If there isn’t any, or the manufacture won’t provide you with them RED FLAG. I can’t emphasize this enough. I am a strong believer that our hands are our perfect tools to get the results we want without adding expensive machines to do the work for us. I hate to break it to you, but guess what? There is no quick fix, or 'magic pill' to long term success in the rehab and therapy process. It takes time, patience and discipline to get long term results. So, lets not forget these points when helping our horses. I’ll leave it at that with one finishing note : Keep it stupid simple.

It’s here! The Christmas video we have all been waiting for this year! Emma Massingale

I’ll be in Boyle on Saturday with WaterLou Equine Therapy for anyone needing treatments before the New Year!

This lucky guy received an early Christmas gift this morning. Thank you @that.dappled.arab for having me out today! It was a pleasure meeting you and your sweet boy, Oscar! #yeg #horse #equinemassage #equinetherapy #equestrian #equinerehab #theyegequestrian

CLIENT SUCCESS STORY: We tend to lose sight of how far we've come when we are rehabbing our horses. I saw Nash again this week and wanted to remind my client how hard she's worked in-between visits as we are all guilty of focusing on the detail and forget to step back to see the whole picture. This client was presented to me last year, after a bi-lateral counterirritant injections to help with upward fixation of the patellas. With his owner giving me her trust, we designed a ...rehab program to help Nash get him to where he is today. This didn't happen overnight! I have to congratulate her hard work and dedication. She did weeks of ground work exercises to help strengthen him enough before going under saddle. Changed his diet to provide adequate nutrition to build muscle. We spent months correcting the angles of his feet to provide proper support of his continuously changing body. I'm happy to say he is now in full time work, and well on his way to a lifetime riding partnership with his owner. With time, patience and consistency the final product is well worth the wait when you have such a rewarding outcome, just like Nash did.

Clifford Update Following the last post, I wanted to showcase some videos to add more visuals. *The videos are attached in the comments* The first video is the day I met Clifford on January 21, 2020. (we call him this because he honestly has the friendliest personality, like the classic big red dog cartoon character). It is clear that he was landing heavier laterally on both front legs. He also had shoes on with pads. I asked the pervious owners to pull his shoes and NOT tr...im him on the next farrier visit. I wanted to work with Kody under Smokin’ C equine. The Canadian Equine Therapy Institute and myself work closely with him on all of horses we rehab as well as our personal horses. The second video was when we met with Kody on February 11th, 2020. We took a before video in slow motion so we could get a good look at how Clifford was loading. His front right was worse than his front left, it was quite obvious that he was landing heavier on the lateral side of his foot. When Kody and I work together, we don’t do one therapy before the other; We actually work in unison. When he trims a foot its going to change the angle of the horses leg, creating a difference in terms of what muscles have to support that change. The third video shows the changes after an hour and a half of body work and gradually trimming the feet at the same time. As a result, his front left is now bearing weight more equally and his front right isn’t fully crossing over the left anymore. The moral of the story: knowing the attachments and the action of each muscle is vital in a therapist treatment, this tells us whether or not a horse is using the proper muscles during movement. As we know, the way a horse carries itself will impact the feet, and the horse as a whole.

Captain Morgan (Clifford) Age: 10 Breed: CWB Height: 17.1hh...Continue reading

Therapist’s-eye view This beautiful sunny morning was spent with some red heads! Here is a ‘therapist’s-eye view’ from behind the horse with a before and after respectively. ... Why do we do this? What are we looking at? How does this guide us where to start? Let’s take a human. If our left knee is flexed and adducted towards the midline of the body, our pelvis drops drop causing a bend in our spine resulting in our left shoulder to drop as well. Let’s take a horse. If our horses left stifle is endorotated (inwards), our left ilium would drop into a ventral out-flair (hip drops) causing a bend in our spine resulting in the horses left scapula to drop into a downslip (shoulder drops). It’s the same thing! As a therapist, this 5 second dorsal view is an essential foundation to our assessment. This one view can potentially tell us what is causing an issue and even why your horse is having an issue. Most important, this opens an opportunity for us to start asking YOU more questions on your horse to aid us on a more detailed and precise assessment before we even start working on them. Happy Saturday! @ Edmonton, Alberta

Everyone meet Captan Morgan, the newest patient in for rehabilitation! I am really excited for this big, beautiful and friendly warmblood. I will be sharing and updating his progress for you all as we continue to work with him!

In honour of today being the National Day of the Horse, it’s only appropriate to thank all of my currently clients, supporters, and students as this dream of being a therapist can only happen because of all of you! So thank you for everyone’s continuous support! Also, a major thank you to Shantel Perreal for taking me under her wing and providing me with the education, skills and opportunity to help continue educating future therapist! Oh, and to my own special horse, Blue, for winning us National Reserve Champion 13 times when my only goal was to stay on during my first ever horse show!

Received a complimentary holiday car wash at a clients yesterday!