Being a Therapeutic riding instructor has been an amazing blessing in my life. I get to witness miracles everyday I teach. One very special day was with a beautiful young woman, Amy and her horse Knickee. Amy is one of my students with Cerebral Palsy. She has been riding most of her life, and now in just the last 6 months has made great strides! Most of her progress is due to her own determination and hard work. Another great factor is her wonderful partnership with Knickee. The communication between Amy and Knickee is apparent. So much emotion and love passes between them! A truly healing energy is radiated, even to those of us blessed to associate with both of them.
I taught Amy when she was a little girl. An adorable blond youngster with a contagious smile , she would just make you feel good meeting her. After 20 years or so I get to teach Amy again as a beautiful young woman. She is now an ambitious and inspiring adult. She enjoys life, and helps educate people about disabilities and how to over come and work with them.
Knickee is one of the most skilled therapy horses I have ever worked with. Her wisdom and understanding astound me. She not only adapts easily to all her riders with varied disabilities, but also gives lessons to able bodied riders, and is a very knowledgeable jumper. Patience and love is express though her big brown eyes, truly a priceless animal partner!
Going into this fall the hay situation looked bleak. The drought in Texas, and the rising gas prices were both a clue that the price of hay would skyrocket, and at best it would be very difficult to get. Here in Colorado I was able to buy small bales (about 65lbs.) from a local grower for $7 a bale. That was picking it up and loading it myself. I was happy to get it and stock piled as much as a could. Just after Christmas my pile was looking more like a mole hill ,and I knew I needed to secure more hay, and I knew I would pay much more. Small bales are near impossible to find and if you do, you are paying anywhere from $12 to $15 a bale. Solution: Big Bales. Big square bales come in two sizes 850lbs and 1100lbs. I have several friends who had started buying the big bales and their stories of loading and unloading these monsters helped reassure me. Unloading was my biggest concern. One day I watched in amazement as one gal I know arrived at her barn with two 850lb bales straddling her truck bed. With out as much as a warning she started backing up very fast slammed on her brakes and the two bales tumbled off the back and landed perfectly side by side on the pallets at my feet! I knew I would not be doing that as my barn is on a hill and to back my truck into it requires one to be slow and careful. But as the post in my barn are set in concrete I was pretty sure I could rig a pulley to drag the bale off as I pulled forward. I was able to find the largest bales at the local feed store for $174 per bale , not a great price but fare for the cost in our area. This is equivalent to 17 to 20 small bales. Also it is a very nice Timothy hay. I have to admit it is a bit nerve racking to watch as the fellow loads it in the back of my truck with a front loader. No problem driving it home and the unloading worked like a charm! I was able to put 3 of these big boys in the aile way of my barn. The next challenge was to figure out what a flake of this weighed. It flakes off nice but way to heavy to hold the whole thing. I pulled it apart and stepped on the scale, but had to have someone else read it for me as I could not read the scale over the pile in my arms. One flake appears to be anywhere from 40lbs. to 45lbs. I was not looking forward to tackling this unruly stuff everyday! I decided I would try the hockey net. I have seen info on using nets to hold hay and get horses to slow down their eating. So off to the local hockey store, you can also order them on-line. A 72inch heavy duty net cost me $26. I wove the tie strings that came with the net to tie together the sides and made a big bag. Ran a rope around the top as a draw string and filled it with one whole flake of hay. First I hung it in the stall and watched . They seemed to be eating it soooo slow. They would take turns going in and out of the stall all day. I was worried because the volume of hay in the bag did not seem to be diminishing ,so the first day I threw a bit of loose hay out to them, and it didn't seem like they where starving. Here is a link to a site that shows several different methods : http://www.naturalhorseworldstore.com /slowfeed-hay-saver-net/ Today I dragged the bag out and tied it to a tree.They seem to like this better as they both eat at the same time now. So far so good, and I think it will be far healthier for them to eat this way. Let me know if you have tried this and how it is working for you. I'll keep you posted.
I took the tail gate off my truck so then bale would fit down in the bed.
Could fit up to 6 bale in my barn .
I like that I can look out my window and see them eating.
Hi Everyone! Thank you for all your heart felt messages for Phlame. As of 10:30 Monday night he is home and doing well. Although my pocket book has a big hole in it my heart does not. If you are wondering what 2 nights and 2 days of IV fluids and round the clock care cost...I have not gotten the final bill but they said about $2600.00, does not include care at the endurance ride.
Here is what they did. At the ride, he had a tube put down his nose to the stomach so gas and fluids that where building up could be released. 4 bags of IV fluids and pain meds. Rectal exam and advice to go to the Littleton Equine Clinic . At the clinic he had a Ultrasound , one more rectal exam another nose tube (stayed in until Sunday afternoon.) IV fluids from the time he arrived until we left this evening at 8:15pm. Meds to prevent ulcers. Oh yeah they gave him another ultrasound on Sunday to see that his small intestines where indeed moving stuff. They wanted to keep him one more night, so I drove over with the trailer to see how he looked and what my gut would tell me to do. When I walked into the stall he looked worse than when I brought him in. Luckily I had brought the Power Mag (a very cool magnet device) and started that on his belly. It is amazing how as soon as you start using it the gut sounds begin! The Vet came by and said they had pumped more fluids directly into his stomach and it had made him a bit painful again. I asked if I could take him for a walk, and they capped off the IV and said just don't let him eat. As soon as we got out side he perked up and we walked briskly around the parking lot. It had rained and there were puddles all around , so what does he do...walks right over and take a drink from a mud puddle, guess the nice clean water in the stall was not good enough for him. He really wanted to eat the weeds and grass, but didn't care for the equine senior mash they set out for him. I didn't let him eat, but after a while took him back to the stall and had the intern reattach the IV. More magnets and lots of lovin' and after 30 minutes , I told her I would take him home. So here we are and I will check on him every hour. Small meals of wet grass hay and a mash of SAFE Choice. (He really just wants hay). I'll let you know how he does by morning.
I promised that I would share a post on Emotion Release or as it is know "The Emotion Code". I have been using the Emotion Code method on humans and horses for a little over two years now. I learned about it from my husband, who while attending a Nikken seminar was introduced to Dr. Bradley Nelson who developed the Emotion Code over 17 years of exploration and practise. Dr. Nelson has a great little video that best explains how the emotion code works:
When I started reading Dr. Nelsons book I came across a story he tells about releasing emotion from a horse.
" My first experience treating trapped emotions in animals occurred somewhat by accident. On day I received a telephone call from a patient named Linda, a trainer from San Juan Capistrano. She had come to see me a year before with a rather severe case of asthma that I'd helped her with, but this call was about something else entirely."
"I have kind of a strange request and I'm wondering if you can help me" she said. "One of my horses, Ranger, is having a problem with frequent urination. I've had three veterinarians examine him, but none of them can find out what's wrong. As far as they can tell he's perfectly healthy. But he's causing a terrible problem not just for me, but the adjacent stall owners and horses as well. I know that you occasionally work on animals, and I'd really appreciate it if you could come to the stables and see what you can do."
"As I arrived at Ranger's stall we could see immediately why Linda was so concerned about him. Unlike all the other neat , clean stalls we had seen in the building, this horse's stall was a soggy mess. I determined that there was something causing an imbalance in Ranger's kidneys, but after testing him for a few minutes, I was at a loss as to what the source of the imbalance might be. My wife who was with me said " Why don't you test to see if there's a trapped emotion?" While I loved my horses as a child and took good care of them, like most people, I never imagined that they might suffer from trapped emotions. My wife Jean looked at me calmly and repeated, "Just test and see."So I asked out loud, " Is this imbalance due to a trapped emotion?" and the answer was Yes! As I went through the chart of emotions, we were surprised to find that the trapped emotion was conflict. By a process of elimination, we determined that Ranger felt conflicted in his relationship with another horse. Linda was able to confirm that a new horse had been brought into the stables in the past few months. Ranger and this new horse were at odds from the first day they met and occasionally had to be separated to prevent them from injuring one another. Further testing showed that this trapped emotion had become lodged in the right kidney and was indeed the underlying cause of Ranger's kidney imbalance. Once we had verified the trapped emotion, I released it by rolling a magnet down Ranger's back. From that moment on, Ranger began to recover. When I talked to Linda on the phone a few days later, she told me that his stall was dry for the first time in months. The problem never recurred."
When I read this story in Dr. Bradley's book I remembered that I had had some very amazing experiances using the Nikken magnets on horses. Not only for colic ,and other physical problems but in training issues as well. I began to wonder if I had been releasing emotions from these horses with out knowing it. I wrote a blog about this in the past call " Did I release Spring Thunders heart wall?"( look it up). So this lead me on a path to learn the emotion code and I have been using it on my friends horses and those of clients as well as my own two Arabs Smoke and Phlame.
Ok, so now I have worked on close to 60 horses, and I am beginning to see a pattern. A pattern of connection between horses and their owner, which is really no suprise at all. But now I am developing a theory I think I might call: Equine Assisted Emotion Release, but I'll talk about that in my next blog.
We have been back in Colorado a few days . We had our house here leased out, but our tenants have moved and we are moving back into our country home. We love it but it is a lot of work moving stuff from the storage unit back to the house.
I also have been helping out my Mom she just had knee replacement surgery. All went well and we are all looking forward to her feeling great again. If she is doing well in 3 week she may have the other one done too.
I was looking around on the internet to find out more about the procedure (I might have to have it done in a decade or two) and I found this really cool site. It is a virtual operation where you are the surgeon . It takes you though the procedure step by step, WOW give me a scalpel...I'm ready.
Wow! Thanks for all the emails on Emotional Code. So everyone wants to know how does it work, and more important how do you do it? To help illustrate I will tell you a story about "Spring Thunder" a Mountain Gaited horse I worked with.
I first saw Thunder 12 or so years ago when I was working another horse for some friends of mine in Colorado. Thunder was a jet black colt with a white star and sock, and even then he was gaiting naturally in the pasture. My friends , Cliff and Minghsin Schroeder who own and operate Happy Canyon Ranch in Colorado, planned on keeping him a stallion for their gaited horse ranch. Fast forward a few years and Thunder is now ready to be registered, but before he can do that he has to prove his stuff. Two or three gaited horse trainers later, Thunder is still not gaiting. Mind you, I know little about training gaited horses to gait, but Cliff and Minghsin knew that I had seen Thunder gait as a colt, and maybe I could give it a try. So, I went out there and sure enough Thunder was a lovely horse, but he would not gait. It was like he wanted to, or would just about try, and then break into a trot. I happened to have a little device with me called a Magboy,
I had been rolling on my sore lower back, and I had a thought... maybe I will just roll these magnets on Thunders' neck and head ,help him relax and change his thinking. Well low and behold after rolling the magnets for a few minutes and thinking about Thunder gaiting, I mounted and he started gaiting, just a few steps at first and then more and more. It was like magic. I came a few days later and yes, he is still gaiting!
Looking back on this event knowing what I know now, I think what happened was Thunder may have had an emotional block to gaiting. When I rolled the Mag Boys on his neck and back I may have unknowingly removed his heart wall. The first thing you do is identify the emotion or block, that is causing the problem, this is done thoughmuscle testing. If you are not familiar with muscle testing it does take some practice and some understanding. Next you roll the magnets down the horses neck and back to remove the unwanted "emotion" or "vibration" or "energy", don't get hung up on terminology these are all ways to describe it. This can happen fast, or more subtlely depending on the emotions involved. Horses, I find are very sensitive to energy, and have no placebo effect, as they have no agenda.
Really I can't wait to try this on every horse that I know. I love them all, as I know you do!
