Welcome! From a dedicated horse-obsessed person. I was bitten by the bug early on. As many of you know, once this disease in contracted, there is no cure. I think probably the first word I spoke as a young child was "horse", not "mommy." My parents were perplexed as they were city folks. This obsession has lasted all my life, and happily consumes my life entirely. I feed them, I shovel for them, I train them, I ride them. My business is horses, my recreation is horses. My wonderful husband of 6+ years had nothing to do with horses prior to meeting me; and now he is almost as one-sided as I am. See! It's "catching" too!
I received my veterinary training, and veterinary license at UC Davis, and have been a licensed practicing veterinarian ever since. I started out in main-stream medicine. After several years doing conventional veterinary work, I started to become somewhat discouraged, for many reasons. There just seemed to be something missing. It seemed in many cases that animals would get better in spite of the veterinary treatment, not always because of it. Now, don't get me wrong. I am not discounting some of the wonderful things that Western Medicine can accomplish. We certainly need it for humans and animals. But, as many are becoming more and more aware, we need other things as well. We need to support the intrinsic capacity of a living being's ability to heal itself. I found that often times TLC and "hands-on" work was sometimes the most important thing in an animal's ability to turn the tide from disaster to better health. I found that nutrition and proper supplementation was a huge factor. I know this is true with humans as well, and there are countless cases to prove it.
I had always had an interest in other less conventional modalities, and as I had some personal health issues which were corrected by alternative medicine and energy medicine, it became obvious that that was the direction I needed to go. I worked for the Humane Society for several years and explored my options during this time. People ask me how and why I studied acupuncture and went in that direction. I indeed had a life-changing experience which led me unquestionably in that direction. My animals have always been my guides.
You will never know me without knowing my dearest friend Center. I adopted this wild mustang when he was two-years old. He obviously came to me as a teacher. As I was training him, or he was training me rather, it was obvious that this horse "had it all together." I would make dumb mistakes; things would happen which would confuse or scare him as in any young horse, let alone a wild one. But Center always "came back to his center" faster than I could blink. Thus, his name. I knew, at that time, that if I could learn to find my CENTER as fast as that horse did, it would change my life. And it did! When Center was 4-years-old we started to do some Endurance Riding. I had noticed that Center seemed not to be as free as he needed to be, especially in his rear quarters; but there were no obvious problems. I had no idea at the time how "CROOKED" affected a horse. But it seems that, if you aren't paying attention, the gods will "turn up the volume," till you learn what you are supposed to. Center and I fell over a cliff together. I was riding after a bad rain. Part of the trail fell out from under our feet, and we tipped over and dropped suddenly about 12 feet up-side-down. I had a true moment of "my life flashing before me," because I was quite sure I was going to die. As I was flying through the air, my last vision was of my beloved horse falling up-side-down. I will never know exactly how he managed to twist around and land on his feet and not on top of me, but he did. I did a 5-point landing, with my nose being the 5th point. Miraculously, neither of us was seriously hurt. However, I was about to learn what "CROOKED" really means. Center proceded to manifest the "Sacro-Sciatic Syndrome" before I even had a clue what it was, nor had I coined the term yet. I always tell people to think of a refrigerator-freezer, stocked full of food, that you push out of a two-story building. It lands "ker-thunk." Then you prop it up and it looks the same. But it isn't! Things have shifted inside. This is very similar to what happens to a horse during a fall or accident.
For months and months I tried to find answers to the vague symptoms my horse was having. Nobody could pin-point the problem. I tried what was available at the time in the way of Chiropractic treatments, I took him to specialists and lameness experts, to no avail. But it was evident that things were not right. Many times I would ride out 20 miles and walk the last 10 back home, because he was just not right, and would look so pathetic. Still, nothing you could really put your finger on, nerve-block out, or even predict.
I tried to find the only Veterinary Acupuncture person that I knew, but he was out of the country. I saw a notice for a short course on Veterinary Acupuncture, and I signed up, just to see if it might give me a clue. It not only did that, but I was able to fix my horse. I didn't really know what I was doing, however, the results were so amazing, it opened up so many doors, my life was changed forever. I started to practice on my friends' animals with astonishing results. I worked on a dog who had had chronic pain from hip dysplasia since her early life, and increased her quality of life immediately, and for several years thereafter. There were many other successes, with even my limited knowledge. I knew I had to study acupuncture in depth. So began my education in Alternative Medicine and Acupuncture and it has been a learning process ever since. I decided then to go back into private practice specialzing only in this type of work. I felt that to really become proficient, I needed to devote 100% of my practice to this. After receiving my certification in Veterinary Acupuncture from IVAS (International Veterinary Acupuncture Society), I hunted down the practitioner that had the best success with horses according to my clients, and begged him to teach me his techniques. This excellent veterinarian, Dr. Ralph Johnson, brought me to a new level of understanding and showed me how to make an immediate difference in my patients. My rate of success increased immediately. The most important thing I learned from Dr. Ralph in addition to technique was that horses exhibited a PATTERN WHICH OCCURRED OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Now he didn't know why this happens, but he knew how to fix it. I was fascinated by this and dedicated myself to learning more about this.
To refresh my knowledge of anatomy, I took a course in equine anatomy from Dr. Deb Bennett. Dr. Deb is a noted horse person and has the added benefit of having a doctorate in Paleontology. Dr. Deb had had a recent evolution in her thinking and talked about the "leaning" horse. I will tell you about this in great detail later. Dr. Deb has everyone in her clinics get down and crawl on all fours like a horse, arch up like a horse, hollow their back like a horse, and then crawl around and try the same movements while "leaning." The minute I did this excercise, my body went into the same pain pattern that my locked up horses have. Bingo! That was a moment of monumental importance and I have spent the last 25 years of my life learning how that manifests in the horse and how to fix it. This is where we start - so hold on to your hats and read on!
