Whispering Horse Therapies

20/08/2025

🎥Webinar Replay: Risky Business – The Real Safety Conversation Every Horse Person Needs

Recorded live on 19 August 2025

A spook, a kick, a split-second decision — and life can change forever. Handling horses is risky, but many of the most serious injuries and fatalities are preventable with the right knowledge and preparation.

This well-received live event brought horse people from all walks of life together for an eye-opening, entertaining and illuminating conversation about what real safety looks like. Guided by expert Kas Kensho, the session blends real-world stories with practical insights from the Code of Practice and the Work Health and Safety Act, showing you how to recognise risks before they escalate and how to keep yourself, your horse, and others safe.

You’ll discover:
✅ Why helmets and protective equipment are only part of the safety puzzle
✅ How to meet your legal obligations with clarity and confidence
✅ Practical tools to prevent accidents before they happen
✅ Why safety is not about luck, but leadership

Whether you are a casual rider, a horse property owner, or an equestrian professional, this replay will give you the knowledge to turn safety into second nature.

See comments for access information ℹ️❤

20/08/2025

[🆕Webinar] New Home Syndrome in Off-the-Track Horses: What It Is, Why It Happens & How to Help 🐎

Our first webinar was extremely well received, so we have decided to present another!

📅 When: Monday 25 August 2025
⏰ Time: 7:00pm (AEST) | Sydney, Australia
🎙️ Presenters: Dr Shelley Appleton & Isabelle Chandler

When an off-the-track Thoroughbred or Standardbred leaves racing, their world changes overnight.

New people, new routines, new environments — and suddenly, the horse who seemed calm, trainable, or even brilliant can spiral into anxiety, reactivity, or shutdown. Too often, this gets labelled as “bad behaviour,” “crazy,” or a “problem horse.” 🚩

But there’s another explanation.

✨ We call it New Home Syndrome — a powerful cluster of stress responses that affect a racehorse physically, mentally, and emotionally. The most visible signs are behavioural disturbances, but beneath them lies something far deeper. It’s the most insidious and impactful challenge facing OTTBs and STBs — and yet, it’s barely understood.

What You’ll Learn:
🔍 What New Home Syndrome actually is — and how it shows up in off-the-track horses
📉 Why racehorses are especially vulnerable when they leave the strict order and routine of racing
⚡ How subtle racing-life triggers can create big confusion in their new homes
🛠️ What you can do — as a retrainer, re-homer, or owner — to help them land softly and build a confident second life
📖 Real case studies that reveal how misunderstanding this syndrome nearly cost horses their futures

💡 Why You Need to Attend

If you work with or own an off-the-track Thoroughbred or Standardbred, this webinar could change how you see everything in those early weeks and months.

👩‍🏫 For retrainers & re-homers: Understand why good horses unravel when you send them off with their new owners — and how to prevent failed rehomes.
🐴 For new OTT owners: Learn how to keep your horse safe and progressing, even if they currently feel like a “scary kite on the end of a lead rope.”😅
📚 For coaches & professionals: Gain insights to better support students and clients with OTT horses.

✨ Your horse isn’t “crazy,” “dangerous,” or “broken.”
They’re struggling. And when you recognise New Home Syndrome for what it is, you can help them not just survive — but truly flourish. ❤

👉 Reserve your spot now and be part of a conversation that could change outcomes for thousands of OTTBs and STBs. See details in the comments.



🙏Please share to as many OTTB or STB supporters, pages or groups as possible. We are determine to raise awareness to this issue in OTTBs and STBs. Thank you in advance ❤

16/08/2025

16/08/2025

Todd River Downs horses, update... asked to remove post sorry. There will be another post when some horses come off. Apologies, out of my control.

Good news is all horses can be homed! It's all about logistics now... more news when it comes to hand.

Will update on this page Mon evening.

Photo is Peter Ross left, Kevin Pick, right. Kindly sent in by Jack Baldwin.

16/08/2025

16/08/2025

Too bad if you're in a desperate hurry to p*e 😳

16/08/2025

Yesterday I posted a very unusual xray view of a horse foot. Many of you realised that the P3 (coffin bone) didn’t look quite right, it appear to be missing some bone at the bottom and the back. Well you were right! Is was truly missing, but why?

Because the xray was done on a 1 cm slice that was taken through the middle of the foot. It’s called a sagittal slice as it divides the foot into 2 equal halves, and when you look inside at each half, they should be a mirror image of each other.

When I do sagittal sections, we loose lots of detail that is located deeper in the foot, towards the lateral or medial, depending which half of the foot you are looking at.

The sections look like a birds beak at the bottom. That part is P3, the coffin bone cut right down the middle.

May folk asked why I wanted to do X-rays on cadaver feet and asked if I’d get similar info just by dissection. Well most of my studies are done by accurate and meticulous slicing through specific planes of the foot. I get to see soft tissue and bone but I don’t get to see the different density of bone as I do in a xray.

In the X-rays of this slice we can see the composition of the bones, and the incredible detail of the composition and internal structure of P3. We can see where the bone has laid down stronger bone where it is needed (white) and more porous bone where it needs to be supportive but light. Those parts are more towards the middle of the bone.

Looking at the xray we can also see the wiggly worm like structure in P3, that’s is literally a hole that contains the important blood vessels that join together inside the P3 to form the terminal arch. We could not see that in the wet saggital slice.

Notice the little dark spot at the tip of P3 in the xray and then look at the wet slice. That’s the circumflex artery. An incredibly important motorway that sends blood to feed the growing cells of the sole.

Finally the navicular bone, shows its density beautifully on xray with its flexor surface (the whiteish part at the bottom) that will have the deep digital flexor tendon gliding over it. Note how much bone density that there is in that location. A busy hardworking area that needs that!.

Remember in a cadaver xray we can’t look at joint spaces or orientation of P2 and P1 (middle and long pastern bones) as we need the rest of the soft tissue to hold it in its right place. Plus the horses weight will change what these look like.

I have more images loaded onto my patreon page of this specific foot if would like to join me.

15/08/2025

14/08/2025