20/06/2025
Yess!!
Hot, sharp, nervous, repetitive behaviour, dangerous, self harming, loosing weight, ulcers, stressed, reluctance to work
Scared, worried, not communicating, to quiet, personality change, grumpy,
If your human friend was described any of the above would they be in work or would you tell them they need to be off work until they felt better, you would probably say the first thing they need to do is probably change their job and are you in pain, and simply how can i help.
Stress is not only in the head it affects the whole body you need to look at your horse holistically. Environment, feed and you as an owner need to maybe change this things have to be done for the best of the horse and all those things could be the best yet if the horse has pain it can not absorb, understand, or recognise the beneficial aspects we provide.
We are already asking the horse to do something that it is not designed to do so that already is comprising the horses body so don't we owe it to the horse to be as sympathetic as we can, dont we want to know if they are ok with what we ask and if they are not then maybe time out might be needed until the horse is at a better place both physically and mentally.
I have posted this pic before of one of my old horses who is sadly no longer with us, we often want to fix things by doing something but it took a year of nothing just to change his facial expression and as he relaxed his whole body changed, no bodywork, no training, no special feed, no magic touch, in fact hardly any human interference at all, for other horses was the company he needed, the freedom of movement had to bring his nervous system into a better equilibrium and the most important aspect a human who didn't want to do things but could just be an extra in the background providing good experiences to try and change his view of us.
We often think we need to do everything to change our horses yet often it only takes the right thing, we can be led blindfolded down a path of promises when all I teach is for the owner to just see their horse for once you truly see you will never be led down a path of deception and heartache for your horse
Do what's right for your horse, let's stop normalizing behaviours which is not good for your horse, we all know I just allow you to say it without feeling like you are being neurotic, crazy, mad, cuckoo (because aswell as the horse getting a label the owners often get a belittling label too)
We are often persuaded to keep doing something to "fix" our horses a continous ever-changing path of courses, fixes, supplements, gadgets yet the first step of progress is simply seeing if your horse can be happy and Functional at just being a horse if your horse struggles to place one foot in front of the other without breaking down then we have to ask the question does the horse need you to go on another course or does it just need a break, we used to turn horses away to see if a more holistic healing could take place after the medical intervention yet we bring horses back into work a super fast speed in today's modern way of thinking but have we allowed the body and mind to heal before we try another thing.
P.s I know if you were describing a human as hot it would be a compliment but I couldn't think of another word 😁
