05/05/2026
This resonates with me.
🦄🐎💖
Psst let me tell you a secret
I am just an owner who has all the same issues as everyone else
You know I do not do bodywork on my own horses,
You know I struggled to catch one of my horses
You know i used to sit on my mounting block looking at a horse that had been so damaged that he couldnt get past who I was as a species to trust that we were not all the same, yet I spent a while not understanding that when he gave more I often wanted to fall in line with what others think I should be doing yet when I realsied rehab for him was to just be a horse with minimal interaction with the one mammal who caused him so much pain, only then when my mind was not focusing on fixing him did he heal.
You know when I was trying to catch one of my horses when they were foals I managed to get a headcollar all done with liberty, yet I hadn't checked the stiffness of the buckle and when I tried to take it off it got stuck so then the foal bogged off and I had to spend ages trying to get hold of him to take it off (with the other horses all running around)
You know Henry that cute pony was a little bit handy with his back legs which made me go umm maybe we will work on that because he is much faster than me, but it did make me a little bit cautious
You know I don't ride my horses they live life on their terms they have the best possible advantage in staying healthy, yet I still lost my 16 yr. old pony to a freak accident in the field
You know my main horse which I owned for many years used to make me feel sick for almost the first year of riding him as he was so spooky
You know sometimes with long covid I have to force myself to go to my horses everyday and in fact this weekend plans have had to be scrapped due to fatique
You know sometimes I just feed, check and come home
You know I have rung a professional and they had to tell me to stop, take a breath and talk slower 😁 yet I am also that calm professional who tells an owner those exact same words.
I may be a therapist, but I am still just an owner to my horses, and I come with all the baggage and worries and yes sometimes a little bit nervous when dealing with my own. I never want to paint a picture of serenity and calm because sometimes it's not. its why I don't edit my videos for a glossy outlook because real life is not like that. My work is all one take, my work is all done with my phone because like you I often am on my own balancing the phone on a wall trying to get a video
If we portray something that you as the owner feels is unobtainable, then I don't think we are doing our job well enough and if all you see is the end result then you will never know the struggle or the work, we have to put in to get there.
I come to your horse as a therapist, but I come also as an owner who gets that not everything is rosy all the time, owning horses can put us through such a range of emotions throughout their lifetime.
We live in a world that to admit that it can be a struggle is somehow admitting that something has failed when often a step back, a turning your horse away for a bit, a not riding today, a not doing anything today can regroup yours and horses' thoughts
When someone says they don't deserve their horse, or it's wasted with them I often answer a horse comes into our life for a reason we may not know it or appreciate at the time but on reflection we realise what such a huge lesson we were taught and not all lessons are meant to be easy or give us the answer it is simply there to teach us
No horse in a safe secure home wished their owner would do more, if we keep wishing we were something else other than our true selves with our horses then we will never appreciate just how lucky we are
