Willow Creek Equine

09/14/2025

07/10/2025

05/11/2025

Happy Mother's Day to all the kid Mom's and 4 legged critter Mom's!! Enjoy your day 💖

08/14/2024

Somewhere I read the phrase "one is a treat, more is a treatment" and it really stuck with me.

There isn't anything wrong with booking a single bodywork session for your horse, as long as you understand the difference between a single appointment and ongoing care with an equine wellness professional.

The real benefits come when an equine therapist can see your horse regularly, or at least for several sessions in a row. The length between appointments can vary quite a bit, based on the therapist and the individual case. Having an open conversation with the therapist about goals, expectations, and budgets is the best way to determine what fits you and your horses' needs.

My first session with a horse can be quite lengthy, often two hours, because I spend a lot of time observing, palpating, connecting with the horse and their human, and asking questions about their histories. Bodywork is included in these sessions (if deemed appropriate for the horse), but we need to build slowly upon what we start in these first-time sessions - especially when working with modalities like craniosacral, myofascial therapy, and nerve release work. These are very deep, profound techniques for the nervous system. Doing too much, too fast, is absolutely possible.

While I want to see every horse that is brought to me (because even a single session can be beneficial) I am hesitant when someone says they want to book one appointment as a treat for their horse. It is definitely possible to have a relaxing, feel-good massage session with a horse, without all of the observations and palpations and deeper work. Unfortunately for me, that idea of "you can't unsee it" definitely applies here. Once I feel it, I can't unfeel it, and I can't turn off my inner therapist to give a one-off, simply feel-good session anymore.

It's the same reason why an athlete wouldn't book a hot stone massage before a big game - sports massage exists for a reason! A therapeutic massage likely isn't the vibe you're going for on a spa day, and you wouldn't call the spa to help you with a muscle injury. Many, many kinds of therapies exist to meet all of our needs.

By the way, I LOVE hot stone massages. 😉

Thank you Julia for the photo of me and Willow!

07/27/2024

Vitamin E is so important and often forgotten about!
Omega Alpha's Vantiox is my go-to for vitamin E supplementation. It contains vitamin C,E, zinc, beta-carotene, and antioxidants. It supports muscle function, antioxidants (immune health and anti inflammatory). It is great for any horse- especially the ones that are fed a hay diet and do not get to graze on pasture. Contact me for more info or to place an order.

Fresh pasture provides an abundance of vitamin E but hay is devoid of vitamins after harvesting.

My horses have always been on VE supplementation during the winter & since moving to Arizona they have been on it full time.

However as of late I’m learning it’s not enough. 😖

The NRC recommends a daily intake of about 1000 IU per day for the average horse in light work, although many experts insist this should be higher.

I typically provide 2-3000 IU to my horses depending on their workload however after my best boy Prowler displaying odd and unusual behavior, off to the vet we went.

Over the last few months he has been becoming unpredictable, overreacting at the smallest thing, feeling out of control even at a trot & exploding for no reason (the latter resulted in bucking me off very badly).

After cervical xrays, ultrasounds, THO & hyoid scopes, the vet came up with nothing. But she agreed something was “wrong” as Prowler seemed to have vision impairment & failed his baseline neuro exam.

We started with running blood work for EPM which came back negative, so her next idea was testing for Vitamin E through which we uncovered he is dangerously low in this essential piece of nutrition. 🏥

Symptoms of VE deficiency that look like other common problems:
🩺Eye & vision changes aka: becoming spooky, reactive or nervous
🩺Muscle pain & stiffness: we often reach for the magnesium here
🩺Dry/damaged coat: more omegas are typically toted as the answer
🩺Neurological problems: often we reach for trial treatment of EPM & Lyme.

Untreated - vitamin E deficiency can cause severe issues including permanent vision problems as well as equine motor neuron disease and equine degenerative myeloencephalopathy (this is fatal).

Although we finally have a direction of Prowler’s problems, now begs the question if we found it soon enough. For me, as the ever advocate of prehab & prevention, it feels like I’ve failed my horses once again by having to learn the hard way.

He’s now on 10,000IU of natural VE per day and we will retest in 3 months 🙏 Natural VE is also the key, with liquid form being more bioavailable than powder, but both are better than synthetic. If you do feed a powder it is essential to feed an oil alongside it for optimal absorption.

Running testing for vitamin E will become a regular part of my veterinary workups for all my horses - how about you?

05/16/2024