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Louise Mauferon Vernet - Equine Osteopath

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Louise Mauferon Vernet - Equine Osteopath

Osteopathic sessions for horses Hi there, and welcome to my page! What I offer is deep physical changes for your horse, and these things take time!

My work revolves around understanding how your horse's body is organized to make sure I get to the core of your horse's problem. I can help with a variety of problems, from performance issues to ongoing pathologies, and help advise you on how to best manage your horse's body. The techniques I use are very gentle and I'm a firm beliver in working with my patients and not against them. This includes giving them time to process the changes during a session and giving them a break, working within what they allow me to do and building trust for those areas that are more sensitive. This means that my sessions last for about 1 hour and half per patient, so if you're looking for a quick "bone cracking session" this isn't the place. If this description sounds like what you're looking for, get in touch! You can contact me via text or via messenger and I usually reply within 1 or 2 days. And if you need more convincing please go to the review section of my page where some of the owners I've worked with have left their opinion ;)

I'm based in Brighton, and travel to many places for enough horses, such as areas of Surrey, West Sussex and Kent, so if you're in the south east, chances are I'll be able to get to you. I wish you and your horses the absolute best and look forward to working with you and your horses,

Louise

PS: although I love people, I do not treat people, so if you're looking for someone for yourself I'm afraid you're going to have to look elsewhere. Not enough fur on humans to my liking ;)

11/03/2026

Fascia, anatomical links and restrictions

As I review and prepare the anatomy for the Fascia Diploma me, Jo Rose and Rebecca Baylis are creating, I can’t help feeling in aw.

Fascia is just incredible, even in its anatomy.

Let’s take the fascia under horse’s scapulas for example. It’s the coolest (in my opinion) fascia of the entire equine body.

It’s incredibly deep, hidden under the scapula by an array of thick muscles. It is itself thick and dense, yet incredibly hydrated and mobile, allowing movement of the scapula, shoulder and arm against the ribcage, while also protecting nerves, blood vessels and tissue integrity.

No other structure exist like this in the body.

But it’s not just under the scapula.

It actually wraps itself around the scapula, creating pockets for various muscles and coming round all the way to the superficial side of the scapula, where we can feel it and work on it.

This means that we have direct contact with a fascia hidden deep under your horse’s shoulder.

It also mean that the tension we feel around the fascia of those superficial scapular muscles, isn’t isolated tension. It’s tension that most likely comes for the deep, hidden fascia under the scapula and that has spread all the way to the surface.

And so it explains why working on those superficial tensions creates such a beautiful and strong opening of mobility. Because we’re not working on small, isolated muscles. We’re also working on a fascia that encompasses the entire arm and shoulder, and that controls how much movement your horse’s shoulders can do, and how much movement the ribcage can have.

And in case you’ve forgotten, the ribcage is also your horse’s back.

And so by releasing this fascia via working on the superficial side of the scapula, we also work at releasing your horse’s back.

And it’s the beauty of fascia. It creates connection where muscles create isolated movement. It creates unity of separated structures. And it creates the most beautiful changes in our patients ❤️

Picture of said fascia. When I say it’s a beauty, I mean it’s truly a beauty.

09/03/2026

On visceral tensions

Visceral tensions are the restrictions around the connective tissue that surrounds the organs of the abdominal and thoracic cavity.

When a practitioner is trained to feel and release those tensions, we are also trained to put two and two together and understand how the musculoskeletal system influences the abdominal and thoracic movements, and vice versa.

Here are some common points to know about visceral tensions:
- when grass changes it’s very common to find tensions or over activity of the fermentation organs such as caecum and ascending colon. These organs are massive tubes that take up the bottom half of your horse’s abdomen and generally will restrict back and pelvic mobility. It’s not rare to see lumbar tissue tension melt away as you release the tissue around these organs.
- organs such as liver, kidney, spleen and uterus tend to me more constant over the year in the tension around their tissue, meaning that if their surrounding tissue is restricted, it can happen at any point during the year and doesn’t tend to me linked with seasonal changes, although the spleen sometimes can.
- the thoracic organs are less commonly restricted, which is good considering their importance. If restriction is felt it is most likely due to underlying pathology of the lungs (which usually already diagnosed and being treated) so even if a manual therapist can bring a bit of relief, it’s not a long term fix.
- the stomach can have various types of dysfunction around its attachements and generally will affect the breath. If the stomach has high grade ulcers, there’s nothing manual therapy can do about it and it needs treated from the inside. Once the ulcer treatment is concluded it’s good to have your horse seen as the bracing from the ulcers will have impacted tissues throughout the body and will need releasing.

Visceral osteopathy is brilliant at addressing the connections between movement and guts, but it’s not a good option for pathologies and a good practitioner will have a discussion with you about it if they have a doubt about the state of your horse’s insides.

When it comes to simple tissue restrictions though, it’s absolutely fantastic. Seeing horses release, finally be comfortable to breath, and swing their pelvis around with their newly happy abdomen flowing through the movement is always cool 😁🥰

Never forget that this area of the body is around 300kg on an average horse. It’s not to be underestimated 😉

06/03/2026

Patient highlight: Rocky the mighty

If you’ve followed this page for a while you’ll know that I go monthly to visit Mane Chance Sanctuary and treat their horses. We’ve worked together for years and most of the horses are on some sort of rotation so that we keep them as physically comfortable as we can, along with doing our best to spot signs of deterioration early for vet referrals.

Rocky is one of my patient there, and again if you’ve been here for a minute, you will have already seen a post or two about this dude.

Like most mini shetlands, his life hasn’t been easy or straightforward before arriving to the sanctuary, and we believe he has communication difficulties along with congenital physical issues. Basically if he were human he would most likely be diagnosed somewhere on the spectrum, and his body looks like it’s been put together by a toddler 😬

With all of this you can imagine he’s not a straightforward patient. His sore body means he can be in a difficult mood, his struggle with communication means he can go from zero to 100 in a split second, and as we equestrians know, just because he’s little doesn’t mean he’s harmless.

A few years ago he got lucky and met a wonderful groom working at the sanctuary at the time. She, somehow, understood him and he found in her the stability and someone be could trust and lean on, something he clearly deeply needed. The relaxation this brought him meant he could start to build trust and confidence in a more lasting way with those around him.

And so thanks to her, we worked on his sessions (it was pretty much a no go before that for everyone’s safety). Bit by bit, we showed him that the moment he looked uncomfortable, the moment he’d want to move away, we’d let him be. It’s the deal we made with him: we’re here as long as you allow us to be and we’ll listen to you.

With time, he started to relax and to be able to trust us more with sore areas.

And although the groom moved on to pursue other ventures, the work carried on and he’s no longer known from all as a dangerous pony, just one to be aware of.

Last week was his check up, I try to see him every 2 to 3 months so that we keep his body comfortable and his mood as stable as possible.

For the first time ever, he let me work fully on him, everywhere from front to back, from sore stifles to castration scars and everything in between, and with the technique of my choice, without any objections.

It was a normal session on a normal pony. And it was incredible.

His stifles are often visibly uncomfortable and winter is worst with the slippery mud, meaning he is normally a lot less patient with his hind end. So for him to relax and trust us like this was extra.

It’s incredible to see how far he’s come and I’m so grateful for the continuous care that the team gives him.

Picture attached of the rockstar (little grey dude) with his shettie gang, all waiting (im)patiently for access to the grass 😂❤️

04/03/2026

Who should I call for my horse?

This is perhaps the most complicated question for owners. Physio? Osteo? Chiro? Sports massage? So many names and not a lot of information on each.

Having taught each for a few years now through CPDs, here’s my best understanding of each profession.

Note that this is my understanding through conversations and observations only so it’s not gospel, other professionals please chip in to help people understand what you do and clarify anything I say 🙏🏻

Please also note that, as each type of practitioner gains experience and does extra training and CPDs, a lot of us end up working in a similar manner, no matter our original training. So finding the right person for your horse might not be about the official name they carry but more about their results, clinical understanding of horses and the care they bring to their patients.

So first up, osteo. Obviously my favourite of the bunch, our job is to look for the core issue of your horse. Our assessment and treatments area include everywhere in your horse, from muscles to fascia, intestinal attachments to craniosacral rhythm, ligaments to joints. The point of an osteo visit is to not to work on obvious tension sites but to find the reason behind the tension, so that the rebalancing means you’ll need us less, not more. We’re usually called when other practitioners are stuck, but that doesn’t make us magiciens, we just have a different lense.

Physio. The pros of the rehab, the acute phase of injury, and the muscle queens. Their understanding of the body is deep in muscle physiology and they do incredible work for maintenance and rehabilitation. Their use of machines means also they can support you through tissue healing before other practitioners can step in.

The chiropractors. The joint queens. Their understanding of the body comes from the central nervous system as the core processing of every structure, and so their treatments usually focus on the spine, even if they are normally trained in other joints as well. Fantastic if your horse needs joints rebalanced. They often do extra training to deepen their tissular work.

The massage therapist. The muscle queens, but different from the physios. Their work relies more in palpation of tissue and usually initial training doesn’t involves joints or other structures. They are however the most keen to learn more and usually do about a million CPDs a year, so there’s both aware of what they can and can’t do, and are never shy to refer to colleagues and get second opinions. Fantastic for maintenance and might be able to do more depending on their extra training.

I hope this helps, again this is a very quick overview and any professional reading this, please add your own thoughts and views to the conversation to help owner understand your work better!

02/03/2026

On identifying orthopaedic pathology such as arthritis in your horse’s back

Recently I saw the question raised of « how can animal osteopaths identify osteoarthritis when the joints of the horse’s back sit 10cm below the surface? »

So let’s talk about it.

During an assessment and through the session, your practitioner will use a series of test, both palpatory and mobility, to assess movement, texture and comfort of a joint.

This involves moving the joint, either by positioning your hands as close as possible to said joint, or by using other structures to move the joint, for example lifting a hind limb to mobilise the lumbar spine or pushing on the rib cage to move the thoracic spine.

So there are several ways that we can move and feel for the mobility and deeper joints. With this we can assess quantity of movement, so how much each joint moves in each direction, and compare this with the rest of the body and put this in correlation with equine bodies in general. With enough practice you will know what kind of movement you might expect from different ages, breeds, work level and so on.

But with these techniques you also learn to assess quality of movement, and this is where suspicions of further pathology can come in.

A healthy joint, even if restricted, has a certain quality to its movement. There’s a bit of elasticity at the end of the movement, the horse is usually fairly comfortable and so on.

But with an area that has « bony changes », wether that’s kissing spine, arthritis or other, not only will the quality of the joint feel different, the comfort of the patient will be clearly poor.

Each horse has their own way of responding to pain, but testing the mobility of joints is usually a good way of knowing is something more serious might be going on.

In « grey » cases, where there is a pain response but it’s mild, your practitioner will most likely rely on the response of the tissue to the session. If there is improvement, then we might still be ok and the pain could have been caused not by bony changes but by tissular inflammation, muscle spasm or other. If we stagnate and the pain response stays the same, then we potentially have some changes in the bones and cartilage and it will be worth to get a vet’s opinion on the area.

Because we can’t know if these changes would be kissing spine, arthritis or something else, and if the pain response isn’t changing then chances are your horse will need veterinary support. All we can do is point it out, have a conversation with you and advise to have your vet investigate the area.

So now you know. We’re not magiciens and we don’t have x ray eyes, but by developing a good sense of feel in our hands and by paying attention (and respecting) the feedback from your horse, we’re able to identify potential problem areas and redirect you to your vet.

Note that, because pain is a subjective experience, different horses have different pain threshold and so things might still be missed with very stoic horses, or be non pathological with very sensitive ones. But our job is to observe and advise so that we all know how to best take care of your horse 🐴

25/02/2026

Part of what will keep your horse's musculoskeletal system healthy is a good amount of healthy muscle mass. This helps stabilise the joints as well as keeping them aligned, effectively protecting them from inflammation, uneven/inappropriate use and hopefully limiting the risks of injury (to a certain extent).

Unfortunately most horses do not have healthy working muscles and so the body creates fascial tension as a response to keep the joints stable, which influences range of motion, blood flow to the concerned area, proprioception and overall biomechanics (as no muscle or joint of the body work in isolation, everything being under the control and monitoring of the cerebrum with fine tuning happening in the cerebellum).

So how does one know if their horse has healthy muscle development of if what they are seeing and feeling under their hand is actually fascial tension. Although it's not easy to describe solely by word, let's give it a try.

First of all healthy muscle feels bouncy and soft at the same time. Their is a plumpness to it that signifies healthy and numerous muscle cells, while the bounce and softness point towards healthy and gliding fascia.

Different areas of the body will feel different when healthy but if we focus on the topline, it shoulld look visually full from the top of the withers all the way to the tail, including the gluteal muscle area, and there should be no dips/peachy looking junction where the pelvis and gluteal muscles meet the back/lumbar spine. Continuity is a big component of healthy muscle development as it shows unified and continuous movement of the spine.

Looking from behind, the muscle development should look the same on both hind quarters and thigh muscles.

Also note that if your horse is slightly overweight, you might have a great topline visual but some if it usually comprises of a fatty layer, so keep that in mind and don't be surprise when your horse drops weight if the back looks weaker ;)

A test that you can do over the lumbar muscle area is to create a wobble with your fingers. If the waves travels far easily, we're doing well. If the wave is solely under your hand, we have tension. 🤓

Finally, please note that it's extremely hard for a body to build healthy muscles if it holds fascial tension, so make sure to get your horse seen regularly to support your training. 🐴

23/02/2026

On scar tissue

Scars are quite common sites of restrictions in bodies, be it ours or our horses.

During the healing process, where the body goes to repair damage done to a tissue, collagen fibers are laid down in a chaotic way, partly due to lack of tension forces dictating the density and direction that particular tissue needs.

See, we have all sorts of tissue with all sorts of needs. Some areas need tissue that is supple and able to bend and glide in all directions, like under our skin. Some areas need strong, dense and unidirectional tissue, like for tendons.

The way our bodies and horses’ bodies know what to create during embryonic development is a fascinating process that is dynamic and linked with tensional forces of neighboring structures. As one structure grows and develops, for example a bone, it moves in a particular way and the tissue around it adapts to this, creating exactly the right type of tissue our adult bodies will need in that specific area.

But in case of injury, bodies don’t have that process anymore, and with rest, the collagen gets created and placed in whichever way the body can lay it down at that time.

This leaves scars that are a lot more dense and rigid that the initial tissue would have been. This almost always leads to restriction in the glide of the tissue, creating a point of fixation in a body that needs to move smoothly.

Manual therapy can address scar tissue. Most horses are great with having their scars worked on but some might be sensitive to the area being touched, either by memory of the injury or by changes in sensation around the scar, a common side effect of tissue scaring.

Scars in horses often lead to compensatory posture or compensatory weight bearing, and it’s always wonderful to see how much the body changes once the scars have regained some glide.

Common scars in horses are of course castration scars but can include branding scars and all injuries involving fences, fence post and so on.

Always tell your bodyworker if you horse has a scar somewhere, sometimes even a small looking scar can affect the body ❤️

18/02/2026

The CNS vs PNS

If you've never heard those terms, CNS stands for Central Nervous System and PNS for Peripheral Nervous System. Together they make up your horse's (and yours) nervous system.

The CNS is your brain, brainstem and spinal cord, the brainstem being a part of the brain that connects various part of the brain (cerebrum and cerebellum) to the spinal cord. It's also where 10 out of the 12 cranial nerves connect with.

The PNS is all the nerves, cranial and spinal, that come out of the spinal cord and brainstem. The role of these nerves is not only to report numerous sensory information such as sight, taste, proprioception, interoception and pain, they also have motor functions to coordinate voluntary movement.

The PNS is itself devided in 2 parts: the voluntary, which your horse uses daily to walk, canter, do highly coordinated dressage movements or jump; and the autonomous, which regulates everything from blood pressure, heart beat and breathing to digestion and healing functions.

The autonomous nervous system is often called the fight/flight and rest/digest system. One of its important role is to regulated blood flow depending on the present needs of the body.

A sign of peace and quiet? Let's increase blood volume going to the intestines.

A sudden scary movement? Let's change constriction and vasodilation areas to redirect blood flow towards the muscles and get your horse ready to run or fight if danger is confirmed.

A wonderful side of manual therapy is that it supports your horse's nervous system by helping the PNS get accurate sensory information from the musculoskeletal system, and by helping the autonomic nervous system to access the rest/digest system more easily, as unfortunately soreness and tension keeps bodies closer to the fight/flight system.

So many wonderful things come from the Nervous System, it's like a silent friend that constantly cares for your horse's survival and wellbeing 🥰🐴

11/02/2026

A few weeks ago I saw a wonderful trainer I work with, the great Rosie Bensley Equine.

We've been working together with some time, along with her physiotherapist, to support her gorgeous horse Mico recover from hind end issues. I was really pleased with his last session and told Rosie that it felt like we were out of pathological patterns and seemed to be working more towards performance now. This comment prompted many thoughts for her and she wrote a post about it (it’s easily found on her page).

And so obviously this has been going on in the back of my head and I'm taking some time now to try and explain, as clearly as possible, what I mean when I say this.

Before carrying on, please take this as a professional opinion but a personal one too. Other therapists may work, approach and see things differently. It's part of what makes this job so intersting.

So what does it feel like to work on pathological patterns.

First off let me say that this is after veterinary assessment and treatment. Prior to this there are several ways to know that a horse might be dealing with a pathology and not just stiffness and wonkyness and these include but are not limited to palpatory responses, gait analysis, tissular response and clinical improvements.

So once we have the diagnosis from the vet and they have done their treatment, we start working on undoing patterns of compensation. These patterns will include compensations that happened DUE TO the pathology, and generally involve things like tissular tensions due to compensatory weight bearing.

As these are being sorted, usually what should emerge is another pattern, if not several, which was there PRIOR to the pathology, and potentially were one of the reason for the pathology to develop. (note that the etiology of orthopedic pathologies are various and include but not limited to genetics, congenital tendencies and young age trauma/injury).

As we work through those older patterns the body should start to find a sort of flow and elasticity in the tissues, and ideally needs less and less rebalancing as it is able, through its newly tuned proprioception, to stay balanced.

And one of the things that we might find is old restrictions that have been blocking riding progress, such as a ribcage rotation that keeps a shoulder less able to load, a trunk less able to bend and a pelvis less able to perform lateral movements. Which, if all clinical signs are good and the overall tone of the tissue is soft and healthy, points towards performance issue and no longer pathological rebalancing 😊🐴

And we’ve gone full circle to our initial question.

Note that if the veterinary treatment was accurate, meaning it's what that body needed and that body doesn't need anything else, the change in tissue and body happens fairly quickly and is a straightforward path forward most of the time.

However if after veterinary treatment the body still struggles, in the same area or in a new area, this means we unfortunately need more investigation as the clinical signs point towards either another pathology or that the initial pathology isn't fully resolved.

As previously noted, other therapists may work differently so let's head to the comments to learn about other perspectives!🤓🐴

05/02/2026

The brain is a truly fascinating structure. With its 86 billion neurons in humans, it's the center of our sensory processing, our motor coordination, our autonomic regulation such as our breathing, swallowing, digesting and so on, and where we form conscious thoughts, store memories and create emotion.

Although horse's brains are certainly much less impressive in their neuron numbers, with only 1.5 billion neurons so about 1.16% the amount we have, it remains an incredible structure which allows them to feel deeply.

Horses have at least 7 emotional systems which include seeking, play, care, fear, rage, panic/fear and lust.

They have incredibly highly developed senses, with panoramic view and very good motion detection abilities, ears that can rotate to 180 degrees, 300 million nerve endings in their nasal cavities, and very specialized low threshold receptors in their whiskers.

Their brain and spinal cord are organised generally like ours, with the outer layer of the brain being grey (aka processing) matter and the inner layer of the brain being white (aka highways) matter. Their spinal cord, just like ours, is the opposite with grey matter as the inner, processing, layer and the white matter as the outer, highway, layer.

And from the spinal cord and brainstem emerge the nerves, spinal and cranial, which can be both sensory and motor, with around 50 nerves per side of the body constantly monitoring movement, pressure, contact with the outside world, inner perceptions; and responding to those sensory input as seen fit by the central processor that is the brain.

An incredible system designed for our horse's (and ours!) survival 🤓🐴

23/01/2026

Although the cold is gone, the rain has replaced it and we are still very much in winter. So let this be your yearly reminder that it’s ok to slow down during this season, and to let yourself and your horse take a little break 😉

22/01/2026

Fascia, the perfect mechanical culprit?

Many moons ago when I was writing my thesis I was reading a book in which the author described fascia as the "perfect mechanical culprit".

The author was arguing that, by it's continuity and omnipresence in the body, a restriction in fascia in one area of the body would impact several structures and, with more or less time, impact the whole body biomechanics.

And to be fair to her, it is an excellent point. Manual practitioners are very familiar with that satisfying moment where, after working on the tissue of an area, another suddenly softens.

But it is truly just mechanics or is there more?

Of course there's a mechanical component to this phenomenon, the same way that if I pull on a blanket attached to a fixed point, I create tension throughout.

But fascia is so much more than a perfect mechanical culprit.

It's an rich sensory organ with over 250 millions nerve endings. It's rich in proprioceptors and mechanoreceptors. It's constantly giving feedback to the central nervous system and is considered the largest sensory organ of the body.

So with this much interaction with the nervous system, is the fascial response truly only mechanical? Is it fair to only consider this tissue as the perfect mechanical culprit, or is it reducing this incredible tissue to its most basic property?

Join the amazing Rebeccah Baylis, Jo Rose and myself this April for our Integrated Fascia Therapy Diploma. And for those who can't make this year, our 2027 waitlist is open.

Can't wait to spend hours and hours talking about this incredible organ 🥰

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