04/16/2026
Beautifully written, April. ❤️
I was so honored to share space with these incredibly gifted women, who want nothing but the best for our equine partners. Women who continue the chase to find better methods, adapt to the findings, and teach willing followers.
I’m still recovering from the knowledge gained, the grief of evidence, and the overwhelming love I have for this community who continue to keep showing up for the right reasons.
I am endlessly grateful for Ciara and Critter - their gift to us for learning will be forever cherished.
I have been thinking long and hard about how to share my feelings about what I experienced at the most recent dissection I attended.
The weight of discovering the secrets a horse carries after they pass that they cannot clearly tell us while they’re living is profound.
When I started my journey of becoming an equine bodyworker, my main goal was to help horses. I naively thought the more I knew about bodywork modalities would be the answer to bringing comfort to the animal I fell in love with as a young girl and dreamed of working with someday.
I quickly realized that while bodywork was a powerful support to bring balance to horses bodies-it was not enough to relieve so many of the ailments they were experiencing.
I struggled for a few years to find ways to ask “why” these things were happening and {stay in my lane}.
Over the years, that has lead me to learn about more than just the muscular aspect of the horses body-that’s just one system that depends entirely upon all other systems being properly developed and balanced.
In order to support these systems indirectly with bodywork I had lots of learning to do.
This was my 4th dissection experience. At each one I was at different stages of learning about all these things-hooves, nerves, biomechanics, environmental factors and gut health.
Each horse solidified the depth of what I was learning and I walk away from each of them with reassurance of one thing-we have to do better.
Most importantly, behavior is communication.
We have normalized dysfunctional behavior to suit or human needs and goals in ways that are breaking down these amazing animals.
We justify this by saying horses are tough. Resilient. They can handle it.
We are ignoring their prey animal instincts to hide pain and weakness and push through to survive.
It is my strong belief that this is a result of removing their species appropriate environmental needs and replacing them with human conveniences that hinder their abilities to thrive.
Horses can be remarkable athletes-but are often developed poorly.
I don’t believe this is intentional-rather a result of doing things a way that we hadn’t yet discovered could be done better.
We confine them.
We feed them in ways that don’t allow their systems to function properly.
We ask their bodies to do things they aren’t developed to do-and in some cases not well suited for.
We use tools and aids that do more harm than good.
We take short cuts for success that have devastating long term impacts.
We are imperfect humans.
We only know what we have been taught…
We know better now.
Yet we use “the way things have always been done” as an excuse to look the other way.
Gathering in a space with 20+ passionate equine professionals to learn more about the inner workings of the horses-while having to face the ugly truths of what each one of us at some point have done to a horse(s) in our care is life changing.
Finding community like this is inspiring.
It is not lost on me the responsibility we all walk away from this with to tell these story’s, advocate for the horses in our lives and serve the purpose of protecting them.
To Ciara and Critter, I am forever grateful for the courage you displayed in sharing and the lessons we learned. 💜
To every person in that room that shared their stories and supported each other in ways I can’t explain-thank you, it was an honor to share the experience with you and I look forward to deepening the connections we have all made from this.
We are going to make waves.
To all the Becks and Lorre’s of the world helping to tell these stories via dissections-you will change the world for so many horses and deserve so much appreciation for the work you’re doing.
If you are ever able to attend a dissection-it will be one of the most valuable experiences you will have and I couldn’t recommend it more.
Never stop learning.
