Chapter 195

Over the years I’ve spent many hours researching and presenting to various groups, both corporate and casual, on the benefits of self-care in the form of massage, yoga, and other wonderful things. These days I’m doing the same thing in the equine arena. I’m a great advocate for self-care; more people ought to utilise massage as a preventative. Keeping yourself fit and healthy in order to be able to (a) do your job, b) look after your family, c) have a happy and productive life is not a luxury, it’s an essential. Massage is proven to help in injury healing/rehabilitation, restoring full fitness after a traumatic event. Thoroughly researched in the human arena, similar research has been done in the equine arena.

Current conversations globally dominate equine health and wellness – approaches to shoeing, use of various forms of tack, bits are good/bits are not good. It’s often hard to understand people who insist on adhering to traditional methods just because that’s the way things have always been done. In many cases, traditional methods are used because they do work, but in other situations, traditional methods may not necessarily be the best or remain appropriate. Do they take into account the feelings of the horse or their physical wellbeing?

It’s not that long since kids had to sit in lines and learn by rote. They were thrashed if they didn’t learn, they were beaten to learn… this was also a method with horses. That’s why we talk about horses being broken, a term which makes my skin crawl. The idea was to break the horse’s spirit, to tie them down until they gave up trying to find freedom. To put a saddle on their back and watch them buck around trying to get this potential predator off their back, waiting until they gave up in hopelessness, then the horse was broken.

Traditional equestrian training in England may not have been quite so aggressive, but there were certainly plenty of often horrific tools and techniques for getting the horse to submit to your wishes. The pendulum always swings from one extreme to the other, so you’ll find opinions and people and trainers along the full sweep of the pendulum’s range. Some people have great ideas, many people have good ideas, some people shouldn’t be allowed within spitting distance of a horse, but that’s just my opinion.

My opinions can be wrong, they frequently change. Over the course of 50 years working with horses I’ve changed a lot about the way I deal with them and my attitudes to certain things. I’ve deepened my understanding of the horse in general and how they communicate and what makes them tick. I’ve allowed myself time to sit and watch horses, to stand and breathe, to allow a horse to say No, and to gently, but firmly, advise the horse that although he may have said No initially, it’s my opinion that he should come around to saying Yes. I have to find the appropriate argument to persuade them to change their opinion.

All these things keep me thoroughly engaged with life, constantly learning, looking for improvement in myself and everything I do.

Meanwhile…it was not until a recent conversation with a friend that I realised Starlink has now implemented multi-tiered pricing. When I checked a year ago, there was only one price option, which increased in January, probably due to Mr Musk’s not having enough pocket change. In case you weren’t aware, check out your Starlink account. You can now pay less, and if you go away, switch to standby mode for a fraction of the cost. I just wanted to put that out there!

Merry November everybody.

Kat Dancer
bodymudra@gmail.com,
+1 415 525 2630 (ph/whatsapp)