Please take a few minutes to share your challenges, concerns and wishes as an animal care-giver/owner. Your responses will help in developing support!
Click here to help with this survey.
I’ll share results in a future blog post.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Research | Tagged challenges, happiness, health, survey | Leave a Comment »
Here’s a great Q&A article from theHorse.com. Veterinarian Dr. Joyce Harman, DVM, MRCVS, offers her response to a question about asymmetrical muscle development and how it can relate to both movement and saddle fitting issues.
And be sure to note her comments in the last paragraph, “So what can you do about this asymmetry?”!
Posted in Anatomy, Q&A, Websites and Blogs | Tagged asymmetry, larger shoulder, saddle fitting, shoulders | Leave a Comment »
Here are a few tips to keep any stretches you do with your horse safe and effective.
- Have a sense of what muscles you are stretching and why before you begin. Unless the muscles across one side of a joint are initially tighter than others across the same joint, you may create an imbalance over time by only stretching one group.
- Apply stretches slowly! This way both you and your horse have a chance to feel when it’s
time to stop before the range of motion is taken too far. If muscles are overstretched, a necessary but counter-productive guarding response occurs, or worse, a muscle or tendon may be injured. - Gently jostle your horse’s leg or neck before applying any stretch. This will help muscles relax, reducing initial (and maybe unnecessary) guarding responses.
- Do not hold stretches for more than 1-2 seconds, but rather keep the joint moving slowly in and out of a comfortable, easy “stretch,” repeating several times rather than one long stretch. The range of motion will (usually) increase a little with each repetition, and you will avoid many potential pitfalls of the longer static stretches. The longer stretches require much more skill and experience from both you and your horse to be done well.
- Use either massage or exercise to warm muscles up before doing stretches. This will reduce the chances of causing a strained muscle, though even a warmed-up muscle must be stretched appropriately for safety.
Posted in Coaching Tips, Modalities | Tagged strecthing, tips | Leave a Comment »
Don’t assume stretching is always good for your horse! Depends on how it’s done, when it’s done, and how often, just to name a few obvious factors. (And yes, there are potential benefits to stretching, just some potential pitfalls as well.) In my book I teach a good alternative to stretching for the limbs, which is to use a combination of jostles and circles to help muscles relax and stimulate joint fluid.
I also believe that massage provides a much more efficient and effective way to improve range of motion. It can melt adhesions that may be restricting joint movements, and can also lengthen the collagen fibers (and their orientation to each other) within the connective tissue. Theoretically this is what stretching does also (one of the benefits), but only if the stretches are held for a length of time. (Some say at least 90 seconds for this to happen. Try telling your horse that as you’re trying to hold their leg in a stretch!)
So here are two links, one to the research article itself (the abstract and access to more), and another link offering a good summary of the research.
Posted in Coaching Tips, Research | Tagged stretching | Leave a Comment »
Listen and enjoy!
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Posted in Coaching Tips, Horse Tip Daily Podcasts | Tagged Horse Tip Daily Podcasts, stretching | 2 Comments »
Here’s a link to some new research which supports what we all already knew about the power of touch. As usual, the research is about humans, which is fine. Just know it all applies to the animals, too. (Humans are animals, too, after all!)
The article’s title is “Massage May Aid in Grieving Process.”
Posted in Miscellaneous, News, Research | Tagged grief, grieving process, research | Leave a Comment »
Equine veterinarian, chiropractor, and acupuncturist Dr. Kari DeLeeuw offers another tip on Horse Tip Daily.
Horse Tip Daily #176
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Posted in Horse Tip Daily Podcasts, Related Holistic Care | Tagged DeLeeuw, Horse Tip Daily Podcasts, prevention | Leave a Comment »
I’m very happy to announce that my book, The Horse Lover’s Guide to Massage: What Your Horse Wants You to Know, did indeed win a bronze award for 2010 (for books published in 2009)!
You can see the complete list of winners and more information about the awards at the Living Now Book Awards website,
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged book award | Leave a Comment »
I’m excited to announce that my book, The Horse Lover’s Guide to Massage: What Your Horse Wants You to Know, is one of four finalists of the 2010 Living Now Book Award in the Animals category (scroll down to category #7 to see the list). The final awards will be announced on April 22.
Send those judges lots of positive vibes!
Posted in Miscellaneous, News | Tagged award, book | 2 Comments »
