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How Pain Affects Your Horse

By Sue Palmer on April 7, 2024

In any subject, there are key areas to consider. In this lesson, ‘How Pain Affects Your Horse’, I’ll discuss the ‘5W’s’ of pain, the what, why, when, where, and who. I’ll also include the ‘H’ of ‘how’. What is ‘pain’? The International Association for the Study of Pain (ISAP) defines pain as "An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage.” Short-term pain is called ‘acute pain’, and long-term pain is called ‘persistent’ or ‘chronic’ pain. Pain that comes and goes is called ‘recurrent’ or ‘intermittent’. Pain is a complex phenomenon involving our whole body, and the experience of pain can change from one day to the next.

Embracing the Present: Finding Joy in the Journey

By Sue Palmer on April 4, 2024

She found it hard to bend. Her muscles held tight, keeping the joints from moving through their full range of movement. I held my hand gently behind her poll and breathed into the release. Working with my breath, I applied pressure and then eased off again. I felt the soft tissues lengthen slowly, gradually, in their own time.

Finding the Right Time: A Guide to Stretching Your Horse

By Sue Palmer on April 4, 2024

Determining when to stretch your horse depends on your goals. Stretching may improve flexibility, reduce injury risk, help monitor neuromusculoskeletal health (meaning relating to nerve, muscle and bone), and enhance your horse's overall comfort. There are no hard and fast rules, and here are some examples of when to stretch, based on the stretches that I share in my online course, “Stretching Your Horse: A Guide to Keeping Your Equine Friend Happy and Healthy.”

A simple exercise to encourage straightness in your horse

By Sue Palmer on March 22, 2024

Your horse can only be straight if he can bend. I know that might sound counterintuitive, but imagine that your horse is less able to bend his neck to the left than to the right. He will find it far easier to bend to the right and tend to bend that way. This, in turn, means it will be much harder for him to be straight.

Which horses would benefit from stretching?

By Sue Palmer on March 16, 2024

Stretching can be helpful whether your horse is old or young, a happy hacker or a competition horse. Be it hacking, dressage, show jumping, eventing, TREC, horse agility, endurance, working equitation, a growing youngster or a retired elderly companion, stretching could be beneficial. I recommend a stretching programme to almost all my clients at The Horse Physio. Your horse’s physical therapist can advise you if specific stretches would be most beneficial for your horse. The stretches in the online course “Stretching Your Horse: A Guide to Keeping Your Equine Friend Happy and Healthy” have been chosen for their suitability for all.

Why does my horse buck?

By Sue Palmer on March 16, 2024

“There can’t be much wrong with him if he can keep bucking people off the way he does”, is how I was greeted at a yard recently. I know I’m preaching to the converted here, so it’s safe to vent my frustration. I’ve put years into writing ‘Brain, Pain, or Training’ and then more into writing ‘Harmonious Horsemanship’ in partnership with Dr Sue Dyson. Dr Dyson has spent years developing the Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram (also known as the Ridden Horse Performance Checklist - you can download a FREE PDF here) and ensuring that multiple robust scientific studies back up the list of 24 behaviours. That’s on top of the hundreds of scientific papers she’s been involved in around horse health. And that’s just me and Dr Dyson. There’s a worldwide conversation around social license for equestrianism. Discussions around horse welfare are at the top of the Paris Olympics agenda.

Which stretches should I do with my horse?

By Sue Palmer on March 13, 2024

In terms of which body parts to stretch, you might be guided by where you feel your horse is stiff, tight, sore or restricted. It might be that your physical therapist has suggested that you stretch a particular muscle group or that your horse has a specific movement restriction that could be eased with stretching. Your instructor may have told you that your horse needs to be looser or more flexible in his ridden work, or they may have pinpointed a specific area for you to work on. In these cases, you may focus more on some of the exercises in my online course "Stretching Your Horse: A Guide to Keeping Your Equine Friend Happy and Healthy" than others. There is no right or wrong. Every horse is an individual. Trust your instinct; you know your horse.

Beginners mind and horse physiotherapy

By Sue Palmer on March 7, 2024

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few” Shunryu Suzuki In meditation, we are often reminded of ‘beginners mind’, the act of approaching something as though it’s the first time you’ve ever seen it / done it / felt it / been there, etc. As a Chartered Physiotherapist, I’m aware of the ‘curse of knowledge’, the assumption that everyone else knows the same things I do. As a non-tech person, that ‘curse of knowledge’ becomes very obvious to me when a tech person is trying to explain to me how to do something that I’m struggling with but they find easy. Approaching a situation with a beginner’s mind helps me to maintain a sense of wonder, and I love that feeling. Listening recently to a meditation, it occurred to me that I don’t need even to try to have a beginners mind when it comes to my work (and yes, I’m well aware that means that my mind was drifting - that’s ok, one of the aims of meditation is to be able to notice the mind drifting off and gently bring it back to the moment, so I’m not beating myself up for that!).

How do I do fascial stretches with my horse?

By Sue Palmer on March 6, 2024

To stretch the fascia, we need to be slow and gentle. That’s one reason I’ve chosen to share fascial stretches in the course "Stretching Your Horse: A Guide to Keeping Your Equine Friend Happy and Healthy". I think that slow and gentle works well with horses. A blog by Amanda Oswald on the Pain Care Clinic website states, “We know that trying to force fascia to stretch is not going to get us anywhere. However, the viscoelastic properties of fascia also mean that it responds well to heat and gentle sustained pressure. This combination creates a physical change in the tissue, making it more fluid, in the same way that the combination of heating and stirring treacle makes it more runny.”. Allow the soft tissues of the body time to release tension. Think of how your body feels when doing a stretch (for example, a calf stretch or a hamstring stretch), and imagine that perhaps your horse is feeling similar sensations. With these stretches, slow and steady wins the race.

Why should I do stretches with my horse?

By Sue Palmer on February 25, 2024

As a horse owner, you understand the importance of keeping your equine friend comfortable and happy. Tight muscles can often lead to soreness. A 15-minute stretching session can make a significant improvement in easing tension and alleviating discomfort in your horse. The stretching routine doesn’t have to be complicated. Just getting your horse moving can make all the difference. Similar to how you feel after a 15-minute yoga session, your horse can feel looser and more comfortable after he has stretched. With regular stretching, you can help ensure your horse stays happy and healthy.

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