Week 2: Starting Hands On Experience!
Emily H -
Welcome back to my blog!
As of right now I’m watching and observing Melinda, the proprietor of Premier Equine Sports Therapy, work while also studying equine anatomy and terminology to further familiarize myself with her work. However, I was able to get a small amount of hands-on experience this week! This was very exciting, as it was my first time getting to work on a horse myself. For this experience, I massaged a horse rather than adjusting. As adjusting requires more than an explanation and demonstration. So for the safety of both myself and the horse I was working on, I stuck to massaging for the first time. Ultimately, it was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. While the motions were simple enough to understand, it was difficult on a physical level, it required a lot of strength on my part. So that is definitely something I will need to build throughout this project.
The most notable part about my first time massaging was “opening up” a horse’s shoulder. Horses carry around 60-65% of their body weight on their front end. This means their head, neck, shoulders, and front legs, causes a lot of tension to arise in their shoulders, just as humans carry weight and tension in theirs. This tension can build up especially if a horse is not being exercised properly. This massage took the most strength from me, as I had to essentially stretch/pull the muscle away from the horse’s body and work the muscle with my hands. It is difficult to explain without visuals, definitely easier to understand once it is demonstrated. I’ll try to take pictures next week to further explain this concept.
This week I shadowed Melinda Monday through Wednesday. On Monday, we had a more unique case, Melinda worked on an aggressive mare. As Melinda was massaging and adjusting this mare, the horse tried to bite and kick Melinda. According to this mare’s owner she’s had a very traumatic past and does not trust humans, not even her current owner. Throughout this mare’s treatment she relaxed however we stayed weary of her. It was interesting to see this treatment because it was more difficult than others I have watched. While it was more challenging for Melinda to treat, she provided this horse with the same types of treatments as she would any other. On Tuesday, Melinda worked on two draft horses that are used to pull wagons. They received standard treatment and were well behaved. And lastly on Wednesday we got to see Drifter! I introduced Drifter in my last blog, the 26 year old gelding! As I mentioned previously Drifter has lost a lot of weight, this is actually very helpful to me as it allows me to see more clearly where bones lie on a horse. Most horses are filled out with muscle and fat, but we are trying to build that on Drifter. This allowed me to take what I have read and studied so far and apply it to a live horse!
Thank you for joining me this week! Stay tuned for my next blog!
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