Our Approach
We offer you the chance to expand your view by seeing the horse from a different perspective and through a different lense. We invite you to new understandings and to a new partnership with your horse. We don't view the horse as a passive, unreactive thing, but as a reactive living being. We advise working with horses in ways that are congruent with the way they are and to consider things the way they do.
The horse care world is a world of product and personality marketing. They're trying to sell you something, and they make all kinds of wonderful claims about their products...and about themselves. But does it really help your horse?
Unlike those who see every problem and every symptom as something to be "fought," we see problems as part of the normal cycle of life, the natural flow away from and back toward wellness. Our approach is not to fight symptoms but to support wellness. The real problem often lies with our reaction to the problem. When we accept problems as being normal, give up the fight, and focus on supporting wellness, we can experience peace with our horse. We trust in the self-healing capabilities of the body. We view the body as having amazing abilities to detect imbalance and restore balance. Our approach is to trust in and support the self-healing capabilities of the body and try to reduce harmful influences that might overwhelm them.
We believe that sometimes wellness means accepting each horse for the individual that he or she is, and going down the path presented by that particular horse. We cannot make a certain horse into what it is not. Although we try to support health and wellness as best we can and minimize harmful influences, sometimes wellness means accepting the fact that this horse has and will always have a certain health problem, or that this horse just does not have the feet to withstand 7-hour barefoot rides over harsh terrain, or that despite the fact that we've tried 5 different training methods and philosophies, we'll never be able to effortlessly load this horse into a trailer. Sometimes wellness means letting the horse be what it was meant to be.
Our approach can be summed up as follows: Assume a person is standing holding his or her hand on a hot stove and yelling, "Help! My hand hurts!" Should we offer them medication--a pill or herbal remedy that will dull the pain? Should we offer them an insulated glove? Should we offer them a step-by-step method to help focus their attention on something other than their burning hand? Or should we say, "Take your hand off the stove."?
