Like so many others, I spent years pursuing my passion in
my spare time and commuting into London to work as an analyst programmer the rest of
the time. However, like a lot of people, work was just a job in those days - to use the
classic adage: I worked to live, not lived to work. I followed this routine for many years,
summer and winter, often trudging through muddy fields before work with my skirt hitched
up above my wellies! It wasn't always an easy routine, but my horses have always been my priority.
During my many years as an owner, I have had horses both young and old, and
consequently I have faced many of the problems I now address as a professional: box rest,
starting a young horse, coping with arthritis, loading a 'bad loader', undoing the damage of
neglect.... the list could go on.
Eventually, this routine came to an abrupt end in the form of redundancy from my job
of over 15 years - a slightly scary prospect! But, as it turned out, this was my
opportunity to turn working to live into living to work! I had over 15 years of
feeling uninspired at work, and I wanted a change. I wanted work to be something
positive and something I could believe in.
So, with all the challenges I had faced and with all the lessons I had learnt as an owner,
and with all the mistakes (often unintentional) I have seen people make (and have made myself), I
decided to do something about it.
FORMING HOLISTIC EQUINE
I use the name / term Holistic Equine because, right from the outset,
this service was never going to be one thing in isolation. My concern was with welfare - not just
behaviour, not just physical problems, not just management - the term welfare covers all these things
and more. Holistic means looking at the whole, treating nothing in isolation. Basically, Holistic Equine
sums up the main precepts of my approach, of which I discovered there were two:
Look at the horse's situation as a whole
Explore all methods to help the situation
I believe horses are a complex web of
influencing factors (as are we) and as such should not be pigeon holed. I also believe
that some things work and some things don't, and of course some things may work better for one horse
(or owner) than another, so I never narrow my viewpoint to one skill. I might reject the use of
something in my professional and personal capacity because I disagree with it, but exploring it
(and its alternatives) will enable me to make that call.
Of course, I cannot be an expert in everything and there are times when I will need to refer you to the
appropriate professional (vet, chiropractor, saddle fitter etc) - it is impossible, for instance,
to address a behavioural problem successfully if the horse is suffering from any pain or discomfort. It
is part of my training, however, to know the broader picture, incorporating what I can into my own
practices and advising the use of other experts where I can't.
That said, there are perhaps 2 distinct areas in which
I could be said to operate: Behaviour & Management and Complimentary Therapies. From my point of view,
the distinction is not that clear as complimentary therapies can be a part of management which affects
a particular behaviour. However, it is probably clearer to explain my expertise in this context,
which is as follows:
