Something lovely happened a few days ago.
Donna has a yearling who has had quite limited handling due to all kinds of valid circumstances that I don’t need to go into here and unfortunately, the filly had hit her head in the paddock and caused an injury that had some paralysis happening on one side of the face. One eye couldn’t blink or close at all and there was a droop to one side of the mouth that was affecting her ability to eat properly.
Serious stuff.
A vet was going to have big trouble examining and treating the foal, given the not being handled issue. Donna has had excellent results with me with alternative therapies in years past, with complex and life threatening issues for people, dogs and horses over our long association, so she called me as the first option – holding more dramatic veterinary options in reserve if needed.
I did a healing session on the filly loose on the yard and the results were great, with her eye blinking action coming back to about a 1/3 of normal and the mouth not so drooped and Bella eating hay by the time I left. That’s a great result but not the most beautiful part of the day.
The most beautiful part of the day was working with Donna and the foal to address some of the emotional issues behind the foal not being handled yet. (FYI there were lots of practical issues too 🙂 )
The foal was quite a nervy little thing from a very nervy mother and seemingly in contradiction, had also got a bit “bullish” around feed time –trying to find a comfort zone for her own little nervy self by extending her control over the human, bless her.
After the healing session I led Donna through expanding her awareness to the next level, very similar indeed to the Quiet Mind session that I led people through on the Live Seminar this morning. She gained insights about what she had to do to “fix” the feeding problem in a kind and caring way, with the good of the horse AND her own safety jointly at the heart of it.
The photos you see, are AFTER Donna’s personal breakthrough in her own level of awareness, which ALWAYS has the horse responding more positively. Please read that sentence again because it’s a big deal – expanding our awareness ALWAYS has our horse responding more positively – no matter how good the relationship is now. It’s not just a “problem” horse that responds positively to expanded awareness.
I have selected photos that show the filly clearly changing her response and gaining more and more confidence all the time.
No matter what the age or experience of the horse, I wouldn’t even try and halter any horse until they had a level of confidence that enabled them to be touched and rubbed all over while having a feel-good level of trust in that the human has their best interests at heart.
Fast Track to Brilliant Riding is the at home, with your own horse program designed to take you to the kind of Feel it takes to do this kind of job. There’s a bunch of early lessons that you could use to step by step gain the trust of a horse who has serious doubts about being caught and needs every part of the starting process like this little filly. We start that program at liberty – which is the best place to change their relationship with a human. Mistakes are easily forgiven and not life threatening at liberty!
Utterly gorgeous, really well done Donna… no wonder you’re beaming 🙂 It would be lovely to hear about her continued healing both emotionally and physically (Jenny’s so incredibly skilled with her mind blowing healing work) and how you yourself continue on with this. It is great to hear Bella’s story… thank you for sharing it with us xxx