All right where was I, so by learning to read the responses of the horse and working in that
environment where there's the performance environment where I was able to get feedback
from the riders and the trainer's and learn from other other therapists and trainers and
professionals I was able to put this method together that to improve performance in the
horse and by you following the horses responses get these releases and kind of the fun byproduct
of that is this interaction you get going with the horse so it's very user friendly it's fun
and once you get this interaction going it's not just a mechanical this is a certain muscle and
then you rub it this way and this is a muscle you rub that way and sometimes these muscles get sore
doing this this is an interaction with the horse where you actually the horse is participating in
the process so that's it's not only the fun part of it but it's I think the part that makes it so
effective the direction of treatment most horses they generally load the right front left hind so
they would get tight on the right front and the left hind I'll find them very tight in the left
in the gluteal back here in the sacrum hey that's my book buddy and then I'll find them very tight
up here on the right on the right side of the poll so what I do is I start on the left side
the easier side we'll do the left front first will be the Bladder Meridian on the left side
then we'll work on the left front the head neck and shoulders hey that's my book I told you then
we'll come to the right front the harder side then we'll go to the right hind which is the
easier side behind and then we'll go to the left hind which is generally the harder the tighter
side behind so just as a rule that's how we that's how I start any questions I like to just find out
something that if I work on I don't want to hurt anything that if the horse has an injury or he's
been injected or something that I don't want to do any damage I generally like to just start out and
go over the horse myself and and but it's good to know I mean it's good to know as much as you
can about the horse but I don't watch a horse go a lot I mean I watch them go when they're going
but when I go over the horse that I'm going by what I feel in the horse and then if he if the
owner the trainer has other information then I can put it that together with it but I do like to know
as much as I can you know like what he does for a living what if he's been off because of an injury
because you don't want to hurt anything that's already been hurt and it's good to know if he's
just worked or not because you might like I do an evaluation - or I palpate palpate for pain
when I'm not going you know when I've got a lot of horses to do I'll go in and poke and jab you know
and see where he hurts so it's good - good to know or enough flexes his joints and things but it's
good to know if he's just coming out and coming in off of work because if he's really reactive then
you don't panic , ah this horse is really sore it's because he just he just jumped or whatever
so that's a good thing to know but also any things anything injuries that he's had because you don't
want to aggravate anything that's our good boy okay now and I always work on the horse in the
stall we're demonstrating out here but we'll go into the stalls when once we start practicing but
I work on the horse in the stall because they're there you can take the lead rope off sometimes
there you don't have to chase them all over the place you know if they want to walk away from me
I'll let them walk away from me and then when they stop walking I can go work on them again
but the stall is just a comfortable place to work on the horse pardon well it's not whatever you're
comfortable with if you're if like a horse like this that is actually going to be moving around
a lot you can keep them on the line you can have somebody hold him if you like because you don't
want him to keep walking around no he's holding himself so we don't have to hire somebody now
okay what was i we're gonna the bladder meridian the bladder meridian starts i mean depending on
what book you're looking at i just go in the general area starts over the eye comes over
the poll he's tense up here you can see he's just telling us right off the bat and it comes the mane
I usually start here right behind a poll and more or less three inches you know off the center line
all the way down along the spine and then back here there's another branch that comes down here
but we don't this is for our purposes we just need to have follow the general I let somebody somebody
hold him and it goes along here and then back here it kind of splits off and comes down the
poverty groove and goes down here it goes along maybe this far off the the the middle of the hind
leg down through that groove goes over the fetlock and it ends terminates right here that it's called
a ting point and Chinese medicine there are six on the hoof they're the terminations of of different
meridians this one terminates here right down this kind of ridge and where the coronary band
is that's where that would terminate there's another one corresponding on the inside there's
a ting point basically in the front here there's one opposite in the back just above the ball of
the heel and then there are two here in the middle between this one and this one the ting point is
an acupuncture point and it's a termination of a meridian so this ting point would be the bladder
meridian ting point I don't know the other ones that I use the bladder meridian mainly because it
relaxes the horse it it's a major meridian all the other meridians connect with the bladder meridian
and it runs basically along the areas we're gonna be working which is along it doesn't come down
here which is where we're gonna be but it runs along the spinal column and past the junction
of the shoulders the four limbs to the trunk past the junction of the the Sacro lumbar junction and
the sacroiliac the junction of the hind limbs and it's a very relaxing meridian to go over for the
horse and the reason I do the bladder meridian is one to get you'll see where the horse has tension
by going lightly the main reason is you get this communication going with the horse you get that
level of communication because all horses are different when when I come up to the horse if
and he doesn't know what I'm gonna do and I start going very lightly over the bladder meridian and
he's and he realizes how this isn't gonna hurt then he relaxes and when he realizes it's he's
starting to release tension he relaxes even more and you can see the level of response different
horses will respond differently some will be tense up right away and it's more difficult to
read others who immediately are very interactive with humans and they'll start trusting and they'll
start to release right away and relax some horses are too interactive with humans which is when you
have somebody hold them so that they'll at least hold still long enough for you to get going