Caring horse lovers are alive and well in Scandinavia, as you can see below. Another capacity symposium to wind up our early summer tour of UK and Sweden. Our instructors Carola and Eva did Equine Touch proud and the students they presented us with for Level 3 were excellent. It was also great catching up with some of our qualified practitioners over there who came along for ET and Beyond and watching the enthusiasm with which they worked on the horses with the new developed procedures especially the new withers release technique which has evolved over the past 12 months and is proving to have a positive effect on reducing pain and freeing up this area. We must always remember that pain is the enemy and the more tools we have to defeat our opponent the better the result will be.

The venue at Bokeburg was out of this world. Built on the side of a hill it was an auditorium, arena, stables restaurant and student accommodation. The ultimate venue, and the owners so willing to embrace Equine Touch and its principles. As you can see from this photo this is modern Scandinavian architecture at its very best. Unfortunately we ran across many horses with problems especially in the neck brought about by severe training involving restricting techniques designed to make the horse work long and low. Alas this will always be the situation as long as the sport means more to the owner, rider, competitor than the welfare and comfort of the horse. Luckily we made a great impression which we can only hope will be lasting and the Scandinavian team will be providing equine bodywork support at events and competitions held at this great venue in the future.

Tomorrow we finish, jump on a plane for UK, pick up our car, catch the ferry to Amsterdam and drive to Czech for our summer break which we are looking forward to! Ivana to write her anatomy and physiology book and prepare her lectures and research for the dissection clinic in December in New Zealand. Myself, to transfer everything from PC to Mac, picture by picture, write the all new Level 3 manual for the new educational system which we will be unveiling in September at the UK IETA conference. So it will be a very relaxing break! ---------------

Three days later, here we are in Czech, land of the 2nd worst drivers in the world, Slovakia takes the title, but not by much. So for those of you who wish to get in touch with us for anything at all, and those who we are due a letter, now is the time to catch us while we are strapped into our office chairs.

Until next time ----- keep in touch and keep on touching!

 

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'The Equine Touch, From Zero to Hero in Your Horse's Eyes' has now been released in hardback with the 2nd printing of the book.We have made the new price worldwide £28, this will include postage and packaging to anywhere in the world. Unfortunately due to the extremely high cost of printing and postage the price remains high due to the fact that we are printing only for the demand, but we hope you agree it is worth it. We are receiving excellent reviews on the book and especially now that it is in hardback, t will make a great Christmas present for your horse loving friends. At present it can only be purchased through the UK NCC.

"Learning this or that technique, of what use can that be. Just single mindedly cut right to the heart of things and learn about yourself." Morehei Ueshiba founder of Aikido To me this actually say's it all. I meet so many people in the equine bodywork world, they go out and learn (taste) this and learn (taste) that, then they go up to a horse and find that they are unable to achieve the results they desire and so blame their techniques. Perhaps the answer does not lie with the knowledge of the modality they use but with their lack of knowledge about themselves. One of the best examples I have found in my own inward search is to allow my integrity always to precede my intent when approaching a horse who has a problem with humans. Think about these words, then think about the words of Tom Dorrance, Ray Hunt, Monty Roberts, Cowboys and martial Arts masters all saying the same things.

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As I watch the occasional student or practitioner trying in vain to pick up the hind leg I realize that it is essential to reinforce the positive thought in their minds and remove their inbuilt controversy at the ET way of doing this. The average horse owner picks up the foot, usually to clean it out, or as in the case of the farrier to trim or shoe the foot. Equine Bodyworkers pick up the leg, the ultimate focus being to work on the mobility of that limb. Initially we want to find out if the horse is prepared to work in harmony with us. The Equine Touch bodyworker must never fight to achieve a move, harmony is essential, this is why correct 'branding' followed by the choreographed leg lifting routine is imperative to the success of a session. Picking up each front leg correctly and rewarding the horse for this before attempting to request the hind leg is important in that it allows the horse to prepare itself for what is coming and put its mind into the correct frame of mind. Use your horsemanship and your integrity to create harmony between yourself and the horse before invading its dynamic sphere and even attempting to pick up the hind leg. As Ray Hunt said "Don't get into a competition with the horse, there will only be one winner, and it won't be you!"

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A question that is always coming up is - How do we differentiate between pain and reflex? The candid camera of Eva caught this sequence which clearly demonstrates reflex and pain. In the first photo the the horse has shown normal reflex to the stick, as you can see in the the back and neck appears quite normal, the anatomy looks quite relaxed.

In photo 2 note that even the hairs on the main registered the pain while the reflex did not, the neck has come up, the muscles have spasmed, the back has shortened and the shoulders are tense - not shown in the picture is the fact that the tail is swishing and the ears are back and the eyes are rolling. If you look close you will see from my body language I am VERY aware of the reaction also. ____________________________________________________________________________________________

It has often been said that I have a story about everything. Someone once said I had a checkered career, I just think I have lived an eclectic life, been in a lot of the right places (and the wrong ones) at the the right time and so of course I have a Michael Jackson story that i would like to share with you all. Back in 1978 i was wrestling in Auckland, New Zealand, as usual my overweight buddies and I went out on the town to drink the restaurant dry after the matches, and having drank and eaten our fill found ourselves invited to a party with the Commodores who were on tour 'down under' at the time. I arrived home at 6am, to the sad news that my stepfather had been killed in a car smash in Scotland. At 9am nursing a king size hangover I was poured on to a plane for LA where I thought I could sleep till I landed. Sleep was not to be however, the chief steward was a former cocktail barman of mine and so before the plane even took off he was pouring Dom Perignon and Cointreau cocktails down my throat. Somehow I managed to make the connection, upgraded to 1st class I was asleep before the plane even finished boarding. I awoke to find a tall skinny young black kid with a big smile and an even bigger Afro haircut asking me if I wanted dinner. As there was a crowd of them, I immediately thought I was back at the party with the Commodores, (they did look alike with these Afros), only to be told that they were the Jackson's, and you guessed it, I was sitting beside Michael, they were on their way to perform in Glasgow. It was funny I suppose, to me he wasn't a big star like Willie Nelson or Waylon Jennings! He was just a skinny, tall, nice kid, that could not sit still, chatty, pleasant with a then normal speaking voice. When he asked how much the Commodores were paid (the promoter was a friend of mine) I told him, which reduced him to fits of laughter. He then had to go around everyone in the group telling them, it appeared to be the joke of the decade. The one thing I did notice was that he didn't just walk around the cabin, he moved, danced, shoulders and head moving all the time, his body movements different to other people, if he met a hostess in the aisle he would literally dance around her. Strange kid, but I spent the best part of 10 hours sitting and talking to him he was fascinated that I had been Andre the Giant's Tag partner and was really interested in New Zealand. A nice memory, I was in a nice place at a nice time, and it gave me another story to tell.

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Q: Marie asks: How do we tell a client that the problem in their horse may being caused by the trainer or training, they just do not seem to want to know? A: Now that is a hard one, in fact the hardest! Alas it is all too common and any wrongly worded comment by you may not only lose you a client but gain you an enemy. I have many of them, diplomacy not being one of my strong points! Firstly you must evaluate your relationship with the owner in comparison to that of the owner and the trainer. talk about the positives in the horse, not the negatives. Very often the trainer has no knowledge of the pain syndrome or influence, considering it a behavioral problem. Sometimes it is actually good to point out the pain to the owner and the trainer together, show the pain reaction and state that it could be manifesting itself as behavior or training problems. Try to involve them in the 'ouch syndrome' that you have discovered. Unfortunately that does not always work. It is a sad indictment that to many the sport and performance is more important than the well being of the horse. Just recently I had to deal with three young 'trainers' all of whom had horses in severe degrees of chronic pain. One of them was so grateful that I had worked on her charges and was hungry for any advice I could give, one just continued training after I pointed out the horse had a rib problem, the other who's own horse I worked on, cleared the pain, immediately rode it for two hours the following morning, brought the pain back, when Ivana checked the saddle it was horrific. When all this was pointed out to the girl, she just shrugged, picked up her saddle and walked out of the arena leaving us to handle her horse (the one in the pix. Her comment "What does he know" (Why is youth wasted on the young?) It is heartbreaking but we just have to keep on trying to stick to the mission statement - Helping horses by educating humans! Good luck, you will need it. As Linda Parelli once said to me, "It's sometimes easier training the horse than the human."

Jock and Ivana's clinics 2008 2009

or go to http://www.theequinetouch.com/schedules.htmlhttp://chicago

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STORIES, STORIES, STORIES, where are they, we all want to hear them, write them down and send them in with a photo.

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