The case I am describing here is one of my first cases in Equine Shiatsu which I took in November 2006 and I am glad to report how well this horse continues to be. At the time I began working on Tinker, he was around twenty four years old and was a favourite of the riding school owner as he was very gentle, safe with children and always willing to do his best.
Unfortunately in early 2006 he started to go lame in his right front leg, so the owner decided to give him a well earned holiday for a few months in late Spring and into the Summer. In October she brought him back to work and he became lame again. The vet diagnosed the horse with navicular and said that since he was that old it was best to retire him.
So that was the situation when I started doing some shiatsu sessions on him. I did the first one in November 2006 and was very surprised that this very loving and willing horse despite being quite polite did his best to ignore me completely. Tinker was very tight in his shoulders and was also quite out of proportion in that his front end was quite strong and his back end being very underdeveloped and it was like the front end and the back end did not seem to be connected! So most of my sessions were focused on loosening his shoulders and trying to bring a connection between the front and back end of the horse which involved working on his bladder, gall bladder and small intestine meridians.
When I came back two weeks later for a second session Tinker was immediately very receptive. He apparently had made up his mind about Shiatsu! He really relaxed. At this stage I was working on loosening his shoulders and also doing rotations and stretches of his hind legs. When we took him out of his stable he was more flexible and engaging his hind legs.
I did another two sessions on Tinker in January 2007 by which time he was a real Shiatsu fan, happy to see me and relaxing straight away; always trying his best with the hind legs work. By February 2007, Tinker was back in light work and was much better with no sign of being lame, even though you could see that he was still very much a” front wheel drive” horse.
A few weeks ago (July 2009) I met the owner of that riding school and asked her what happened to Tinker thinking that he was retired and to my amazement she told me that he was well without any lameness, still working and as popular as ever with his young riders!!
This shows what the combination of the powerful effects of shiatsu and a very willing horse can achieve.