by Monty Gwynne
The fourth annual Health, Harmony and Horses conference was held at Esprix Stables, near Stony Plain, Alberta, March 3 and 4. According to conference organizer Sonja Christopher, nearly 200 people attended this year’s event.
“My goal with the Health, Harmony and Horses Conference is to provide a positive, friendly atmosphere for people to share their knowledge and experience of what has worked for them,” she says. And that she did.
There were a wide variety of topics with seminars ranging from the very factual presentations of Equine Podiatry presented by Dr. Sean Archibald and Miniatures Make Miracles Happen presented by Donna-Rae Coatta, to the more esoteric topics such as Allison Mohr’s Re-awakening to the Animal Voices.
The one session that particularly interested me was Dr. Janek Vluggen’s Osteopathy: Treating Horses, not Symptoms. Equine osteopathy is a combination of spinal and extremity joint manipulation, visceral (organ) manipulation, and craniosacral therapy.
The fundamental philosophy of osteopathy is that for the body to be truly healthy and vital, every tissue must have proper mobility thus optimizing the flow of blood, lymph, and nerve impulses.
It treats the whole horse, rather than just focusing on particular symptoms; it is a whole-body approach. For example, in osteopathy it is believed that a presenting complaint (where the horse is stiff or sore) is never the dominant restriction or lesion in the body.
Instead, it is believed that the loss of mobility of internal organs can show up as stiffness or back pain in a horse, which can then lead to performance issues such as a horse becoming resistant in bending laterally or lacking impulsion.
A common theme I found throughout the conference was “doing less is more.” It started with the renowned clinician Chris Irwin and his presentation Horse Sense for Human Potential, wherein he suggested that perhaps because we all want so badly to do the right thing for our animals we do too much, and that we might actually see more if we did less.
The theme continued with Don Mackenzie, a farrier of 30-plus years, who shared his experiences in his presentation A Journey to Hoof Health. He’s seen some amazing changes in horses’ hooves by observing more about the hoof, trimming less, and thereby allowing the hoof to respond and show him the way to health.
Kathryn Kincannon’s presentation on The Alpha Mare Experience followed the trend in that she said that doing more with an alpha mare is certainly not going to get you more. Only by doing less and doing it better than the alpha mare, will you prove that you are better at horse language than she is.
There was one presentation, however, that suggested we needed to do much more or we would be left with very little choice as to what kind of care we can have for our animals. This was the Equine Dentistry: Keeping Your Right to Choose seminar.
Presented by Shannon Johnson, an equine dentist, and Dr. Ileana Wenger, the pair spoke about dental health and also about the Veterinary Professions Act and how we, as concerned animal owners, must do more if we want to keep our right to choose.
All proceeds of the conference went to the Alberta Animal Owner’s Association (AAOA) of which Sonja Christopher is president. The AAOA was created in 2006 in response to the proposed amendments to the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association’s definition of veterinary medicine.
Overall, the weekend showed me that less is more … sometimes!
Keep an eye out for next year’s dates at www.healthharmonyhorses.ca. If it is anything like this year’s, you won’t want to miss out.
