The 3rd Lumbar

I'm going to start with lumbar and the reason being, because I had an awesome experience with my sister's horse that has to do with the 3rd lumbar. So, the 3rd lumbar. Altogether there are 6 lumbar(picture below), but the important ones are the 1st, 2nd and 3rd lumbar. The 1st lumbar works with the urinary tract, the 2nd lumbar works with the digestive system and the 3rd lumbar works with the reproductive system. When any of these lumbar are misaligned, it can cause many different problems with each of the systems. In example, if you have a horse that is usually easy to keep (weight-wise) and then you find its weight declining, it could just be because the 2nd lumbar is badly misaligned.
So my awesome experience involved my sister's horse, and her 3rd lumbar. The horse is about 9 now, and we have never seen her come into heat. She's a gorgeous quarter horse, nice conformation and we've always wanted a baby out of her. Problem was, she never came into heat and we never quite knew why. When I finished the course in November, I came home and worked on her about a week later. When I came to the lumbar, low and behold, her 3rd one was misaligned and quite significantly at that. So I adjusted her and then waited. About a month and a half later, while feeding cows, I noticed that she was following one of our geldings around. So I watched her and to my excitement, realized she was in heat! So now we're planning on getting her bred in about a month and hopefully finally get a baby out of her.

This was one of my first experiences that kind of proved to some people that chiropractic most definitely works.

How my work is done

I get a lot of questions about chiropractic and how I go about adjusting the horse's back. The regular comment(from people who have never seen the chiro done) is: ''So what do you do, get the horse to lay down and then crack its back?'' Actually no. There is no 'cracking' involved. Unlike human chiropractors, I use a small rubber mallet (shown on the side) along the back and move the misaligned vertebrae back into place. They can shift from side to side, and cause muscle groups around that area to become sore. For the rest of the adjustments, like the vertebrae in the neck, the pelvis, the femur and the shoulders I use my hands and body weight to shift it back into place.

Along with chiropractic I also do some massage. When your horse becomes misaligned, it causes the muscle groups to become tense, tight and often sore. I use accupressure and massage to the main stress point areas helping with the oxygen flow and loosening the muscles.

Another question I get is: ''Does it work?'' This is quite a broad question, but yes, it works. If I didn't believe it did, I wouldn't be doing it. There are so many little things that can be going on with your horse - eg. bad behavior, won't pick up a right/left lead, won't bend their neck- that can so easily be solved with a bit of adjusting. Of course, in most cases, you need to see some of this to believe it. I've seen my fair share of big and small changes in a horse to fully believe this work is beneficial!

The Beginning of Equine Therapy

Hello and welcome everyone! I have finally got together a blog for you to follow. I hope you enjoy it!
I'll start with a little bit about myself and how I got to where I am now! I grew up on Pa-Van Ranch up the North Fork. Yes, I am a North Fork folk! Here on the farm I learned to ride almost before I could walk. Horses have always been close to my heart and they always will. I love riding our horses, especially the young ones because they always keep you on your toes! I always knew that I wanted an outside job and one that involved horses.
After much searching, I came across a lady who taught horse chiropractic in Barriere. I started my schooling in September of 09 and finished November of '09. The course was amazing and I learned SO much stuff. Not only did I learn about how to adjust a horse, but I learned all about the horse's anatomy and how to recognize whats up when your horse isn't feeling up-to-date. And that was just the theory! When we started going out to different places and looking at all kinds, shapes and sizes of horses, I learnt even more. I had the very great experience of being able to work with many different breeds of horses and the attitudes that go along!
Sadly I did eventually have to graduate and leave the amazing people that I met. I finished in the top 3 in my class and now I'm here to help the local horses around Grand Forks area.
I hope that you will learn many things from my blog as I'm going to take you through some key things that I learned as well as some of the things that have improved in my horses. Enjoy!