#49 Balanced Bodies, Balanced Nervous Systems with Wendy Murdoch

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:00:02-00:00:16]
On this episode, we're talking with Wendy Murdoch, internationally recognized instructor and clinician for over 30 years, author of several books and DVDs, and creator of the SURE FOOT Equine Stability Program and Ride Like a Natural Program.

[SPEAKER 1]
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The whole idea with Ride Like a Natural is, my catchphrase is, I teach riders how to do what great riders do naturally.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Welcome to the Equestrian Connection Podcast from WeHorse. My name is Danielle Crowell, and I'm your host. Wendy's desire to understand the function of both horse and human, her curiosity, and her love of teaching have led her to be able to help both horse and rider. She combines her creative talents with her scientific training to break down larger concepts of horseback riding as well as horse help into simple, easy-to-understand, bite-sized chunks for students of all ages, abilities, and disciplines. Her ability to make learning enjoyable, engaging, and fun through in-depth presentations helps her students connect the dots and achieve their goals. Wendy's willingness to embrace new ideas led her to develop the SURE FOOT Equine Stability Program and Surefoot Equine Balance Pads, which allows horses to reprogram their own brain in order to feel more grounded, secure, and confident so they can become a more willing partner I have to say my horses are using a surefoot balance pad and I'll speak about it in this episode my experience with it and how cool of a product this really is so there's so much that we're going to cover in this episode it's such a good one let's jump in and get started Wendy, thank you so much for coming on to the WeHorse podcast. I'm super excited to chat with you today.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:01:46-00:01:50]
Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here. I love talking to you.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Awesome. So let's go back to the very beginning. I always love to hear people's like origin story. What brought you to horses and what were your first few years like as an equestrian?

[SPEAKER 1]
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So my mother told me that I had a horse on my first birthday cake. I came out with the horse gene. Nobody else in my family had that horse gene. And, of course, I started going back and looking at old photos. And I used to have my birthday party was at the local pony riding place, right? And I had my little cowboy outfit, hat, skirt, vest, the whole bit. I found some of these pictures recently. So, you know, I was always bugging my parents about horses. And anytime I saw a horse, I was nuts about it. But I didn't start riding until I was 11. And my mother gave me an option. I could play an instrument or I could ride horses. That was a no brainer. So I started riding at 11 with a Welsh gentleman named Mr. Davies. He was an old Welshman, and I rode Honey, a buckskin mare, and Nugget. I remember them well. And then when I was 15, well, actually when I was 14, I met this horse that this woman had bought for her boys who weren't interested. So I was taking care of the horse. And then at 15, I bought him and came home and told my mother that I'd bought a horse. Wow.

[SPEAKER 2]
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I've done that with a puppy. I did that with a puppy once. I said, I brought home this puppy. But a horse is a whole other level.

[SPEAKER 1]
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A whole other level. And my parents were separated at the time. And so, you know, my mother's first question out of her mouth was, where are we going to keep it? So I boarded it for a little while. And then my dad converted his garage. He lived a quarter mile up the road. He converted his garage into a barn. And so I kept my horse at my dad's house and I rode in the school field across the street. To get to trails, I had to ride on, you know, alongside very busy roads. My farrier finally just put borium on my horse's shoes permanently because I would wear them out. They were like paper thin when he attacked my horse. So I spent many, many hours hacking for like all the way up into trails and riding with my friends and doing that all the way up into college when I finally realized I couldn't juggle all of it. So I found a great home for my horse. Yeah, so I was bitten before I was ever born.

[SPEAKER 2]
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It is so interesting, the amount of people that come here on the podcast. And I mean, the people like you that here are on the podcast, like they're not just horse people. Like you are top of your game. You're really making an impact in the industry. And so many of them don't have horse families. They're like, I don't know.

[SPEAKER 1]
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I just...

[SPEAKER 2]
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I just like horses. I find it so interesting.

[SPEAKER 1]
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Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to explain. I don't know. Maybe it's, you know, past lives or so.

[SPEAKER 2]
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I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So you've had that journey with your horses, you know, obviously just like went full throttle with horses as a kid. And now how has that journey begun to influence and has influenced the development of where you are now as, you know, an educator, clinician and a founder of companies?

[SPEAKER 1]
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You know, one of the things when I was a kid was I literally rode for hours, like on the weekends. I would probably be, you know, and trail riding in a sense in that I had to hack like an hour up the main highway, the four lane road on the sidewalk to get to the trails. And just and I and for me, I think one of the things that I didn't realize at the time was just the hours in the saddle. Right. That so many people don't get that experience where they're, you know, they're coming to riding later in life and they only get to ride like three times a week or something like that. And for me, I think that those hours in the saddle and then I had a really good instructor. My 4-H, I was in 4-H and my 4-H leader, Kathy Campbell, had very good basics in classic traditional riding. Like teaching. And I grew up in Stanford, Connecticut. So I would go over to Oxridge Hunt Club and watch the jumpers. I watched Bill Steinkraus and Ronnie Mutch and George Morris and all those folks. Right. So I had I saw. I'm going to date myself now in the 70s. You know, I saw top writers and my teacher was very much a solid foundational instructor. And I actually dedicated my second book, The 40 Jumping Fixes, to her because I realized, looking back, how important that foundation is to what I teach, what I acknowledge, what I believe in. And so it was a great gift to have her as an instructor. And, you know, you don't realize that stuff at the time, right? But in hindsight, I see now that those just, you know, what I tell people is you can't avoid gravity. Gravity is the law, right? And what I see now so often is style that doesn't take gravity into serious consideration. And the thing that suffers is the horse, right? So, if we have the style of bracing our heels down and bracing against the stirrups, what we're not recognizing is that Newton's third law, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, that pressure is going from the stirrup to the stirrup bar, and it's pushing the saddle down behind the horse's shoulders. Well, we want the horse's back to come up, but we've just applied a pressure pushing it down. And so we're working against what we want and against the horse from a misunderstanding of what heels down means. It's not about pressure. It's about function. That the ankle is deep, but it still moves. It still has a function. You know, and Bill Steinkraus in his book said, you know, to make your legs stronger, to have a, you know, more leg, if you will, you deepen your heel to make your calf muscle harder. And that's what makes your leg stronger. But if you're at maximum depth, if you're jamming your heel down as far as you can, 100% of the time, there's no nuance. There's no variation. There's no conversation with your horse with your legs. And so this is where, you know, what I realize is that I had this really incredible foundation. And when I teach now, it's it's like I see people writing in a style or a position or they're trying to do what their instructor said, but they don't understand the fundamental principles. structure our skeleton and our function how it works and why are we doing this and what's actually happening because again you know you think about the size of the stirrup bar and pressure is is force over area the stirrup's bigger so when you get to the stirrup bar you've increased the pressure even more but we don't think about it in terms of well how is that influencing the horse well it's pushing his back down then he raises his head then we put a tie down on Right. Yeah. And we have to get back to, well, what is the rider's function and how is their their joints, their hip, knee and ankle supposed to work? Those are our primary shock absorbers. When they're not allowed to absorb, to move, then the lower back takes it. Well, your back isn't designed for that. So how many riders have back pain or knee pain? Right. Yeah. Because they're numb feet. I just had a student yesterday and she you know, her thing was her feet weren't numb anymore when we got done.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Yeah, I find this so fascinating. And you're leading me beautifully into my next question, which is this topic of ride like a natural. So what is that? What is that teaching? What is the method?

[SPEAKER 1]
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What is it? So it's something I coined a long time ago, and I coined it during my first book. So my first book is called Simplify Your Riding. I can't even remember how long ago, 2004. And the whole idea there was to help people understand their body and how it functions. And what I keep seeing is that natural riders don't know what they do. They're natural. That's the problem. It's also their gift, right? And then everybody else tries to emulate a natural rider, but they don't know what that rider is doing to make it work. Yeah. So what I do is I I can see what's happening and I can break it down into simple concepts. One of the most common things I teach people is where their hip joints are. So your hip joint is where your leg joins your body. But most people think of the hip as the top of the pelvis where your belt sits. If you think that that's your hip and I one of my absolutely favorite trainers in the planet, I went and watched her at a symposium and she said, you know, the top of your pelvis is your hip and put it in the saddle. And my perspective was, if you did that, you broke your pelvis.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Right.

[SPEAKER 1]
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Because we're not.

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um educating people to their own anatomy and so that they can actually be successful a really good and she's a totally natural rider she's an amazing trainer and rider but she doesn't know her own body because she doesn't need to yeah and you see that a lot too is like trainers that um they can work with your horse and it'll it'll go lovely and everything and then it's like okay well what did you do and they're like uh i i I don't I don't really know what I did or I can't explain it. I had this once I was at a this is kind of an off tangent, but I was at a yoga training and this one guy, he was just doing this beautiful like handstand arm balances. And I said to him, how are you doing that? And he was like, I don't know, my body's just doing it. And I thought, well, that's not helpful. Like, but it's just because he's a natural at it. Right. Right. I this is this is fascinating.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:12:07-00:14:15]
Please keep going. One of the things we have to realize is that movement is directed by the motor cortex. Okay, I'm going to simplify this a lot. Okay, you have a brain. You have a cerebellum that stores motor patterns, and you have a motor cortex that fires and tells the muscles what to do. Muscles are dumb because if you cut the nerve, the muscle dies. It withers. It goes away, right? So it needs innervation to do something, right? So when you move – You went through childhood development for a reason, okay, to learn how to use this body. Okay, but there's no words in childhood development. There's nobody telling you, you know, tighten this muscle, move this. You do this by experimentation, trial and error, and you figure out how your body works. It learns, it stores motor patterns, like riding a bicycle. If you've ever ridden a bicycle, it doesn't matter how old you are, you can get back on a bicycle in about two minutes, you're pedaling away. Okay, because that's a motor pattern stored in your brain once you've learned it. Okay. So natural riders have these motor patterns that are stored in their brain and they call them out when they need them. The problem is there is no language in the motor cortex. There's no words there. So when we try to tell somebody how to do a movement, we're trying to use our frontal lobe, our language, our analytical brain to tell somebody how to do something that has in itself no words. OK, so, you know, if I tell you to ride a bicycle, I'm going to say, OK, get on the bicycle, put your foot here, put your foot there. I'm going to give you some training wheels so you don't fall over. Just start to play with it. Right. And you start to tell you, oh, and you wobble and you know, OK, and then you write yourself. And your nervous system is adjusting your balance, recognizing gravity, figuring out how to coordinate and learning the motor patterns. OK, but if I told you, you know, get on the bicycle and I'll put your foot here and put it now put five degrees of angle on it and add two ounces of pressure and then tighten your biceps in order to hold the handlebar and then contract your hamstring when you're you'd never ride the bicycle.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Yeah.

[SPEAKER 1]
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And so then we look at natural riders. They don't know what they do and they can't tell you because they're the the things that they notice are the things that have more allocation of awareness in your brain. OK, your hands, your feet, your eyes, your ears, your lips, your sensory organs. OK, have a lot of allocation, which is why we can do fine motor control. Your thighs and your back have very little mapping. You take your pants off, you got a gigantic bruise and you're like, I don't remember that. So it doesn't have a lot of mapping in the brain. So now what the natural rider does is he says, you know, use your hands and feet because that's the thing he's aware of. Oh, I just closed my hand on the rein when the horse resists a little bit and he's fine. But he didn't tell you anything he did with his back, his hips, his thighs, his tension, his tone in his chest. None of it because he doesn't know he's doing it. Yeah. So the whole idea with Ride Like a Natural is my catchphrase is I teach riders how to do what great riders do naturally. Because from my experience, we haven't really gotten here yet, but in 1984, a horse flipped over on me, rolled over me, and punched my femur through my hip socket, broke my hip socket, and then he kicked me between the legs when he got up.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Oh, my gosh.

[SPEAKER 1]
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Put me in the hospital for three weeks. I was in traction for 10 days. And when I got done, out, when I got out, you know, I couldn't even go into my kitchen because it was a linoleum floor, right? So I had to figure out... how to get my body functioning again. I went through a lot of pain. I went through a lot of processes. I went through a lot of exploration and tried a lot of modalities. because I had to figure out how to get this body that was now broken working. And so through my experience of rehabbing myself, I learned a lot about anatomy and physiology. I was actually studying that already. And then I took the training to become a Feldenkrais practitioner, which is the guy's name. But it's all about learning possibilities of movement or regaining possibilities of movement. And so through my, you know, whatever, since 1984, 30 something years, I've developed how to show riders what to do, what great riders do naturally, because I had to figure out my own body. And in that process, I can help other people how to use their body to communicate clearly with their horse.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:16:56-00:18:30]
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[SPEAKER 1]
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Their own anatomy.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Exactly. Do you do you see any other issues, you know, as you're going around and doing clinics, things like that? Are you seeing other issues that are coming up for horses and riders, you know, that that are being affected by body wear, lack of body awareness or something completely different?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:18:52-00:20:40]
You know, again, we're in gravity, and this is the body we have, and we have to marry this vertical body with a horizontal body that's also in gravity. The thing that's fascinating to me is how similar we really are. Our nervous systems are actually really, really similar, okay? And the one thing that we all want to feel is safe, because in gravity, the thing that we don't want to do is hit our head, right? It's a game-changer. So horses and people, basically, we're struggling with gravity and we don't want to hit our head. We can break just about everything else. But if we break our head, it's kind of, you know, over. Yeah. So our nervous system reports fear when we feel unstable or insecure. OK, the emotional side is insecure, but the balance side is unstable. So if we feel unstable, then we're going to report fear. Now, horses report fear like, oh, my God, I need to run away because whatever this is is scary. And if we look at it from physics, the horse on a thousand pound horse has a 40 pound head at the end of a three foot lever arm with the center of mass at the 13th or 14th rib. So you've got a 40 pound flag there. Right. Think of a crane. And now you move it. And if the horse isn't well balanced, he moves his head. He's leaning and he's already in a controlled fall. He's already running away from himself. Right. Because he doesn't have the wherewithal to reorganize his balance so that he can look at something and not lean. Then you add a rider who's been told to sit up straight, shoulders back, chest out, which instantly puts them in a hollow back position, throws the horse on the forehand. And now he has to raise his head to kind of deal with the weight that's gone forward. And oh, by the way, there's something over here I can't see and they're pulling on my head.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Right.

[SPEAKER 1]
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Yeah. So, you know, this is the thing is we all want to feel safe. If we feel safe, we feel invincible. We can do incredible things. We can jump and leap tall buildings. I think event riders don't have the fear gene. You know, but that's the thing. And so if you don't feel secure, you're going to transmit that to the horse, right? If the horse doesn't feel secure, he's going to transmit that to the rider. If your position is created such that you're bracing, right? Now you're going to be insecure because the minute you brace your leg against the stirrup and stiffen your joints, not only have you created a lever, meaning that it takes very little effort for me to pull you over, even if I'm not trying, right? But there's another piece in here that I find so fascinating. Not too long ago, I learned about the fact that there's a hormone released by bones.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Oh.

[SPEAKER 1]
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Uh-huh. And it's called osteocalcin. And osteocalcin is associated with the flight reflex.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Oh.

[SPEAKER 1]
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So there's research that says that in mice and humans that do not have adrenal glands, they can still have a panic attack because of the osteocalcin released from the bones. Yes.

[SPEAKER 2]
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Okay, you're like blowing my mind right now.

[SPEAKER 1]
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Yeah, this is a mind blower. I just love this one. So that means that any creature with a skeleton, okay, anybody who's got a skeleton releases osteocalcin. And so when we brace, when we stiffen, I'm taking it one step in conjecture, right? My hypothesis is that when we are braced, we're actually put ourselves into sympathetic bite and flight because of the osteocalcin. Now, let's think about this for a second. A rider that's bracing against the stirrup. Not only have they created a long lever for me to pull them over from a physical perspective, but if that's causing a release of osteocalcin that's putting me into flight mode, into panic, right, even on a slow level, what is the horse reading? OK, now the other thing is when we have that pressure on the stirrup and it's going up to the stirrup bar, it's pushing the horses back down, even if it's a little bit. The horse's sympathetic nervous system is primarily through the torso. So we're activating the sympathetic. But in addition to that, because we are then out of balance, in other words, we're not in good alignment with gravity. We're a little on the horse's forehand. The horse now has to brace his legs. And as he braces his legs, what if that also kicks in osteocalcin and puts him in flight?

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:23:39-00:24:04]
Okay, I rarely go back and listen to these podcast episodes. I have this thing where I don't want to go back and like hear myself and wish I said something different, you know, or something like that. And it's like, I'd rather just not listen to it again. This is an episode I need to go back and re-listen to because you are like... blowing my mind right now, Wendy. I'm just sitting here like, this is crazy.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:24:04-00:24:13]
Okay. And that's the thing is, Okay, so it's a hypothesis, right? I don't have proof, but I do have enough experience, and this is where Surefoot comes in.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:24:14-00:24:15]
What are Surefoot pads?

[SPEAKER 1]
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So let's talk about what the program is first. Yes, perfect. Okay, so the Surefoot Equine Stability Program is a process of placing an unstable surface, a Surefoot pad, underneath a horse's foot. allowing him the choice to stay or go. Right. He has autonomy over the process. So I'm not going to hold him on the pads. Right. Besides which, if he walks off, he's lost his balance anyway. Right. And isn't that what I'm looking at is his stability. Right. And in that process, The horse's hoof, which is a sensory organ, and this is the thing that I, you know, we recognize the hoof has to be healthy. It has to be well trimmed and shod, or if it's shod, and not have thrush and all that. We realize it has to be healthy, but we've, in my opinion, we've forgotten that it's as important as your eyes. Okay? So it is a sensory organ reading the world through the feet. And so what the surefoot pads do is they input information through the sensory organ of the hoof, this unstable surface. And however that works, and this is the part we really don't know, it changes the horse's nervous system. Right. So we see the horse go from fight and flight. to grazing, from anxious to calm, from unbalanced to balanced, from poor posture to good posture, from short stride to long stride. We see all these changes with Surefoot. And the thing that I keep wondering is, how does this happen? And the only thing I can tell you is that horses have habits just like people. And if they develop a habit in relation to the ground, then that habit keeps occurring every time they put their foot down. So if I learn to brace my front leg, every time I put it down, I brace my front leg, I'm already throwing my balance off. And so for however it works, and this is, like I said, the part that we, they're just starting to study it now. The horses reorganize themselves, right? And so this is where, you know, at first you can see that they're not they're not sure what's happening. Right. And they may not you may not see them actually consciously become aware of it. But very quickly, they'll like look at the pad, they'll put their head on, they'll sniff it, they'll go over the pot. They're like, what the heck was that? And then they'll want the pad. Right. and they'll reorganize themselves. So they become self-aware in a horse sense. I don't know that that's the same as people, but they become self-aware. And because they are a motor-based creature, because they can get up and run within an hour of birth, you have to figure that their movement patterns, like I talked about with people, are more hardwired. We have to learn how to use this unit. So I think of it as this kind of firm wired, whereas horses are hardwired to move. And it's almost like we just like if you had a whole pile of dirt and dust and books and everything piled up on a pattern and you just swipe it away and reset the nervous system and restore the original programming. Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of I don't know if that helps you understand.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:27:59-00:29:11]
It's interesting because I got I got my pad. And so for those listening, I have the physio half pad and we'll talk about the different pads here shortly. But I got it on a recommendation from somebody else. So Celeste Lazarus recommended that I get it, and Dr. Rachel Bellini recommended that she get it, and, like, it was just this trickle effect. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to get one of these, and let's try it out. So I have two horses, and I'll give a really brief overview of both experiences of them. So my mare, she had a past SI injury that led to a really twisted pelvis. So we've since... done a ton of osteo and things like that resolved it. Um, but she's very tight in her body and she, um, she's not super trusting of her body. Um, you know, just from years of her body, not feeling good. And so she used to on the cross ties, you had to dance like with her. If she was on the cross ties, it was like, Oh my gosh, like where's her feet? They're, they're all over the place. So I'm, I'm tap dancing around to make sure my feet aren't getting crushed.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:29:12-00:29:13]
She was very, very antsy.

[SPEAKER 2]
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And so we've since, you know, moved eons and eons and light years past all of that. And she's a lovely, lovely, calm horse now. And so when I put her on the cross-eyes, she can still be, I mean, she's definitely not antsy, but she's curious. She'll take a couple steps forward, take a couple steps back, look around, sniff things, stuff like that. So I stood her in the cross-tie section. I, of course, didn't start her on the cross-ties, not wanting to give her the choice, you know, stuff like that. I just put her in the cross-tie area. My horses generally will just walk around the barn by themselves and hang out. And so we just went in the general area, and I gave her the chance to, you know, let's try stepping on this pad. And so every single time she'll be kind of like, oh, I'm looking over here. I'm looking over there. I'm doing this, doing whatever. She steps her foot on the pad and she just goes into this trance and she lowers her head. She softens her eyes and she just stands there. And she looks like she's meditating. It's the neatest thing to watch to go to see her go not from zero to 60, you know, or 60 to zero, I guess, because she's not in the state that she once was. She's in a much more calmer state now to begin with. But let's say to go from 10 to zero or something like that. And to just see her focus on the task at hand. you know, or whatever it may be to just put that pad underneath her foot and to just see her go into this sense of like inner concentration. And she'll stand like that for, you know, three minutes, five minutes. And then she'll just step her foot off. She'll usually kick the, push the pad away. I'm done with this. Move on. And so she brushes, she pushes the pad away and then she's like, okay, cool. Now what? And she just has this whole other state of, okay, And we go about the rest of whatever we're going to do. And it's so, and I have no idea what's doing it. All I know is that her whole nervous system completely changed. So that's her. That's just the very interesting thing of her. Again, this horse that didn't really ever feel safe in her body or comfortable in her body to go and now be like, hey, I'm cool. Like, what's up? So then we have Mike Gelding, who we've been rehabbing. He has, to say he has poor posture is a good way to describe it. He's just not, you know, he's got bad hoof angles. He's very heavy on the forehand when he's just naturally standing there, things like that. He's got a dropped thoracic sling. All of the things. So we've been really rehabbing his posture and his feet. And so he's been a little bit I haven't quite seen the same transformation as I've seen in my mayor. He's more like, oh, OK, this is changing things. I need to take a second with this and I can't quite be on here as long as her. And that's really interesting as well, because he's slowly but surely being able to keep his foot on for longer. But at first it was more like, oh, this is weird for me. And it's because, you know, it is, in my opinion, starting to change his physiology.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:32:48-00:32:52]
It's challenging him. Yeah. It's challenging the habit that he's kept.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:32:53-00:32:53]
Exactly.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:32:53-00:33:18]
Exactly. And now there's an offer to be different and different horses. Some horses are like, yeah, bring it on. And other horses are like, what does that mean to me? Yeah. And that's human words, but you can see it in their expression. What do I do with this feeling? How do I change the way, you know, this is how I've been. And so that's that the conference confronting their habit.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:33:19-00:33:19]
Yeah.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:33:19-00:34:08]
Right. And and what I think we haven't recognized is how much of what we call behavior are actually habit patterns that got formed for whatever reason. You know, I mean, there's a million reasons how and why we form a habit pattern. But habits can form pretty quickly. And unless they're consciously addressed and unless they're brought to the conscious mind, you can't change them. Right. So the person who habitually choose to choose their fingernails doesn't know they're doing it. And then people yell at them. But it's not it's not really conscious to them until something causes them to go, wow, you know what? This is painful. I want to stop. And then they can address the pattern.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:34:09-00:35:04]
And I think I think, too, like if I'm so I sit at a desk a lot. And if I sit a certain way, let's say I don't have armrests on my chair specifically because I don't want to lean on them. But let's say I did have armrests and I was always leaning to one side. And so that began to feel normal in my body. And let's say I started working with somebody or I removed the armrests. And suddenly I needed to sit up straight. And that no longer felt straight in my body. Leaning to the side felt, you know, my normal. So if I start to sit up all the time, it's like, oh, this is weird. I'm not super okay with this. I'd rather just kind of sink back into this a little bit or work slowly. And that's kind of the way I think of him. It's like he's always stood a certain way. And the moment that I say, hey, what if we stood like this? He's like, ah, that doesn't feel super normal to me. So I've got to take this a little slower.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:35:05-00:36:13]
Yeah. And the other thing I find with horses is that the younger they are when a pattern is established, the longer it's going to take to grow. bring them into a habit of a new pattern. Yeah. So I have one horse that he won't stand on a pad for more than a second. But then he steps off and he completely processes, licks and chews, drops his head, relaxes the whole nine yards. And that's been his way for three years. But it turns out that as a foal at six months old, he was stuck in mud up to his knees. And this woman rescued him and his mother. So, you know, that experience of being stuck in the mud up to your knees, that pad is going to have a giving feeling. Right. But he still gets all the benefit of the pad, even though he's not on it. And this is what's so hard for people to realize is that duration is not the key. It's not about how long they stay on the pad. It's just the offer. And when I started, it was 15 seconds with the first horse and it completely changed in 15 seconds, which is why I'm doing this now.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:36:14-00:36:14]
Right.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:36:15-00:36:15]
OK, so like.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:36:17-00:36:22]
I'm so excited about this, as you can tell. I'm like, oh.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:36:22-00:36:25]
So how did you even come up with this?

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:36:25-00:36:29]
What inspired you to develop these? How did this even come to mind?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:36:30-00:41:50]
So so I mentioned earlier that I'm a Feldenkrais practitioner. Dr. Moishe Feldenkrais, he would be over 100 now. He was around in the in the 40s. He was a young man in the 40s and he hurt his knee playing soccer. Now, he was an engineer. He was a scientist. and he actually was working in Dr. Madame Curie's laboratory just before World War II broke out. So he was an athlete, and he hurt his knee, and the doctor said, I'll give you a 50-50 chance of rehabbing, and he's like, that's not with surgery, and that's not good enough odds. So he studied the body, and he looked at the skeleton, right? And he also studied psychologies and philosophies. I mean, the guy was brilliant. He spoke multiple languages. But what he recognized was that you cannot think a thought without a movement. So we're back to movement, right? And if you want to get picky, when you think there are neurochemicals that move in order to make the connections. And if you have a parent with Alzheimer's, you realize they can't think anymore. They can't make the connections, which is loss of movement and ultimately death, right? So if you cannot think without a movement, um, The other thing he said is that we act in accordance to our own self image. We act in accordance to our own self image. So if my self image is, oh, you know, I'm really insecure and I kind of drop my chest and I roll my shoulders and you see teenage girls like that all the time. And you can read their body language, which is what we do with horses all the time. Right. We read their body language and we know where they are emotionally and mentally. So from that, he concluded that rather than talk to people, he would help them achieve their potential, bring about change by either helping them regain movement or learn new possibilities. Now, to do that, he talked about differentiation. So an example, I have a hand. I have five fingers. Well, if I take my other hand and I identify, I outline, and I take my finger and I go through each one, I'm making it clearer in my brain. I'm differentiating it. And then you put it back into a function, okay? It's not just about that my five fingers are loose. It's like, what can I do with loose five fingers? Oh, I can be very delicate and pick something up. OK, so someone who's had an injury, what happens in the brain is the map of our body gets smudged and shrunken. And now it doesn't have that clear differentiation. So the Feldenkrais method remaps the body and the brain and shows people how to organize their body in an efficient function, a good function. OK, now for riders, this is super important. It's one of the things I teach riders all the time. Most riders don't know that their pelvis can move in all different directions. They get stuck in a pattern. Driving the car is a perfect example because you're always sitting asymmetrically. And then they get on their horse and they wonder why the horse keeps missing the lead or falling through the shoulder. Right. Because they're not aware that their body is actually not in the middle. OK, so as a Feldenkrais practitioner. which I have trained in for over 16 years. I'm always looking for ways to show my students new possibilities of movement, how to use their body. I mean, that's my job. And there's something that I do called grounding the foot. And this is back to the foot in the stirrup, right? I place a board under their foot and I slowly, slowly lower it. The nervous system has a seeking reflex, which is what allows us to stand. And in that seeking reflex, the person, it's almost like their foot's magnetized to my board, and the nervous system follows that board. The foot follows that board. So when I put their foot back in the stirrup, their joints are moving again instead of being braced. So we've reset the nervous system. So I've been doing this since 2002. I've been doing this a long time. And I was always kind of like, well, you know, is there some equivalent for the horse? Like, how can we get the horse to think about, you know, softening and lengthening the way I can do that with a rider's leg? So one day I went to teach a lesson. It was actually it'll be 12 years ago, May. And. And this is a horse I'd been working with for a long time. He was lame when I started, but I gave him Feldenkrais lessons. I worked with his body, right, showed him new possibilities of movement. And the rider was getting eights and harmony in her dressage test. Everything was going great. She decided she wanted to do some jumping, so she put on a jumping saddle. And when I saw the horse a month after the jumping saddle, he was lame in the right hind leg. Okay. So I said to her, you know, do you have your dresser saddle with you? And she's like, yeah. So we put the dresser saddle back on. He was still short in the right hind leg. So that night I went home and I don't know if you know who Dr. Joyce Harmon is.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:41:51-00:41:51]
I've heard the name.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:41:52-00:42:58]
OK, she's a holistic veterinarian. She's retired, unfortunately. She's a good friend of mine. And we were talking on the phone that night. And she wanted to stand at her computer instead of sit. So this is when the idea of standing desk was just getting started. She said, I want a pad to stand on. And then she started telling me how they were using pads for rehabilitation for dogs for like surgeries, post-surgical and that sort of thing. And so I'm sitting there on my laptop talking to her on the phone. I'm tapping away on my laptop and I'm looking at these pictures of dogs on all these unstable surfaces. And I said to her, well, do you think it would work for a horse? And she said, I don't know, but time it for 15 seconds. I'm like, okay. So I was going to see this horse the next day, the same lame horse. I go in my shed. I grab a pad. I drive to the lesson. She's already on. I walk up to the horse. I pick up his right hind leg. I stick the pad underneath. I put the foot down. I time it for 15 seconds. He walks off sound. Blew my mind. So this was just an experiment, right? A 15 second experiment that it totally changed my life.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:42:58-00:42:59]
Absolutely.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:42:59-00:43:01]
Oh, my gosh.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:43:01-00:43:25]
And I have to ask a really quick question and then we'll keep going with this. They're the different, um, sides of the pad. So one is colored and it's like a little bit harder. And then the bottom is squishier. Yep. My mare likes it if I flip it and it's a squishy side better. What, like, why is that? Or is it a thing? Like, is there a difference?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:43:26-00:44:24]
So I, you know, I go back to the hoof as a sensory organ. Okay. And that's why we have the different pads that we have. So we have, um, um, Four different densities and two styles, flat and slant. And the reason that we have those, in the human world, you have a graded system of instability. And for horses... It's a graded system of instability. OK, because some horses and my rule of thumb is anything but totally calm. You start with hard or the half physio pad. It only has it only gives the heat and pressure and has no lateral give. And and this is you know, it's so funny because people ask me this question. What pad should I start with? Like number one question. If you're starting a new exercise program or if you have an imbalance, you do not go to the hardest exercise first.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:44:24-00:44:24]
Right.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:44:25-00:46:28]
Yeah. Right. You start with the one where you can be slightly challenged and be successful. OK, so anything like any horse with an injury, any horse that's anxious, nervous, not settled or a horse I don't know. In fact, I just had two horses yesterday. I don't know them. I start with my half physio because it's my lowest profile pad. And it's like, let me see how you respond to this. Thank you. Now, I have had horses that have completely freaked out at that. Now, it's rare, right? In the 12 years I've been doing this, I can count the number of horses. But before I start challenging them with something more difficult, I want to say, hey, have a taste and let me know if it's okay. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You know, if you're going to somebody hands you a cup of coffee and you go, it's hot. Well, you don't know how hot until you. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right. You know, because you're hot and my hot or different hot. Right. So it's that, you know, just I start with a taste. That's why I love the half physio pad. It's the lowest profile pad. You have two different surfaces you can play with. It's what the farriers and trimmers all use because you're looking to offer comfort, but not to challenge them. Right. And it's why I created the pads, because I was you know, when I started, they didn't exist. None of this existed. Right. And so I was using human products. And I know a lot of people are out there using a wide variety of things now because they've seen this. But I created the pads because I needed to have something much firmer for horses. Right. And durable. Right. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, we spent a year and a half developing and designing these pads. We have pads that have been in use six years. In fact, you know, we did make them pretty, which was a problem because people don't like their pretty pad to look ugly.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:46:29-00:46:32]
I know the first time I had, I was like, but it's so bright.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:46:32-00:47:08]
I know. And like your foot on it. Yeah. You know, I had one woman, and she was like, you know, my pad, you know, the pads are going to get nicked and torn and cut, but they'll keep working, right? Felicitas von Neumann-Cosell is, like, one of my biggest fans. Her pads look horrendous. They still work, right? It's a tool. She's had them for five years. She uses them on, like, every horse every day, five days a week. Right. They get beat to crap and they hold up. And that was the point of people complain. Well, they're expensive. Yeah, but they're going to last. It's not like you have to buy one every week, which I was doing with the human stuff.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:47:08-00:47:09]
Right.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:47:09-00:47:35]
Yeah. And we put a lot of effort into the design to make them horse usable, you know, so I can go into that. But to go back to this point, so you started with a half physio pad, and it's the only one that has two different materials, so you can offer your horse a choice. And that pad, you know, I sent some pads. Remember the wag where they had the hurricane and the whole thing?

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:47:35-00:47:39]
What year was that? Yeah, that was, I feel like it was like two years ago.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:47:40-00:48:06]
So I sent a bunch of pads there because I was actually over in Europe at the time, and there was a horse that – I can't remember what the problem was, but the head farrier, James Gilchrist – said, get that horse on physio pads right away. They didn't even take the wrappers off. I have a picture of the horse standing on the pads with the wrappers on the pads, right? He says it bought him enough time to get the horse the medical treatment it needed to save it.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:48:06-00:48:07]
Oh, my gosh.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:48:08-00:49:19]
So, you know, I think of it as an emergency pad. We've used it. We've had horses stop colicking. Call your vet. Do all your, you know, and offer your horse a pad. And we've had a number of cases where horses stop colicking. Laminated horses. You know, offer them a pad. I have some other recommendations besides have physio. But if that's all you got, use it. Because we had one horse. She had a winter laminitis event, all four feet. And we put her on firm slants and she would stand there for an hour. Now, this is a case where I could allow her to stand for an hour for a couple of reasons. One, she wasn't swaying. And two, you know, she was in serious trouble and she knew she could walk off. Right. She knew she had choice. And within 48 hours, she was standing square instead of pointing like crazy. She had to have all the medical treatment. Right. So this is where you have to realize, yeah, you got to do all this stuff you got to do. And let's make them more comfortable in the process. Let's off. And if they don't want it, they'll walk off. They'll get away. They'll say no. But if I don't give you the chance, then maybe I could have done something to help you. And I didn't take the opportunity.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:49:20-00:49:20]
Mm hmm.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:49:21-00:49:22]
Right.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:49:23-00:49:37]
The idea of the horse, it says on the Surefoot website that the pads allow the horse the change or the chance, sorry, to become their own teacher and for them to experience self-learning. Can you explain what you mean by that?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:49:37-00:50:38]
Yeah. So. You know, we think of I don't think we've ever thought of horses this way, that they are that they can be self-aware and. But I know they can because of surefoot. So I've watched horses that stand on a pad. And I'll often do this with riders on as long as everything's good. And the reason I do this with the rider on is because, for one, I want the rider to feel all of the changes that the horse is going through. And there's so much that happens that you can't see, but you can feel. Okay. Two, I want to work with the horse in the environment of being ridden because I always say, you know, what are you like when you visit your mother and what are you like when you visit your friends? OK, so if you've had a bad experience in an arena or you've had a saddle that didn't fit or you had a bridle that was uncomfortable and every time you went in the arena, it was unpleasant. If I work with you in that environment, I can reset that nervous system and make it a pleasant experience.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:50:39-00:50:41]
Great idea. Love that.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:50:41-00:52:12]
Right. So the thing is that I'm offering the horse the choice. Would you like to stand on this pad? Yes or no? Yes. Which foot? If I can't pick up the foot, I don't force them. I go to a foot and say, okay, I can't pick up your left front. Let me pick up your... Oh, your right front comes up easy. Let me put that pad. And they stand on it. And when they walk off, if you're the rider on the horse, you feel the horse literally going... Wow. I mean, you can feel them sensing the ground. Like people say to me all the time, I feel his feet. I'm like, what did you feel before? So you can feel the horse exploring how he's moving. You can see horses go back to a tighter pattern and let it go. They go back and forth and back and forth. They're experimenting. Well, that requires self-awareness, right? That you see them. I have one horse in New Zealand. The horse literally couldn't stop moving. It was so out of balance. It had a massive head, was leaning so far over it, and the rider's like, you know, at the end of the lead shank because the horse was constantly falling. And I was working with two horses unmounted, and in the course of the hour, the horse stopped, stood square, in balance, right? That horse had to process that information. That horse made that choice. This is a better place to be. So I trust that the horse can sense ease now. If the horse can't sense ease, I don't know how or wherever I'm doing anything with them.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:52:12-00:52:50]
Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, you saying that and, like, the experience that I've been able to witness time and time again using these pads with my horses, I completely, I hear everything that you're saying because I've been able to witness it myself. For them to, you see the look on their face of, like, oh. You know, and it's, it's, it's, I... For anybody listening, I feel like I can't explain it other than it's just really cool. Like, it's just something that when you witness it, you're like, I don't know what this is, but it's doing something.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:52:51-00:54:43]
Right. And we in Naly, our nervous system resonates. When we see that horse let down, our nervous system resonates. Yeah. Right? That's the other thing. When I do this under saddle and I have a rider with a tight horse and the rider's nervous and I start doing short foot pads, and pretty soon the rider's letting the reins be long, not because I told him to, but because everybody's nervous system calmed down. Yes. Yes. And so this is the thing that you've hit upon that's really – we – sense and feel that change in their sense of calmness and relaxation that let down in their nervous system and it lets us down too and one of the things i it's really funny i have to be so careful when i do a surefoot workshop when i have people and i'm teaching them how to do surefoot I can't do all day with the horses because they'll be just drooling in their chair, falling asleep. So I have to like do other activities with them over here and talk to them and keep them moving. Because as the horses let down, the people let down. And literally after a couple of hours, they're toast. They're done. They're chilling. So I have to keep kind of playing with that, like taking the horses away, doing other activities, putting them over the path. And stuff, you know, because we resonate. You know, I wonder if this isn't the reason we want to be around horses is because we resonate with them when they are in that relaxed state, that calm and peaceful state. And that's what you know, what is it we're looking for as riders? You know, I mean, yes, when we're competing and we're performing, we need the relaxation with tone. We don't need the anxiety. We need the horse to be able to be in an athletic stance, but we know that you could tip over one side or the other.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:54:43-00:54:43]
Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:54:44-00:54:44]
Right.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:54:44-00:54:48]
That we could be lethargic or too anxious.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:54:48-00:55:01]
And that middle. Right. Finding that middle where we have the increase of tone with the activity, which requires sympathetic. Right. We need to have some sympathetic. If we're just totally, you know, rest and digest, we won't get off the couch.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:55:02-00:55:02]
Right.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:55:02-00:55:14]
But it's it's having it managed in a way that it is productive. It's useful. It has a purpose as opposed to out of control. Horse running away with me or horse won't go. Right.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:55:14-00:56:54]
Yeah. Next question I have. And I guess this is a little bit more of a. Hey, Wendy, what's your opinion on this to help me out? But maybe it'll help people listening as well, is that you had mentioned the idea of. if you do this like in the arena and it transforms the nervous system experience of that space. And so I'm thinking, so backstory on this is that my mare that I had mentioned with the SI issue and the crooked pelvis and that she's been off for the past three years. I haven't been riding her, just allowing her to rehabilitate and you know, all of the things. And yeah, This year, she's doing so well. And this year, my goal is to be able to get back on her again. And so that's our hope. We have the ring was a really bad place for her because it was one of those things where as we were trying to figure out what was going on with her, I was continuing to ride and it was just becoming a bad experience over and over and over again. And so the ring became this place that she did not want to go in. So we've been spending the past three years, when I say rehabilitation, I mean like rehabilitating the body, the mind, the emotions, our relationship, all of the things. And when we go on the pads in the barn, again, I had mentioned she goes into this this sense of calm. And so when you mentioned that it's like a light bulb went off in my mind that I thought, well, why don't I go down and do that in the ring? I mean, we go in the ring every single day.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:56:54-00:56:56]
Like now I can't get her out of the ring.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:56:56-00:57:32]
She loves the ring. She waits at the gate to go in. Like, I'm like soda. We're like, I'm, we're all done. We got to go back out. Like, so now she loves the ring, but I haven't gotten back on her in the ring. Right. So we've created this sense of the ring being a good place, but there's no one on her back. And so I thought, why not pair the two experiences together where we do the surefoot pads in the ring? It creates a good experience. And then it's like, so how is it now if I get on you? You know, and so I'm kind of like those little light bulbs are going off. What do you think?

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:57:32-00:57:39]
Am I kind of just like, no, no, no. And here's how you break it down. You've got to break it down a little further. OK, so so is she OK being tacked up?

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:57:39-00:58:01]
Yes, we've been practicing. I'm basically looking at this from a whole, like I'm imagining that she's never been ridden before in her life and that she's, we're starting from ground zero. We've been practicing tacking up, being comfortable with it. I tack her up and then I groom her, like just, you know, on the places around. We hang out with the tack on. I'm basically taking it from the perspective is that she's a youngster that's never been ridden before.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:58:01-00:58:06]
Okay. So here's a suggestion. Put her on the pad and then tack her up.

[SPEAKER 2]
[00:58:07-00:58:07]
Okay.

[SPEAKER 1]
[00:58:08-01:00:04]
Okay. Put her on the pad and then put her bridle on. Put her on the pad and walk her into the, you know, and then take the pad to the arena. Once you've done the tacking up pad associated with the tack, okay, then only use the pad in the arena. Bring the horse into the arena. Put her on the pad. Bring the horse next to the mounting block. Put her on the pad until she can stand completely relaxed at the mounting block because the mounting block means you're going to get on. Right. OK, now stand on the matting. Just break it down. Just chunk it down. Every step associate comfort with the activity. So now you're going to stand on the matting block and she gets to stand on her pad. Then you can just have the pad near the mounting block, and she'll see the pad. She'll let down from the visual. So what happens with SureFoot is that it goes from an offer, which is what you've been doing, and then it can become positive modification. In other words, you know, we know about our positive and all that sort of stuff, but most people are using food. You don't need to use food. You can use your pets. In fact, I think it's a, you know, it's not that the other is bad or wrong, but I think it's different because I think you're hitting the brain in a different place. You're not activating that food seeking response. Right. But you're saying, Hey, look, here's your pad and I'm going to do this thing, but you're already chilling because your pads here. Okay. Then, You'll you'll need a person because the next step is, you know, you get on and you put her on and you just keep associating. But, you know, it may be that she can just have the pad near her. So we've had horses where there was a horse in Germany and the horse like the soft pad, the blue one. And so the groom would go in and stand ringside with the blue pad. The horse would come in to do its dressage test, look over, see the blue pad.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:00:06-01:00:07]
Oh, my gosh.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:00:07-01:03:41]
So interesting. Right. We had a stallion. He had been a stallion, a Mustang stallion that I worked with that had been gilded. But he had been a breeding stallion when he was six when he came off the range. So he had the really thick underneck and the whole... He loved his full physio pad, and then he would go and stand next to his physio pad and let down. And then what it turned out is he actually recognized the color because he would go stand next to orange things and let down. So I don't know how much horses see color, but... But the whole idea is you're you're telling them you feel comfortable and safe here. So now let me walk you around the arena with your tack on and find, you know, is there a sticky place in the arena that makes you nervous? Oh, well, would you like your pad here? And now you're conflicting. Do you want to be anxious? You want to feel good? Well, relaxing is going to win, right? Calm is going to win. It might take a little while, but calm is going to it's always going to win. It's just a question of time. And what surefoot does is it shortens the time it takes to get to it. And the more you make this positive association, you're building a good habit. When you see your pad, it's going to be awesome. Then the horses, the horses get it. The horses get it. We had a horse once. Rider could not ride her down the trail a mile without her completely coming unglued. they tried everything, acupuncture, everything, right? Nothing worked. So she got some pads and she did the pads at home. Then they took the horse to the trailhead and they put the horse on pads at the trailer and the horse would go out for five miles, not look back. No problem. So the beauty of surefoot pads is they're portable. They're lightweight. They're easy to use. You know, you asked, where can you use them? Anywhere you want. Yeah. Right. So, you know, you can use them before you ride as a warm up. And Felicitas uses them every day with all our horses as a warm up. You can use them as a cool down. Right. You can use it. You tailor your horse and you take it off the trailer and you want to go. You know, how hard was that ride on you? You either won't stand on the pads because it was too hard to ride or you will stand on the pads because I needed to be a let down. You can use them to overcome anxiety. You can use them to make a connection with the farrier. The farrier is going to put this pad under your foot. You're going to feel great. We have people that don't drug their horses anymore because they use your foot. You know, we have veterinarians using it in rehab. With rehab, you know, the thing is you don't use it with the injury until the vet gives you the okay sign. Right. Because you don't want to make it worse. So if you have a tendon injury, you've got to make sure that it's it's ready to handle an unstable surface. But at the same time, you've got three other legs. Your horse is on stall rest. You got three other legs. That horse is deconditioning every moment it's in the stall. But if you put it on surefoot pads, you're causing little tiny micro contraction in the postural muscles and you're keeping them going. You can build stability, stability. And stifles. It's a huge one for stifle rehab. Huge. Neurologic horses, I always say talk to your vet because neurologic is a huge range of things. You could make it worse. You could make it better. Right. So indiscriminate use with neurologic horses is no. Have your vet. You know, it might be that your horse had had EPM. You've now treated it for EPM. Now it's time for rehab. Right. But if you're dealing with an ECVM horse or a wobbler horse, well, I don't know. Right. You don't have what it takes to be able to be stable. So they're compensating and you don't want to take away the compensation.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:03:41-01:03:41]
Right.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:03:41-01:03:41]
Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:03:42-01:03:42]
Yeah.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:03:42-01:03:54]
People ask me if Surefoot can make a horse lame. No, Surefoot cannot make a horse lame. What Surefoot can do is decompensate the compensation, the holding pattern.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:03:54-01:03:55]
Take away that crutch.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:03:56-01:04:37]
Yeah. So that you can. See what's really going on. So in that regard, it could be really useful. Right. Because now you're like, oh, there it is. Right. Because the horse has been high. So one horse, they use your foot. They knew something wasn't right, but they didn't know what. Use it on the left hind horse broke out in a total sweat around its stifle. And then they found the neck problem. Right. So in that in that decompensation, they could find what he was really hiding. Horses and people are masters at compensation. That's what we do. Ask any rider. Are you OK? Yeah, I'm fine.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:04:37-01:04:38]
Right.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:04:38-01:04:40]
Yeah. I've got a broken collarbone.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:04:40-01:04:44]
I'm still going to go. I've got a clasp later in the day.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:04:46-01:10:15]
My ankle is totally distraught. I'm fine. So we're masters of compensation. And so this is where I laugh when people say horses are good at it. People are really good at it because we don't want to be vulnerable. You know, that's where we're the same. We don't want to be vulnerable. But anyway, so it can be very useful in helping figure out what's going on. In fact, you know, when people say, well, my horse won't stand on pads, it's like, wow, that's really interesting because that tells me that, He's either really unstable or it's like your horse. It's causing a reaction in the nervous system. They don't know how to handle it. Right. So all of these things are great observations. And going back to the osteocalcin, you know, when I do surefoot, I just had one two nights ago. Cute, cute, cute, right? Goes around kind of high-headed. Okay, that's interesting. Go to put his foot on the pad. Couldn't pick up its leg. Braced back. I now know it's in sympathetic. That osteocalcin, right? That rug was so rigid. And then they find out that, oh, this horse has a really nervous skin twitch. You can't really touch him. And I was just picking up his leg. And then we worked with him, and pretty soon, wow, now I can pick up the leg. And then as I pick it up, I look to feel, well, how many of the joints are moving freely? Is it just the fat lock? Is it only the knee? Do I have the elbow? And you can feel that as you pick up the foot. You can feel the change in the ease of the leg as you go about this. And then what was really fascinating was at the end of yesterday, the girl could just drop around his neck and grab around his neck, no twitching at all. None, right? So when we start to really think about being present and observant and that's i think one of the things that surefoot's done for me more than anything is made me a better observer because it magnifies things i can see how the horse is loading his foot i can see where he puts his leg i can see how that's relating to other parts of his body i can see how that relates to his emotions um you know in the end i always say that it's what we're dealing with is not a behavior problem but a balance problem We cannot avoid gravity. Here you have this 1,000-pound, 1,500-pound beast with a 40, 50-pound head at the end of a three-foot lever arm that if he does not feel grounded, which is why it's surefoot, right, grounded and stable and secure, then when he moves that big old head and he leans over and then somebody grabs on his face, he's now falling, right? Fast or slow, right? And the momentum takes him, and now pretty soon his feet are going like crazy, right? The rider's bracing and screaming because he lost his balance. Or, you know, one of my favorite ones was I had 15 minutes to do a little short foot demonstration. All I had was the half physiopath. I walk into the barn. It's an OTT rehab place. I look down the barn aisle. I see this gray horse. I said, I'd like your gray horse. Oh, no, you don't want that horse. What? Yeah, that's the one I want to use. No, no, no. He's a butthead. Really? Yeah. And this is where we we label horses and stick them in a box and don't let them out. Right. And I said, that's exactly the horse. Bring me that horse. And she was I was like, I have 15 minutes. That's the horse. Bring that horse. She brings the horse out. I take my physio pad. I was on the right side. for whatever reason usually i start on the left but it's okay right so i dropped it down picked up his foot put it on the pad in under 10 seconds all behavior stopped the horse stood no fussing no biting no grabbing the chain no whacking his head around no pawing zero it all stopped and the woman looked at and then i took the pad and i put it under her and she flushed and in under a second she was about to cry So it can have an effect on people too. I can't explain that one at all. So I spent my 15 minutes and this horse was perfect. And so the later on, I called back up and I said, so how's that gray horse? Oh, he's still a butthead because the trainer wasn't there to see it. The trainer wouldn't use surf foot. The trainer thinks the horse is a butthead. The trainer put him back in his box, his behavior box. It was not behavior. And this is where in our industry, I think one of the things that is really, really important is that if we don't start thinking about how we label these horses and how we treat them because of the welfare issues that are coming down the pike. Right. That we see happening in other industries. If we don't start changing and recognizing this horse is trying to tell me something. He's not doing this to make my life miserable. He's miserable. He doesn't feel safe. Number one thing. This horse does not feel safe. How can I help this horse feel safe? All he has is those four little feet. And if they're not secure to the ground, he is not safe. And so that's where, you know, do I what I see is the bigger mission of Surefoot is. is to help people understand that these horses need to feel secure and safe. And when we offer them that, they are so willing to do what we want.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:10:18-01:10:43]
I love that we opened the episode talking about gravity and talking about a sense of safety in the body. And then you brought it full circle. And that's how we will close the episode as well. Oh, I'm just, I'm just soaking this all in. And before I forget, we have four rapid fire questions we ask every guest. And so the first one is, do you have a motto or favorite saying?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:10:44-01:10:45]
Where's the middle?

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:10:46-01:10:47]
Oh, good one.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:10:47-01:10:51]
It's going to be on my gravestone. Okay. Where's the middle?

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:10:53-01:10:57]
The second, who has been the most influential person in your equestrian journey?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:10:57-01:10:58]
Linda Tellington Jones.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:10:59-01:10:60]
We love Linda.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:10:60-01:11:15]
She is how I learned about Feldenkrais. So when I had my accident in 1984, a friend came and handed me a teen newsletter and a little book called Illusions by Richard Bach. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:11:15-01:11:17]
Okay, I'll list my list.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:11:17-01:11:46]
OK, it's all here. It's the same thing as as it's the same story as the Wizard of Oz. We have the ruby slippers. We just need to know how to use them. Right. We have the ability to help the horses and work with them in a relationship. We just need to know how to do it. We have the skills. We have our nervous system which resonates with theirs. Right. We just need to know the skills to use it. How to click my heels three times.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:11:48-01:11:52]
I love that. I'm definitely adding that book to my list.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:11:53-01:12:09]
I just want to say that I got this team newsletter and a year of the day after my accident, I showed up in Wisconsin at my first team training with Linda. So, you know, while the accident was horrific and I would never want to do it again, I would never change it.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:12:10-01:12:10]
Right.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:12:11-01:12:13]
Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:12:13-01:12:21]
Yeah, we're big fans of Linda here at WeHorse. If you could give equestrians one piece of advice, what would it be?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:12:22-01:12:24]
Trust yourself. Good one.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:12:25-01:12:28]
Please complete the sentence for me.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:12:28-01:12:30]
Horses are everything.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:12:32-01:12:39]
Exactly. Yeah. Like period. Wendy, where can people find you and how can they connect with you?

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:12:41-01:13:17]
So you can find me on Facebook. We have Murdoch method.com. And that's also a Web site, Murdoch Method and then Surefoot Equine. And we have if you're really interested in Surefoot, we have a group called Fans of Surefoot on Facebook. And it's a fabulous community and people can ask questions there and see how people are using pads and that sort of thing. It's a great place to learn more about Surefoot. You know, we have a Web site, SurefootEquine.com. And if you want to purchase pads, you can go to shop.SurefootEquine.com. Awesome. We're here to help people figure out what pad to get.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:13:17-01:13:52]
Awesome. We will link everything in the show notes. So for those listening, if you're trying to like scramble and write this down, it'll be in the show notes for you to make sure that it's all easily accessible. Wendy, like I said, I'm just, I'm sitting here taking this all in, absorbing this. This has been such a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful podcast for me personally. I've learned so much and just, I just feel like this is, Such an episode for our audience that they're going to get so much from this. So thank you. Thank you so much for the past hour and 20 minutes of your time. I've enjoyed it immensely.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:13:54-01:14:43]
Oh, you're so welcome. It's so much fun to talk to you because you had an experience with Surefoot. And, you know, people go, well, can I do this? Absolutely you can do this, right? I've got a workbook. I've got videos. I've got a YouTube channel. There's lots of content to help you figure it out. But the most important thing is to not be afraid. Just get started. Let your horse show you. They will show you, right? Listen to them. That's really the key is this is a conversation with your horse to – you know, play and interact and give them a voice. Let them have a voice and a choice and they will show you. And no is not no. No is just the moment, right? I think, you know, if a horse says, no, I don't want the pad, they go, oh, he doesn't like it. No, it's just that moment. If you give them the opportunity to say no, you're going to get to yes.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:14:43-01:14:44]
Yes, exactly.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:14:45-01:14:46]
Yeah. Allow them to say no.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:14:47-01:14:50]
Yeah. Love it. Love it. Thank you so much, Wendy.

[SPEAKER 1]
[01:14:51-01:14:52]
You're welcome. Take care.

[SPEAKER 2]
[01:14:55-01:15:29]
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Equestrian Connection podcast by WeHorse. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a rating and review, as well as share us on social media. You can find us on Instagram at WeHorse underscore USA and check out our free seven-day trial on WeHorse.com where you can access over 175 courses with top trainers from around the world in a variety of topics and disciplines. Until next time, be kind to yourself, your horses, and others.

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