Holistic Horseworks Talks with April Love

Helping Heal Horses with April Love on Holistic Animal Insights

• April Love

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Join us for an in-depth discussion on holistic horse care with guest April Love of Holistic Horseworks and host Poppy Philips of Holistic Animal Insights!

In this interview, April shares her journey learning various healing modalities and how she's helped horses with complex issues like kissing spine and lameness. She discusses the importance of bodywork, proper tack, and natural remedies in maintaining horse health. April also offers insights on prevention through addressing muscle imbalances and root causes of injuries. Listeners will learn practical techniques for alignment, arthritis, and dental care.

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Speaker:

Welcome to helping heal horses a holistic animal insights interview featuring April love with host Poppy Phillips.

Poppy:

Well, happy Monday, you guys middle of June. We're halfway through the year and we've got April love today. And several of you had reached out to me to talk to me about April. So I pursued it. I want to say that I pursued April, and April. Some of our members are super excited. They watched your unwinding video and they loved it. And you are a Northern California native, I think I've heard from I heard about you, gosh, probably like 15 years ago. And we've never crossed paths which surprised me that we never ever crossed paths. So when she was given a clinic over at Michelle Heseltine's pine trails ranch in Davis, I was all over it. I was like, Michelle, I want to come and meet her, I need to say hi to her, I need her on as a guest. And so I aggressively pursued her. And she was more than open to saying hello, and just gracious and very open with her information, which I was blown away from. But she also is a great instructor. She loves her horses. She loves training people. She wants to make a difference. And I think she actually as she has traveled all over the world teaching equine body work, but she's more than just an equine body worker, this woman thinks out of the box more than anyone I know. So April, welcome today. Thank you for being live with us on our membership.

April:

Thanks, Poppy for having me here. It was great to meet you. And I was in Davis as well. Because on melee, I don't have a lot of force people to talk to you. And you and I were just like

Poppy:

we're all over it you guys because she's a little different thinker, as well as myself. But she actually made me speak to this a few times, literally, which is really hard to do. So April, tell us your origin story of how you came to be who you are today. What was there an event was there. Like, were you raised holistically, or did you just dabble in it? What's your story?

April:

So I was lucky to have riding lessons for my grandma and I was in like sixth grade once a week. And none of that socialistic. That's just a horse and saddle and go ride. And then they got us horses, we had a little five acre ranch in Santa Rosa. And I had grown up in San Francisco, so they would take the grandkids up on the weekends. And there was lots of chores to do. So there was three horses, we tried to disappear on the horses, so we didn't have to do all the chores, and 105 degree heat, like weed whacking and wanting grandma's plants. And we would take off and those poor horses, they'd be coughing or limping, but we didn't care or like 12 years old, we just wanted to get somewhere away and go hang out under a tree all day or by a creek all day or something. I left it when I was 17. And I got back into it at age 30 Because a lot of women find that that really was their passion. I was like oh grow up, can't have a horse anymore. I gotta have a job and kids and family and all that. So they find in their 30s and 40s. They're coming back to the horses. And then it was like a re education and I had fallen in love with Theresa this mare and did everything wrong saddles from Jeffers and wormed her as soon as I bought her and brought her home and she'd never been off the property where she was at colic that night and was just learning everything the wrong way feeding straight alfalfa and sweet feed, wondering why I had a neurotic horse that jigged all the time and I used to teen pan on her as well as do the 50 mile endurance rides. And one day she just didn't really want to get in the trailer and couldn't back out of the trailer and my horses, I could take them by their mane and load them in a two horse straight load trailer. You know, no halter no nothing. So something was wrong. She was trying to like have a career to get out. And someone had told me about anycoin bodyworker in the area, like bodywork for horses. And so he came did a bunch of work on my horse and all of a sudden, instead of eight and a half, nine hour 50 mile rides, I was doing them in four and a half to five hours. Because I had 100% of the horse. You know, there wasn't always, you know, low gut sounds or low, you know, metabolism or anything like that. So then that I wanted to kind of learn it and I started training other horses but I was still paying the body workers. And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm only clearing about 200 a month training horses and they're leaving with $500 and a dad something's wrong with this pick Sure, right. And just being in endurance, I just kept wanting to take another class and take another class. They said, Take a sports medicine massage course. So I did that for horses just to learn all the muscles, but they don't even get into the grind or at the Insight at the hind legs. And then you take a chin point therapy class, and you're like,

Poppy:

April, I think it's totally weird that they called it Sports, medicine, massage, or horses. And yet it was super superficial, like literally,

April:

it's near you guys. She was in Newcastle, and we practice on group members that didn't have a muscle anywhere and I paid $1,200 for that course. I'm like, Okay, this isn't it, then you do 10 Point therapy. And it's like, okay, the meridians are out of balance, but you have side bone, ring bone and are through that course. So, and then, you know, you start doing the body and then you're like, oh, but they have a crooked head and people like, well, how are you going to fix that? Okay, I will take more courses. So like $90,000 later, it's like, okay, took this course, I took that course. And I would take it back to my little horse Tiki, he was a white air gelding, and I'd practice on him. And he was kind of my spirit horse. He'd say, like, you know, he liked this, or he didn't like this or throw that out. And so and that's how I kind of developed my program. Then I put together and at the time, I was having a lot of shoulder issues from doing cranial sacral the other person's way where you let the horse thrash on you. And I was like this, I would put my hand on the horse and like walk up like this, and put his hand out walk up like this, and they give me this satis horse at the end of the day, Oh, we didn't know you do this, can you fix him? And I'm like, I can't even lift my arms. And when you get into a lot of the healing work like Louise Hays, Robert tending since Stevens and you know, shoulders, his burdens of the world thinking that you're the only one good enough to do it, that you have to do it all, no one can do it as good as us. So you have to let go of ego. Because everyone who learns it is going to bring something else to the table. There's not just one way to clear an energy Meridian or something like that. So it just kept evolving. Every time someone says, Well, what would you do about Uveitis? I got, I don't know. But that horse's head looks like then go this is way up here. And it's way down there. And we could fix that and see what happens. And then two months later, they say the vet said he must have been wrong and misdiagnosed it because Uveitis never gets better. And they don't need to remove the eye anymore. Like yes. And

Poppy:

we just have the before and after on that, of course. So you guys, so how exciting is that is giving versus not only horses, but humans hope or their horses. And so April, thank you for your passion. I just find it so amazing that you invested and you dove deep and every time you had a problem solving issue, you figured it out like you, you went somewhere you did something you you got it done almost all the time, like you you've fixed some really out of the box, things that most people say can't be fixed. So especially

April:

stage four roar and equine shivers and string hard and all of those things. So that's been the most amazing.

Poppy:

That's cool. So what do you do for the roar? Was that a sternum first rib issue? Or what was that?

April:

That's level three. So what we found I had a horse, I got called back east that had stage four and the cranial bones are compressed on the left side, compressing the laryngeal nerve on the left, and the first rib is misaligned, compressing thoracic outlet on the left, so it's compressing both ends of the nerve. And it was the vet that actually gave us the diagram and showed it to us. And I was like, So are the tie back surgeries always on the left? And he says, yeah, they are. And I said, so. Where's the laryngeal nerve on the right side of the body goes it runs in a different pattern. So we did the cranial work on the horse to first rib, we did cold laser therapy for the nerve damage and then fed nerve regeneration herbs, like from silver lining, and he went back down to a stage to to where she could write him again.

Poppy:

That's amazing. And I actually didn't know the nerve only ran on one side of the neck. What

April:

it's both sides, but it's a different pattern. So when it happens on the right, it doesn't affect the breathing apparatus.

Poppy:

So but when it happens on the left, it compromises and compresses.

April:

Yeah, and then it starts to get really lazy that flat and I had a really powerful horse in training and Arab mare 15 To you asked to trot you'd slide to the back of the saddle and she had that from the racetrack. And that that just kept saying, just keep writing it till it gets so bad and so bad needs that. And the other horse that we helped to just leading them, they can't breathe. So I would pony her and she couldn't even climb a hill. She couldn't get enough oxygen. And then they did the $5,000 tie back surgery. But this is before I knew all about the stuff that I know now. That's so exciting. However, we just had to watch this powerful horse just go to be

Poppy:

on it's technically a head injury.

April:

Yeah, two things, but yeah. Or more than one thing

Poppy:

affects that.

April:

Sorry.

Poppy:

Do you think dentistry could be a culprit too?

April:

I follow them Bert Lambert around, he was a great equine dentist, he'd go with a book and say this too, could mean this lameness and this tooth would be this but I don't think the laryngeal nerve is that close. I do know that the cricket had makes it so the horse can't chew sideways. So they start to chew up and down making the hooks in waves. And then your horses will get that big muscle on the forehead. So you probably see all of that before it would be affecting laryngeal nerve. You're

Poppy:

the only other person that I've ever heard talked about the temporalis muscles being bolje most people think it's very attractive, especially halter horse people, you know, and they're shanking, those halter horse, people in the horses so much that their temporalis muscles like end up bulging. And when you point that out, and it goes away, everybody says, I didn't know that wasn't normal. But it is not normal, you guys. Yeah. So, so fascinating and fun.

April:

And well. And when you're like that, you're going to be spending a lot of money on power tools to take down the hooks and waves. And that just creates, you know, cracks and teeth and cavities and the teeth loosening in the gaps.

Poppy:

I love talking to you, because it makes me think different. It makes me think deeper and different. And it's a little overwhelming April. But it's fun to like, think about a whole new angle. And we're both muscle testers. So we can definitely go through a process of muscle testing and ask these questions. You actually believe that many things are related to viruses. Is that true?

April:

Yeah, I have a lot of things going on. But so first rib is usually misaligned in horses by six months of age starting or high lows and a whole bunch of other issues. And you have we've switched to the Nybro halters, like 2025 years ago for the natural horsemanship, so the all the horses are coming up with Cushing's Uveitis more damaged because it been knotted rope just slide right up behind the occiput when they sit down and pull back on these patient poles. So between the smashed head, the first rib and nothing in the body, you know working well, when you have cranial issues, it opens the body up to absorb more things. And since COVID hit, I do long distance readings on horses, people send me pictures and I let them know what's going on viral bacteria with bones where there's pain, all that. And all the horses are coming up with viral on the lungs for the last three years. And they're like, well, that doesn't transmit to horses. I said you're patting him on the nose. You're kissing him on the nose. You're biting a piece of apple and giving it to your horse. How do you think it's not transmitting to the horses? And so when muscle test in the class, and you get viral and lead and lead systems and neural tube and brain that's usually when we find EPM and I'll say they have you tested your horse or EPM and if there's viral and bacterial, I'll say have you tested your horse for Lyme? Yeah, how do you know? Because that

Poppy:

Yeah. So fascinating. Now do you think some that viral muscle testing is vaccine overload because for me when I muscle test and I get virus often it's a vaccine Gnosis definitely

April:

because most of my clients that their horses can't have the shots anymore. I've told them about the homeopathic no so it's a living vibrational waters to try and detox your horses. But it's the pharmaceutical companies that are telling the vets that your horse needs this, the vets aren't taking in dry blood to see that you still have titers five years later from that four way shot so we're over vaccinating and overwhelming and then we're starting to see your metabolic issues your IR your insulin, your allergies as well. All from this most had, and all the toxins in their body,

Poppy:

the overload the overactive immune system, what is that water thing you just mentioned?

April:

Um, so I think it's called healers who share its vibrational water remedies. And they'll do like saliva and a hair test and they'll see what all the stresses are. And then they have different vibrations of water that you'd have to give to the horse. It's kind of a pain in the butt people to this little bit of water for 15 seconds in the mouth, nothing else for two minutes, then another one, but I know a lot of people that it's really brought their horses back around, because if they are in a show barn, or you know, big training barn, oh, you have to have those shots and then like, but you don't have to do them all in one day. You know, so I even tell them that if you want to make a good army, you don't give it six things to do. You train it. For one thing, if you want tetanus, if you want West Nile, if you want strangles you want an immune system for that, just let a horse work on that for three or four weeks before you add something else in?

Poppy:

Well, and I think the general community is seen enough bad reactions to vaccines, that now vets are getting a little more lenient about running titers, and also riding horses out of the need of vaccines. So I have quite a few clients that now show with a disclaimer that their horse can no longer receive vaccines. So I think that's amazing that the shows are okay with that. And it is rolling that way. But it's been a long slow process of education people like you and I just talking about it over and over and over again.

April:

That they didn't the same thing with their kids. How many shot to the kid supposed to have before they even leave the hospital when they're newborn?

Poppy:

I don't understand that stuff. You're

April:

not gonna go there. Yeah, at

Poppy:

all. And it breaks my heart to see the younger generation attacked like that in in, like prevention.

April:

You don't love your child, if you don't get this you don't love your horse if you don't get this and I'm like, it took me so long because I was that person due on the warming and the vaccine. And, you know, my body worker was saying that's bad. You got to clear the liver, you got to do all these things. So it was a process and first it was my horse and it was my dog then it was me. What do you mean, I got to stop drinking now? What do you mean I got to stop doing this and you're like really? And so it's kind of a learning process. But I gotta tell you so I took all the courses for my horse Tiki I just you as an Arab off the racetrack when I got him he had tight web halter on and sores all over his face because he never took it off that can catch him and first thing you do is let them go and a big pen. Go up say hi to him every day freedom apparently I just really liked his mind. It was about 14 Three 800 pounds. So I decided to keep them but he just had all these issues and even after legging them up for a year. You know, he's pulled at three out of the first five races, but always something different. And when you ask the bats, you know he's great to land. He's great. So you like Well, where is it? Well, I don't know. We can nerve block it and tell you what it's not for $600 I'm like, All right, or you can go home and just give it beaut and time off and hope it gets better. So I went from that to being able to sit at when they vet in horses on the 100 mile endurance rides and go Yeah, roach back hunters about four feet out of balance that horses go about 70 miles. Oh, that horse looks good. He might actually make it 80 miles and it was interesting to see how right I was. And when Tiki and I we did 2000 miles of endurance and 2007 and 2008 and I was a lot heavier so I was to 15 attack on my little air. Wow. When we weighed him he was 1025 pounds. We did 41 consecutive brides of 50 miles or more in a day in two years. But no that was no vaccinations. No wormers And he was drinking water with 100 other horses sleeping in the water troughs washing their bits and you know from all these different areas but once he learned the holistic you can ask what is my horse need to boost his immune system to do this event. So two years of endurance, no vaccines no worse.

Poppy:

What do you use for warmer do you do warm?

April:

And so at the time I did the dynamite Excel it's a feed through organic it's got digestive aids and the diatomaceous earth summertime fly I tell people to get the 50 pound sacks of organic feed through dye Automation certain sprinkling on all your poop piles, and then you won't have any flies in two weeks, keep that up, or the horses pee. And then you can feed that through and then about every two or three months I do a fecal count. If you're gonna do a fecal count, you know, you should do it on the full moon because more eggs hatch in the horse's body on the phone. So if you have to use a chemical warmer, you know, do it on a full moon cycle like the third or the fourth day, so I just kept doing that and calcium Bentonite clay and he didn't have any parasites for two years.

Poppy:

That's awesome. I love bentonite. I use it a lot in my practice. What about you? Yeah, yeah. So I use it internally, externally, heavy metal detoxifier. The Little Prince is waking up.

April:

So it forces you know, we weren't allowed to diagnose that your horse has an ulcer, but if you do my belly lifts and the hind leg comes up, kick you. I say your horse has a sour stomach and we'll mix it the miracle clay and give it to them every day for like 10 days in a row with the trace minerals, and it just seems to settle the stomach. So the horses that stress for being called in training, I just tell people to always have that on hand because it's like taking attempts. Just really settle systemic. I

Poppy:

love it, too. I've seen so many amazing things with Ben Knight and I preached that night in this group till the cows come home, I think. But yes, it is a miracle clay. I always tell everybody God made everything through clay. And here you go, you will heal with the clay to

April:

Yeah, they call it miracle clay and on the side it has the recipe for people to drink it for their ulcers. But we also used it to do the four legs after the endurance ride when we'd wrap up for the night. And if you got poison oak or anything you could put it on it would just dry it out and it was it really good facial.

Poppy:

Even Cleopatra used it. But it's good enough for Cleopatra. It's good enough for us, right? Absolutely. Um, the unwinding. That seems to be like, I don't know about you, you see all your stats on your video sales and all of that you guys April has some monster presence within online purchases like you can purchase a lot of videos plus she has in person clinics. But everybody raves about your unwinding video, what is unwinding? So

April:

if you you know had yarn that was all tightened up, you know how you're like, you know, nothing can really move. And my first course is the body work was kind of rough. Whenever you're rough to the body or you have, you know, a monster massage the fascia tightens up, you know, so my program has gotten so smooth and soft, the 12 year old can do it and an 80 year old woman can do it. But it's so gentle that when you're doing the whole program because we blend the clearing the K 27 kidneys and we do release all over the head to start the cranial online dating and down the governing meridian of the spine down the pectorals to the belly on conception. So you're opening all these meridians before you even start and then adding Dr Bradley Nelson emotion coding and defense biology and then the bladder sweeps and that's before we even get into Atlas axis ribs weathers and the whole horse just slowly start to go like this and in an hour people just laugh they go on horses like two inches taller and I already have to use a stepladder Could you stop making bigger I said well universe was like it was trotting around like this and it needs to be like this you know so on the pictures that we have so the horses would get like four inches longer and two inches taller and all the fascia would just like fluff up they would look like they gained 20 pounds and and the level two class the front legs go from like four inches apart to like eight inches apart as you're unwinding like the sternum so when you're talking to the fascia and the height it signals to the muscles to let go so my level two classes way easier than that sports massage course I took that beat me at were like really all you have to do is follow this with love and the whole stifle muscles just melt and like Yeah.

Poppy:

That's pretty cool. And we have some images that I can share on that. Do you want to share that right now? April

April:

just so they know what we're talking about because the two bay horses I can explain each one just real quick.

Poppy:

And I do have your book cover. So you guys April has a brand new book out which is do you want to talk about it while I have that up? Sure.

April:

So everybody was like, so, you know, do you see anything wrong with my horse? And I'd be well, there's a couple little things we could fix. And by the time I started working on it, the owners almost crying going was my horse in pain. I go, yeah, they're uncomfortable. There wasn't anything in your horse's body that can move correctly. So I can just walk up to a horse in the stall or in the cross dies and say, so it's heavier on right rain doesn't want to do left lead canter terrible going down hills and probably doesn't want to pick up behind foot for the farrier because he have a sore SI joint. And they're like, how do you see all that I said, just the hubs in the body stance and the muscling and how the horse is holding itself. So I had to put that into writing. So we finally got that that was like another year. It's funny that I take these big long courses, but then I only write these little books. Yeah,

Poppy:

well, I appreciate little books, because I get overwhelmed with oops, wrong, wrong share. So here's the images of the body work works of the eye.

April:

So that's my level three class the bottom. Well, the top I five year old mayor, they were going to remove the I already been through the steroids, it was in the UK. And she was scheduled like two weeks from then to have the Ironman, and that's a $5,000 surgery. And the below picture is after I did my level three work, where we actually detoxify shift the cranial bones, so the Lacrimal bone can shift and release and then the orbit and I actually gets blood and oxygen again. And those are all the horses that are being in their head and always rubbing and you'll see that it's pink in this inside corner. And if it's pink, then you have inflammation and some kind of infection. So you always want to be looking at the inside corner of your horse's eye that should be white. But that's the level three course. So we're kind of jumping ahead, we got to go back to the level one picture that I was just to get you guys excited. So the before picture was in Pennsylvania, the top horse had regular body work every month, I walked up to him and I said, I'm sorry, I can't tell. And the bottom picture is an hour later. So if the backs in spasm, the heads gonna come up, you know, they have this Oh, I can't get my horse's head down. When I write well, if your back's in spasm, your head is gonna come up and you're gonna pull at the front end. So you know, you're gonna get really tight and girthy. So you have to kind of release everything. So it looks like he gained about 50 pounds and he looks longer and kind of bigger.

Poppy:

It looks a lot bigger. It Yeah. Hardly looks like the same horse. That

April:

when you're in pain, how do you sit? You know, you don't you're not like, yeah, I just feel so good. People are in pain. You're just sitting here like this, we shrink in on ourselves. Right in this

Poppy:

beautiful fetal position, but with a ton of tension.

April:

Yeah, it hurts to move. Yeah, lactic acid, you know, horses get written and they get put in a stall, they don't get to work it out. So this picture is when I went up to Canada, what was nice about traveling 50,000 miles a year was seeing horses in Australia and New Zealand and France and Belgium and Switzerland and Canada and just seeing what the differences or what was similar everywhere. So this was just a 14 year old mare that had never had body work. And then below, you know, that's just her unwinding. And you can actually see the whole body change in an hour.

Poppy:

And once again, it doesn't even look like the same horse. Right? Yeah. I had to like compare the socks and everything. I'm like,

April:

Is that the same? No worries. Yeah. But they they get shinier. So usually after a session, they start to adapt loud as well. So the dabbling in the skim coat, you can feed it with rice bran, corn oil, all that stuff. But you don't truly have a healthy horse from the inside out. And when all the oxygen is going through the fascia, blood and nutrients is moving in the whole body. Everything just gets softer and the horses will walk away. And honors like, I'll be darned my horse has got dappled all over his butt and ribcage now. So yeah, that'll be another $20 No. But I also teach in the you know, you gotta clean that beam thing because they have to be able to pee to detox. So if it's down, I do that for them too.

Poppy:

I, I'm a big beam cleaner myself. I actually really get some satisfaction out of being cleaning. I've gotten to accounts where horses were chronically draw. And I was like, does your horse always say that? They're like, yeah, he always does that. We've talked to the vet we we don't know why he always does that and And then pull out a beam the size of my thumb. I'm like, well, he probably couldn't pull it up, and then he'd be fine. And so I

April:

actually got seven the size of the small walnuts out of a 25 year old horse. They left him at my property while they were moving, and he was stretching out and some of the pee would go this way. And some of the pee would go that and she goes, Oh, yeah, every time I write on my stick the hose up there, so I know he's playing. Oh, the nice cold water hose I'm sure that really mounts all them beans out and I just just getting all that out with that hard and calcified it just backs up the kidneys and everything.

Poppy:

Well, and it's weird because people don't actually understand that there's like three little holes along the penis that you can like evacuate more beings from it's not just the tip. And so I was an AI tech. I went to Colorado State University and got my AI certification from them. And when I was cleaning stallions, I noticed that I was like, nobody told me this. Like I've never seen a diagram of this and started cleaning beings in my practice. While I would go work on horses, if they let me and it made a world of difference. And same with the smegma on mares merited wax. I've had miserable cranky mares and you just remove the tint wax and they're like, thank you. Yeah, sometimes it's just that simple. And you're I think your approach is pretty, like sensible, like the way you think you literally put yourself in the horse's shoes and you try to think like a horse.

April:

Well, you have to be able to eat you have to have feet. I had a client that we had her horses gone good. She bought it from Ann and how Hall pretty inexpensive because it had clubfoot. And two years later, when she stopped handing 50 mile rides and getting BC they're like, Oh, is that that same horse with the clubfoot? She goes, yeah. And then they're like, Well, where is it? Oh, well, April's been working on. You know, the high low syndrome is totally different than a club foot. And then the club foot, the high heel side is usually the one with the first rib misalignment. And the other side is the side that compensates. So your bigger foot with the low heel is going to be the compensating side, that's also going to be the one with a torn tendon or suspensory. Because it's compensating for the right one that can't move well. So and I don't know, I didn't give you any of these pictures. If anybody doesn't know where the first rib is on the horses. When you take away the shoulder, it's all the way up there at the base of the neck. And every horse with kissing spine that I have looked at, if you do my little check on gallbladder 21, that first rib misalignment, every single one has first heard about both sides. So the muscles in the weathers and the lumbar are tightening, trying to help the horse pick up the shoulders.

Poppy:

I see that a lot in my practice, too. And then it throws the withers off. Gosh, it's just like a just a cascade of issues from that Brockie Plexus from the sternum. And

April:

we were told if the horse doesn't want to take right lead canter, it's a weakness. So make them do it more, you know, and the right shoulder can't move. So then they gotta throw back to the left hind to pick up and give you the right shoulder. So you're gonna have a right staple that sore inside left time hawk. And I tell people by the time your horses bobbing their head, they're like three legged thing. You've missed all of the signs coming up.

Poppy:

You know, I'd never heard that before. And I was really surprised by that comment, like, I had to process that in my head and really think about it and, and ponder like, okay, so they're finally bobbing their head. They're lame and whatever, front leg but everything else must have failed for them to pull on the front and break down. Is that your process?

April:

Um, well, if they didn't get a leg hooked in fence, yeah. So if you're training, I've seen people just out there whip in horses because it can't take the barrel to the right. Okay, so if first rib is out, on the left side, the horse will do two barrels to the left really good, but can't get that shoulder to do the barrel to the right. So what are they going to practice more on? Trying to get that right, they're all so the whole rest of the body is going to compensate. And the compensation comes. You know, when you go sit in your chair after gardening all day and you fell asleep and you wake up and you're all locked up. That's the horse in the stall that isn't running on two or three acres to be able to roll and work some stuff out. But there's still body parts that can't do their jobs and everything else is just overworking. So when you have the tour in suspense to your attendant and you spent all those months and stole rest and then trying to hand lead a horse, you know, to exercise it walking and it's, you know, jumping all over the place why it comes back because you never addressed why it was torn in the first place. Why was it overloading?

Poppy:

Well, I don't think people understand how sensitive horses are like, just the way people lead them can throw them out of alignment, I think what what are your thoughts? And

April:

well, there's usually a lot of fear. Yeah, you know, so my two horses my barefoot trimmer, I'd say who trained your horses like me why he says, they're the nicest horses. They're two feet away. They walk side by side. When you stop, they stop. I don't even have to pick up the lead rope. They just go with you. But I did endurance. So we had to run on the trail with their horses. They learned that their space, here's my space, I took care of their body that checks. And when you start getting into this bodywork, even Ann Hall, who's a famous, you know, Tevis writer, and people pay her from all over the world to find them horses. I let her ride my Tiki horse so that I could ride a green horse. So I gave her the nice horse and she's like, this isn't that one of the nicest horses I've ever read. You just think about what you want to do. You just collect your chat canner you sit down, you know and just everything on a loose rein. It was just so much fun when you have that and you have that respect and it's not. I think the horse is getting more pushy because we're not listening. My first DVD ever is the horses are talking Are you listening? And if your partner's not listening you talk louder right? Are you hearing me? Are you hearing me? I got a headache I'm gonna keep butting my head like right in your boots because after your solar plexus and I had need some energy so I'm gonna smash Jess Are you know they're biting because they need some attention to their teeth in their face.

Poppy:

Yeah, they try to point us in the right direction but we don't often see it

April:

because our trainers and farriers and the you know the good ol boy way it's been working that way for 50 years still work and now it's like yeah, no, it's not well the beautiful

Poppy:

thing is those days are winning out I think the average horse lover the ones that truly love their horses want that more intimate relationship

April:

which is no you know, I don't I'm not riding my horse. There's a testimonial from a place I did in Northern California kind of in the great vineyard area it was beautiful place we did level one two and three but she had me out because she had this big huge chest nightmare who's now like 14 that she hadn't written in like six years. The right hind would just fire lock you know the equine shippers all of that couldn't even get near the high dam because it's so sore. You see Davis Loomis everywhere they took it to their like oh left friend. She's like it's in the home. Now horses off on the left front but right rear is gonna throw to left front. And I'm like, they're not even Western medicine professionals who know what the skeleton and aren't even checking that the pelvis is out of alignment. So on that there that right hip was backed by like five inches, it was tilted down. This bone Hold

Poppy:

on, right. Let me highlight you so everybody can see that better.

April:

Okay, you know, there's your hips and this one's back five inches, the other one and then also to Dan which puts the so ass into spasm. But it was also tip out like she'd slipped and fallen on the mud on that side of her butt. So when you look at the rear feet, and I always tell people don't evaluate your horses hook ups from the front do it from the rear. So when you squat down 10 feet behind your horse, you're gonna see all the hoof imbalances that crushed heels. On that horse, the inside heel was totally crushed and the toe was turning out so she wasn't even breaking over at the Staples straight. That whole hind leg was in the wrong direction. And as soon as we brought the hip up, change the angle and then pulled that in. She was out there trotting and cantering and sliding stops and staying square and the lady's like I haven't seen her like that in 10 years.

Poppy:

And you believe that a lot of your horses are out in the right hip we do see a lot of right hip issues and I think it's weird that the respiratory issues on the left and and what are your thoughts about that chronic right issue? Hi,

April:

I thought it would be different in Australia because you know in Australia the water goes different right because you're on the other side of the planet. So on this side of the planet our for our foals are born per day permanently left. And that's why the race tracks coach to the left in Australia their goals are born predominantly right? begin their race tracks go to the right but they still had all the same body issues in that right hip was still bad. Is it because we mount on the left? It's you know is that are we always bracing that right shoulder so then it throws back to the left hip, but 99.9% of the time, it's always the right hip back in the string halt and equine shivers is always on the right height. People say My heart says equine shivers. They said, right. And I like they go yeah, how do you know?

Poppy:

You're so amazing. I never even thought of that. That never crossed my mind. Like I see a lot of right eye and likenesses. And often it's EPM. And it seems to settle in the right eye. And I've always wondered why it manifests more on the right hind end, some people think it's the position of the spleen or something else in regards to the compensation or the I believe the disease actually, like hosts in the right height. But yeah, and we talked about vaccines suddenly in the hind end, too.

April:

And then you have people that post mainly a left diagonal. So when I was doing endurance rides my fastest 50 mile races, three hours and 42 minutes was fat. A fastest female, right has crossed the desert. It's called a wagon train ride where you go from like point A to B 50 miles a day. I was three hours and 42 minutes. So that's not with your bedtime. So you have an hour break, you know, and then another half hour break. But that's just your run time. So you're averaging 1780 miles an hour. So you have to kind of know what you're doing horse wise and you know, body wise to kind of keep that going. But I had a treeless saddle and I to find it and you kind of open your hips, you can drop your heels, lift your toes and be like, and it was deep sand moguls. And another ride I went to and as in first place has gone we, me lady, and they had something like 30 lameness polls at that ride. And I asked her, they all on the front. And they said, Yeah, they are. So because everyone's trotting a left diagonal, when they're doing this and that lock left leg with that rider on the left diagonals hitting that base of that next hill, I see patterns and stuff. And

Poppy:

your thought process is really interesting. It's really fun to follow your brain a little bit.

April:

We know the distance readings I do, right? So people sent me left and right side picture their horse. And if they get the home study program that's $400 and includes the distance reading, or you can just get one by itself, or 75. People had sent me pictures of their horse. And I didn't have an assistant at the time. So it's typing it all up. Okay, first grade, left side, this is sword that sword, this or this star. And now I'm going to look at the ones that I'll have first right side and you can just start to see the pattern of what was happening.

Poppy:

And there definitely seemed at least in my practice, I see like zigzag patterns throughout the course like, like you were saying the right front, the left behind, but then it zigzags throughout the whole body. And right but

April:

we're tighter on our right side because of getting in and out of pickup trucks and cars. So all of my clients, I tell them, especially with tracks, you cannot use your psoas muscle to hike up your hip to get into that seat. You need to step up, turn around, sit down like a girl with the mini skirt on and put both legs in together and come out the same. And then we're driving all day with the right so is our right, tightening, you know, tightening the horses well.

Poppy:

You know, I can't drive a stick shift at all it throws my hips out so that my one of my very first cars as a kid was a stick shift and I hated that thing. But also, I was just thinking about the heart being a little more on the left hand side. And I wonder if that that breathing issue with that nerve issue is connected to the heart. What are your thoughts about that? I just never really thought about it.

April:

It could be the only time I've had to work on heart issues on a horse. My client in California bought 100 shifter cross country horse for a lot of money and Florida. Had them all vetted out. He was all good. I think he was seven or eight at the time, shipped him over here and they vaccinated and sedated him for dental floating that day and it triggered something in his heart. And he's never been the same so I gave her a heart rate monitor but they said he can drop dead out from under you at any time I wouldn't be jumping fences. So all of that triggered too much and most vets are right handed giving it on that side. You know, so how many vets are giving it on one side of the neck versus the other when they go to sedate your horse? Right?

Poppy:

True. I never really thought of that. But that's absolutely correct. And this is why I like talking to you because you just get my brain kind of spinning. So

April:

when that's the horses that are headshot, but only on one area, you just go to the other side, because you'll cowboys, and that's where right handed and they would twist the horses left here. Right on the horse from the other side. Can

Poppy:

you talk about kissing spine a little bit?

April:

I actually have X rays and pictures, I really recommend people get on Facebook and look up Helen Davies in South Africa. We've had her as a guest. So I've been trying to work with her she doesn't get pictures before because I can in my reading say what's going on before they put the horse down that was so dangerous. And then she boils down and shows the bones and everything but I have permission to use all of her pictures in my writing and stuff and just give her credit. So we did newsletters recently about the little fractures of bones in the withers. You know, so when you have kissing spine, it's going to be you know, in one of those two areas. And I've worked on horses, you know, where the withers are drawn to close and the lumbar spines drawn to close and worked on horses with scars in their back from pieces being cut out and like okay, so you're cutting out the pieces of bone so it's not there anymore, but you're not addressing the cause why muscles so tight pulling the bones close together. Doesn't anybody want to ask that?

Poppy:

I was always taught muscles, bone, bone. So I always think about that, but I don't know if anybody else does.

April:

I worked on a horse in Belgium that was a jumping horse but you know both hind legs come together. And it was seven years old. She had X rays diagnosed with kissing spine. I did my whole session I do the body and the head and she says three months later Wow, that that says my horse doesn't have kissing spine anymore. I said, Great. Can we get those x rays? No, he won't release them. Yeah, I've had more hard times trying to get oh, this site bone and ring bones got great. Can we get those x rays now they don't want to give them to us? Like, really? So awful.

Poppy:

Yeah. Like, why do you think that is? Do you think that's like a supernatural issue or like an ego issue that that's don't want people to know that body workers can actually fix kissing spine or legal issues?

April:

I don't know. I know. Like there's so many states that outlaw you know, people like us working on horses that you can't have a big sign on your truck and that will turn you in and when I lived in Sacramento, I was going to buy some property and open like an equine rehab play and take all three horses and then people come out classes there. And then I get this letter from Sacramento veterinary board being investigated for diagnosing and treating as like so what do you think I'm diagnosing and treating because basically I flagged globally not working much locally and well your video on cranial says horses with headaches. If you look at the cover, it's a two year old horse and it's had looks like this going Yeah, looks like it has a headache. We can't say he has a headache that's diagnosing. So I had to change the name of the DVD to equine cranial sacral and parentheses formerly horses with headaches. Had to do all these things on my website. I couldn't say like a medical intuitive for my long distance reading. So if you put it into the woowoo animal communication thing they leave you alone. Yeah. Same thing with Equine Musculoskeletal Unwinding. What are you doing? I'm just underlining the horse. You know, I had to give names to my students. So they could say something I say, say that you do cranial sacral the vets leave you alone because they think you're just working on the head. They don't know a lot about it. And then you're back on the hips and they're like, What are you doing? Well, cranial sacral, head, sacrum working on everything in between. But yeah, I have a lot of students that have to tiptoe around Utah's really bad. Really? Yeah, you can't touch your horse. So she works under a trainer and it's part of the training package that comes in when your horse comes into the barn. This is all the things that's going to be due it's just part of the horse journey.

Poppy:

That's amazing. That's actually really smart. And then that way the trainer gets whatever they want done. And it's there's no questions asked between like, Hey, can you pay for this? Hey, well, you've you Know your horse really needs this. So I love that idea. When I was

April:

retraining problem horses and I'd say we're going to do the bodywork, we're going to balance the feet, my vets gonna do the teeth, I'm gonna look at their nutrition and then we'll see what's left. And then 30 days I had done with the other trainers have voted on three months. And they're like, You and zip the color of my horse that was raring fire breathing dragon when I brought them to you. And now this docile little thing that says, are you gonna get on me now? You know, is not my horse. Would you do it? My horse said I took them out of pain. I listened to what his issues were we fixed it now you have a nice horse. Not

Poppy:

so awesome. Okay, April, we've been chatting for almost an hour. Do you want to like open this to all the members to ask questions?

April:

We can but Can I point out my other books real quick?

Poppy:

Oh, yeah, absolutely. How do we connect with you?

April:

So this is the first one I ever did horse 101 All the things you wish you'd learned before you got your first horse. And we give it out free and an e book to kind of educate people and the horse trailers rockin you don't fly, man, all these other kind of things. What makes a horse colic? And if you just go to horse Academy, one Oh one.com You get the free ebook. And then everybody said so what do you do about stones again? What do you do about over vaccinating? What do you do about bacterium virus, and then I had to write this book that's on Amazon. They're all like $9. If you want the paper back, and you'll throw out everything that is in your medicine chest, you do not cold water, fresh hose wounds. That's the worst thing you can do or saline bodies. You don't want to use iodine and alcohol and hydrogen peroxide that kills the skin cells, you want something that can heal it from the inside out without scar tissue. You know, so that was those two? Then there's when if I can do it, you can too. It has why my customers and clients follow me for years before they finally come take a test because our things of worthlessness and not being good enough of childhood we don't think we're good enough. And I tell people the worst thing you can do is not try. So it gets through some of our stuff that's in my program and then the what I see when I see a horse so you can just learn to walk up and say up cricket head cricket feet cricket body yet I can fix this horse for you, bro,

Poppy:

let me share your website too. So people know what that looks like. It? Yeah,

April:

everything is Holistic Horseworks, the two YouTube channels, Facebook, three Facebook pages.

Poppy:

And what is this approved training provider? I've never actually heard of that.

April:

So a lot of the courses that people are taking, they're misleading them to think that you're certified in it. You cannot certify someone in a modality unless you're the originator of the program. So there's so many other programs out there that well I got certified for equine massage in three days. Are you kidding? It's like 400 hours seen how to be certified for people. And so I went on Masterson methods ICT approved to so I follow that and the companies in Australia and its International Institute for complementary therapies. So if you go through my level one program, and then we submit videos at the end so I can see what you're doing, then you can get a certificate to be IICT approved. And I only did that I didn't need it because I'm already global. But I did that for all my students to hopefully be able to work side by side with vets to say, I my ICT approved and when you join them, I think it's 149 a year. You can list every other class that you took that you got a certificate in so it looks like you're certified in all of them. But it's nice to put that IICT logo on your site and your business card. So because there's so many people out there and that's what pissed off the vets they take a three day class, they think they can go fix horses in Arizona, there's a company called Animal Crackers, and they go out with rubber mallet to work on horses and like oh,

Poppy:

you know, I started off that way. And then I ditched it. I was like this is ridiculous. Um, that's not working. But yeah, it's the doctor came in method, I think. Yeah, he

April:

says ribs never come out. They don't come out. They go into spasm the intercostals turn but they locked down this thoracic. So

Poppy:

yeah. And people come out of that weekend with their certification and claim they're an equine chiropractor. But now,

April:

this certificate usually just says certificate of completion. They like to make you think that you're certified. You Exactly. So all of my instructors I have 10 now had to get retrained with me to make sure that globally we're all teaching at the same and South Africa and Australia and Belgium and Switzerland, Canada, and we opened up Ireland, South Africa and Costa Rica and the last year. That's

Poppy:

so fun. Now you also have a podcast. And then you have all your courses. How many courses do you have for purchase?

April:

Just two. So level one is that the horse has been crickets in six months of age, starting your high low, you know, if you stand behind your horse on a bucket, about 10 feet back, you'll see one but higher, one side back, lower one shoulder bigger, weather's kind of crooked, and you're putting a straight saddle on that and girthing them up to fit, you know, in their bodies, not in alignment. So that's all level one and bacteria on fire on level twos. The fascia that Oregon's diaphragm, the muscles, you can unwind all the tight hind end muscles on a horse in two days, with only like 20 minutes a day of holding the muscles and giving that it's a cranial sacral technique. April.

Poppy:

You do dogs, too. I

April:

do horses, dogs and people in that order.

Poppy:

And I think people need to be done if they're dragging their horses off to the side. I mean, I do I think it's a vicious cycle. Like you're saying hi, have dropped shoulder, whatever. And then the owners are riding crooked. And so it's kind of a symbiotic relationship of the climb.

April:

Well, I've actually had top FBI endurance riders send me before and after pictures on her long training rides, and I'd say whatever you do on you dropping her 1011 on your 30 mile training, right? You have to not do that. Well, my body's curcuit Well, I don't care you can't ride your horse crooked for 100 miles. So we had to work with padding and lengthening one stirrup until she could ride balance on a horse for 100 miles until all of a sudden she wasn't dropping ups 10 and 11 because that's gonna short strike that whole left side.

Poppy:

Amazing. All right, let's leave it open to everybody else. I'm going to open the gallery

April:

and you go and I can answer any vet type questions. I can say step if it was my horse, I would do it this way.

Poppy:

Cheyenne Do you have any questions?

Cheyenne:

Sure. Hi, April. I'm Cheyenne. So glad to get to today. Okay, so just today I worked on two horses with their sternum is off to one side and I I am finding the pattern of rope horses, especially team roping horses. And I'm not I haven't noticed a pattern yet whether it's to the left or right seems to be what are your thoughts on how I can help these people prevent this because it's it's happening consistently with rope horses once in a while barrel horses once in a while a pleasure worse. But super consistent on rope horses. So tell me your thoughts on sternum. They're

April:

wet by bodywork are you doing for them? are you releasing the first rib?

Cheyenne:

Yes, yeah. 100%. And I'm picking up one leg to actually push on the sternum over getting the weather is on the other side using leverage. It's an easy move, it works very well. But my whole thing is, yes, we're fixing them. How can we help prevent this? And you know, my brains trying to figure out why is this happening? Is there some move as they're coming around the corner? You know, it's mostly on heel horses, but not always. Sometimes it's a head horse. So I'm thinking, okay, how can I help these people strengthen that? Or do something maybe not strengthening maybe there's something else they need to be doing to make the not such a all the time thing that's happening?

April:

Well send me like a left and right side picture when you're done with the horse at my email address April at holistic horseworks.com Because a lot of body workers are getting ribs two and three and not the first. I find a twisted sternum on do

Cheyenne:

I do?

April:

Oh no, but I'm just saying they're done. I'll let you know of some myths for free. I have backyard pet horses. So any horse that's had a hard trauma to the chest been kicked or whatever. I'm finding most of it's going off to the right side, the off side. There's only a couple that go off to the left and my level two we underline that the diaphragm and the intercostals. But you have to get them out of the sticky tack pads in the verse that grip. You know, they have a quarter horse and they they're trying to get the tap so they're not slipping and sliding, and that can tweak and tighten that again. I mean, we released the sternum like in one session, but you have to address all the ribs in intercostals. The diaphragm has it hanging off and on one side and look at their tack. If I'm working on a horse again, I'm like, I want to see your tack. Well, I have to use a square skirt saddle wood that's I don't like square skirt saddles on any competition horses because it really digs into the psoas. But they're like, I have to use that grip that you know, grippy tag girls so that you know, we don't slide you know, and how are they here? Are they pulling this way like we were originally taught to do? Are they pulling this way? All my clients, I have them do buckles on both sides. So they're gradually doing on both sides, not continually pulling everything over in one direction. So say, let's say look back, let's do that. But send me a picture after you've done your session and I'll see if we're missing like an elbow the intercostals Are you doing the myofascial behind the scapula to free up all of this?

Cheyenne:

Yes, yes, I am. I think what's now behind? And what I was mostly wondering about is prevention. What can I have? Or can I have them do anything for prevention, but I think the Tac is fantastic. I think it's probably attacking

April:

into it being on one side and how much they're gripping that horses off and body to not slide. In endurance. We always had to worry about our saddle sliding so far back on the uphill that you were making the so as sore. So the type of breast collars we recommended had the extra piece that goes up over the withers in front of the saddle. So it brought that whole breast collar strap up not across the horse's shoulder but following the line and that gives people a lot of stability for that extra Waggers. But I tell everyone to go back to the mohair ones, people don't want that they want the neoprene because they don't want to have to wash girders. Mine are the mohair cotton ones, they had elastic things on each end. So you know, you could do a little bit on each side, if you're always pulling one way and you have that ring there. You know, that's embedded in their flash when they do the western saddle, that's always going to be tied to that side. So something is coming. I look at the environment and the attack and what they're using and how much they're all I have to do that Dixie midnight pad because it grips the horse, right and you're bruising all the fascia and I have to use this girth because it grips the horse and again, it's bad.

Cheyenne:

One that's awesome.

Poppy:

For the rope horses, I know when I was a kid and I groped, they only grow them to the lab. They just lie. No, they just love Yes. And you know, and actually one day because I came from a background, I was like, why are we only looking to the left? This makes no sense. They're like, Oh, you don't want to look to the right, your horse will start swapping leads on you. So yes, this is a mentality in the rope industry. And it's still like that, right? Cheyenne. I mean, people aren't getting their horses

Cheyenne:

100%

April:

they're not they view them, give them time off and then they just go for it again. And they inject the Hawks.

Cheyenne:

Yeah. Or they inject everything that every joint in them that moves. It's unbelievable. So yes, you're correct, Poppy there, they're still all making left hand circles and not to the right. It one by one I'm trying to change that I'm like the one woman boycott over here in Texas trying to make it right. But I love the tech part of it that that's great. The pulling up on one side, because I'm trying to figure out why every day. Am I having to fix these not necessarily the same horse over and over. But every Roper that comes through same thing, same thing, same thing. So

April:

are they a horse so they don't get ripped off the horse so you have to see what can change just like barrel racers and Rayners want that square skirt saddle that everytime that horse turns and bends the saddle and the pad it's usually a crushed felt pad or Dixie midnight pad is just irritating that so as in the other end of that attachment inside the hawk so you keep irritating the so ash and your hops are going to be this close together. And I tell people great you love your saddle fits your horse go to the leather store cut around skirt. Get that square part out of that. So Alas, and you're 18 thread and stop bugging that area.

Poppy:

You need effect. You need a Cheyenne Thomason exclusive rope rehab saddle. Yes, for sure. Okay, that's something, you can create something like that and have him start writing in that and winning in that.

Cheyenne:

And then you've Oh, that'd be awesome.

April:

Yeah, yeah. And I'm trying to get people back to the Navajo blankets that breathe and like if you wouldn't work for underwear, don't put it on your horse's back and then it's armpits. Yeah, there you go. You know, everybody got away from the stuff that was good for the horse because there was so much washing and care.

Poppy:

Well, and I always have had like, fluffy is when I was growing up. I didn't love the mohair so much because it felt so prickly. But I definitely would have loved but then the neoprene came out and it's super hot. Like I don't think anybody takes in consideration how hot that is and how much heat it generates. But

April:

when the first mount of the day when the horse is called how much it pulls on the skin in the armpits, you know, endurance horses, we teach them to mount and dismount from both sides. So we're even if this is your cliff side, you have to be able to get off on the right side without spooking your horns

Poppy:

on the problem with the rope versus to April is they are coming around that left corner. They grab the heels deli and jerk though horse you know that that? Just concussion of slamming them from the steer. But

April:

yeah, you know, you have to think about that saddle tree dropping in behind that scapula. Right as they're getting yanked? And are they tweaking those ribs right there, which is just going to undo your whole sternum release? Yeah. As opposed to happening.

Poppy:

So now you have to make every Roker change hands and go to the right. Yeah. We're changing the industry.

Cheyenne:

Yeah. Sounds sounds like a bit the plan, but we'll try it. Okay, well ask for more questions. If you don't get any come back to me.

April:

All you need to do is sponsor someone that's willing to listen to you and they start winning. You can say it. It's one of my horses. Any of you want to win like that when she listens to me. I was working with a lady Diane that was in Vacaville. And she was winning barrel racing and stuff. And her horse had ulcers, he was only seven we worked through the whole body. So that's great, but you still have crooked feet and the whole frog is off center. And on your left front. It's flat on the inside and all the way out here and frogs over here and you can't keep your horse down and keep doing that. Eight months later. She said, Okay, you're right. He did the suspensory What do I do now? And we got him to go barefoot, and we got the whole hoof balance. But it's like, you know, I did the body but you still got to do the feet.

Poppy:

I am so about friends that cuff observation, like I will look at a hoof and how it's growing. And just like you said it the frogs going? A little kilter. It's red flag you guys and no hoof, no horse, but a lot of people blame their barriers for that. And often it's higher up because they're compensating and wearing to get off something in their neck or jaw. So are

April:

they you know, try to slow down the rear so that they stop pulling the front shoes instead of just fixing the front end so it could pick up faster, leaving all these trailers and there's a farrier on island here and keeps putting egg Barksdale shoes right across the frog, all my horses and huge shoe boils because he makes them himself and it's really thin metal across the back at your elbows. And I'm just going oh my god.

Poppy:

How do we build awareness?

April:

You have to educate the horse owners so much that they start educating their vet farriers and trainers. That's what my programs about I tried to educate the vet fairs and trainers they didn't want to now it's been working this way for 40 years. So I have over 190 for YouTube videos, everything. So I listed courseworks that my podcasts are usually under six minutes, one subject so they're on Apple and Spotify, but also my website. So if you just want to learn one thing while you're driving to the bar, and you can just pick the one thing you don't have to go through it and people say, oh my god, I had to hit backwards because you really start talking right away. Yeah, and about me and my experience. Hey, we're gonna talk about UBI to start now go out, measure your horse's head.

Poppy:

Lee is a saying that she has a urine yearling Colt right now that wears his back feet unevenly and is trying to become cow hawk. What can she do,

April:

you need to fix both first ribs and put the hips in and starts in the front end so neither shoulder can move correctly. When they go to canner, they actually have to go back to the so as to pick up the front end. And the more that that so ask goes into spasm, the closer the hind legs are going to come together. So I tell people, when you're looking at your horses, they should have a groove going all the way down the horse's back, like where the muscles and then it's a little bit of a depression. And you'll find right behind the 18 thread that it starts to race that's all the so acids but in spasm pulling the lumbar, so you're gonna see that horse when he's running with both hind feet together, I kind of like the little bunny rabbit top instead of the individual. Right? She gets my pom study programs, then she can work on all of that herself. Okay,

Poppy:

and you're gonna be back in California in the fall, right?

April:

If we fill up the classes, guys who wants to Canada, Vacaville or Davis take the class in October?

Poppy:

Yeah. So I happen to live really close. I will be gone the first week of October though I already have made a commitment there. So hopefully it won't be the first week but April I would love to come. Yeah.

April:

So hopefully then I'm only doing the West Coast right now because I've got three instructors, Indiana, Ohio and Kansas so they're kind of doing the East Coast. I kind of like it here a mountain like Stan swimmin and no horse trails so I'm not riding here. And

Poppy:

April you're 62 years old looking fabulous.

April:

Ixy to young not young. Yeah, exactly.

Poppy:

Total inspiration that holistic life is the best life

April:

that doesn't mean I don't have a beer in the attic

Poppy:

that's all you baby. Yeah.

April:

So I hope you guys join us I hope you find me on the internet we had one more person that had a question or was that it for the year?

Poppy:

Cheyenne wants to ask another question she has this burning question and ask him what on

Cheyenne:

when you mentioned ring bone earlier what do you put the dynamite salve it seems like I watched a video you said one time is it dynamite salve you put on it or something along that line. Remind me what you do for ring bone.

April:

Well, there's three things that starts it ones the first one being out of alignment. When the first ribs out of alignment. The horse is not landing heel to toe. He's using rhomboids and trapezius and coming up and landing toe to heel. So you're jamming that knee and you're jamming that fetlock and your side bone is can you see that? So when you're looking at your horses coronary band, and it's not found in the 10 points aren't soft, that's what's under there and it actually affects the coffin bone. So people say can you ask my horse wants to jump I said you have sight bone and rainbows you might want to take off in the air but he doesn't want to land on those feet because it's painful. It's like rocks in your shoes. So I tell them to do the body work first to add that third of a cup of apple cider vinegar to their feed kind of gradually to help break down because osteoarthritis is porous, where the other bone is dense. So when you're doing apple cider vinegar, it helps people with ulcers and indigestion but it also helps to break down arthritic hands and feet and knees. And then we use the dynamite balm, not the South that used to be called the bomb but it's not supposed to go in a womb so they had to change the name and we do a sweat one so we have to be careful and watch the video because I have people doing tight saran wrap and it's too hot. The plastic that I use is like your shavings bag stiff plastic. So that air is still getting under there when you put it around. So that's your side bone if they have ring bone and a thicker ankle fetlock area I just put the bottom all the way up at the plastic a little longer. Okay, and I have a YouTube video on that because no matter what what I said they used the wrong plastic the wrong Bell Boots interference, they were blistering the coronary band saying what am I doing wrong? So every time someone said how do you do that? I made a little video. So most of my YouTube videos are also under four and a half five minutes long because we all have short attention spans nowadays. So you can just make a little reminder one podcast a day one video a day four minutes good. And then the Equine Musculoskeletal Unwinding is the level one core Someone had written a What was the name of the course? Excellent. That comes with. It's a landing page. So one thing that I'm doing that other people aren't doing. Everything is on a landing page and digital download, you get your workbook you get your videos, but I can't change the moves in the original videos. Every time we change or upgrade the moves, I add another free little video on there. So there's a whole page of here's how we do the elbow. Here's how we do the knee. Here's how we do the new ilium pull down. And you always have access to that page. Two years from now you're like, Oh, I got a horse. Again, I want to refresh on that are the kids gone off to college and I have time again, it's not digging through stuff, you just go back to your homework page. And it's there. And we update the workbook every year, which is about 145 pages.

Poppy:

That's amazing. Yeah, you know, I wanted to say something about that. Ring bone and side bone is people that leave bell boots on forever. Drives me crazy. It just, I just think it's a recipe for disaster.

April:

They do that because they have the crush shield and the horse isn't picking up the shoulder because of the first ribs. So except they don't have to put the bell boots on and they don't have to have the egg bar shoe that makes the shoe boil on the elbow. So you still got to go back to I Was that why child and once they learned about kinesiology because my mom always just said because I said so because I said so but by. So now I can say hi, where it started? Is that where it started, you know. And that's a Empower on my students to really feel good about that. And then they get to submit five case studies after one at a time and I let them know if they're missing anything you didn't quite get ribs 10 and 11. How you know, show me how you're doing. You're not quite getting the axis. So show me how you're doing move. And I didn't have any of that in any of my classes. Right. Five years later, can I continue my course shirt? Because I'm not about ego. I'm about you guys. Help them all the horses out there.

Poppy:

Yeah, April, thank you for your time. This has been a wonderful chat. And thank you, you guys for watching. And you know where to reach out to April it's holistichorseworks.com

April:

april@holistichorseworks.com

Poppy:

Excellent. You guys,

April:

I expect you to send me a picture of one of the horses after you fix it that the sternum keeps twisting and I'll see if I can find some.

Poppy:

Right on Well,

Cheyenne:

I appreciate all the Thank you. You bet.

April:

That's what I'm here for.

Poppy:

That's so kind of you. Thanks, guys. Yes. And now that we're live on Facebook in a certain way, I have to figure out how to quit going. Okay, let me see if that worked.

April:

Yeah, let me just cancel out. You can work on all that.

Poppy:

Yeah, if you want to go, go. Okay.

April:

Thank you. Beautiful and sunny here on Maui. And I'm gonna go to beach. Whoo.

Poppy:

I'm gonna go clean stalls. Yeah, we'll

April:

see you next time, hopefully in October.

Poppy:

Okay.

Speaker:

To learn more, visit holistic horseworks.com And before you go, make sure you have a copy of our free ebook, horse 101 Everything you wish you had known before you got your first horse at Horse Academy, one Oh one.com