hobbyhorse23
Well-Known Member
Sometimes there are issues that a surface level reading just can't get at. We don't always know why we react to something the way we do! I use a lady named Vita Lobelle, who is very good at getting to deep emotional traumas and helping horses and people to recover from them and find peace. She does this in one session, can be over the phone or in person, and she's really amazing. My Arab, Spyderman, had "chased his tail" for years and years and we'd always wondered why he did that. He'd go out in his paddock about the same time every day and spin in circles reaching for his own flank, then stop and stand licking and chewing for a minute and start over the other direction. He never hurt himself or squealed or anything, though occasionally he'd finish with a brief buck in place and then run off a bit before settling. It seemed fairly harmless. We found an old owner of his who said as a stallion he'd self-mutilated, biting at his flanks until they bled during a very unhappy period in his life and that she'd spent months rehabbing him until the behavior was reduced to what we were seeing. At this point I think it was a learned behavior that released endorphins and he simply kept doing it out of habit.shane said:
Then he started having full PTSD-style panic attacks and got very dangerous, to the point that he broke my mother's hip and I could no longer go near him. We heard about Vita just as we were facing the decision to put him down as you could no longer even handle him in the paddock, nevermind take him out. (We have NEVER put an animal down for behavior problems but he was simply that bad. He'd go into a full-body panic reaction and completely check out mentally.) We figured we had nothing to lose and called Vita, who released the deep seated trauma that he was flashing back to and completely ended the cycle. He's been a totally different horse since then, deeply relaxed and peaceful and full of joy. I had her do me a year later, and then Kody in '06 and it made a real difference for all of us.
I asked her about the tail-chasing when I realized a year later I hadn't seen him do it since she'd come out and she said that self-mutilation is completely foreign to a horse's natural state of being. They have to be in an incredible amount of emotional and spiritual pain to turn it inward and start physically hurting themselves, and it's one of the saddest things she's ever seen. I do think some horses simply "throw tantrums" and buck and kick in place out of frustration, but truly hurting themselves is an act of desperation. If Twinkle is not happy, have Vita talk to him. It's expensive, but it's a one-time thing and it really sounds like he's one who could benefit tremendously from talking to her. Bonnie did read Kody correctly, but was unable to find out why storms bothered him so much because he wasn't sure himself. Vita knew exactly why, released the trauma, and now he loves storms and loud noises. No more fear.
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