Sofi's movement was much free-er after her massage. 

Vali had a massage on Saturday. The vet commented first thing Monday morning that her movement on the lunge was the best he had seen her move to date.

Elaine is professional, considerate and has a wide knowledge base of horses, movement and training from which to apply her assessment and massage treatment. I would not hesitate in recommending her work to anyone. I trust her implicitly with my horses.

After seeing how much my own horses benefited from the treatment I plan on having regular future treatments.

The essence is that I trust  Elaine, think that she has a wealth of
knowledge, good intent, and makes visible improvements to the horses after treatment.

~~~ Sofi ~~~                                                                                          ~~~ Vali ~~~

Philippa P - Surrey - July '09

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I bought a very sweet 5yo lusitano mare called Xita nearly a year ago, with a view to all round riding and progressing with dressage. She was 5 stage vetted and I also had her thermographed and a chiropractic treatment before I bought her, to try and cover all bases.

She passed all of these things, but it quickly became clear once she was home that she had tension issues through muscle weakness and habitually braced her whole body. She was also quite crooked which caused blockages in different places including her neck and poll, where a kink in her neck was apparent and her mane lay on different sides. This continually caused soreness through her body and she was regularly unhappy to be deeply groomed and sometimes to have the girth done up or even to be tacked up at all. She also sometimes walked wide behind in an attempt to stabilise herself.

I was pretty sure that consistent strengthening work would improve all of these things, but I wanted to change the way she now habitually moved and didn't want to work her when she was sore.

After a few chiropractic treatments it was clear that the problems were all now muscular and her underlying structure was sound. I was very lucky at this time that Elaine was training to be an equine sports massage therapist. Elaine agreed to treat Xita on a regular basis and subsequently wrote a study on how massage helped her and also on how her basic conformation would affect her movement and therefore muscle use.

Xita has improved enormously in this period and it is obvious even just seeing her standing in the field how much she has changed. She stands with her hind legs more underneath her now, the blockages in her muscles have gone and she is happy to be tacked up. She is also happier to be groomed and generally have people around her. Elaine has improved her trust in strangers which is lovely to see.

Now that the initial work is done, Elaine is an invaluable part of Xita's progress. Elaine is happy to work with my chiropractor's assessments and recommendations. Elaine will also speak to my trainer about her findings and recommend ridden as well as ground exercises that will help the weak or tight muscles. When Xita does something new, such as jump for the first time, a massage afterwards is very helpful both for relieving sore muscles and for diagnosis so that I know if there was uneven muscle usage or she sustained any muscle damage.

Although I was only introduced to equine sports massage through Elaine, I would now say that it is an integral part of helping my horses to firstly be happy through not living with pain or discomfort and secondly to enable them to work and perform to the best of their abilities. I feel that my relationship with my horses has improved from being able to meet their needs in this way.

Helen W - Kent. June '09

Group 4 dressage rider.