“Happy horses heal hurting human hearts.”
~Nahshon Cook
Equine Welfare
To empower horses to elicit healing in humans, we must first define what happiness means to the horse. The best tool we have for this is equine ethology, the objective study of horses’ behaviour in natural environments. For our domesticated horses, we can only ever provide species-appropriate care within an approximation of a natural environment. Windrose Horses live in 20 acres of undulating pasture amongst the safety of their herd, able to socialise, explore, forage and move freely.
I shape my practice around a core principle: the horses’ sentience must be honoured, always.
Their fundamental rights to the Five Freedoms are upheld:
Freedom from hunger and thirst.
Freedom from discomfort.
Freedom from pain, injury or disease.
Freedom to express normal behaviour.
Freedom from fear and distress.
Whilst many traditional horsemanship methods are built upon outdated constructs of human dominance and equine submission, our interactions are force-free and based around positive reinforcement (you can learn more about the training methods I use here). It’s integral the horses choose to join us in this work; their true agency can only ever be honoured if we listen and respond appropriately, even when they communicate “no”. Because Windrose horses are able to express their innate behaviours in an environment that replicates their natural way of being as much as possible in a domestic context, they are able to meet you in your authenticity, their regulated nervous systems supporting the regulation of your own.