CASE STUDIES

Thank-you to all those who share their personal experiences of Healing through Relationship – as One,
so we may learn.

DAISY, GEORGE & JEMMA

Thank you for telling me about the Animal Spirit Medicine course and showing me another way of hearing and helping to heal my animals.  The work you've done has had such a positive effect, i'll be forever grateful.  Daisy and George are doing really well - still hanging in in there with me!!!  Our love and very best wishes.

COOKIE & NANCY

When I woke up and looked at Cookie, she seemed to have normal expression like she did before the accident.
I can’t put my finger on it but I noticed a clearer presence to her. I didn’t know Michele had already done her healing. There was a different, subtle aura.

PRECIOUS FLOCK & JULIE – NEW LIFE PARROT RESCUE CENTRE

My heartfelt thanks and appreciation for Little Mo’s Healing Story, which is beautiful and brought tears to my eyes because of its loveliness – she is a beautiful spirit.

The wonderment of all this is what we are able to understand and feel, their (our animal friend’s) true essence and thus see more than what the physical eye, in its limitation, allows us to see. However, as it all comes from the heart it shows we have been looking with our eyes shut.        www.nlpr.org.uk

SAETA & BARBARA MURRAY

Why am I feeling blocked with my mare? What prevents us from having a close and enjoyable relationship? What do I need to do to improve things? – all the usual things haven’t worked! Saeta had dissociated herself from her surroundings just to get through each and every day. She lived in a double bind: unable to fit in with her own kind and at the same time incapable of being on her own. So she lived with a series of corral-mates who bullied her and even the foals kept her in the lowest rank, so she could never thrive well. When I first saw Saeta in March 2005 she was skeletal, pacing up and down the fence, distraught. She had arrived nearly a week earlier and had been swaying and weaving all that time. She was wasted, and her beautiful grey arab head was high in the air like a periscope. She strained her neck directly towards me, her bulging eyes bored into mine and I heard the words “do something”.

For the next year what I ‘did’ to her was to force her to defend herself against my well-intentioned but mechanical efforts to ‘calm her down’. I didn’t know how to read her signs of fear and frustration. Adding insult to injury, I was forcing her to retreat further inside herself and things were getting worse. We were not communicating, and I knew she needed a different kind of leader. I didn’t know how to deal with a horse that could change from being apparently terrified one minute to dominantly running over me the next, or indeed how to relate to her on any level. I had waited all my life to have a horse and it felt like I was failing the one I chose.

There was sadness still to come. With one month still to go, after a bad summer storm, she delivered her foal but he did not survive.  I was astonished at how she recovered so quickly. With no shadow of a doubt I knew she was challenging me to figure out what we were going to do next.  I knew this was not about her – she had proven that she could deal with her losses: it was about me, and mine. It was about giving her the kind of care which would meet her needs, not mine.

We had to learn a common language. About two weeks after the foal died, I knew I had arrived at the end of the line for the two of us. Unless I could find the inner resolve to be the leader she needed, the rest of her life would be no different to the first part: she would remain an isolated creature who had never known a solid, authentic relationship with either horse or human in her life.

Moments of true despair ignite the resolve to change.  Embracing humility, I turned to the people around me who could be resources in such a situation. My husband saw so clearly that Saeta was mirroring my own inner turmoil at that time of life - as well as the desperation to rise above it and move on. He coached me to change my approach: instead of being in my head, literally speak up and speak out loud and clear, tell her what I want using any language I can; the English language, the Spanish language, and most of all – and match it with body language that conveys the same message. I then asked Michele to work with Saeta and she began with the healing journeys.

Things started to change on many levels. We moved Saeta into her own corral, where she was separated from, but still surrounded by, horses, allowing her to relax, eat and drink at her own pace. I started taking her lots of buckets of water (she had an automatic dispenser) and she enjoyed slaking her thirst in the suffocating heat of the Spanish summer sun. I knew she was saying how much that peace and space  - and the water - meant to her. Suddenly I realized what a responsibility it is to truly attend to the needs of an animal who depends on you (not just go through the motions assuming we know their needs).  

Fears melt away, and we are open to the flow. When she began to run over me as usual that day I spoke out, I felt no fear of her, and was inspired to do what had to be done to show her how we could get along together from now on. This meant we reached an agreement about what constituted a respectful distance. Saeta was able to stand still for the first time. Really still. She finally had in front of her a human whose emotion was fully in tune with intention: she saw and felt respectful leadership as opposed to fearful gesturing. With this trust established, we became firm partners and she now carries me around to all her favorite places where we rest and hang out together.

When a relationship fundamentally changes in this way, it is a humbling  experience. I had to learn what kind of caretaker she needed, and I had to learn to be that person. It meant caring for her body and soul, caring and defending her place in the horse-human herd, making a stand for her right to have a comfortable and safe place to live, and doing what I needed to do to avoid losing her altogether. She had to suffer being a displaced soul until she could be convinced of a better alternative way to live. That was my journey too.

The key words in Michele’s healing story were:

• Hiding / escaping
• “Who does she think she is?”
• Lost with no identity
• Water is the only dependable
• Sensitivity not mechanical
• Communication and language
• Care taking like a parent