In  response to my last blog about counseling animals a reader sent in asking for advice in regard to a gnarly situation she just encountered. I will give my best advice via the blog and you can send in comments and ideas for her too. The overall issues here are that working with animals and helping them almost always involves interacting with people. Often there will be a need to get the people to change so the animals can be healthier and happier. Also emotionally, dealing with the problems of animals can be overwhelming. There are some very upsetting, very gnarly and horrid situations going on out there on an individual scale and on a bigger scale. I will do my best in this blog to give some ideas for dealing with all this. And please feel free to chime in. I find the readers of this blog to be most astute and enlightened and I get a lot out of the comments, thanks.

Here is her story:

I board my horse next door with the neighbor, who is a horse trainer.  One of the horses there for training got her feet tangled up and cut her fetlock with a hoof.  Just a small cut, but two days later, it was severely infected and the horse was unable to bear weight on that front foot.  She was in agony. She needed to see a vet.  I tried to suggest that, to no avail.  I got wound care tips from my friend, an ER nurse of 30 years, and a horse owner.  Suggested removing the horse from the herd as she almost got knocked over, and couldn’t walk to the water trough.  All ignored. (I carried water and food to her.)  The trainer wasn’t much concerned about giving her pain relief, either.  Long story short, 5 days later, at my urging, she got the owner involved, who came out with a penicillin shot.  She’s gotten several since then and is improving slowly, though the joint could be permanently damaged, and the horse is only 3.  How did she treat the injury?  Tomato paste and turmeric poultice, wrapped it in bacon, and applied essential oils.  She believes in natural healing only.  Which is one thing if the horse were hers, but it isn’t. I was just sick, watching all of this, being unable to do much to help, though the horse was begging me for help. I feel like I failed her.  I would really appreciate any advice for dealing with something like this in the future.  Who knew that the hardest part of animal communication would be dealing with humans?  Needless to say, my horse will be moving. 

 My advice for this situation if she had called me day one and if she could have gotten some TeaPro (www.healing-tree.com)  would have been to spray the wound with that on the QT as much as possible. It is a miracle wound healer. There are probably some other great wound healers (like calendula oil) that might have worked. But what if she couldn’t get access what then? Going to animal control in some cases might help but usually they don’t do anything until an animal is almost dying. Organizing everyone in the stable to protest would probably get her kicked out and her horse hassled (at the very least) but might have been a possibility. (If I could clone myself I would write mystery novels about stables and the murderous dynamics that seem to be ubiquitous in those environments.) Here are some other ideas:

• Brainstorm Creative Solutions -  Find some friends and brainstorm about creative crazy solutions. For example, maybe she could have gotten some allies and staged a camp-in the field -protecting and treating the horse until some action was taken. (Of course with an owner like that the horse may not have had a chance or would have encountered some other bad situation… and still may since the person still owns the horse and now the horse is now lame…)

 

•  Spirit Talk – In your imagination,  talk to all the relevant players… the owner, the stable manager etc, and tell them what you can’t tell them in person. Go into great detail and explain exactly what you want and why. Listen to their arguments and respond. Sometimes this practice can create amazing shifts.

 

• Manifesting – As I mentioned in the last blog, this is an option for helping an animal in trouble. You can manifest for them and explain to them how to manifest. I see manifesting as a way of manipulating energy to create the experiences (the energy) you want to have. In my classes I say, if you begin a conversation by thinking it will not go well and you won’t do well, guess what happens? Life is no different. What you think about you bring about and what you feel becomes real. So to shift a bad situation, think up, visualize, and most importantly feel what you want to have happen instead. Ask for the highest best outcome. Then imagine what you think that might be, realizing that things could go a different route. You are just looking for the best that can happen. Feeling seems to be the ultimate key to this. So in the case of this horse you could explain to the horse to see and feel someone coming to treat the wound and being taken to a safe stall and getting medicine and healing. The for yourself ask the question, how would it feel if those things happened, and feel the feelings as intensely as you can. That process opens the way for that reality to come in. This could still be done for the horse now, for her to get treatment and go sound and for the owner to shift or for her to get a nicer new owner…

Manifesting and the Real World

It isn’t enough just to manifest, one has to act as well. You will read below about the plight of the mustangs. I am giving a bit more detail as the situation is becoming desperate. I explain below ideas for manifesting for the mustangs. But we also have to get people involved, all our friends and all their friends and that takes on the ground action, calling, emailing etc. We could also brainstorm some creative ways to get attention for this cause. And think about who you know or who you know who knows someone famous who might join in for the cause. The more luminaries the better. So put these new found skills to work for a good cause: wild horses!

Wonder Woman Dog

This is here for comic relief because this blog is hard and sad….a reflection of life right now. But this dog is adorable. I have never seen a dog happier to be dressed up!

The Mustangs Need You Now!

March 25 Protest in WashingtonDC – see info below, get your friends and their friends to go…

The situation with wild horses is critical, time sensitive, and worse than imagined. The 2,000 horses rounded up from the Calico herd are in hideous shape: 40 spontaneous abortions and 75 deaths so far. But beyond their terrible plight the big picture is  the US government wants to wipe out the wild horses. They want to roundup the remaining 35,000 of them and ship them to the East and Midwest to zoos specially made to hold wild horses using $43 million in public money. It appears that the reason for the Calico and some other fast track scheduled roundups is to make way for a planned gas pipeline through the public land in Oregon, Washington and Nevada wild horse range: 
http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/index.php/news-events-a-media/press-releases/258-ruby1
We who love animals, horses and the west we must do something now or we will lose these herds. More roundups are planned. We have to get involved and stay involved and get every horse lover in the world working on this to stop it. If you care you have to get involved now, it is that serious.
The claim is that wild horses can’t find enough forage and need to be sent to managed zoos. That is just a ploy to get the land cleared for the pipeline and turn our public land over exclusively to cattle grazing. Note: Sierra Club is supporting this but it will not result in any wilderness protection as the BLM intends to run cattle on our public lands, they just don’t want any horses there. Read http://humaneobserver.blogspot.com/ for evidence that our wild horses are in excellent shape, until they get to the BLM holding pens. Aside from the “handling” deaths, they are dying because they can’t tolerate the food. See the before and after pictures and weep.

What you can do:

Go to the demo on MARCH 25th in Washington DC or find someone in the area you know and get them to go for you. We need lots of people and lots of press – http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/

Get updates and Action alerts from the Cloud Foundation and stay involved and tell your friends – http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/
Join the Cloud Foundation on Facebook
Get observations from the field of the ongoing calico roundup tragedy – http://humaneobserver.blogspot.com/
Learn about the SalaZoo plan – http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/index.php/news-events-a-media/press-releases/301-public-opposes-salazars-request-for-millions-to-move-mustangs-east-3110
Write, email, and call your senators (202 456 1111) and Obama (202 224 3121) – Protest the removal of mustangs, say absolutely no to Salazars Mustang Zoos. We want a moratorium on all roundups and we want them to uphold the provisions of the laws in place to protect and preserve our wild horses in the wild.

Call every week and get your friends to call.
Write letters to the editor giving people action items and websites for info.
Get this out to the media, press and TV.
Don’t stop and don’t give up.

MANIFEST FOR THE MUSTANGS – Start imagining a good outcome by focusing on the “feel” – Imagine what it would feel like if we can horse people all over the world acting on this. Imagine what it would feel like to have the holding center in Nevada surrounded by protesters. Imagine what it would feel like to have 500,000 people in DC protesting on March 25. Go with the feel of winning this victory and getting the wild horses back, safe and free.…. What you feel becomes real.
Background:
Here is a good blog for background on what the BLM has been doing with our money and our horses and the outright lies they have been telling: http://americanherds.blogspot.com/
The Wild Horses and Burro Act of 1971 specifies the protection and preservation of America’s wild herds. Since its passage the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has removed over 270,000 horses from the western range and taken away 20 million acres from horses for cattle. Only 37,000 wild horses remain on public lands but millions of cattle graze our PUBLIC lands. On July 17, 2009, the US House of Representatives passed H.R. 1018, The Restore Our American Mustangs Act which was meant to further protect our wild horses. Obama and Salazar are not acting in accordance with these laws.