When I first met Gabriel in 1997, he was six years old and was at my friend the horse vet’s clinic. He had broken down completely after coming in off a long haul from a show circuit. Standing tied for 24 hours in a moving trailer combined with aggravations from previous injuries had left him completely unable to move his head and neck, and he was pawing and groaning constantly from agonizing pain.
My friend had tried everything, but Gabriel was responding to nothing. Plus, he wouldn’t eat so had already lost a couple hundred pounds the first time I saw him. She called to see if I thought flower essences might help because they address the emotions rather than physical symptoms, and she knew I used them in my practice. We figured it was sure worth a try.
I concocted a special blend of essences for Gabriel and began by simply rubbing a few drops into his forehead and ear tips. The essences are vibrational and work through the “electrical” system of the body, so don’t have to be ingested to be effective.
Almost immediately after the first few drops were applied, Gabriel began licking and chewing (a good thing in a horse) and started responding to my efforts at communication. Previously he had been a brick wall and I could get nothing whatsoever from him. I had been trying to let him know how much we wanted to help him, and that we understood how much pain he was in. That he must begin to eat or he would die, and that we would do anything we could to keep that from happening.
Gabriel showed me a lot of what had happened to him previously, including some of the accidents and abuse he had experienced. He then showed me that he had been separated from a little girl he adored, and that he just wanted “out” — he wanted to die. He was extremely depressed.
I told him the essences would help, and that we could talk a lot and maybe that would help too, and within the hour he was responding to body work and chiropractic and beginning to try to eat.
Gabriel was in the clinic for five months before recovering enough to be sent home. He was doing so well at that point that, despite instructions not to from the vet, his people put him back out on the show circuit.
So . . . two years after the first clinic stint Gabriel was brought back in, again after a 24-hr. trailer ride, and this time could not be brought back to health, after even six months. The people who “owned” him could not afford to keep a horse they couldn’t show. Nor could they continue paying for him to stay at the clinic. They decided to put him down so as to avoid future suffering for him and in order to cut their losses.
To make a long, long story very, very short, the vet and I prevailed in convincing Gabriel’s folks to let me take him. Which I did. And we moved him to my property where I would end up babying him and hand-walking him for many months in order to keep his body viable (it took us an hour to walk one mile).
Gabriel went a full year without being able to roll or to graze or even to reach a water trough, but eventually he did all those things and more, and he has had a very happy life since.
Gabriel is now 18 and still has to spread his legs a little in order to eat his hay off the ground. And he’s a delicate boy and can’t be ridden. He goes through periodic set-backs due to sudden spells of bad weather or over-exercising himself, but asks for body work and is given feed, nutrients, and herbs too numerous to mention in order to keep him healthy. He has a beautiful mare to lord it over, and Copper, the wise old Quarter Horse, to learn from.
And yes, he does sometimes still take flower essences, and when nothing else will snap him out of a downturn, that usually works. The essences are magic, and Gabriel is a good, good boy!
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