Where It All Began: Horses, Healing, and Finding My Way Back

My journey into equine wellness wasn’t planned. It unfolded slowly, shaped by instinct, curiosity, and a deep pull toward understanding horses in a way that felt meaningful to them. Looking back, every twist and detour had a purpose, even the ones that didn’t make sense at the time.

For the first fifteen years of my life with horses, I learned mostly by contrast, by seeing and feeling everything I didn’t want to be. I learned what not to do. I learned what didn’t feel right. And thankfully, even when I didn’t have the language for it yet, I stuck to my gut. Something in me always whispered, There’s a better way.

But like many horse‑people, I was told early on that you “can’t make a living with horses.” So in my early twenties, I did the sensible thing: I went to school for Marketing Communications. I finished the degree. I did the thing I was supposed to do. And then, almost immediately, found myself right back with horses.

A local farrier and trainer encouraged me to pursue farriery, and before I knew it, I was enrolled at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, hammer in hand, learning the craft. I enjoyed it more than I expected. It grounded me. It taught me to see the horse from the ground up, literally. And without knowing it, it laid the foundation for the osteopathic work I would one day fall in love with.

But life isn’t linear. A few years later, I stepped away from horses entirely. I worked as a staffing consultant for a global company, wore the professional clothes, sat in the meetings, did the corporate thing. And then everything changed.

I suffered several significant head injuries, not from horses, but from bikes and slow pitch. Suddenly, I was off work, on disability, and facing years of recovery. My world shrank down to the basics: healing, coping, trying to find my way back to myself. And strangely, beautifully, that’s when horses came back for me.

During my recovery, I discovered the Masterson Method. Something in it lit me up instantly. It was the first approach I’d ever seen where the horse had a say, where their subtle responses mattered, where softness mattered, where the interaction was a conversation instead of a demand. I knew immediately: This is how I want to work with horses. This is how I want them to feel.

That moment cracked something open in me. It was the beginning of years of studying equine therapy, wellness, and the deeper layers of what horses actually need to thrive. And then came the turning point, the one that changed everything.

Osteopathy.

Osteopathy didn’t just change my career. It changed my life. It helped me heal from chronic pain and the lingering effects of my brain injuries. It gave me back parts of myself I thought I’d lost. And once I experienced what it could do for me, I knew without question: This is how I want to treat horses.

So I enrolled in the Equine Functional Osteopathy diploma program with Animal Osteopathy International in the UK. That education was pivotal, transformative, and deeply validating. It gave me the tools to understand the body in a way that finally matched what I had always felt intuitively.

For nearly ten years now, I’ve been treating horses therapeutically, and I still love this work as much as I did on day one. But as my practice continues to grow, another pattern keeps showing up. A missing piece. No matter how skilled the bodywork, no matter how committed the owner, some horses continue to hit the same roadblocks.

And the answer has become, obvious and unavoidable: nutrition. Not generic feeding programs. Not “this supplement because everyone else uses it.” But holistic, therapeutic, species‑appropriate nutrition, the kind that actually supports the body’s biology instead of working against it.

This isn’t new to me. I’ve been passionate about holistic nutrition for humans and my own family for years. But as I dive deeper into it for horses, studying, researching, taking courses, working through mentorship, everything is shifting again. The results are undeniable. Horses who were plateauing are finally moving forward. Chronic issues are softening. Nervous systems are regulating. The bodywork finally has something solid to build on.

It can’t be ignored.

So here I am,  fully immersed in this next chapter, committed to my continued development, and firmly in service to the horse. I offer osteopathy. I offer holistic nutrition. I offer the integration of both. 

Every horse I meet changes me. Every horse teaches me something new. Every horse reminds me why I’m here.

This is where it all began. And it’s still only the beginning.