Horses

by Les Rees

Les Rees is a qualified practitioner of Natural Medicine for Horses and has opened a practice here in Tasmania.

She is particularly interested in stress related disease in horses and wrote her final assessment thesis on the subject. Stress can cause a lot of physiological symptoms which, if left untreated can perpetuate further behavioural problems in horses. But these symptoms can be treated very effectively with herbal medicine, good nutrition and a training regime that considers the natural learning behaviour of the horse.

Natural Medicine is the practice of holistic medicine and mostly requires more than one herb for the symptoms of disease. In Herbal Medicine the body is considered as a whole, each of its systems working in conjunction with the others in order to maintain a balance that keeps the horse healthy. If one system is weakened by disease it affects the other systems as they have to adapt their functioning to make up for the weakened physiological reactions, therefore the medicines used in treatments are aimed at the functioning of the whole body and not just specific parts where symptoms appear.

Unqualified chat room talk does not take this into consideration and can be not only misleading but detrimental to the health of horses, further more there are contraindications involved in the use of some herbs that could be unsafe for use in some circumstances. A recent example of this was a horse suffering from a chronic itching skin disorder causing the horse to rub the area until it became raw.

The owner had spent a lot of time asking advice from friends on how to deal with it and had spent a lot of money trying the various suggested remedies none of which had accomplished any success. As a result, the horse became stressed & difficult to handle due to the continued use of various washes and creams tried that only aggravated the condition. The reason being because, they could not work on their own.

It needed a holistic approach which was to address both the external and internal conditions to enable the healing of the whole body. Externally, the affected area was washed with Chamomile tea followed by an application of Chickweed & Calendula Cream.

Chamomile is a gentle soothing herb which contains nervine, sedative, anti-allergy and digestive actions all of which are useful for this problem. Chickweed has a vulnerary action which is excellent for the healing of wounds especially for those associated with itching and irritation. Calendula is the best herbal excellent antiseptic & anti-inflamatory.