Tuesday’s Horse

Certified equine practioner uses stress point natural methods to help relieve pain in horses

By Karen Gardner, Staff Writer for the Frederick News-Post reports:

MOUNT AIRY — Little Troy walks funny, which is not good for a standardbred horse. But with a little human common sense, this equine can live a happy, healthy life.

Lorrie Bracaloni, a certified equine practitioner, tries to help horses, and humans, restore their natural balance. She does this by going back to nature with her horse and human clients.

The treatments are simple, but Elle Williams, owner of HorseNet Horse Rescue in Mount Airy, said her horses move better and seem happier after her sessions with Bracaloni.

Bracaloni, who lives in Boonsboro, volunteers her time with some of the 50 horses at HorseNet’s farm on Mattie Haines Road. These horses have seen better days, either in competition or as someone’s pet.

“I get the ones nobody else will take,” Williams said. Owners want a horse they can ride, and Bracaloni said her work simply gets the horse back in tune with its body.

Bracaloni and Williams hope to start a program for troubled teens, bringing them in touch with abused and neglected horses and helping both to learn from each other.

For now, Bracaloni does consultations with humans and equines on preventive, natural health care. She does paid consultations when she can, but she spends one day a week at the rescue.

Bracaloni’s message is basic: The body is designed to heal itself. Eat a healthy, natural, whole-foods diet, and chemical imbalances will slowly right themselves. Get rid of stress, get back to simple pleasures, and life becomes less complex and better.

Bracaloni, 51, started working with horses because she’s owned or ridden horses most of her life. She grew up riding, and later trained horses. Her daughter is a jockey at Charles Town.

Much of what she teaches is common sense, she said. One-third of her equine clients have spinal misalignments, which can result from something as simple as putting a saddle in the wrong place.

Bracaloni also tries to listen to the horse, to learn whether it’s confused or defensive or lonely. “Everything is stored in memory patterns,” she said.

Little Troy had been put out to pasture after she was born with deformed legs, a result of bad positioning in the womb. “They fed her and that was about it,” she said. The horse, a standardbred, could not race or breed.

Bracaloni touches her, using the Bio Energy Analysis Technique developed by Regan Golob, a holistic chiropractor in Washington state. Her methods, however, are rooted in nature. She leaned against Little Troy and said the term that came to mind was “jovial.”

Afterward, she walked her in circles, moving first right, then left. That is good for clearing the mind, whether human or horse, she said. “Walking in circles stimulates the brain,” she said. Babies crawl in circles naturally, stimulating both sides of their brain.

The horses at HorseNet often come to the rescue because their owners have given up on them. “They want a job,” Bracaloni said. “They want something to do. They want someone to love them. They don’t know why their owners gave them up.”

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