MKM Equine Synergy Services LLC

11/08/2025

Some Friday thoughts! 💭

Have you ever wondered how the blood 🩸 is stimulated in the horses hooves? How is it able to be pumped from the top of the leg, down into the hoof, and then back up the leg again?

This is part of the intricate “Hoof Pumping Mechanism” and haemodynamic blood flow. 🌀

When the horse places weight through their hoof, the frog makes contact with the ground and the bones within the hoof descend, which compresses the digital cushion and venous plexus; a series of veins located at the back of the hoof that hold

11/07/2025

11/07/2025

•telepathy•

Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be able to speak to animals. Especially horses, but any critter would do.

After several encounters with so called animal communicators along my horsemanship journey I was completely disillusioned.

The reading I had for Kai was nothing but lies and anthropomorphism. The practitioner even went so far as to say he was dealing with gallbladder stones. But horses do not have gallbladders, I questioned? Nor do they see colour the same way as humans, he wouldn't know his halter was rainbow.
Horses do not care about human spoken language, nor do they curse like we do.
(I take that back, they can and do curse. But that message is gotten across by intention and action and not like our human f@$*% expressions)

The amount of animal communicators that mistake a horse's physically energetic stress as excitement about the task, tells me everything I need to know about the clarity of those readings.

Plus if any of it were true, there would be a lot more horses telling these practitioners that they don't want to talk. Why doesn't that occur a lot more often?

So with all that, I laid the idea to rest.

Animal communication, or at least what is available for hire isn't legitimate like I dreamed it to be.

I carried on with my studies, and in due time became fairly handy at reading horses as well as being capable of getting my own message across.
I put in my 10,000 hours towards perfecting the techniques and "hard skills" of this work.

Somewhere along the way, I found that telepathy was already deeply interwoven in the tapestry that is horsemanship.

Telepathy is something to notice. More than something to do.

If the "hard skill" techniques of good horsemanship were marbles in a jar, telepathy would be the space that exists between the marbles.
Barely considered, but always present and tangibly real.

Horses start to offer what I was thinking about next, before I made a move.

(All those transitions they make, long before an official cue. That we humans like to call extremely fine tuned body language perception. Except, it's so fine tuned we cannot pin point what change within us the horses are picking up on. How curious?)

More and more frequently when I coach, there will be an instance I describe something brand new to the student and the horse is already on it as if they've done it before.

A lot of my students joke that their horses understand spoken English. Yet this is more of an observation than a joke.

I most recently worked with a very downhill mare. Drafty and now in her teen years, it appeared she had sunk down her thoracic sling like an old anchor on the day she was started under saddle years ago and remained there since.

I explained to her owner about what we are looking for in her posture. And then this shut down horse who had zero relationship with me to use as a foothold, lifted her withers and offered a little school halt.
I've done nothing more than talk and occasionally feed her a cookie to maintain her interest while I did.

I wouldn't have believed myself a few years ago.

From there, my own horses answer me when I ask "how was your day? How are you feeling?" when I'm back after being gone for 12 hours.
Kai once let me know the fence was down, on the one night I wouldn't have checked otherwise.

Our telepathy expresses itself within daily care and regular training.

This isn't rainbow movie magic where I meditated myself into picking up on some magical frequency, and was rewarded with gossip about a horse's past owners.

Telepathy is refined, tangible and mundane.

I do not believe in telepathy existing without solid horsemanship skill. Without those marbles, there cannot exist that space between them.

If the hard skills are skipped over by the practitioner, the soft skills are never good. There has to be both. Real telepathy cannot be bought or hired! It exists within the spaces allowed for it.

Now to those still reading this, if you ever had your horse pick up a trot that you were planning to ask for but did not do so yet.

I invite you to let this sensitivity snowball into something greater.

11/05/2025

11/05/2025

Horses who don't want to stand quietly for farriers aren't naughty, they generally have some postural issues or pain that needs to be adressed. Warming them up or gentle exercises to help with strength and mobility makes this experience more positive for everyone. How can I help?

11/04/2025

Your horses physiotherapy appointment is only as effective as how your horse lives in between treatments.

If your horse has reoccurring poll tension, feeding from haynets, having a disharmonious contact, riding a horse overbent etc in between treatments will still mean your horse has tension in their poll when it comes around to their next appointment.

If your physiotherapist provides stretches to do and you don’t do them, the problem will continue to bubble.

If your horse is uncomfortable, and your physiotherapist recommends that they see a vet to investigate further, don’t continue to ride your horse.

If you only ride straight lines, rarely hack, and your horse is constantly sharp and spooky so they’re lunged more often than not in a training aid, your horse is going to have reoccurring rib, neck and back pain.

If your horse is stabled for most of the day, or equally spends most of the day in fetlock deep mud, they’re going to be braced and they’re not always going to feel the full benefits of a treatment as treatments will focus on alleviating the “brace” and not on improving performance.

If you’re riding in a saddle that doesn’t fit, hooves that are unbalanced, or an arena with too deep a footing… changes need to happen so that your horse is able to thrive and develop and not just survive in between treatments.

The quality of a veterinary physiotherapy treatment is arguably just as important as the life your horse leads in between treatments.

As horse riders and guardians, we should be seeing the body under the skin; the nerves, the fascia, the muscles and really envisioning caring for this in everything we do 🤍

11/04/2025

Forced Exercise is Inflammatory and Damaging.

It does not matter the exercise. It does not matter the movement. Be it a good solid 20 minutes of long trotting, a walk on a 20 meter circle, a Piaffer, or your very best Renvers. All physical exercises become inflammatory to the body when a horse is forced to do it.

Who decides, who knows if they are forced or not? I do not.

The horses do.

This is not my opinion, I share my colloquial understanding of long held facts about exercise physiology.

We all know the benefits of exercise. All studies point to regular, strenuous, effortful exercise as being key markers in longevity, health and wellness outcomes. When we regularly load and stress our bodies, raise our body temperature, and put effort into hard physical skills, especially when we feel uncomfortable doing them... there is a cascade of benefits created by the body. The body rewards you for stressing it.

With dopamine (key to activation), endorphins (euphoria, pain suppressant), endocannabinoids (calm, euphoria), serotonin (mood elevator, anti-anxiety), norepinephrine (energized, clead-headedness), brain derived neurotrophic factor BDNF (Brain growth and memory improvement), epenephrine/adrenaline (short term power, sharpening focus). Plus a range of anti-inflammatory processes clear the body of toxins, lymph fluid, strengthens bone, muscle, tendon... we benefit this way and so do horses, when we regularly put our bodies under stress in exercise.

I call this the "Body Rewarding Itself". Horses that have broken their own resistance ceiling will have a good relationship to the reward that comes afterwards, and this looks and feels like a horse with a work ethic.

The problem is- consent is key.

The same mechanical exercise or movement, when done through fear, duress or force in such a manner where the brain does not opt-in but does it because they have no other choice... all of those rewards are replaced instead with their dark cousins. Inflammation is now your norm rather that anti-inflammatory processes. Fatigue and fogginess is now your friend rather than focus. Metabolic dysfunction instead of regulation. The list goes on.

Equine vets are currently experiencing a crisis in the health of horses who have worked hard all their lives. Almost unexplainable metabolic and autoimmune diseases are plaguing these horses necessitating chronic medication use and early death.

I believe forced exercise, done in the name of the horses own good, to be one of the contributing factors to this.

Which is why the whole notion of light-force and diet-dominance is still so silly in my mind. Because if you are interested in your training having long term health benefits for your horse, mandating that you have earned your horses voluntary buy in to the exercise should be priority number 1. Not a luxurious or inane afterthought of hobbiests or people whose "kindness kills".

I will say it again.

Involuntary, forced exercise or movement is inflammatory and damaging to a horses health.

The same movement done voluntarily is anti-inflammatory and beneficial to a horses health.

Same rule applies to you.

Which is why the rhetoric of even quiet force is so dangerous. It is giving people permission to continue extracting movement out of a horse that slowly breaks down their health rather than build them up.

10/27/2025

Studies have shown that in horses with kissing spines (overriding or impinging dorsal spinous processes), the interspinous ligament often becomes inflamed or fibrotic.

This chronic irritation can lead to:

🔹 Increased sensory nerve fibers (hyper-innervation)
• This phenomenon, often referred to as neuronal sprouting, is common in chronically inflamed or damaged tissues.
• It heightens the area’s sensitivity to mechanical pressure, movement, or even mild touch.

🔹 Clinical Relevance
• This explains why horses with kissing spines can display dramatic or unpredictable behaviors under saddle, even if they don’t show clear signs of lameness.
• Pain from hyper-innervated tissue can be sharp, localized, and exacerbated by back movement, especially when the saddle or rider compresses the spine.

Massage therapy can be a powerful tool for horses with kissing spines.

Massage helps by:

✅ Reducing muscular tension
✅ Improving circulation
✅ Releasing fascial restrictions
✅ Reducing pain and discomfort
✅ Alleviate compensatory patterns that contribute to pain.

Over time, this support allows the horse to adopt a healthier posture—lifting through the thoracic sling, engaging the core, and reducing pressure between the spinous processes—ultimately promoting better movement and comfort.

🧠 Bonus Insight

This kind of neural adaptation is also observed in humans with chronic back pain, where ligamentous or fascial structures develop increased nociceptive input, contributing to pain sensitization and sometimes movement avoidance behaviors.

* The interspinous ligament connects the spinous processes of adjacent thoracic and lumbar vertebrae. It supports spinal stability and helps limit excessive flexion. In conditions like kissing spines, it can become inflamed, thickened, or fibrotic, contributing to pain and restricted mobility.

Massage with Myofascial Release can be a Real Game Changer for Horses with Kissing Spines - https://koperequine.com/massage-can-be-a-game-changer-for-horses-with-kissing-spines/

10/23/2025

One of the Most Offensive Things a Client Ever Told Me.

It is the hallmark of being professional that often times, you have to bite your tongue, or be calm and quiet in the face of inappropriate behaviour. Thankfully, for the last two years, the folks I have been lucky to work with and work for, have enabled me to be 100% myself. And even solicit my total honest, and unmasked self. They call THAT professional, not the masked politeness that often befalls us all in a working setting.

But before I got that lucky, I was once sitting on a zoom with someone who said something that for me- was wildly, wildly offensive -despite the fact they meant it with good intentions.

"I booked with you because I kept wondering why this guy who appeared to know so much about training, riding and biomechanics, chose to just trail ride."

Framed, of course, in the common mainstream assumption that those that can't do much with horses, trail ride. Or, that lower level horses trail ride. Or that preparing for a trail ride is somehow a lowly endeavour.

I spent about 12 years working in trail riding for the public environments. At various different levels. One employer I had used to only "rescue" horses, meaning not spend more than 1000€ on a horse which in Spain only buys you problem horses. Another would drop a minimum 8000€ on well bred youngsters. The latter once lamented that when they visited breeders and mentioned they run a trail riding outfit, would be shown the horses in the back, with weak spines, minimal bone, poor head set. And she would instead insist on the quality of breeding that they hold Dressage horses in regard for, because her horses work harder and in greater demand than any sport horse could dream of.

What this client said was offensive to me, because they were an intelligent, talented and kind-hearted person making an enormous difference in their local community with advanced, empathic training. And yet, they demonstrated a profound prejudice and ignorance about one of the most difficult jobs you can ever ask a horse to do.

Trail Riding a fit, properly prepared, happy and aware horse is one of the highest expressions of quality training in my humble opinion. Requiring them to be as fit as a sport horse. As calm as a paddock puff. Adaptable as a Police Horse. As agile as a Working Equitation mount. As powerful as an Eventer. As collected as a Dressage horse. Yet be able to do all this with both connection to their rider and independence in their skills, while their rider relaxes and takes in the scenery.

Some of the most impressive feats of training I have ever seen, have been out on the mountain, in the forest.

Not in the arena.