In the last few months I’ve been aware of emphasising the therapy aspect of AIT, and seemingly pushing the communication and healing like some poor discarded relative into the background.  The truth is, animal communication is the tool and healing the goal of every single session I do.  But to say AIT is just about healing and communication is a bit like saying a house is built with a site plan and bricks!

Saying all that, I love doing healing work and have spent many wonderful and memorable hours recently with a very loving and beautiful 10 year old Retriever called Ellie.  We’ve been on many different healing journeys together, she’s inspired me to try new techniques, adapt old ones, and in this way has taught me new ways that healing is possible, both for herself and those around her. Over our weeks together, Ellie has reduced me to both laughter and tears, such is the warmth and generosity of her personality, and I know she’ll remain a much loved gift and blessing to everyone around her.  

I’ve also been working with an absolutely beautiful Arabian edurance horse - a typical stallion with attitudes of his own pleasing. The main thing he needed help with on this particular weekend was in loading into his trailer to go off on an endurance ride, as it meant leaving the current love of his life in his field; a very pretty Arabian mare. 

So I spent a session working distantly with him.  We went through the entire procedure – leaving the mare, loading, arriving for the ride, until he could see himself doing it calmly and quietly.  When loading the trailer, I got him to visualize getting half-way up the ramp, stopping to centre himself, taking a breath, looking around and then only walking on when he felt calm.  I didn’t bother to work on the ‘going home’ routine afterwards because I knew he’d be only too keen to get back to the mare again.  But this, I have learned since, was a mistake!

The Sunday dawned.  He didn’t seem nearly as bothered about leaving the mare, loaded beautifully, arrived safely and calmly, but the moment it came to returning he went into March hare mode and it seemed like everything had gone out of the window.  But thankfully, the moment he reached the ramp of the trailer, our visualization kicked into action.  He stopped, took a breath, centred himself, looked around and then calmly loaded the trailer, just as we'd rehearsed.

In a later session, we worked on the ‘going home’ routine.  At the time of our session, he was returning from another endurance ride.  He told me he was hot and tired and didn’t want to bother with visualising stopping on the ramp because he was so tired he would go straight in to the trailer.  When I reminded him about how he did still tend to get distracted at awkward moments, he gave me a sheepish response about not being able to help getting triggered by other horses (pretty mares are his downfall) and agreed to some EFT and visualisation to help him relax.  After this 20 minute session, true to his word he apparently loaded the trailer “like a dream first time.”