I met Ed the first time at a dressage show in El Paso. Baleno was tense, sour, almost lame but not quite. As he has been most of our time together, Baleno has a very hard time picking up and using his right hind leg. He’s been having regular hock and stifle injections along with supplements with MSM, Glucosamine and Hylauronic Acid. None of this improves Bee in any particularly stunning way. At the dressage show, I noticed Ed’s card and called. He came to the stabling area and worked on Baleno for about 45 minutes.

Was he instantly better? No, because the soreness, just like in humans, takes much more than one treatment to resolve. But he was relaxed, and Ed showed me all the places on Baleno that were tight or locked up. Those spots closely matched Baleno’s laundry list of ills: He doesn’t bend or take contact to the right. Baleno’s head and neck were tight. His right hind doesn’t step up and under for collection—his right gluteus had a lump the size of a baseball.

We forget sometimes that our horses are athletes. They need the same muscle care—from stretching to physical therapy to massage—that we do.

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow up with Ed back then. Baleno got better, loosened up, had a few decent (although not great) dressage scores. It was a mistake not to schedule a follow up appointment.

When you watch Ed work, you realize how incredibly knowledgeable he is. He can pinpoint an exact spot and tell you what problems your horse is having. He can position his hands (incredibly strong and even a bit gnarled from years of work)in the right way to work out the kinks in the muscles and the muscle connective tissue.

During the clinic, Ed had us team up and work in pairs and threes on the demo horses. After the demonstration he’d come around and help us locate the spots he’d talked about and show us how to use our hands.

You have to dig deep. The horses react. Boy do they react. The lick their lips. Close their eyes. Drop their heads. Or sometimes they arch their backs in pain, “Ouch.” Ed says, too, that massage is part of the equine-human bonding process.

Even though Bee didn’t come along as a demo horse, he is going to get a massage, or maybe five. I’ve scheduled Ed to come out to the farm on Wednesday for a session with Baleno. And this time, I’m going to take notes and make sure I learn the moves myself so I can give the gang (not just Bee, but all the horses) a little loving touch.

If you’d like to learn more, Ed recommends a book called Beating Muscle Injuries for Horses, by Jack Meagher. It is quite old but still available from Amazon and other major book sellers.