Attuned Assessment online workshop for horses
Workshop on how to set up and carry out an Attuned Assessment of your horse to answer questions like “Have we really ruled out pain?”, “How does my horse feel about food?”, “How does my horse learn?”, “What is happening when we communicate?” and “How is my horse’s lifestyle serving them?”
What is Attuned Assessment?
Attuned Assessment is my method of going deeper than a conventional veterinary physical examination with an animal. It consists of distance observations, paying attention to behavioural indicators, and assessing their body with your hands. Slowed down observations with the animal in as free a setting as is possible to begin with are highly valuable. Using various stations they can interact with give more information. And finally cultivating two-way communication in order to give the animal a voice can tell us where their needs might not be being met, where they hurt, and how they feel.
This way of collecting information about the physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing of animals has them as an active participant in the process. As a result of this and the logical and sensitive way in which you go about it, the process can often reveal more than a conventional clinical examination does. This is not meant to teach you how to perform a clinical examination or to diagnose, and it is vital that qualified professionals carry out this part of the process of investigating our animals' ill health as well. But as an owner, this will equip you to help out the attending professionals, to better evaluate the efficacy of treatment or management, and enhance your relationship with your companion.
Often people say “if only they could talk”, but they are communicating with us all the time, we just have to listen and be able to figure out what they are telling us
What can these online workshops help you with?
• Gaining a deeper understanding of your animal companion and their unique needs - how do they best learn and communicate, how is their lifestyle serving them, how do our interactions affect their health and wellbeing?
• Assessing for subtle signs of pain or discomfort - do they have pain, are we managing it successfully, can it be resolved?
• Evaluating progress in ongoing health conditions - is your horse improving or not, do we need to change strategy?
• Deepening and celebrating your relationship with your horse!
Attuned Assessment involves distance observations using various food, scent, or play stations as well as hands-on observations and setting up two-way communication
How and what do we assess and how does this help us understand our horses better?
We use a combination of distance observations using various food, scent, or play stations at liberty as well as hands-on observations and setting up two-way communication. Through these we assess:
Static and dynamic posture, range of motion, musculoskeletal development, and hoof morphology - these can tell us about our horse’s underlying neurophysiology and patterns of movement and weight-bearing, which direct us to sources of pain and dysfunction
Feelings around being touched - this directs us to pain, fear, fear of pain, and our overall relationship with our horse
Feelings around food - this tells us whether there is something we need to change about our horse’s lifestyle, and helps us set up and carry out positive reinforcement training without feelings of food frustration or conflict
How your individual horse communicates and learns - enabling us to better formulate our training approaches
Postural and expression observations - non-vertical cannon bones, triangulated eye, dip in front of withers, and deep groove in thigh muscles are all indicators of how the body is dysfunctioning, with pain present
Postural and expression observations - tight muzzle, triangulated eye, turned-out right hind foot and slanting left front limb - show tightness in shoulders and groin, and slight worry about moving like this
What’s included?
• Live introductory Zoom call and access to the recording
• PDF worksheet containing useful exercises to assess your own horse
• Live follow up Zoom Q&A call to discuss what you learned and discovered and access to the recording
• Submit your horse as a detailed case study - provide photos, videos, and history and receive individualised feedback during the wrap-up group Q&A call, PLUS arrange a 15 minute private Zoom call about what it all means and where to go from here
• Longterm access to private community discussion group on Facebook for posting videos, discussing observations and sharing ideas
What do previous workshop participants have to say?
… “I know it sounds corny to say that it’s life changing but it really has changed everything for the people I work with” …
… “You and your horse are individuals, this course helps you… in the way that works for both of you” …
… “This helps you develop your method with your horse, and that’s why it works”…
Lisa Luongo, dressage trainer, riding instructor and equine bodyworker of Lisa Luongo Equine
Attuned Assessment webinar excerpt:
Downloadable PDF on applying Attuned Assessment to ruling out pain:
Next workshop dates: October 2024
• Opening Zoom call: Thursday 10th October at 7pm BST (UK time)
• Closing Q&A call: Thursday 24th October at 7pm BST (UK time)
Sign up here:
Gain a deeper understanding of your animal companion and their unique needs by assessing for subtle signs of pain or discomfort, how they feel about food. Evaluate progress in ongoing health conditions and deepen and celebrate your relationship with your animal.
About your host
Dr Lily Wilson BVetMed BSc(Hons) MRCVS and ZZ Hot Haida, Sunny to his friends
Lily is a veterinary surgeon with a wide breadth and depth of passions and expertise in species-appropriate husbandry, anatomy and locomotion, pain physiology, harmonious and ethical riding and training, and ecosystem health.
She has worked in practice with horses, donkeys, pets and livestock, in private and charity clinics, in general practice and in a hospital as an emergency clinician, both in the UK and overseas. She completed a Batchelor of Science degree in between the second and third years of vet school to do a deep dive into comparative animal locomotion, skeletal pathology and wildlife health. Alongside her veterinary career she has studied and practiced riding teaching, saddle fitting and ethical training and has a deep fascination with the influence of movement on physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing. Recently she has also done postgraduate study on biodiversity and ecosystem health, especially focusing on the ingredients for harmonious, mutually beneficial coexistence of people and our animals with the natural world.
Lily has now taken a change in direction from solely conventional veterinary practice. Her path into this was illuminated by the guy in the picture with her, ZZ Hot Haida, Sunny to his friends, who came home in summer 2020. Lily needed a teacher but didn’t know it at the time. Sunny has shown the way to recognising some inner work changes that were needed and gives daily life lessons, alongside the rest of the herd Beau, Pepper and Ellie. This now informs a large part of the decision making coaching that Lily offers, integrating this with scientific and clinical knowledge.
Lily’s passion is helping people and animals to live their best life together by nurturing their all-round wellbeing and their unique partnership. She is fascinated by all aspects of wellbeing from how the body functions in health and disease to how we all learn, think and feel, and how all of this is intertwined. She wants to help people on their journeys of discovering how to keep horses’ bodies and minds healthy, comfortable, active and engaged and to explore the integral role of both the horse’s and our emotions in all of this.