 So hello friends, welcome everybody today. So today I have Wendy Murdock here and she is going to be talking to us really about the value of learning about our bodies, about ourselves, about our kind of internal responses to things as well as our horses and helping us find ways to learn how we, through exploration, can figure out how to be more secure riders, how to help our horses be more secure in themselves, and Wendy's going to help us really discover the feel part, which is the meaningful part, finding that joy and that growing and finding the journey between you and your horse that means the most to both of you. I did clinics at your mom's place and you were a teenager. How long ago was that? Yeah, oh my gosh, so it's like the late 90s. I've learned so much from you. I really have and I have applied it throughout all of my teachings. I mean it really, it's something I totally integrated and I just loved it and you turned me on to Feldenkrais. I ended up taking some classes at our UW system. They had some workshops on the pelvis and then you know the head, neck, and shoulders and I went to those because of you. Oh that's awesome. That's really great. Yeah, I really appreciate it because it's because I have arthritis too. I had limitations and you were able to help me learn how, through alternate paths of movement, you can find actually still a really good functional body inside of you, which was pretty good. Yeah and that's, you know, I've worked with a lot of people with arthritis and stuff and it's amazing how when we start to look at possibilities, we realize that actually we don't have to let the disease totally control our lives, right? Her true of so many things that people, you know, like I was just doing a clinic over in in the Netherlands and I had people, this one woman and she had, how many things did she broke and just amazing number of things but you know and I was like yeah and that's normal, you know like when I do clinics and I ask people, you know, about their injuries and at first they don't, they tell me, oh yeah, well I maybe, I don't know, I'm fine and then an hour later they're, oh yeah, I forgot I broke my back two weeks ago and that's too funny. Oh it's hysterical and so they start telling me all these injuries they've had and I'm like, you know, your horse knows all of them because it's affected your body and you start to move differently and so the horse has to compensate for that and it's not like we have to have a perfect body or have no injuries like I will always have effects from the injuries I've had but we don't have to let them override our function in terms of, you know, optimum so, you know, people with scoliosis or, you know, you know, whatever broken back stuff, it's so many people I find they think that's limiting them and then when they find the better function they realize it's not just really cool. Yeah and that's really neat to be able to share and help people through that because it's not only just making a difference in their bodies but the body and mind are so connected. You can't separate them. You honestly can't separate them. So I do this thing, so I take in the sure foot pads and I use it with people now in my clinics which a friend of mine was like a few years after I started she goes, I put my students on it it's really great and I'm like, oh that's a fabulous idea. So I make this balanced trail and some people call it hopscotch some people call it the trail of torture but I send everybody through it and I use not just sure foot pads but a variety of different unstable surfaces right and I have everybody go through it the first time and after that you know and they all manage to handle all the different objects even one that's around when we have to put both feet on and that's kind of a challenge and I call the last like the horse being out in the field you know the horse in the field he can go and find water and get hay and play and whatever and he can deal with his own body as long as there's no outside influence and then I put this through the trail again and I push on them and that's sort of my evil side I feel like so nice and actually I have this little evil side because I push on them and and I can push in different places but the thing that that lately I've realized it's so fascinating because I knock almost every single person off the pads right and the more unstable the surface the easier but I get people like I did this little lecture up in Canada when I was up at the Equivo workshop and I called it balance versus behavior and we tend to think that behavior is ruled by you know that we can do we can condition out of it right but actually balance has so much to do with behavior and so when I push on people some people want to hit me some people get really upset some people want to run away some people feel you know mortified and and those are all the emotions that horses go through when they're out of balance right some of them want to bite or kick some of them want to run away some of them get really depressed some of them just kind of get sullen some of them just take it and that's what I think one of these people is they have the same reactions because we both have what's known as vagus nerve which is the biggest nerve on our body 10th cranial has a piece that goes to the heart and the gut and the biggest deal with vagus the biggest question whether it's a horse or a human that's being asked is am I safe so when I push on the person they're not safe anymore right because they're not balanced and this is how we feel when we're on horseback so whether it's unsure foot pads or on horseback or the horse itself when we feel out of balance we're going to react instead of act right right or respond and so then I show everybody how to be imbalanced because I don't want to leave them like feeling like oh my god you know so I show them I know I'm not that mean right um so I show them what they have to do to be in balance and it's the same thing they have to do in riding right and they've got to be solid in their back and allow the knee to go forward down so that the hip can open to the degree that I'm applying a force so it's if you do more than I'm applying you're going to land on your face well actually on your knees and if you do less you're bracing and it's about equal and opposite forces that you have to be able to adapt the amount of force I'm applying and respond to that and as soon as I do that with people the thing that's so fascinating is several one they have perfect ear shoulder hip alignment you don't have to tell them to look up they automatically look up they come up with their head because their pelvis is over their feet and they're in balance two their arms drop so I don't tell anybody about their hands and arms anymore unless I make sure that their basis support is really secure because without the basis support they can't give up their hands right right you know it's this is like I see instructors tell people to stuff with their hands but they haven't addressed the basis support so they can't or if they do they're still not secure so they're going to grab again so I'm always looking at if I make the basis support more secure whether it's a horse or a person right surefoot for the horse and surefoot pads and then my riding stuff for the rider then they feel more secure and then they can they can respond they can hear what I'm saying they can pay attention to what the horse is doing they can interact and have communication because they're not worrying about their balance right now and so it's the the more I do this this in a sense the simpler it becomes in that most of the behavior I see from people and horses and especially like people riding is there the women are afraid well why are you afraid you feel insecure why are you insecure you don't have a good basis support do you know you don't have a good basis support well you know something's not right but you're not sure what to do to fix it right you're not sure we'll look and the other really interesting thing with using the balance trail is I'll put my hands say on their belt area at the back and I'll say rest on my hand and they throw their chest back or they pull their shoulders or they move somewhere they're not moving where my hand is so that body mind thing that you mentioned like yeah um their self image and their and that's a whole folding crisis idea right self image their self image of where to move isn't clear enough to be able to respond in a way that's going to make them secure so we have to remap right they have to figure out okay where is my hand it's on your lower back it's not on your upper back so you don't need to move your upper back or do anything there right you need to find my hand and first they do all these habits that they don't know they have and I can and I and I'll show them it's still not secure and then suddenly and it only takes like a nanosecond suddenly they'll feel it right just for a second and the nervous system is so amazing that as soon as there's a sense of balance it's like whoa what was that and then how do I get that back how do I do that again right you know exactly what I'm talking about your laugh and I can see it totally well you helped me find it so it's and I love I think it's so interesting because you're pointing out how you're actually dialing it into this place where you're helping people on the ground finding out when their vagus nerve is threatened and that that system is threatened you're figuring out what their type of response is because it's so different and I love how you say you know people respond differently and horses respond differently so you need to find these responses and that's kind of getting to the root of it right to help increase the awareness and then through your mean exercises I remember when you wrapped up like a mummy I looked ridiculous oh that's right we did do that yeah well yeah but it was perfect because if you're teaching the feel and I think that's that's something that people you know they think all you can't even teach feel but I encourage everybody go to a Wendy Berger clinic because she will teach you feel and it's neat because it's like you hit on it and you get it and all of a sudden your body starts seeking it out because you now know so instead of and it's a feel thing so it's not what you're saying put this here put that there what you're doing is you're saying you know what's happening and you're questioning the body and you're encouraging the body to find it yeah and then and then when it does it's magical right and then people can find it on their own they don't have somebody to be telling them and that's the point is that um you know first of all I when I work I work through movement right and you know that most of my teaching like the balance trail and I always tell people that's how horses learn they learn through movement and we're actually we learn through movement too but we forget we forgot that all that childhood development was movement we didn't really have language or really any kind of intellectual concept until we're well in our 20s right right so we're learning through movement so so we're just like the horses and and that there's no language in the motor part of the brain so since riding is so much about movement trying to put words on it is really really difficult so I keep the words to an absolute minimum right really simple but I give them a lot of feeling and I and like you know I'll show them like the board under the foot to where to feel the foot I'm in relation to the stressor and just everything I do is about experiences but that's the thing is that I you know like movement is like when we learn through movement we own it too that's the other piece right and so that's the piece with the balance trail or mounted work that I do is I don't tell people to do this or that I give them options and then I let the horse vote okay go back you know go back and forth between the old place and the new place and the horses with your foot they do that all by themselves you don't have to tell them that you'll watch them they'll go back and forth and they'll tense the neck and let it go and tense the neck and let it go but people give me the hardest time about this right they can tell people to go back and forth between the old place and the new place and people complain about it right they don't want to go back to the old place they're right um they don't want to experiment but you know what I always tell them is if I'm not there how are you going to find the new place if you don't map it out right so it's about experimentation and exploration rather than getting it right or wrong I mean there's no wrong it's just you know what is this do when you do this and what happens when you do this and the horse gets to vote right he gets to show you which one makes more sense to him right yeah that's so cool that's so cool and I think it's so important for us to recognize that and be able to read our horse's responses and to know if it's working for the horse as well and that's so nice to have there actually a tool a biofeedback tool for us to tell us where we need to be oh there's biofeedback on the planet right and they're so fast they're so fast they are and they're so new I mean it's just like the littlest thing right and they're and the hard part is that people don't realize you know um I one time had a student she was fairly novice and I put her on my reigning horse blondie and I you know I gave her a lesson and she said something to me that was so profound at the end of the lesson she said if I hadn't been there she would have thought what the horse was doing was was not listening to her but in fact the horse was doing everything her body was saying and she didn't know what she was saying so she thought the horse was misbehaving right and it was such an eye-opener because I was like wow how often do people misunderstand that actually what they thought and what they did were two different things like when people have problems with canner I take them off the horse and I watch them canner on the ground because I can see what their thought of canner is and so often what they think they should do for canner is not what they should do for it like they turn or they twist or they drag a leg or then they wonder why the horse doesn't canner well right and so I improve their canner on the ground so they have a clear understanding of what canner emotion is and when they get back on the horse it's so much better because now they're giving the horse a clear message about what they want right it's like it's so important that we take the time to stop and ask do we really understand what that movement is or do we really understand what the instructor said or does the instructor make it really clear about how to use our body in what they're asking right so so many times you know like a lateral work is a big big one you know people say well I want to start doing lateral I'm like great get off your horse and show me leg heels and you don't have it you know they do all kinds of things and they all have a cool picture right so there's no wonder that the horse can't do leg yield because they're not clear about it right and you know when the trainer gets on the trainer has a clear picture in their mind and body it goes together and the horse does it and then they wonder what why can't I do it well you're not clear enough about what you're doing and how to do the movement and you know I tell people all the time get on all fours crawl around on the ground yeah because if you can't can't do it on your own four feet you know then how are you going to understand what it is the horse needs to do especially if the horse is learning right right no I think that's that's great and I think it's I think it's so empowering to people as well because a lot of people they get into this place where they're like well I can't and I'm struggling and it's just never right and you're giving them such key tools to really break break it down allow them to find the feel allow them to feel the organization of the hoof falls as the horse does leg yield or does not feel feel embarrassed or wrong I mean I I've taken you know like upper level riders and watch them do flying changes and go okay that's why you're having a problem so it's not about you know some people think why do I have to go back and do that because everybody needs to know you can right I like I mean you need to know you can and that's where you can break it down and sort it out and really make it clear because if you're not clear how is the horse supposed to do it right yeah yeah yeah totally so that's that's awesome so tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got here because you are like just this wealth of knowledge and it goes so deep and it's so varied and it applies to absolutely any discipline how did this how did it happen like what happened to get you here well I always say that gravity is not discipline specific right right so you know when people don't want a lie ride Western I write this right I'm like gravity doesn't care what style you're sitting in what kind of horse you're on or what discipline you ride right so I have a I was in undergrad for animal science and then I went to grad school for equine reproductive physiology which is horse hormones right and while I was there I was managing an event barn and we had a bunch of horses we'd gotten from Georgia and so I wanted to be a tough event rider so I thought okay there's this one horse that I knew it could rear and I was gonna gonna ride it and I and I got on and it reared up and hit me in the face but you gotta be tough right you can't let the horse win at least that's what I thought at the time right and he flipped over and then he rolled over me and punched my femur through the socket and then me between the legs when he got up and broke my pelvis in two places so needless to say that straight me off the ground took me to the hospital and I had surgery the next day and I had three pins in my left hip socket so you know 15 seconds and it changed my life and I was about 20 I was 27 so I got back on a horse in six months a little tiny gray pony about 13 hands and because I was determined to get back on and the thing was that because I had this I mean when they did the surgery I have this huge incision on the left side of my leg it's called a Mercedes incision because it costs that much it's the symbol it's the Mercedes symbol right so you know it's cut through all this muscle and so I didn't have the strength in my leg I didn't have the function in my leg and most normal instructors they don't know how to deal with people that are that injured they just don't know what to tell them so a year after my accident I went to my I met Linda Tellington Jones somebody gave me a newsletter while I was laying in the hospital and I went to her training a year later and I walked in and it and it was obvious that this was a good place for me because it was such a different approach and Linda's the one who introduced me to the Feldenkrais method so because she had taken the Feldenkrais training with Dr. Feldenkrais in the 70s in San Francisco wow okay yeah so that's where team came from was this combination of the Feldenkrais method in Linda's first knowledge so that's where I got exposed to the Feldenkrais method and then a year later I was at another training with Linda in Connecticut and Sally Swift was there so that's where I met Senator Sally Swift and so then I started working with her and I finished with her in 92 but you know the thing for me is being a scientist by training it's got to make sense to me and I have to figure out how it logically works within like the known laws right and and with the body so there were a lot of times when an instructor would tell me something and even some things with center riding that didn't make sense to me and so I you know I really would break it down and I really look at it and of course I met Joyce Herman let me know Joyce I met her in 1990 and learned about saddles from Tony Gonzalez and Joyce and Andy Foster and of course you know just took a lot of training with you know Dr. Clayton and John Zahorek because you know I just have this this desire to understand how things work so I you know added the anatomy and the biomechanics and then I finally went back into the Feldenkrais training starting in 2001 and trained for 16 years with I did the guild training in the United States and then I trained with Mia Siegel she was Feldenkrais's assistant for 15 years before I started training and she was she's friends with Linda because she was assisting Dr. Feldenkrais at the training that Linda took so this is really interesting because the the circles keep completing over and over so yeah so I added the Feldenkrais training the formally training and I just use that every single day in my teaching and it's it's so powerful and you know when people come to me and ask me well what should I do if I want to be a better teacher better instructor I'm like take the Feldenkrais training because it's it's it's the root of movement it's the root of function and it's really that function and understanding movement in our own body that's going to help us understand function in the horse function in our students you know and and it's just so powerful to go through that process as you as you know because you've been doing some Feldenkrais work and it's it's so again I keep seeing empowering but it really this work that you do in the Feldenkrais work it really empowers us to listen to our body and to learn from them and to explore and to question and I think that's where the these two breakthroughs actually occur yeah yeah it's so much in the experimentation as opposed to like trying to get it right it's like when you when you let go of right and start looking at well what's going on right now um and really getting present with what's happening with the horse or what's happening with yourself that's where really the magic happens and that's that's why I love surefoot so much because it's really about being very present with the horses and observing and really seeing like the pads are like a magnifying glass so when you put a horse on a pad you see like a breathing change in three to ten seconds where you see eye blinks or lip licensure next lowering and then you can watch how they're balancing over that foot and how they organize in relation to the foot which is key for the horse because that's all he gets is his foot you know them like so surefoot uh I discovered um in 2012 and it was another 15 second moment of like you know mind-blowing change when I put the first horse on a pad but the thing that's so meaningful with surefoot for me is that we give the horses the chance to show us what's going on with them so it's not training it's an offer and we're there to facilitate and there's no fail so even if a horse doesn't stand on a pad which you know doesn't happen that often but does happen um you learn so much about the horse like I was just in Canada and I had this horse in for three days he didn't stand on a pad but what we realized was the size of his bubble how he didn't feel safe how to help him feel safe how to help him become curious and then trusting so that we could start to offer and then yesterday I got an email and the owner has his foot on the pad and it's so exciting because she she had been pushing him more than he was really ready for but she didn't realize it you know and so um and he's he was born this way you know he wasn't nothing happened to this horse she bred him but he came out really really sensitive and so she's done a lot with him and he's really neat horse I love him um but this you know has the whole issues about his feet and what he touches and how he reacts to it he's dumped her quite a few times because of it because he's so quick and he would get disturbed but when we really broke it down and really looked at the smaller details and how to help him trust to overcome those anxieties and and really feel safe with the person we're going to have to safety right now now he's learning how to trust her and that he has a choice so he can approach or he can step back or you know like I let him like hide behind me and look at the pad but she really got to see just how deep this goes and how important it is to work it through for for everybody's safety and comfort right right so that's what I love about surefoot is it's it's like it's felt in Christ it's totally felt in Christ right it's this whole idea of exploration and no fail and learning and observing and and the cool thing about the horses is that it's so profound to them that when you watch you know it's so hard to watch a video and really get what it's about when you see a horse stand on a surefoot pad and you see the degree of relaxation and then the fact that it carries on afterward which I still don't understand like right I'm a scientist right by training and I have asked so many people the past seven years what do you think is happening how do you think this is working and we all have our guesses that's what they are their guesses they're educated guesses right uh-huh um but we we don't totally know how it's working we just see that it really does work um right and and it does work like not just at the time the horses on the pad but um the effects can last like I was my horse Dennis was working on my horse a few months ago and she said you know that sure foot pads you have I'm like yeah she said I have a client and the horse had to be tranquilized for the farrier and they did surefoot with that horse two times and now they don't have to tranquilize them anymore wow and I was like wow that's awesome right it's really cool and this is a story you know I I don't even know the person she's talking about I don't know the horse I just know that they got the pad and they did the process and now everybody's safer and the horse is better right right right wild it is wild you know my mom told me because you know my parents have a farm and stuff and just because you've been there and you've found it so my mom has the sure foot I haven't experimented it with it but I need to because she told me she's like you really have to try this it's just it's so interesting and she's like when I when I put cashmere on it it makes such a difference in how she is she just totally melts and and I was like huh because my mom is like the weirdest concept I'm the first one to admit that okay well how how exactly did you I mean like so okay so it's like obviously it comes out of my Felding Christ experiences and I had this horse that I would see him two days a month Monday Tuesday every month and in the past in the month between she changed the saddle and she put a jumping saddle on it was crooked and it put some pressure on the right back corner and so then the fairy quick the horse and when I saw him he was lame in the right hind leg and so we switched back to the dressage saddle just to see if that made a difference the horse was a bit better but he really wasn't totally better so I knew I was going to see her the next day and I'm thinking about her and and then I went home and I was talking to Joyce Harmon um Dr. Joyce Harmon because she's where my horse lives actually is her house oh really oh yeah I'm trying to get Joyce I'm trying to get Joyce on for the fair and she was just too busy and didn't have time to get it all that's too bad that would have been great um but anyway so she's she's amazing um she is yeah she's really amazing so anyway this was in 2012 when standing deaths were just becoming popular and she's like I want to stand at my computer instead of sit like okay and then I want to stand on a pad and so then she while we're talking she said you know they put dogs on pads for rehabilitation and so I'm tapping away on my laptop while I'm talking to her and I'm looking at these pictures of dogs on different pads and I said do you think that would work for a horse and she said I don't know but just you know when you do it just time it for 15 seconds I'm like okay so I grabbed something out of my shed and I drive to the lesson and all my students are used to me doing crazy things right so I walk up and I go um I'm going to stick this pad under your horse's foot and she's on the horse right um so I stick it underneath and I time it for 15 seconds and the horse walks off he's totally different 15 seconds and I'm like what happened so we spent the the rest of time just messing with it and I could only do his back feet I couldn't do it he wouldn't let me do anything with his front feet fine no problem next horse was a quarter horse that had done western pleasure and the woman wanted to event so she the canner wasn't very good so he loved the front feet but didn't want the back feet but in an hour we had a round canner and then the next horse was a halflinger in an hour we had a round canner and I'm like I don't know what this is but this is something this is meaningful to the horses yeah so I started calling up my dressage turns I'm like can I come over and do this weird weird horse and they're like sure come on over yeah yeah well then I got a little clean and I flew out to Washington state to do a clinic and I didn't take anything with me and I got out there and I was looking at this horse I'm like oh I need to put a pad under his foot so somebody had something in their house and we just messed around and all the horses changed and I'm like this is so cool so then I flew home and then went off to Holland right um a little bit of jet lag there but I go to Holland and um I take my pad with me and I work with this horse and I video it and I go to Mia Siegel right and I say Mia watch this video tell me what you see and she's watching and she's like look look there there's changes in c67 and now look the pelvis just changed and she's I'm on the horse in the video and she's watching and she's saying look there's the change there and there's the change there and you can see it all these changes right and I was like wow that's really amazing so I just started putting pads underneath every horse I could find you know and seven and a half years now and I have um veterinarians using it as rehab like um Dr. Rachel Bellini she's amazing she's a holistic vet she just wrote a post on my um short foot page all about stability should put two parts and just validating the importance of stability in horses and how we take it for granted and really you know it's like people you know we think horses are athletes okay great so that they really know where their feet are not true right or that they really are grounded not true and um you know they're they're just like us they get injured they change they get habits you know they have a bad fitting saddle or their teeth were bad and then they finally got it fixed but they have a habit and um I've talked to Dr. Robert Bowker you know he's this really amazing guy up at Michigan State he's now retired studying horses feet and looking at all the nerve endings in the foot and the whole neurology of the hoof and um you know it's you start to realize well I did how important the hoof really is like we take it for granted we take it for granted you're gonna get on your horse you're gonna go out you know in Colorado and go chase some cows and that horse is going to put his feet down just right every single stride so that you can you know kinner across the the the horizon over all kinds of terrain and your horse is going to stay upright with you on its back right and that's all because the foot gives reports back to the brain and the brain gives reports back to the foot so that it lands in the right place right right you know and the more you think about it it works perfectly every time right yeah and the more stunning more you know amazed I am at how incredible the system is the design of the system to give the feedback to organize everything so that you can you know like go over an event course and have the horse land and actually stay upright like crazy and and that's how important that foot is to meet the ground and so if you have a horse like I have people actually that are starting horses and they put them on sure foot pads before they start them because the more balanced the horses the easier they're going to start and I have people with rehab I have one person out in Colorado and whenever they get a horse in for training they put it on sure foot pads and so many of the problems that were the reason why the horse came to them go away right doesn't have to do with like the procreation or like what part of it and so you know there's that's the thing is there's so much going on that foot you've got the proprioceptors which tell us where we are in space you've got fascia you've got pacinian receptors rafini receptors you've got acupuncture tang points I mean I'm starting to think of the feet as like four brains four little brains down at the end of the leg that have to report back to the central brain to tell everybody hey this is where we are and this is the timing right and so if there's a misfire or a misconnection or you know something's created a habit like the horse say he got injured and so now he's just like a person off loaded that leg for a while he's not going to move the same unless we bring back the function restore it to function the way it was before the injury that's almost encouraging a reorganization of the entire body through everything because it's all connected so it's through that's right you're reorganizing the entire body in relation to the foot because the foot's what meets the ground and how that foot meets the ground is going to determine how that whole system organizes in relation to that foot right so the horse with a thousand pound horse you've got a 40 pound head at the end of a three foot lever arm of the neck right with the center of mass at the 13th to 14th and the counterweight of the bridge eight feet away from the head at least right I mean from a mechanics perspective this thing in is amazing organizing and so that foot has to hit the ground in such a way to keep the whole system upright and if say that horse and this is one of the things you can see on surefoot pads you know I look at the foot and I think of 12 o'clock being straight ahead and six o'clock at the back 39 right so I think of a clock and you can see where horses have more pressure at say one two and three on the right foot and 10 11 on the left so that they're they're dropping their weight in well that's going to affect whether shoulder is relative to the foot and so say you have that on one foot and you want to make a turn and the horse is dropping in on that foot in terms of weight load and the shoulder leans out well the horse is going to have to go with the shoulder weight leaning out because it's not underneath the foot's not underneath the shoulder right so you know if you want to balance you've got to have the foot in the right place yeah it's so interesting because it goes right back to where you started in the beginning with the vagus nerve yeah how is your reaction when you get you know out of being stable when you're threatened and this is what I'm seeing so often that when I put horses on surefoot pads that are behavior problems or you know people want to call them resistant or they're you know they're pushy or they're you know whatever behavior you want you want to attribute I put them on surefoot pads and they get grounded and pretty soon those behaviors I mean literally can disappear in minutes or less so I went to one place and they had this thoroughbred they were a thoroughbred rehab center and I had 15 minutes because I was catching a flight and I walk in the barn and I look at this gray horse and I was like I want your gray horse she's no no no he's a butthead I'm like I really want your gray horse now you know no no no he's such a butthead you don't want that horse I'm like yes I do so finally she relented she brought the horse out I had the half physio pad which we usually use to like when fairies are working this stuff to make the horse more comfortable anyway so all I had with me right so I put the foot on the on the pad right front foot and in 10 seconds this horse dropped its neck closed its eyes and she was completely blown away because all the behavior stopped like stopped right no chain bleeding no thrown his head around no fussing no stomping and it was like in 15 seconds and I've seen this before so you know I wasn't surprised she was completely blown away and and it's like is this horse a butthead or is this horse unbalanced and insecure and it's a thoroughbred off the track where so many of the horses have you know that classic race horse shewing which doesn't give them good support right and so literally in in 15 seconds this horse just took a big breath and just closed his eyes and was just like thank you right so how much of it could be just discomfort you know foot sore or you know feeling fought like they're falling or you know think about it think about I take a hold of your head and you feel like you're falling and I tell you you can't move exactly right how you gonna feel you're gonna get upset I'm gonna say wow you know you're telling me I have to see it still but you've got the thing I need to balance my head I can't put it where I needed it weighs 40 pounds at the end of a three-foot lever arm you know and I just bring it over here and you're telling me not to do that now what do I do right I move and then you're yelling me because I moved because I was trying to put my balance yeah yeah that is so interesting that is absolutely fascinating I will be going over to my parents and good out time yeah but playing around with it you know and like with vagus nerve vagus like unhappy vagus is can go either hype hyper or hypo but horses that fool around they're not okay like so many times we we think of horses as just being behavior problems when they're messing around and that you know go to pick up their foot and they drag it out of your hand or they paw with it and we and we think that oh you're just being a stupid horse or you're just you know spoiled but those horses are actually not okay those horses are in sympathetic too high and so vagus is not happy and when you offer them comfort and they feel secure those behaviors go away and I I had another horse I remember for the first day of the clinic was two-day clinic he would just he paw and paw and paw and I try to put his foot up and he drag his leg out of my hand and I'm not going to hold him if he's going to do that right but he would just throw his leg and throw his leg and I got him on a pad a little bit and I didn't worry about it next day he comes in the ring I can put all four feet up had switched off like a light fell asleep so you know how much of it is that they just feel like the little kid in class that fools around that gets the negative attention because they're not okay right and they're they're feeling uncomfortable and then if we can make them comfortable the next thing the behavior is gone rather than constantly trying to deal with a behavior that's really a balance problem right right and I'm not sure if it's not going to work a hundred percent nothing works a hundred percent right we all know yet but it's worth the try because when it works it's it's like so amazing and you can sure if it's portable I have people take it to the horse shows they put the horses on the pads before the competition you can use it free and post exercise I have people with endurance women in Australia and she used the pads at the Shaharazad 400k endurance ride where they're doing 80k a day oh geez and she did two to three minutes per horse and at the end of the ride she didn't see any of the compression patterns in the horses that she'd seen for the past six years when she'd done the ride so she had seen like yes soreness that would start up in the withers and then work down because they're on bitumen and it's cambered so sloped tar roads and this time she didn't see that so two to three minutes per horse just imagine your endurance horses how much better they're going to be if we can right reset them at every break it's not illegal because it's just it's not a drug no no they're just standing on something exactly so anywhere you want your horse to be calmer more confident you know more secure better behaved that's where you can use surefoot and I've literally stopped at lesson and put the horse on pads and gotten immediately after the pad something that we were trying to get for 45 minutes until I thought about using the pads oh man that is so fascinating and so yeah so just out of this you know thought I know just out there and but when you explain it I can completely see how it does all the things you do with us people yeah us reorganize and find security within through being in balance with gravity exactly that's exactly it's like yeah because you know you've since you've worked with me you know that that's really what I'm after with people and this just does it for the horse and you know like I put people on the surefoot pads but the difference with horses is we see this deep level of relaxation they look super tranquil like they'll even like close their eyes and they they look like they're sleeping but they're not they're just really internally processing and the reason I know that is because when you take them off you let them walk for you know a minute or two if it's their first time and you can go right to trotter canner right so they're not asleep they're just really experiencing something so profound that's internal that's important to them that the feedback system from the foot which we don't fully understand is making a huge shift in the brain huge shift that is so neat and I think it's so important for people to hear that the horses behaviors are not they're they're an expression of what they're feeling inside their behavior and the things that we kind of will mentally attribute to the behavior they're not being bad or being naughty or it's it's what's going on inside and when you can address that it's address it so easy I mean what a simple what's worth it worth the try for anybody right absolutely it's worth the try and that's what I tell people it's like you know it because like and rehab if you have a worse it's laid up you do all the other legs that are okay because then you can keep all the little tiny postural muscles in play you can keep them working while the worse is laid up so that you're not deconditioning completely and so then when the vet gives you okay you do the leg that's been injured and you always start with hard and work from hard to soft right unless like if you have a laminated course then you go to soft you just give them as much comfort as you can but you know that's all explained on the I have a lot of a lot of videos and stuff on my youtube channel murdoch method and there's tons of videos about surefoot there and you can see lots of verses and on my facebook page surefoot ecline because it's you really need to at least watch video of this to see what's going on and it's like like your mom has been telling you so that's great yeah yep yep and I really it's it's ridiculous with this fair and stuff I haven't written I've written maybe three times in the last four months it's but this has been amazing it's fair it's like really caught on like wildfire hasn't it it has I'm really excited I'm really excited and what I you know what I really like about it is I've done all these different disciplines and I always feel like it's one's pitting against the other and I just don't like that feel because there's so much to be gained from everybody and having this eclectic mix of people and what a rich learning experience and so I'm so excited about that piece of it yeah like people that would not have ever found you are now going to find you yeah it's awesome and they're going to resonate you know or not all of them because they might not be ready for it and that's okay but I can be exposed and not have to you know pack up and travel and do all the stuff that is required of going to a fair which somebody don't get to them right and you know like I've been going to Equitana in Germany and S in Germany which is the biggest horse expo in the world it's nine days it's I've forgotten how many square meters of floor space like 250,000 people through the door it's a madhouse and it's nine days you know it's like exhausting but it's also amazing and you know it it's to bring you know that kind of level here it's really hard to do but see through online you can get all those people together where people can get exposed and it's really awesome yeah well cool and I so appreciate you doing this interview and people are going to get so much it's just like jam packed with information so I'm so glad you're doing this it's great it's really awesome yeah well thank you and thank you everybody for watching the interview and joining Wendy and I and I appreciate you all for joining us all of us presenters and people on this journey of launching a new kind of event that's yeah and and really the bottom line is having a better relationship with your horse right that's really the bottom line is that we you know through this experience people can gather information so that they can improve that relationship with their horse which is just so important that's what it's all about it is it's that it's that journey isn't it and it's and it's um the experimentation and that it's okay to be be wrong just play around and you'll kind of find what more child like you know when we were kids like I didn't have a pony when I was a kid but I had a horse and I did all kinds of things that you know I never told my mom right like I would not tell her I had you know some of the things I did but you know in that child mind you just play with stuff you don't have any judgment you're not like trying to get it right or wrong and obviously when we're older we do have to think of safety and so that's where if we listen to Vegas and we listen to our own self and go okay this makes me nervous what do I have to do to make myself feel safe but then we can also by doing that have the exploration of going well what you know what is that about how can I feel safe and how can I make it better for me and my horse and really have a good time right right cool well thank you for that Wendy we appreciate it thanks so much all right well bye everybody bye