Observing horses with essential oils

I use essential oils in my candles and soaps because I don’t like synthetic fragrance, and because of Zoopharmacognosy

In 2019 I went to a Horsemanship workshop

I’ve been a horse girl since I was about seven years old. Since 2013 my horsemanship instructor has been a very talented and enthusiastic woman named Sarah.

In 2019 I arrived at Sarah’s place in Kildare for a weekend horsemanship workshop. It was meant to be a continuation of our last workshop but when I arrived I found Sarah fully obsessed with and giddy to tell us about the work of someone named Carly Hillier.

Sarah had been to one of Carly’s workshops and was falling over herself to share with us everything she had learned, and for us all to try it out immediately. So we scrapped the original plans for the workshop and played with essential oils instead.

Carly Hillier uses essential oils to help horses with physical and emotional issues of all kinds.

Carly is a Zoopharmacognocist and the founder/director Whitehorn Equine Health.

Applied Zoopharmacognosy is an observational science involving offering plant extracts according to presenting symptoms enabling domestic and captive animals to self-medicate effectively in environments devoid of therapeutic plants.  

Since attending Carly’s workshop Sarah had purchased a large variety of essential oils. She had about 30 of those 8ml bottles (the ones you recognise from the health food shop), all arranged nicely in alphabetical order in a two tier storage box, of course!

To show us the method she had learned it was a case of ‘pick a horse any horse’, and all gather round to watch.

‘Self selection’ in Zoopharmacognosy is a very gentle method of allowing the horse to choose the oil that it needs.

This is done by subtly offering the horse the option to smell different essential oils.

You stand relatively near to the horse and go through the options one by one; removing the lid from a bottle of essential oil and waiting to see if the horse shows interest in it. There is no need to shove the oil right up near the horse, or to encourage the horse in any way to engage with it. If the horse shows no interest in the open bottle after a minute or two you replace the lid and move on to the next one.

The horse will ignore every bottle of essential oil until you take lid off the one that matches with the health issue it is having.

The horse will then suddenly become interested in an oil. The horse’s interest is how you know it’s the right oil.

Once you and the horse have found the right oil, all there is to do is simply allow the horse to engage with the oil for as long as it wants. This can look different for every horse. Some may get very close to the bottle and lick it or try to chew on it. Some may simply breathe deeply and disappear into a state of deep rest. Some horses will yawn, or stretch or lie down. This may go on for a few minutes or half an hour. (This is where previous experience in horsemanship is very useful. People trained in horsemanship can read the horse and see subtle changes in it’s facial expression, breathing pattern, behaviour etc.)

That morning we went around the barn and tried out this method on three or four different horses. 

It was fascinating to watch each horse self select the oil it needed and the different ways each horse engaged with the oils.

As beginners we could then retroactively ‘diagnose’ what issue the horse may be seeking relief from. The Whitehorn Herbals website gives a list of issues usually associated with each oil so we could match up the oil and symptom that way.

With her training and experience Carly does not have to do such a long process of elimination with each horse. She has studied and observed connections between which horses choose which oils. However the method is the same and the horse is always in control of how much it engages with the oil. Oils are never added to the horse’s food, applied to the skin or in any other way ‘given’ to the horse.

The oils are both a diagnostic tool and a medicine.

In some cases, allowing the horse the opportunity to engage with the oil a few times a day for a few days will give the horse’s body the support it needs to heal itself.

In some cases the next step may be to investigate further. If for example the selected oil is for muscle ache the next step may be to get a better fitting saddle that does not cause pain.

In Conclusion

The conclusion is there is no conclusion.

I know that what I observed watching horses with essential oils was real. I know that humans too are animals and potentially can benefit in the same way from therapeutic oils. However we are much more estranged from our body’s wisdom than horses are.

I know that essential oils have been prized in many cultures for as long as they have existed, but much of the indigenous wisdom about them has been lost. 

I know that most scented products are made with any old junk to just ‘smell nice’. I know that aroma is more significant than that which is why I never use synthetic scents. 

I have huge respect for the oils I use every day; for their long history and the people who grow and make them. I am sure that my work with these oils seems very clumsy and haphazard to the few people on earth who really understand them. 

There could be a lifetime of learning about these oils and I continue to be curious, open minded and ready to learn all of it.