At the time of this writing, Molly is in foal. However, her problematic temperament was causing concern as to how easily she could be approached and handled as the pregnancy progressed. This was the main priority for treatment, to "mellow" the mare into a more docile and receptive emotional state within the remaining month of pregnancy, for her own good, that of the foal, and for the safety of the handlers.

Molly's Past History and Temperament

Hefina has only had Molly for eighteen months, but has a good record of the mare's past history up to age four or five. At the age of four, Molly was sent away by her owners to be "backed" by a trainer. In this trainer's hands, she ended up badly injured, bleeding from the ears and nose, hardly able to stand up. Apparently she had tripped over her side reins and landed on her head.

The owners went to great lengths with veterinary treatment for her and after a long ordeal and much suffering, she survived. Since that time, five years ago, she is left with a tilt to her head and a difficult temperament. The previous owners were apparently quite intimidated by her, and had allowed her to become dominant. Out of a combination of her past traumas, long medical record, and her relationship to her owners, Molly had become a difficult mare to handle. She has not been ridden in the last five years. Additionally, her sire, a well-known competing thoroughbred, is reputed for his bad temperament; so Molly's character could also be partly hereditary, perhaps a latent tendency that has been brought out and exacerbated by her experiences.

The result is a mare that is short-tempered, bossy, and aggressive (biting more than kicking), pulls away from handlers, gets very stressed and agitated at the sight of the head collar, dislikes being caught and stabled, and is generally hard to cope with.

Occasionally, one does get a glimpse of the calmer and more loving temperament that is locked away behind all the armouring of the trauma. In these rare moments Molly is affectionate and enjoys being made a fuss of. Hefina had the feeling that the mare wanted to be nice, wanted a good rapport with her care-givers, but could not help herself. It seemed that the memory of her past traumas and bad experiences with handlers kept coming to the fore and was lurking just beneath the surface. Horses have very long memories and will not forget negative experiences.

Previous Treatment

Hefina had felt from the beginning that Molly was stiff and in pain, especially head pain. She has had her teeth checked, and been seen by a chiropractor who thought there were problems in the neck and pelvis. Homeopathic treatment, specifically Arnica 200c which we had recommended some months ago, has not made any impact on this. The suspected headaches were confirmed by a Bowen therapist.

Bowen therapy is a hands-on holistic therapy akin to Reiki, but involving special movements across muscles, connective tissues and the energy meridian lines. Molly had one session with the Bowen practitioner, but was too tense and nervy to continue. The only result of the session was that the practitioner left with a terrible headache of her own that lasted for days.

Our Consultation / First Cycle of Essences

Molly was quite reticent about approaching us in her paddock, coming closer for a tentative sniff, but then backing off. Her companion in the paddock is Polo, a little grey "Welsh Section A" mountain pony. We noticed that Molly was particularly bossy with him, which may be a perfectly normal manifestation of herd hierarchy, although the dominant instinct in Molly is exaggerated and so we thought the rapport between the two horses could be a secondary priority for later treatment. It may also be helped by this first cycle of flower essences, although this was not a deliberate aim in making our selection.

Based on what we saw and were told, we provided Hefina with the following essences for Molly:

Star of Bethlehem for her past trauma (we give this essence very frequently, even when details of the trauma are vague or unknown. Horses with any kind of past history have very often been abused or traumatised in some way).

Dandelion for what appears to have been a great deal of muscle tension due to emotional stress. We were led to this essence by the fact that homeopathic Arnica (given for past injuries) had not had any effect, and also by the very interesting way that the Bowen therapist had evidently picked up on some very strong negativity from the mare. We felt there was much internal armouring and lots of traumatic emotions stored in the body and musculature, possibly causing the tilt to the head, the suspected headaches and the problems detected by the chiropractor.

Vine for Molly's dominant streak, which had been encouraged by the previous owners. This is also her genotype remedy, addressing the inborn characteristics she has inherited from her father.

Snapdragon as Molly's preferred mode of aggression is with the teeth, not so much with the hooves. This essence also releases tensions stored in the jaw.

Rose Quartz Not a flower essence but rather a crystal essence, we added this in as we have found it useful in the past to deal with problems where animals resent and struggle against trainers, handlers and other "authority figures." It releases repressed anger and works synergistically with combinations of flower essences.

The treatment bottle was given to Hefina on Friday, April 27, 2001. She was unable to start giving them to the mare immediately, and did not start until Sunday, the 29th. From then on, essences were administered twice-daily, eight drops on handfuls of hard feed (the only thing that Molly will happily come for). The first report of progress came after only two days of treatment. Hefina said:

"Molly's doing really, really well. She's much more amenable already - calmer and not so grumpy! She's still a grumps with Polo, the little pony, but that's part of being a horse, I think, rather than any sign of psychological damage. I'll keep you informed on any other developments, but it's looking good so far!"

Slight further improvement was reported on the third of May, with the mare happily accepting handling and back-scratching.

On May 5th, we had a report from the veterinary surgeon who attends to Hefina's horses. He had a look at Molly and had no problem handling her. He reported that she was as quiet as any other well-behaved horse, and was surprised to learn that she had so recently exhibited these negative behaviour traits.

Writing on May 28th, 2001; Molly foaled two days ago - a perfect little colt. She is already proving to be a great mother, and Hefina and others have  had no problems with handling them. We are pretty pleased.

Read three other animal case studies from S.A.F.E.R.

Brandy is a Springer Spaniel pup belonging to Mary, Gael's cousin in Ireland. When we started the case, he was about 4 ½ months old. Brandy's problems are very much behavioral, training issues.

This is the case of a Retriever named Jacques . This is one of our recent cases. It was carried out by distance consultation, the dog and owner being in France (showing that in this type of therapy it is not actually always essential to have personal contact with the client / animal).

Jessie is a three-year-old, female, long-haired German Shepherd, who has been in trouble with the law after biting a teenager five months ago. Under the Dangerous Dogs Act (UK) if she transgresses one more time she is at risk of being forcibly taken from her owners and destroyed. The owners have been cautioned and threatened with a criminal record. The owners requested a remedy "to stop her from doing this again."