7March 2021
I thought the best way to start this off is explaining how I came about being in the position I’m in today
I grew up on our family farm in the heart of the Ribble Valley. We have had every imaginable creature over the years but consistently dairy cattle, sheep, and Irish draught. horses.
My childhood and in fact adult life has been spent caring for the injured, weak, and infirm on the farm. Wild or domesticated, ours or a stray…… every life deserves a chance to thrive.
My family have been farmers for generations and are all incredible stockmen and women.
I guess this early start picking up the tricks of the trade and my inquisitive nature is what put me on the path to becoming an animal therapist in later years.
As a child I rode ponies, breeding and backing them ourselves or taking on those with ”quirks”- we couldn‘t afford the well-schooled ones!
I guess this is where my passion for helping the misfits really began! The reward from seeing animals grow confidence, blossom, and thrive both physically and mentally is incomparable for me.
Fast-forwarding several years…….
I bought a horse called karuna, pictured below. He entered my life at a time when I was injured and unable to ride I was looking for a ”project“ I could do groundwork with whilst I was recovering from my injury.
He was everything an injured person shouldn’t be handling!!! and I loved him for it! He was my biggest challenge to date, he had mental and physical issues like nothing id owned before. So I set about trying to sell the mysteries he presented. I worked through everything imaginable, even learned of new therapies id never heard of previously!
He was like an onion, with so many layers and complexities to get through and each layer presented it’s own problem.
I saw an owner massage course advertised on a yard I had done groundwork training at and decided I may as well go as I have several horses and knowledge is power! Little did I know just how much I would love my training with Angela Hall from the equine massage academy.
Back home on the farm, I started looking at the career courses she offered. Deciding the course fee would equate to my horse’s therapy fees over a two-year period it was a no-brainer, I signed up for the next course EMA was running.
Little did I know the profound effect this training would have on my entire life
What started out as a cost-cutting exercise for my own horses became an obsession when I started to do my case studies as part of my training. i qualified in the October of 2018 and spent 2019 building a small client base by word of mouth and undertaking more equine cpd and further species training.
I still work full time on our farm and work my therapy work around that and my own animals. I feel incredibly lucky to live the life I am and look forward to working with more owners over the years helping them get the best health and performance from all their animals.
Diane Cornthwaite