‘Dr. Feelgood’ For Horses Sports Massage Therapist Gets Whinnies Of Approval From Four-Legged Clients With Sore Muscles

Lynn Johnson delivers endorphins to the occupants of the Fairview Farm stables.

In quite a few equine eyes, she’s as popular as the guy who brings the oats and hay. If they could speak, they might nickname her “Dr. Feelgood.”

“They whinny to me,” Johnson says. “That…horse, I cannot walk by his stall. He will knock, knock, knock until I pet him or at least acknowledge his presence.”

That’s because Johnson knows how to get under a horse’s skin.

Johnson has traded her RN title for the more obscure initials ESMT, equine sports massage therapist.

The former nurse became trained and certified in horse massage more than a year ago when looking for methods to improve the performance of her own show horse, Scooter.

Now, many high-performance horses in the Spokane area get regular visits from Johnson as a preventive measure against injuries.

Dressed in steel-toed cowboy boots, Wranglers and a down vest, Johnson spends a chilly morning working on a number of dressage horse “athletes” that live at Fairview, just north of Spokane.

Not only do her practiced hands loosen muscles taut from jumping, reining or dressage workouts, they also stimulate endorphins - brain chemicals that make the horses feel good and win Johnson nuzzlings of thanks.

Beau, a mottled gray quarter horse, is a little jumpy as he leaves his stall. Instead of a massage table, Beau is led to an open stall with plenty of room for his full-body massage. Instead of New Age music, he listens to Johnson’s soothing horse chatter.

“Yes, you’re a very nice boy,” she coos.

After a few minutes of sliding her fingertips through his rhomboideus, brachiocephalius and trapezius muscles (which support the neck and withers), Johnson is warm enough to shed her vest.

As she works, Beau arches his neck, his ears twitch back and forth, and he tips his head attentively as if listening to his muscle fibers rubbing against each other.

“Beauby’s telling me there’s something in there, but that feels good,” she says.

The 5-foot-6, 120-pound Johnson is dwarfed by her clients, but she never uses a stool (too dangerous and limiting). Nor does she climb on the horse to get to hard-to-reach areas.

Her own slim yet respectable brawn, developed from weight lifting and months of massage, match the task at hand.

After the neck, her hands run along the back.

“That’s the one area where I demand perfection,” Johnson explains as her fingers search out knots and sore spots.

Then her hands drop underneath Beau’s belly, her fingers rippling across abdominal muscles. Beau stamps a hoof and emits a long, loud snort.

“That’s a trouble spot,” notes Johnson. Straddling a leg, she reaches around the thick appendage and rubs the pectoral muscles between the chest and belly. Beau passes gas and relaxes, eyelids drooping as the endorphins do their work.

Horse massage actually is an ancient art, practitioners say.

“Early Greeks have been depicted doing percussion (a massage technique) on their horses, and in some ways massage is what grooms have done,” says Mary Schreiber, the founder of Equissage, the first school in the country to teach horse massage.

Schreiber, who lives in Virginia, started the school four years ago after turning to massage to treat her own horses’ aches and pains. She applied the technique to racehorses at a track with dramatic results, she says.

“I thought I’d like to massage every horse in the world,” she says. “That’s why I decided to teach. There were just too many horses for me.”

The benefits of massage last longer on a horse than a human, because horses don’t have the everyday stresses of humanity that tend to interfere with the healing process, Schreiber explains.

Owners and trainers have noticed a difference in their massaged horses.

“It helps us develop the muscles uniformly, it helps us continue to push the horse along,” says trainer Gary Striker. “The horses are happier.”

Veterinarians are open to the new trend in horse massage, as long as it’s not used as a diagnostic tool or as treatment for a medical problem.

“As long as it’s used to facilitate better athletic abilities, it can be very useful,” says horse veterinarian Katherine Burnett. “It’s definitely not quackery if performed by the right person.”

Johnson describes her work as incredibly rewarding - not just financially (she charges from $20 to $50 per massage).

“It brings tears to my eyes a lot, especially a horse that’s in so much pain, to get them to trust again,” she says as she turns a blanketed client out to pasture. “We ask a lot of our horses. This is my way of returning the favor.”

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