Hands That Listen: Transforming Your Approach to Animal Wellness

Discover how to shift from the conventional "fix-it" approach to animal bodywork to creating a tactile conversation with your animal's nervous system. Rather than attempting to stretch, release, or realign body parts, Mary Debono reveals how supporting the nervous system—the body's true control center—creates profound, lasting change.

Mary shares case studies of horses with chronic back pain and dogs with spinal issues, demonstrating how gentle, respectful touch that honors the animal's innate wisdom achieves results. She explains why poking into sore areas creates defensiveness rather than healing, and how her approach creates an environment of safety that allows the nervous system to let go of protective habits.

Listeners will learn how the ribs and sternum play a critical role in back mobility for both horses and dogs, and how to begin using their hands to "listen" rather than manipulate. Mary offers a simple but profound starting exercise to shift from doing bodywork "to" your animal to engaging "with" them in a co-creative dialogue. This episode provides a foundation for a deeper connection with your animals while improving their comfort and movement—a true win-win approach that benefits both animal and human.

Key Takeaways

• Creating safety is essential for lasting change—poking into painful areas only creates defensiveness
• Horses and dogs develop habits of overusing some parts of the spine and underusing others
• Rib and sternum mobility play a crucial role in back health for both horses and dogs
• Touch can be a two-way conversation where both beings are listening to each other
• The bodywork isn't done "to" the animal but co-created "with" them through respectful dialogue, creating deeper trust 
• When you improve your listening skills with your hands, both you and your animal benefit

Resources:

Grab your FREE videos on Connected Breathing and Rhythm Circles to help your dog. 🐕 https://www.marydebono.com/lovedog 💥

Get your free videos on Connected Breathing and Rhythm Circles with your horse. 🐎https://tinyurl.com/equine-videos

Get Mary’s bestselling, award-winning book, “Grow Young with Your Dog,” for a super low price at: https://tinyurl.com/growyoungwithyourdog. Demonstration videos are included at no extra cost.

Want to sit in a more balanced, secure way? Click here for all the details on our Feldenkrais series:
Effortless, Balanced Sitting: A FeldenkraisⓇ Movement Series   

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and does not constitute medical or veterinary advice or professional training advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider if you, your horse, or your dog are unwell or injured.  Always use extreme caution when interacting with horses and dogs.

Email mary@marydebono.com

Transcript

When most people think of helping their horse or their dog feel better, they think of doing some kind of bodywork technique. Stretching something, releasing something, realigning something, in other words, fixing something. But what if there was a more powerful, more effective way to do it? Well, that's what we'll be talking about today. Today I'd like to invite you into this idea that we can use our hands to have a tactile conversation with our animal's nervous system.

Because after all, it's the nervous system that controls basically everything in the body. It's the nervous system who we want to have that conversation with. It's the nervous system that's tasked with keeping us safe, keeping the horse safe, the dog safe, whose ever nervous system it is. Right? That's the nervous system's job. So there are wonderful ways of honoring that, of recognizing that the nervous system is the control center.

And when you can have a conversation and support and offer a safe environment for that nervous system, for that horse, for that dog, that's when true, lasting change can take place. And in addition to that, it's an incredible way to build really deep trust between you and your dog and your, and yourself, your horse and yourself. Really, really important way to do that. Because you're, you're coming from a place of respect.

You're honoring the animals innate wisdom. You're not trying to impose change, you're not trying to quote, unquote, fix them. You're saying, okay, let's see what we got here. Let me see if I can give you a hand. Make life easier. Isn't that what we want? We want to be, you know, we want our animals to have the best lives possible. And this is a wonderful way to help them in, you know, body and mind.

And by the way, in case we're meeting for the first time, my name is Mary Debono and this is the Easier Movement, Happier Life podcast. And it's for you, your horses and your dogs. So let me, let me tell you two stories. One will be about a dog, one will be about a horse. Okay? So I, I have worked with many horses with all kinds of issues. And for example, lots of times it's back issues.

And when I say back issues, I'm not a veterinarian, I'm not a therapist in the, in the traditional sense. I don't diagnose, I don't treat, but I help improve movement and well being for animals and human. That includes humans as well. And for humans, I use the Feldenkrais method. For animals, I use A method that I call dibono moves. So, yeah, let's start with the horse. So maybe this horse.

I've worked with many of them, but I'm thinking of one in particular. He has a tight back. Or I should say he had a tight back. So his back was tight, sore. You know, he was. Trainers that always call back, you have to lunge him, you have to lunge him a lot before you ride them. And, you know, all these different things. And of course, the vet had checked him out.

There wasn't anything that the vet found that they could do medically for the horse. It's just, yeah, warm him up long and low, all that kind of stuff, which could be useful advice, but it's not really addressing why the horse had the problem. Instead, what I did and what I teach my students to do is to listen to what's happening, to ask, why is the back tight? Why is the back getting sore?

Why is the horse's nervous system creating those conditions? Why is it tensing those areas? Why is it tuning out other areas? And so, like a detective, we examine, you know, with our hands. We're, we're, we're talking, we're saying, is this movement easy? Is this movement easy? And all the while, we're creating a kind of an aura of safety, if you will, with the horse. We're not pushing the horse into any discomfort.

We don't poke into the horse. Oh, my goodness. Whenever I see people do that, I cringe. If you have to poke your fingers into the horse to see what's going on and you're creating just more pain, that's certainly not, not the way I do it. Right. Because all you're doing there is you're making the horse more and more defensive. Now, if you're a veterinarian or something, there, there may be very valid reasons why you're doing that.

But if you're trying to set up an environment for the horse to feel safe and to feel listened to, poking the horse to feel where they're sore. I have, I have never done that. I, I. And again, I cringe when I see people do that. You see clinicians doing that all the time, you know, and I don't understand why you need to do that, because you can, you can learn how to determine the quality of a muscle, like the tone of the muscle, how it feels.

You don't need to press your fingers, you know, painfully into a horse to get a pain response. Like, like, why would you do that? I don't want to elicit a Pain response when I'm working with horses or dogs, don't. Or humans for that matter. Right. We want to encourage this again, this environment of safety so your, the animal's nervous system can start to let go of its habits because it's always trying to keep that individual safe, remember?

So you don't want to set it up that it's going to be defensive. Okay, so back to the horse with the sore, tight back. Well, what my students learn to do, what I've done for many years, is I start to explore how the horse's ribs and sternum move. And because they play a huge role in how well the horse, and this is true for dogs as well, can soften and round the back and how fully the spine can participate in movement.

In other words, just like us, horses and dogs get into habits of overusing parts of the spine and underusing other parts. So what we want to do is we want to restore this sense of movement, awareness, flexibility, whatever you want to call it, more equitably throughout the body. And we do that through gentle ways of using our hands to wake up areas and then to passively invite movement there.

But always done in a safe place, pleasant way. We want to associate movement with ease and pleasure. So this is important. And then suddenly the horse's back is softer, the horse isn't holding that tightness there and the soreness goes away. So same exact thing for dogs. So a lot of dogs get, you know, tension in the back. A lot of times we don't notice it because we're not riding dogs.

So we may not notice that their back is getting stiff. But maybe you see that your dog is changing the way he or she walks. Maybe they're, you can just see that they're more stiff in their spine. Maybe they're doing what we call a pacey walk or pacing, where for example, a quote unquote normal walk is a four beat gai. And. But if you see your dog suddenly start to move both left legs, like the front and the hind leg at once, and then the right pair at once.

Right. And if they've never done that before, that can, may not always, but it often indicates some stiffness in the spine, stiffness in the rib cage as well. And so the dog learns that, oh, it's easier. It's not intellectual learning. It's like the nervous system figures it out. It's easier to just move the two legs on each side as one rather than having that more differentiated movement of the four individual movements of the legs.

Now with that Said some breeds of dogs naturally pace and it's not a problem. It sometimes has to do with the leg length in proportion to the rest of the body. Some dogs do a variation of a pace called an amble, which is slightly different. But what I would say is if you have any question about that, take your dog to the, to your vet and ask your vet, you know, please look at my dog walking.

Is this normal? Notice it change. You might even want to take your phone and video your dog and then play it in slow motion. It may help you see things a little clearer. So in any event, dogs do display back stiffness. And yes, you see it more as they get older, but even younger dogs constrain their back and that could lead to a problem later on. So in my book grow young with your dog, I talk about this dog named Cassie.

And Cassie, she had a kind of a sudden onset of a back problem that was very debilitating. I go into great detail in the book about it, but basically she, she ran into a chain link fence and then after that she, she found it difficult to walk home from the park. They lived very close to the park, long story, but of course her person rushed her to the vet.

And what the vet discovered, because they did imaging, was that she had a lot of arthritis in her spine. Now, that arthritis didn't show up from one, you know, from that incident in the park. It happened over time, but it took, you know, a traumatic event to bring it to the surface. And again, I go into detail of how I help that dog. But bottom line is, I'll give you the Cliff notes version is I very, very gently used my hands to again communicate with the nervous system, help Cassie feel safe with me, and then support what she was doing, use my hands to like literally support her muscles so she could let go.

And then very gently started to bring new awareness, new movement to all the parts of her spine because just like us, she was overusing some parts of her back and under using others. When I helped her feel how she could distribute that, that work throughout her whole spine more in a more balanced way, she stopped having any problems with her back and she went on to live many, many more years being a very active dog.

So it's a very similar thing as to what I do with the horses. Like the horses and the dogs and the humans, we have a lot more in common than not know our structure is a little bit different from each other. You know, horses, we tend to work with them only standing up. Dogs and humans, you could lie down in different positions, et cetera. But although we do work with some horses if they, if they're comfortable lying down, and some horses that maybe they're, they're injured or ill and they have to lie down.

So we certainly do work with horses lying down, but it's more common that we don't. So with that said, this is a very different approach than trying to fix an animal. So you might say, yeah, but Mary, didn't you fix that horse? Didn't you fix that dog? No, I did not. I most certainly did not. All I did was provide a supportive learning environment for them and I listened to their nervous system and responded accordingly.

And yes, I, I did help them feel how they could have, you know, newfound awareness, new movement, you know, just passively took them through some movements so they could develop, they could create these new neural connections. But it was not something I imposed on them. I didn't crack anybody's back. Not, you know, and again, this isn't to say like all techniques are bad or anything. It's just that that's not what we do here in this work.

I'm much more interested in having this very kind of intimate conversation with an animal where you feel deeply connected to them and you, you refine your communication using your hands, using your heart, however you want to think of it. But you, you really listen to such an extent that you build this huge amount of trust and you have this very clear communication. You're really tuned into each other, you're listening, you're feeling, you know, you're doing something.

The animal responds and then you respond to their response. And it's just this lovely interplay. It's this lovely co creation. I'm having so much fun in my, my classes right now. I'm in the myths of teaching a move with your horse foundations program. And you wouldn't believe how awesome. Well, yes you would. You would believe how awesome these gals are. But anyway, they are amazing. Amazing. They're having amazing results, they're doing beautiful work and it's just so fun.

So shout out to all my move with your horse people. And I'll be doing, I'll be opening a beta program for the dog people soon and I'm going to offer it at a really crazy low price. And it's all this, you know, group coaching anyway, ton. We're going to have a ton of fun because it's just so fun to teach people who really want to be in a relationship with their animal.

They prioritize that, they prioritize communication and well, being, and, you know, you both feeling, well, like, like that's, that's what I love so much about this work. Because when you do it with your horse or your dog, you, you feel better as well. You have better body awareness, you have better coordination. You feel more flexible and more vital. So it's, it's a win, win. It's a win, win.

And again, it's nothing done to your animal, but with your animal. So, yeah, if you have any interest in that, let me know. Just feel free to reply to any of my emails if you're on my list. If not, just go to Mary. You know, write me an email@marydebono.com also in. If you're listening to this on a podcast app, there should be at the beginning of the description a little link where you can send me a text message.

So if you have anything you want to tell me, there's your chance or email. Either one works. So I hope that gives you some food for thought. Oh, one last thing. If you want to get started with this, if you want to shift from this idea of doing something to your animal and shift it to doing it with your animal, let me just give you a really quick little exercise you can do.

It's so simple, but it's so profound. Now, I go into much greater detail with this in my program, but these are the first steps. Whether you have your horse or your dog, whoever you're working with, just simply put your hands on their rib cage. With a horse, you probably want to put both hands on one side of the ribcage. With your dog, put one hand on each side.

If they're, you know, lying on their sternum or if they're sitting. But if they're lying on their side, you can put both hands on one side. It's the same as with a horse standing up. Sometimes I'll do, I'll put one hand underneath, but I would say in this case, when you're first starting this, just put both hands on top. Okay? So maybe that's, that's the best way to do it.

If you have a horse, you're doing it, of course. Two hands on one side, the dog lying on their side, two hands on the top on the rib cage. Now, if you have a really tiny dog, maybe only one hand fits, and you put the other hand maybe on the pelvis, on the hip area or something. And just listen, just listen. Don't try to manipulate. Don't have any preconceived outcome.

What do you feel under your hands? Can you Feel their breath and just really pay attention to that and then ask yourself, okay, I have to remember that I'm feeling my dog, I'm feeling my horse, but they're also feeling me. So can I imagine that they put themselves against my hands to feel me? The same way they would if they turned their head around and put their muzzle on you.

Right. If they touched you in the arm with their muzzle. Right. They would be touching you. So can you imagine. So shift your perspective there. And can you imagine that they're touching you? They're touching your hands through their rib cage, and they're picking up lots of information about you, your emotional state, how you're breathing, where you're directing your attention. You know, all kinds of things, how much tension you have in your arms, your hands.

They're picking up a lot of things there. So you're in conversation with the nervous system. The two nervous systems are getting linked up, yours and your horse or your dogs. And how do you toggle back and forth between thinking of you're the one touching your animal to your animals touching you, and how does that change the experience for you? And then slowly, slowly, slowly, can you disengage your hands, but just have them maybe an inch away or even half an inch from your animal?

And can you still feel the resonance of that connection with your animal? Can you. Can you imagine the. The sensory experience that you just had in your hands? And. And doing these little exercises like this can really refine your ability to listen, to connect with the animal's nervous system and to really listen, to be sensitive in your hands and your whole self. When I say hands, it's really your whole self is listening.

So have fun with that. Let me know how it goes for you. And thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I love sharing this work with you, and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye for now.