At 21 years old, Mckenzie Brown launched Royal Vision Equine, a business that provides horse structural therapy.
Brown’s business opened on Monday, June 26, and she is already booked out for a full two weeks for her services, which she said differs from regular chiropractic and massage work for the animals.
“My goal is to get the horse structurally balanced, so I’m looking for those imbalances in the horse and I’m using different modalities to try and achieve that balance,” Brown said. “So joint mobilization, moving the fascia around, massage, soft touch chiropractic, just different modalities in order to get what I need, and since every horse is different, they’re going to need different things.”
Brown also looks at the horse’s hooves to see how they impact the animal’s body.
Brown is learning her trade at Hope and Body LLC in New York where she spends a week at a time. She is currently working on her case studies.
Brown focuses her work on performance horses that do unnatural movements in the sports of barrel racing and rodeo roping.
“So horses that are stopping really hard, driving their butt in the ground, they’re doing spins, they’re chasing cows, all different things,” Brown said. “What differs a performance horse from a domestic, regular, pleasure horse, they’re going to be working harder. They’re getting ridden consistently. They’re going to shows, they’re competing, they’re working hard. They got probably more muscle. They’re a little bit more fit and they’re an athlete.”
Brown, who describes herself as a “first generation cowgirl,” is the first person in her family to take on a career path like this. Her parents realized her passion for horses wasn’t “just a phase” and helped her begin horse riding at the age of 13.
“I’m just a big supporter of these horses are athletes and we need to treat them like athletes,” Brown said. “They need to have good nutrition, they need to have their feet done regularly, they need to have their bodies balanced, so that way they’re able to be their best at their performance pen.”
Brown said many people treat horses with injections and other unnatural methods.
“I get it to an extent, but I was always curious how much can we fix things naturally before we go down that route,” Brown said.
While attending school in New York, Brown learned about something that contradicted an age-old thought process in the performance horse world.
“For years we were taught to, if you look at a horse with bad conformation, you don’t buy that horse. You don’t want a horse with bad conformation, you know, because you can’t fix that,” Brown said. “And I think the biggest eye opener is when I went to school, they asked me, ‘well is it conformation or is it posture?’ Because if it’s posture, we can fix it because if its muscle moves bone and we can move that muscle, we can move that bone.”
That was an eye opener for Brown, who looks to buy horses for low prices.
“I look at that and I’m like, ‘I could fix that, you know, I could change that horse’s posture,’” Brown said, adding it’s a lot like a person going to a chiropractor or getting a massage. “A lot of people are shocked when I say a lot of horses need that.”
Brown said horses feel muscular and skeletal pain in similar areas as humans. She explained that a horse’s muscular and skeletal system is very similar to a human’s if it stands on its back legs.
If a horse is labeled with bad behavioral problems, which can include not going through a gate, bucking or even pinning its ears down, Brown said it is usually due to pain.
“Another part of my job is reading the horse and listening to what they’re saying because I mean, as hippy as it sounds, they’re always trying to talk to us. They’re simple creatures,” Brown said.
Brown is able to use before and after photos from her therapy sessions to tell the difference in a horse’s posture and to make sure it has changed. Oftentimes, horses are transparent and provide signs if they are comfortable during her sessions, which allows Brown to realize if what she is doing is having the right effect on the animal.
More information on Royal Vision Equine can be found on its Facebook page. People can also call Brown at 509-424-7898 or can email her at mckenziemaeb@gmail.com.
She can take her business on the road to a variety of locations like saddle clubs, rodeos, stables and to people’s property to lessen the need to haul horses.
