Herbal Horsekeeping
PREFACE
My first involvement with equine herbal medicine came many years ago following a meeting with an Irish Veterinary Herbalist in the Lisdoo Arms, a small country pub in Ireland. This man's name is Tom O'Hanlon and I still have the pages and pages of notes I made during that session. Tom's knowledge came from his mother who was from a French gypsy background, and he had extensive knowledge of harvesting and mixing up herbs for treating horses and farm animals.
On finding out that I was a practicing medical herbalist - for humans - Tom was interested in exchanging information, because farmers constantly asked him for advice about their own ailments. As we spoke, it became apparent that most of the same herbs he was using for animals, I was using for humans to treat similar conditions, and so I could reassure him that, in most cases, there is no harm in treating a human as he would an animal. Then we spent our time discussing all the herbs we used commonly, and comparing their efficacy in both animal and human treatment.
This occupied a cold winter's afternoon, and I must admit to being very glad I took the notes because I find my memory stops working at 3 pints of Guinness - although Tom was perfectly lucid after twice that much! Tom departed for a round of his clients in England (these days he is frantically busy in England, Ireland and France); synchronicity 'clicked in', and on my return to Australia my human patients started asking me about treatments for their animals! The result has been a very busy herbal practice treating human, equine and canine patients.
This book evolved as a direct response to requests from my numerous horse-owning patients all over the world (together with what amounted to harassment from my co-author, Di Rowling!) for us to provide a comprehensive, yet accessible, text that will give horse owners the knowledge to maintain and treat their horses as nature intended.
Robert McDowell, July 2000
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