Your Animal’s Body is Talking—Are You Listening?

What if a simple, mindful touch could improve your dog’s or horse’s movement, comfort, and even emotional well-being? In this episode, Mary Debono shares how to use your hands and your heart to do a gentle “scan”—a profoundly simple practice that awakens awareness, fosters mobility, and strengthens your bond.

You’ll learn:

• Why your hands act like a kinesthetic mirror for your animal’s body
• How curiosity (not correction) supports nervous system change
• What to feel for: structure, temperature, response, symmetry
• Why these moments of shared awareness build trust and connection
• How CLTMs (special receptors) create calm and deepen the bond
• When a quiet pause may be the most powerful part of your session

Whether you're working with a horse, dog, or cat, this episode will show you how slowing down and tuning in can help your animal move better—and feel better—without needing to “fix” them.

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

Hi. Today, I'd love to share with you something that's so simple and really profound. It's a way to help your horse, your dog, your cat, whoever you want to do this with that can help improve their body awareness, their comfort, their mobility, and even improve and enhance your connection with your animal. And it doesn't cost anything. Well, it costs your attention, we'll put it that way. It's super simple and again, very, very beneficial.

So let me explain what this is, because all you really need are your hands and your heart. So it's something that I call a scan. So you know how people will say, like, do a scan of your body, you know, from head to toe, you know, release tension, release notice things. Well, you can do something like that that's similar to that with your horse or your dog. So, for example, with your horse, you can just have your horse in a relaxed place and you just very, very gently run your hands down your horse's body.

You can go down the, you know, the whole side, the back, the legs, every place where your horse is comfortable with you touching. Now, as far as where to start, if I know that the horse is perfectly comfortable, if I start right at the, you know, in the neck, at the top of the neck, I might start there, but if there's any doubt about that, I just start somewhere else.

I could always go back there if I wanted to if I felt the horse got more comfortable with me. But you can start this anywhere. Now with your dog. You can do this with the dog standing up, but it's also really nice to do with the dog lying down or even sitting really, any, any position that the animal is comfortable in. So what is the purpose of this?

Like, why are we, you know, really taking our time and slowly running our hands down our horse or our dog? Well, there's so many reasons for it. Number one, your hands act as a kinesthetic mirror. In other words, if you're sitting right now and your, your back is not against a chair or some other surface, right? If you're just sitting upright or standing, you have a certain amount of sensation in your back, of course.

But if you were to lie on the floor or lean against the back of your chair, you're going to have much more awareness of your back when you do that, or if someone came and they gently put their hand on your back, that place would kind of get lit up in your brain in a good way, you know, depending on how you do it. Now, if someone did something that was uncomfortable, you know, if they slapped you on the back or did something rough or someone you didn't know, well then that's a whole different reaction.

Right? So we have to use that same idea with our animals, that we want to use our hands in a way that's going to promote safe awareness. In other words, that the animal will feel a sense of safety, a sense of relaxation and, you know, more awareness of that area of their body. So, so that's number one. That's, that's something you can do for them. And by doing that again, you're kind of lighting it up in the brain.

So you can help improve the animal's awareness of those parts. Because just like us, your horse, your dog, they get into habits of moving where they're overusing some areas of the body and under using others. Well, that creates a lot of wear and tear, a lot of damage over time. Less athletic movement, more stiffness, fatigue, all kinds of issues. So even something as simple as just helping kind of wake up those areas can go a long way.

Okay, so that's, that's number one. Number two is, and I talk about this in my book Grow Young with youh Dog. It's in, I think it's either the first or second chapter. Maybe it's the first one. And I go over how to do this exactly. And with the horses, it's in my Move with your horse program. But just to give you kind of the short Cliff notes of it, if you will, one of the things you can do is you're not just absent mindedly running your hands down your horse or dog.

You're really feeling for things like what does this muscle feel like? What is the temperature? How is my animal reacting to my presence, to my contact? And then I also really encourage you to feel for skeletal landmarks. In other words, just very gently, like if you're running your hands down your animal's neck, like, do you feel the vertebra of the neck? You know, and again, just very gently, very lightly, you keep monitoring your animal's responses to make sure they're comfortable.

And then you find different things. Like you might outline the shoulder blade, like, oh, this is the top of the shoulder blade. And I really feel that front edge of the shoulder blade. Oh, what about the back of the shoulder blade? You know, and just be curious. Like you can think of yourself as a sculptor and you wanted to do a sculpt, a sculpture of your animal and so you had to know all these details.

So you don't need to know the names of the, you know, the anatomical names or Anything like that, but you just start to feel like. Start to notice, well, how much of their back can I feel like, what part of the back am I feeling? And be curious about it. So it's. Having that sense of curiosity will go a long way. As you continue down, you might go, oh, yeah, that's the last rib.

Okay. This is the sternum, you know, and again, you're just exploring in a gentle, curious way. You might feel, oh, this is the outside of the hip joint. This is the front of the pelvis. You know, these are the bones of the legs. And just again, be curious. By doing it that way, you're educating yourself. So now you know a lot more about your. Your animal's anatomy. But again, you're helping that animal's nervous system have more awareness and potentially then greater use.

In other words, they're going to be more likely to incorporate more of themselves into movement. Okay. So that's another really good reason to do it. The other thing is you will start to get more knowledge about your animals. So in other words, you might have never noticed that your animals, your horse, your dog's legs were developed unevenly. Like, maybe you think, oh, wow, this hind leg, the muscles are slightly bigger than this one.

Well, that can tell you a lot about how your animal is using themself. So, for example, they might be relying more on one leg because there's something else going on that makes it uncomfortable to use their legs more symmetrically. So this is really important because maybe a small amount of asymmetry won't be a problem, but over time, that can lead to a lot of damage. They might, God forbid, you know, tear a ligament or, you know, develop arthritis or some other compensatory situation.

So you could bring this to the attention of your vet much more quickly than if you didn't do this, like, I don't want to call it investigation, but this, like, assessment, if you will, the scan where you're being really curious and noticing things, you might notice one shoulder is more developed than the other. When I first adopted my horse Breeze, many years ago, his right shoulder was so atrophied was.

It was unbelievable. And I would very diligently every week take tracings with a metal, you know, one of those flexible rulers. And as I worked with him, right, he started evening out because now he had freedom of movement through his ribs, which allowed that shoulder to move more freely. He. He was much more comfortable in all, you know, in his entire body. And pretty soon it took a few months, but pretty soon he was now Even, you know, his shoulder muscles developed evenly and he could use himself more evenly.

So these, these things happen. They happen with horses, they happen with dogs. That, again, that was a habit. It usually it's developed as a response, as a solution to a problem. In my horse's case, it's possible. I mean, he had a lot of abuse prior to me getting him. I'm sure his tack was a mess, all kinds of things. He was also used as a pack horse. He got into a lot.

There were some big accidents. He was involved in all kinds of things. So. But it can happen for any number of reasons. So these are things that when you take the time to really explore with curiosity, you're not trying to fix your dog, but you, you want to connect or your horse, but you're trying to connect in this really deep way that you're noticing these things. And again, if you notice things that are asymmetrical, you can bring that to the attention of your vet, or you might notice a lump or a bump that you wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't done this.

Okay, so that's another reason. Another. Yet another reason is something, and I've talked about this in a few of the episodes of the podcast, is when you use light, gentle and slow pressure or contact, you stimulate a particular, what they call a mechanoreceptor in the body that is called a cltm. It stands for, let's see, Low Threshold mechanoreceptor. So what happens is those mechanoreceptors, this is true for all mammals, by the way.

So you have them too. You have these CLTMs as well. They are processed in a part of the brain that deals with the emotional state. They're not processed in a part of the brain that usually processes that type of sensory information. And what they found, researchers have found that when those receptors are stimulated, they actually can increase the cooperation between the per. The individual doing the touching and the one receiving it.

And you'll see that in nature, mothers do this naturally, you know, whether human mothers or horse mothers or dog mothers or kitty mothers. Right. They are doing that naturally. They're licking their offspring. They're doing different things that actually turn out, stimulate those receptors. So that automatically increases the bond between mother and baby. And they've done a bunch of studies where they've shown that when those receptors are stimulated, the receiver is also more resilient to stress.

So there's a whole bunch of different, different benefits of doing that. So when you do this scan again, it's Very intentional, right? You're using a lot of attention. You're not doing it mindlessly. That can help stimulate those wonderful receptors. So that's pretty cool. So that's yet another reason to do this. And the other thing is, you know, as you're doing it, you might find that you just pause in a certain place on your horse or your dog.

You don't know why you didn't, you know, plan it out ahead of time, but maybe you stop right on their back or something, and you just linger there and you can think of just breathing together or helping your animal. Just, you know, I like to think about loving energy, sending my. My animals loving energy. And so you can just think that you're somehow breathing more fully into that space.

And you might find that your animals breathing deepens as you do that. So, like, you can imagine them, of course, you're just imagining this, but you can imagine them breathing more fully into that place and just letting it soften, expand and release. It doesn't have to take more than a minute or so. Okay. Another thing it does is by doing any of this scan you know, that you're doing, you're really interested in what you're sensing.

You're really in tune. So it's kind of like a meditation. Like, you get very focused on the sensations you're feeling, and your animal often will get very focused on, on the sensations that you're creating because you're touching them. So you enter into this beautiful space that I call shared awareness. You and your horse, your dog are both interested in the same thing at the same time, which is very cool.

And you, you end up with this mutual exchange where your nervous systems really get connected with each other. And this can transfer then into other activities you do, maybe training or, you know, other adventures you're going on, hiking, riding, whatever you're. You do with your animals, you can help transfer that sense of, we're together, we're in this together. And it's like your nervous systems get linked up and you can benefit from that.

You know, you might feel a warmth in your heart. You might just feel, you know, it's kind of like a warm, fuzzy feeling. It's just such a beautiful feeling. So that's another what I think a very important reason to do this. Again, this doesn't take money to do this. You don't have to, you know, it doesn't take long to learn what it, what it does demand, though, is for you to be attentive and just to be patient as well, because maybe your Animal isn't in the mood for that at that moment.

Right. It's like we don't want to put our expectations on them either. So you just go with the flow. You do as much as they'd like. When you or your animals no longer interested in it for, you know, that session, you just stop. Not the end of the world, but you can have that. Those beautiful moments together where you're again joining in this way. And I like to think of kind of linking your hands and your heart with your animal.

So it's like you're bringing that quality of that curiosity and attention and loving energy to this interaction you're having with your animal. Maybe you want to do this first thing in the morning. Maybe, you know, if you're, if, if you're working with your dog, you know, maybe your dog is sleeping there in the bedroom with you. Or it could be any time of the day, of course, but, you know, maybe just have a special moment or with your horse, before you even start grooming your horse, you just take a few moments and do this, and it can change so much.

It can lay the groundwork for a beautiful interaction between you and your animal. So I hope you found that helpful. There's more to it as well. When I teach this, we go into something I call muscle lifts, where you're providing not only just the scan, which in itself is very powerful and beneficial, but, but also then adding more support to the muscles to really enhance it, to allow more of the muscles to let go of unnecessary tension, and again, to add even more benefits as far as comfort and mobility.

So get started with this. Let me know how it works for you, and if you have any questions about it, feel free to email me mary Marydebano. Com. So thank you so much for listening. I hope you give it a go. Let me know, let me know how it works for you, for your dog, for your horse. And yeah, I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Bye for now.