Nika The Horse Listener

Nika The Horse Listener Fully qualified McTimoney Animal Chiropractor & Sports Animal Massage therapist, providing clinics all over the United Kingdom.

Horse Chiropractor | Horse Listener
Problem solver for performance horses
Providing solutions for Equestrian practitioners
📍Holding treatment clinics worldwide STOP, OBSERVE AND LISTEN TO YOUR ANIMALS

Having grown up around animals, it was no surprise that I dedicated years of study to enhance my knowledge and specialise in physical therapies. I have a Bachelor of Honours in Equine Sports Science with Psychology and a Masters Distinction in McTimoney Animal Manipulation. I also have a diploma in Animal Sports Massage therapy, NVQ stage three and a BHS stage one and two. My background in horses started in pony club, competing competitively in Dressage, Show Jumping and Eventing, until I outgrew my pony and he had to be retired. I then spent three months at the British Racing School in Newmarket where I learnt about flat racing and from there worked for Trainers Richard Fahey and Brian Ellison riding as a professional jockey on the flat. From here I then travelled to Australia for a year working for Chris Waller, David Payne and Tony McEvoy specialising in track work. After completing my BSc I worked with Witheford Equine specialising in problem or "misunderstood" horses. It was here that I learnt about how horses communicate and the impact pain or discomfort has on behaviour and subsequent performance. I then spent 4 years in Oxfordshire working with Premier Pre Dressage, facilitating in equine rehabilitation cases and in schooling and competing livery horses. I was fortunate to competed Internationally in Dressage up to PSG on clients horses, representing GB for the MCI. During my time at Premier Pre I trained weekly with International Dressage rider Alice Hurley and every few months with Olympic Dressage Rider and Trainer Richard Davidson and feel that I can relate to clients from a ridden perspective. I treat every animal as an individual and take pride in providing a Holistic Service. My mission is to educate every owner and provide them with the tools to help their four legged friends through the ups and downs of training, competing and injury. Team work is vital for optimal performance and welfare, therefore I enjoy working part of a team of paraprofessionals (Vets, Farriers, Dentists, Saddlers and Other practitioners). I am fully insured with the MMA, AHRP and the technique of Chiropractic, McTimoney is also recognised by BEVA as one of its MusculoSkeletal Paraprofessionals. Prior to any treatment Veterinary Permission is required as part of the 1966 Veterinary Act. If you have any questions please contact me : https://forms.gle/RdZ29VpZ8LPzU6pk6
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What if our understanding of the thoracic sling is not wrong, but is not finished either?That is the question we are ope...
24/09/2026

What if our understanding of the thoracic sling is not wrong, but is not finished either?

That is the question we are opening with tonight.

Most of us learned the sling as a hammock. A network of muscle slung between the front legs, holding the trunk up. The anatomy in that picture is sound, and the muscles are exactly where we were taught they are.

But a hammock holds, and holding is not what the thorax spends its day doing. It is managing an enormous load arriving up the front legs at every stride, and deciding where that load travels next.

A picture of something holding still cannot tell us what fails first, or in what order, or why the shoulder we keep releasing turns out to be the last thing to go rather than the first.

So the question worth sitting with is not whether what any of us learned was wrong. It is what we would do differently if it turned out to be unfinished.

That is tonight. Bradley Whale and I are going through what the thoracic sling actually does, the order it fails in, and where to look first on Monday morning.

Ninety minutes, live, 6:30pm UK. The recording goes to everyone who books, so a clash is not a reason to miss it.

Comment THORAX and I will send the link.

24/09/2026

Nobody taught us the thoracic sling wrongly. They just stopped too early.

Most of us learned it as a hammock. A network of muscle slung between the front legs, holding the trunk up. The anatomy in that picture is sound, and the muscles are exactly where we were taught they are.

But a hammock holds, and holding is not what the thorax spends its day doing. It is managing an enormous load arriving up the front legs at every stride, and deciding where that load travels next.

Here is how we know the picture is missing something.

The shoulder that softens under our hands, goes well for a fortnight, and then settles back almost exactly where it was. Every one of us has that horse on the books. The hammock has nothing to say about it, because a picture of something holding still cannot tell us what failed first, or in what order, or why the part we can feel is usually the last thing to go rather than the first.

So the question worth sitting with is not whether what any of us learned was wrong. It is what we would do differently if it turned out to be unfinished.

That is tonight. Live, ninety minutes, 6:30pm UK.

I am joined by Bradley Whale, osteopath, author of three books on equine biomechanics, physiology and psychology, with twenty years across human and equine practice. We are going through what the thoracic sling actually does, the order it fails in, and where to look first on Monday morning.

Comment the THORAX

And if you cannot make tonight, book anyway. The recording goes to everyone.

23/09/2026

The thoracic sling model is not wrong in terms of its anatomy from a muscular perspective however it is limiting for a practitioner from a mechanical perspective.

It doesn’t describe the how

How does a horse actively manage each stride of enormous force through the body?
How does the Horse transfer energy from the thorax throughout the body to create this powerful effortless movement? We are all looking for?

It’s one of the reasons we have so many unexplained performance problems.

That Short stride
Chronically recurring tight shoulders
Crooked Horse

These are all system problems of a wider system breakdown which the current thoracic sling doesn’t explain and give us as practitioners the answers we are looking for.

Comment the word thorax and join us either live or purchase the recording to see this new and exciting practical way of looking at the thorax of the The Horse

20/09/2026

The ribcage protects the heart and lungs.

That is true, and it is the smallest part of what it does. The rest of the time it is organising movement. How force from the hind end travels through, how balance is held left to right, how it adapts to a rider's weight.

Which makes it a driver rather than a box.

It is also not one structure, which is the part that changed how I assess it.

The ribs at the front sit against the scapula and work as a rotational interface, so when the shoulder moves they turn with it. The ribs further back answer to the diaphragm and abdominal pressure, and their job is lateral expansion, spreading load across the thorax.

Front rotation, back expansion, coordinated. That is what every turn, bend and collection runs on.

Which means the two can fail independently.

Look back through your notes for "ribcage tight". I have written it more times than I can count and it never once told me what to do next time.

The note was not wrong. Just too coarse to act on.

This comes out of work Bradley Whale and I have been developing. Early work rather than settled science, which is why it is worth a look now.

So here is one thing to try.

Feel the two regions separately, not one hand along the whole thing.

Hand flat further back, wait a few breaths, feeling for expansion out to the side.

Then hand just behind the scapula, and ask the horse to reach forward for something at chest height. As the shoulder travels forward, feel what the ribs underneath do.

Where this is working, they turn away under your fingers. They give.

Where it has stopped, the scapula slides forward and the ribs stay exactly where they are, as though the shoulder is moving across a wall.

Back expanding but front not turning: the scapula is gliding over something rigid.

Front turning but back not expanding: nothing is spreading the load sideways.

Two different findings. Two different problems. And a note that tells you something.

The ribcage is not one thing, so stiff is not one finding.

PS. Bradley Whale and I are running a live 90 minute workshop on the thoracic sling on Thursday 24th September at 6:30pm UK. Comment THORAX and I will send you the details.

19/09/2026

Asymmetry is not the problem.

Every horse is asymmetrical. Movement spirals through the body rather than running in straight lines, so some imbalance is present in every stride of every sound horse either of us has assessed.

What separates a horse that is coping from one that is stuck is not how straight it is. It is whether it can still change.

A working thorax reorganises continuously. The ribs rotate and expand, the sternum shifts, and the whole thing rebalances from limb to limb. Ask that horse for something different, and the pattern rearranges to meet it.

A stuck one has run out of options. Somewhere along the way, one way of carrying itself solved a problem, and the horse used it again the next day, and the next, until the body built itself around the repetition and what started as a choice stopped being one.

The asymmetry did not get worse. It got fixed in place.

You know the one. You straighten it, the owner is pleased, and a fortnight later it sits exactly as it was, and you wonder whether you are the problem.

You are not, and neither is the horse. It was never ignoring you. It had run out of ways to answer.

This comes out of work Bradley Whale and I have been developing. Early work rather than settled science, which is why it is worth looking at now.

So here is one thing to watch for, and what it means.

Get the horse walked away and back, both directions. If nobody can lead, thirty seconds on your phone does the same job. Watch the same thing each time. Shoulder, ribcage, wherever your eye goes first.

On a horse that is still adjusting, the picture changes between directions. Not better one way. Just different.

On a horse that has stopped, you get the same picture both ways. Identical. It makes no difference which direction you ask.

And an asymmetry that looks the same in both directions is not a response to the work. It is a structure.

Which is why the horse that will not straighten is often the one with nothing left to straighten with.

PS. Bradley Whale and I are running a live 90 minute workshop on the thoracic sling on Thursday 24th September at 6:30pm UK. Comment THORAX and I will send you the details.

18/09/2026

The tight shoulder is the last thing to go wrong.

Not the first. The last. By the time a scapula stops gliding freely, whatever caused it has usually been failing quietly for weeks, somewhere nobody was looking.

Here is the order. The thoracic spine elevates, and that lift creates the space for the ribs to expand, and that expansion steadies the sternum, and the steady sternum gives the scapula a platform to glide across. Every step depends on the one before it, so the whole thing can only ever fail in one direction.

The lift goes first, quietly. Then the ribs stiffen, because there is nowhere left to expand into. Then the sternum loses its ability to steady the midline. And the last thing to happen, the only part visible from outside, is a shoulder that will not release.

So you release it. It softens, the horse goes better for a fortnight, and then it comes back looking almost exactly as it did before.

You were not failing to fix it. You were treating the end of a chain that started four steps earlier.

This comes out of work Bradley Whale and I have been developing. It is early work rather than settled science, which is why it is worth looking at now.

So here is one thing to feel for, and what it means when you find it.

Put a hand flat on each side of the ribcage, behind the elbow, and stay there for several breaths. Then change something. Ask for a step, change the head position, walk them on. Then feel again.

On a horse where this is working, what is under your hands changes. One side and then the other, expanding and giving as the demand changes.

On a horse where it has stopped, you get the same thing whatever you ask. It is not that one side is bigger. It is that neither side is doing anything different.

And if the ribs cannot change, the sternum has nothing to steady against, which means the shoulder you were about to work on is sitting three steps further down the chain than it looked.

Whatever fails first is the thing you will see last.

PS. Bradley Whale and I are running a live 90 minute workshop on the thoracic sling on Thursday 24th September at 6:30pm UK. Comment THORAX and I will send you the details.

16/09/2026

I attended an event last night with some incredible passionate horse advocates showing the talent of our horses.

I had to speak up

Not because I didn’t agree with what was being said

Horses are highly adaptable and versatile

I said this

“We re forgetting the gift and real reason we love and admire the horse. It’s connection. Despite their size, power and ability to really unintentionally hurt us, they are kind, compassionate and teach us true unspoken connection.
Horses teach us patience, calm, confidence and a daily reminder that we are here imperfect humans and that’s ok. They never judge.”

Forever grateful for horses ❤️🐎

We’re managing two systems and only one of them is visible from the gate.Four sentences I have heard on yards this week....
10/09/2026

We’re managing two systems and only one of them is visible from the gate.

Four sentences I have heard on yards this week.
He is a bit loose at the moment.�She has gone off her feed since the hay changed.�He has been windy for weeks.�It is just the weather.
Every one of those may be accurate.
But two ecosystems are running at once, and we tend to watch only one.
Outside the horse there is soil, roots and plants surviving a drought. Inside the horse there is forage, gut microbes and a fermentation system. When the drought pushed us off failing grass and onto hay, we did not simply change the dinner menu. We asked a whole microbial ecosystem to reorganise.
Those microbes spent months adapting to a dry, limited diet. They did exactly what they were supposed to do.
So the questions worth asking are not about the feed bag.
What is fermenting in the hindgut this week that was not fermenting in June?�How quickly did that change happen?�Has the forage changed, the meal pattern, the turnout hours, the workload, the travel?�Did they all arrive in the same fortnight?�And what has the rest of the horse had to do to absorb it?
When we feed a horse, we are feeding two systems.
Grass is not one feed. February grass, drought pasture and pasture after warm rain are biologically different substrates.
A change in the microbiome is not automatically disease. Adaptation requires change.
And a horse can be fit, sound and well trained while quietly in the middle of a large gut transition.
Everything is adapting to everything else, inside and out.
It is easy to change three things in a fortnight and only add them up afterwards, myself included.
So the better question is not what should we feed him. It is how fast are we asking his gut to reorganise, and how much else is changing at the same time.
In After the Drought, Thursday 10 September, 6pm UK, Bradley Whale and I cover:�✓ Why the land plan and the gut plan are the same conversation�✓ What months of hay did to the fermentation system�✓ How to stage turnout so the gut is not asked to do it all at once�✓ What to watch in our horses this week

Comment DROUGHT below and I will send you the link.

10/09/2026

We go live tonight 6 pm UK and 9pm Dubai time.

Comment the word drought to join us live

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