Contributed by Jan Davies
Suzanne Latchford with Ratchet, one of her "healing horses"
Suzanne Latchford is a certified FEEL instructor (Facilitated Equine Experiential Learning) who shares her horses with people who are troubled, struggling with addictions, feeling disconnected or just plain stressed out.
In many ways her story echoes that of the County: interesting history, a few ups and downs and now building on her strengths and making a niche for herself in the modern world.
Still in her thirties, she has had three careers: model; gourmet sauce-maker and now wellness facilitator. Her adventures started in Prince Edward County with her beautiful face (you may recognize her as the 20-foot blond smiling out of the Prince Edward County billboard on the 401 when you approach from the east.) As a model she went to Toronto then Taiwan and Europe and lived in Germany and Italy before coming home to find her true calling.
Coming home at 25, she found exciting new things happening, here, including wineries, good restaurants and a growing wellness industry. She studied sociology, culinary arts, reiki massage and meditation, then started baking for local restaurants and launched a line of specialty sauces. Her timing was great, and so was her cooking. Demand grew so fast she couldn’t keep up. “I’d had my first child and being a single mother and working full-time is tough.” She scaled back, spent time with her child and her two horses and one day read a book that changed her life: The Tao of Equus.
“Until then I loved horses in the conventional way: for riding,” she says. Reading about healing with horses, she learned that the peace and comfort she felt with her horses could be shared. “It was an A-HA moment for me,” she says.
She trained as a facilitator and now works with five horses at a small house in Hillier on 35 acres of land she shares with her partner, her daughters Maya and Lucca and their dogs. “The horses live as a herd now,” she says. “Naturally, outdoors 24/7, not in stables, separated from each other and waiting for us to decide when they will be let out.”
Her programs don’t involve riding at all, in fact most participants are not familiar with horses, and some are understandably nervous at first. But they all experience the connection – primitive, emotional, intuitive and non-judgmental – that develops between a 1,000-pound horse and a human.
Horses are intensely emotional and intelligent beings. It’s no coincidence that people, particularly women, who feel alienated from modern society find themselves mysteriously drawn to these magnificent animals.
Susan is out of the glamour business, out of the gourmet business and into the natural healing business. “Most people hear about me through recommendation or from the Internet. The County is becoming known as a therapeutic kind of place, somewhere you can de-stress. I have worked with a grief counselor, and Norah Rogers, owner of the Claramount Spa has asked me to develop a program for them.
I love what I do. I’m glad I went out exploring and traveling when I was young, but I think I had to come home to really find myself.” With a happy home, two kids and another on the way, a wellness business she is steadily growing and those beautiful horses, you could say Suzanne chose well.
Read more about Suzanne’s approach to natural healing at www.healwithhorses.ca
Tags: Heal with Horses, Health, Natural healing, Prince Edward County, Suzanne Latchford, Tao of Equus, wellness
Comments (0) | Posted over a year ago by Jan Davies
