A horse trainer with a healing touch

When 5-year-old Erin's parents saw a riding pony toy in a store, they knew to quickly pull their daughter away, distract her, and make a quick detour in another direction. It was either that, or stand in the store for hours while the child rode to her heart's infinite glee.

Erin McElmurry laughs. "My father likes to say I came out of the womb crying the word HORSE."

The girl has grown up, but the word "horse" is still on her lips. Erin McElmurry is the owner of Every Stride Dressage at 13482 South Street in Vicksburg, a horse ranch where animals come to be healed and trained, and often, their owners with them.

Every Stride Dressage is a 33-acre, 12-stall facility that currently boards nine horses, four of which are McElmurry's. The facility includes an indoor and outdoor dressage arena, individual grass pastures, a hot and cold water wash bay, and individual tack lockers.

McElmurry is an accredited dressage trainer and instructor. Dressage is a French term that means training a horse to bring out its natural athletic ability. Although dressage began as training for military horses, teaching them precise battle maneuvers, McElmurry defines dressage as "ballet for horses."

"I'm not just teaching tricks," McElmurry says, her hand running soothingly up and down a horse's long neck. "It's like building blocks. I break it down and teach the steps piece by piece, build one step onto the next, so that you understand how it's done."

Riding, McElmurry explains, builds confidence and body awareness. She offers riding lessons for clients as young as 8 years old, depending on the rider's maturity and readiness level.

One of McElmurry's riding students, Allison Herard, walks between the horse stalls and stops to comment on her experience. "I've been riding for 10 years, but I've picked up more skills in just a few months of lessons with Erin. I'm a production supervisor in Sturgis, and I come here to relieve work stress."

All that is what one might expect at a horse ranch. Every Stride Dressage, however, not only teaches horses and riders to move together in balletic synchronicity--Every Stride Dressage also heals horses in pain. And dogs. And cats. And humans.

McElmurry gets a twinkle in her eye as she pulls out her PEMF (Pulsed Electro-Magnetic Field) Therapy equipment. It's not much. Her equipment looks something like a small green suitcase on wheels, not much more than hand luggage. Inside, some knobs and dials to turn, and a couple of tube-like attachments. Plug it in, move the tube-like attachments to the ailing area, and a rhythmic tapping begins.

"That pulsing sound you hear is from the coiled magnets, sending magnetic pulses through the area that needs healing," she says.

When Daphney Dotson, co-owner of Studio Grill, a family diner in Kalamazoo, walks in, McElmurry demonstrates how PEMF Therapy works. Dotson suffered several breaks in her left leg, including a fracture just below her knee, in a motorcycle accident in 2011.

"I came here to ride," Dotson says, settling into a chair while McElmurry gently clamps the coiled tubing around her left knee. "And I ended up getting healed. Ever since the accident, I was in constant pain, and physical and occupational therapy with meds weren't helping. Erin saw that I was in pain, and after my first treatment, I noticed a difference."

The machine taps and pulses for ten minutes while the two women chat. The sensation, Dotson says, is painless. "It's a kind of tingling," she says. "I've had about six treatments now, and the swelling is gone, the pain is gone. I used to be contorted in pain after working just four hours at Studio Grill. Now I come home and zip around, pain-free."

McElmurry discovered PEMF Therapy as a patient herself. After a horse kicked her in the hip she heard about the therapy from another trainer. Tired of still being in pain after years had gone by, she gave it a try.

"My first treatment was at high intensity, for 30 minutes," she says. "I was so tired afterward that I went home to sleep. I slept better than I had in years, and when I woke, I felt better than I had in years."

Rather than go for a second treatment, McElmurry bought the machine. She knew she had found healing for herself, her horses, and others. She found that PEMF Therapy worked as well on her horses as it had on her. The homeopathic therapy helped joint pain, ACL injuries, bowed tendons, osteoarthritis, inflammation, hip dysplasia, back pain, bone fractures and a list of other syndromes and ailments in horses, dogs and cats, often eliminating the need for other treatments, medications or surgery.

"Many riders coming in complained of injuries preventing them from fully enjoying the ride," McElmurry says. "So I offered PEMF to people at $2 per minute, with most treatments at 10 to 15 minutes."

Her human clients have been coming in for treatments for arthritis, backache, sports injuries, joint pain, Carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, fibromyalgia, migraines, depression and other ailments. The therapy is FDA-approved and can be used on anyone except for pregnant women and people with pacemakers. Its healing effect is based on increasing circulation, moving oxygen to injured areas, reducing inflammation and stimulating the lymphatic system.

McElmurry has been certified to administer PEMF Therapy, and she has found that offering the therapy has become as popular at Every Stride Dressage as riding lessons, and often, the two go hand-in-hand, or hoof, or paw, as the case may be. Horses that have been brought to her to be "put out to pasture" have since made near miraculous recovery.

"Riding can be therapy," McElmurry says. "Learning to ride can be a lot like learning life skills, but you can't ride well if you are hurting."

McElmurry's black Labrador, Viper, an animal shelter rescue after being diagnosed with an ACL injury, trots up to his owner with the energy of a pup after PEMF Therapy, although he is now 5 years old. One of her favorite horses, Brembi, pushes his long soft nose into her shoulder as McElmurry passes his stall. This horse, too, receives PEMF therapy for arthritis that has developed with age. She stops, lays her hands alongside the horse's head, and the two gaze at each other. There is healing in that look. 

For more information, visit www.everystridedressage.com or email contact@everystridedressage.com.

Zinta Aistars is creative director for Z Word, LLC, and editor of the literary magazine, The Smoking Poet. She lives on a farm in Hopkins.