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 By Martin J. Scott, with Gael Mariani, excerpted from Bach Flower Remedies for Horses and Riders, Kenilworth Press, 2000 and used by permission.
Working with horses and watching their behaviour is our constant source of pleasure. They are so finely and elegantly tuned in mind as they are in body; they are wonderfully, deeply intelligent and have incredible powers of lateral thinking, logic and memory to rival (and occassionaly surpass!) our own. The downside is that with such a range of emotional and mental states at hand, they share not only in our human capacity for tremendous joy and satisfaction, but also in our lamentable tendency to fall into negative states of mind and mood. The list is a long one: horses may be prone to terror, stubbornness, foul temper, mischief, aggression, boredom, bad habits, loneliness, over-attachment, grief, self-pity, jealousy, resentment and much more. These negative moods, which can be brief and fleeting or sometimes of a semi-permanent nature, can play havoc with our dealings and relationships with our horses, often turning what was once a pleasurable pastime into a living nightmare and reducing proud, confident owners into gibbering wrecks.
But the flower remedies can help riders, too. The fact is that many people involved in the realm of horses and horse-riding suffer emotional blockages that hamper their ability to fulfill their goals, whether they be participating in high-level sport or merely enjoying a pleasant hack through the countryside. Every riding instructor sees scores of people plagued with nervous tension and lack of confidence. These problems may be evinced at one end of the scale by a little stiffness in the saddle, to outright terror and phobia at the other.
Sherman: The Boisterous Baby
One day, Annie was called away to visit a sick relative for a few weeks. It was Febtuary, and there were all the usual tasks to attend to such as changing the horse's rugs, turning him in and out, and so on. Mike was more than happy to oblige. Annie left in the afternoon, leaving him a list of things to remember, and Mike's first duty was to bring the horse in for the night. He entered the paddock and Sherman approached him from the far side at a fast trot. As he got closer, Mike felt unnerved, thinking that the big horse was not going to stop and would plough straight through him. He stepped back and quickly climbed back through the fence.
Mike was convinced that the horse was homicidal, and from then on refused to go near him. He had no option but to leave the horse out that night in the rain, and when Annie telephoned him later in the evening, he was so afraid of her reaction that he lied, telling her that he had no problem in carrying out his tasks and that her beloved horse was warm and cosy in his straw bed! The next day when Mike, now feeling quite desperate and fraught with guilt for having lied, tried again to approach the horse. Sherman was intolerant of his presence in the paddock and barely let him through the gate. This was witnessed by a woman who kept her horse at the same livery yard and who also knew of our work with horses and the Bach flower remedies. Through her, Mike contacted us.
Mike's behavior was based on a lack of direct experience with horses, and a subsequent lack of confident: therefore, I recommended he try Larch. For the fear that he had developed out of this tendency, I suggested Mimulus. And for his inability to command the respect of the horse and stand up to his games, Centaury. Administration was by the 30 ml treatment bottle method, with six drops of each remedy topped up with mineral water, using the normal dose of four drops, four times a day. Sherman was given the Vine remedy -- his new-found behaviour may have started out in all innocence but it had been allowed to develop into an overt expression of a latent dominant tendency. We also chose Holly for aggression, and Vervain for his over-exuberance.
There was an unexpected benefit from the therapy: Annie, who never knew what happened during her absence until much later, saw a subtle change in Sherman. With his tendency to exuberance he had been very headstrong and difficult to school; he now seemed much more settled and his concentration had improved. When Mike eventually told Annie of his crisis and how he had been able to solve it using the Bach remedies, Annie continued using Vervain periodically. As she was a very confident horsewoman, whatever dominant streak lay in Sherman remained buried when she was with him.
ART CREDITS: Hometown Websmith and Art Today.
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Animals suffer problems stemming from the mind and emotions, although these are overlooked or ignored with painful regularity by we humans. Those of us who look after animals with love and respect are highly aware that they experience a whole variety of moods and states, just as we do. 
This is where the Bach flower remedies come in, helping us to treat our own reactions in such a way as to cope with the problems at hand. In the treatment of horses, once the right remedy or combination of remedies is chosen, the effect is rarely anything less than spectacular. Horses that were quite literally pining away have been restored to full emotional health over exceptionally brief periods, while others that had become dangerously aggressive have come back to their old approachable selves in no time at all. For this reason I am always tempted to describe the horse as the ultimate Bach flower patient! They are so pure in soul, so uncluttered with emotional garbage, so open and honest about the way they feel, that their response to treatment is almost infallibly swift and long-lasting. 
Mike was happy to help Annie in the livery stable where Sherman was kept, and he would accompany her to shows and events. But althoughout very supportive of his wife and full of encouragement for her, he was not truly a horse enthusiast and had little in the way of direct dealings with Sherman.
The first thing I did was walk calmly into the horse's paddock and approach him. As expected, he allowed me to catch him, to put a rope on him and to lead him around. He showed no signs of aggression or dominance. Clearly, Mike had adopted a submissive attitude by backing away from Sherman when the big youngster was simply expressing playful exuberance. By yielding, he had paved the way for this escalation in power-play and intimidation. Of the two, it was Mike who was the more active party and the one who could most benefit from some flower remedies.
There were two weeks left before Annie was due to come home. Mike was able to find someone to look after Sherman while we waited for the remedies to show their effect on him. A few days before Annie's return, Mike was able to approach, catch and handle Sherman.