My name is Emily Sanders and I’m happy you’re here. Here’s a bit about me:

Horses are in my blood and I’ve been around them as long as I can remember! I started riding at 6 years old and never looked back. I was lucky to grow up riding with the Kings on the local SWVHJA circuit, learning how to be a horsewoman while also getting to be a true bareback-pony-riding, aisle-sweeping, get-on-whatever-horse-you-have barn rat.

When I got to college, I joined the Virginia Tech Equestrian Club and starting riding with the equitation program. I spent two years as president of the Virginia Tech Equestrian Club, competed with the IHSA and ANRC teams, and got a minor in Equine Production. I should have known at that point that I’d eventually end up with horses as my career! Instead, I moved to the NOVA area and spent five years in my “big girl job” before I decided I wanted to go back to school and dedicate my life to animals.

In 2020, I went back to graduate school to study Applied Animal Behavior and Welfare through the OMALS program at Virginia Tech. I took all sorts of awesome classes - Behavioral Biology, Animal Cognition, Applied Equine Behavior, among others - and spent a year conducting my thesis research which focused on enrichment and positive reinforcement training with horses. Grad school taught me so much about animal training, the art and science behind it, and how to important it is that we advocate for animals’ needs. Along the way, I met some really awesome mentors and behavior professionals who have inspired me to keep chipping away at this life!

After graduate school, I started learning about equine bodywork to help my aging horse, Jeffrey, and I fell in love with it! I started with Freely Forward Bodywork’s Equine Massage 101 online course and quickly decided that I wanted to keep learning! I did a lot of research before picking a professional program and ultimately signed up for Equinology’s EQ100: Equinology Equine Body Worker Certification Course. I truly feel they are the best of the best when it comes to equine anatomy, bodywork, and wellness and felt the rigor of their program is what the nationally unregulated industry of equine bodywork needs.

So, here we are! I have dedicated a lot of time and effort to understanding how we can better care for our horses and I’m passionate about educating others about the importance of proper management and training of horses. I am especially interested in how bodywork and training can work together to create big changes in a horse’s quality of life. As much as I love the hands-on work, I’m also still an academic nerd - I love report writing, data analysis, presentations, etc. Please check out my list of services and get in touch! I’d love to connect, even if you’re not interested in services at this time. I’m always on the hunt for like-minded horsie friends!