A horse of a different color
Equine massage therapist combines two passions
Sarah Gantsoudes said she still finds herself wondering how she got here. The 27-year-old equine massage therapist moved to Crozet last September, and has since been building a customer base for her horse massaging business, Hands Hooves Hearts.
“I always knew I wanted to work with horses, I just wasn’t sure in what capacity,” she said.
A Connecticut native, Gantsoudes found herself in Boulder, Colorado with a bachelor’s degree in religious studies and an itch to work professionally with the animals she’d loved since childhood. Competitive riding didn’t appeal to her, but she said she was drawn to the wellness and healing-oriented nature of Boulder. She enrolled in the Boulder College of Massage Therapy, where she specialized in equine therapy but learned the trade for canines and humans too. After a bizarrely relevant internship working with rabbits—which she said are surprisingly similar to horses in demeanor—Gantsoudes launched her first business in Boulder.
The idea was to serve both horses and their riders, providing therapy that relaxed and synced the two for a more cohesive ride. The business proved unsuccessful in Colorado due to a shortage of human clients, so despite her love for the town, Gantsoudes returned to the East Coast. After a short stint back in Connecticut and a search for a place with a large horse culture with nice weather where she could work year-round, she found herself in Crozet, where the first person she met was a fellow equine massage therapist.
“It seems everybody here knows somebody who works with horses, and they’re all so helpful,” she said. “There’s such a spirit of collaboration.”
Gantsoudes said she hopes to eventually revisit her original idea, but for now she’s focusing on her four-legged clients. The biggest challenge was clear from the beginning: convincing people that it’s “not an unusual job,” and demonstrating to horse owners how beneficial her services are.
“When potential clients are skeptical, I tell them to just think about how good they feel after they have a massage,” she said.
Equine massage therapy has traditionally been reserved for the elite, highly competitive race horses. But Gantsoudes emphasizes to local owners that horses are the “ultimate athlete,” and like humans, they get down and out, too. Nearly 90 percent of behavioral issues in horses are related to discomfort, she said, and owners are often surprised to see how much more relaxed and efficient their horses are after a 30-minute massage.
Recently Gantsoudes worked with an older horse whose competitive days are behind him. She said she focused on just making him comfortable, as opposed to the more intense, deep-tissue work she does on younger, more active horses. His immediate response was incredible, she said, and his owners said they hadn’t seen him so relaxed and at ease in the fields for years.
“That was so rewarding, and it’s why I do what I do,” Gantsoudes said. “I get to spend time around animals and promote healthy, comfortable bodies.”—Laura Ingles