As Sandra Wallace strokes and kneads the muscles, her client's head begins to droop, the eyes close and the bottom lip hangs out. A large yawn indicates total relaxation.

Wallace's client isn't at a health club or spa trying to reduce tension and anxiety. Her name is Godiva and she's a 1,700-pound Danish warmblood horse.

Wallace is massage therapist who performs equine massage at the Oak Hill Ranch near Folsom.

The horses recognize Wallace's truck as it comes in the driveway and Godiva will turn her back on Wallace and roll out her lip and pout if she isn't scheduled for a treatment, said Sharon Londono, Oak Hill's ranch manager.

Oak Hill specializes in the breeding and training of Danish warmbloods and has an average of 60 horses.

Wallace, 48, spent 16 years as an emergency medical technician and worked in a neurobehavioral rehabilitation unit for people suffering brain injuries.

When she hurt her back in an accident, Wallace suffered from pain for a year and a half.

After trying massage to help alleviate the pain, Wallace noticed a difference, so she spent more than 650 hours at the Blue Cliff School of Therapeutic Massage in Kenner learning the techniques herself.

She became nationally certified and state licensed in 1996.

Wallace began doing equine massage 30 months ago, after studying horse anatomy and physiology and talking to facilities and people specializing in horse massage, such as Equissage in Round Hill, Va.; Optisage in Wisconsin; and Diana Thompson of northern California, author of "The Horse Journal," a bimonthly publication.

"Show horses are considered equine athletes," Wallace said, "so we do pre- and post-event massages to enhance performance and optimize muscle health for the animals."

Equine massage also is used to reduce stress and for behavior management.

"As I study the differences between animals and humans, I'm becoming a better massage therapist," Wallace said. "I study equine structure and the human body to see how we can undo what we've done to our bodies, to clean up our systems and help us live a little longer and increase the quality of life that goes along with it."

Just as people are incorporating massage into their wellness routines, horse owners and trainers are beginning to integrate massage into total health care for their animals, Wallace said.

"I've always loved animals and always loved horses," Wallace said. "This has given me the opportunity for them to teach me to love them more and how to appropriately meet the needs of a species that was much more intelligent than I had ever anticipated."

Wallace combines, acupressure, circulatory routines, stretching techniques, aromatherapy and magnetic therapy, deep muscle work, and Reiki energy work, which is based on a Japanese form of healing touch that works within the electrical parameters of the body.

"It's a sort of gumbo-sage," she said, as she massaged the poll area near the 14-year-old chestnut's mane to help relax the muscles that become tense after dressage training, in which the horse's head is held high and the neck is very curved.

"The average workspan of a massage therapist is five years if you don't recharge," Wallace said.

"These guys are my hedge against burnout," she said, referring to the horses. "To be able to vary your routine and do something that is helpful, useful and different and gives a deeper appreciation for what God created reaffirms my purpose in doing what I'm doing."

Racehorses Have Radiators
Canada -- The Globe and Mail carried a story on July 24, 2000 by David Roberts about research into how racehorses stay cool:

It was a rather unorthodox methodology -- running vacuum-cleaner hoses into dead horses' skulls -- which first confirmed the suspicions of graduate student Keith Baptiste.

Mr. Baptiste, a member of a team of veterinary researchers at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, was instrumental in solving the mystery of how racehorses are able to gallop at full speed without fainting from an overheated brain.

The researchers have discovered the function of the guttural pouch -- a miniature 'radiator' in the head of a horse -- which dissipates heat from the blood supply to the creature's brain, the most heat-sensitive organ in the body.

The stunning results were published earlier this year in the prestigious science journal Nature, said Professor Jonathan Naylor of the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan.

Scientists had been puzzled as to why horses -- the supreme athletes' blood can reach temperatures of between 40 and 45 at full throttle -- didn't collapse since the blood temperature of a horse is high enough to cause heat stroke, seizures or brain death.

'It was the largest structure in domestic animals for which we didn't know the purpose,' Prof. Naylor said of the fleshy 500-millilitre air sac found in the skulls of horses, donkeys and bats, but not in other creatures in the animal kingdom.

'For at least 100 years, people have wondered about the purpose of the guttural sac,' he said, noting that a French anatomist, Claude Bourgelat, first noted and described the sac in 1764.

There had been many theories: that the pouch functioned as a hearing aid, a voice resonator, an air cushion to allow head flexion, a sneezing aid, a swallowing aid, a regurgitation device.

'In the 1800s people thought they were there to regulate blood pressure. In 1885 somebody speculated that the guttural sac was there to keep horses above water when swimming, that it was for buoyancy.'

Blood is pumped to a horse's brain via the carotid artery, which flows over the surface of the guttural pouch -- located along an inner tube which connects the ear and throat and which can hold up to half a litre of air.

'So there was some speculation that maybe its function was to cool the blood,' Prof. Naylor said.