In the mid-1990's I began a career working with horses, studying farriery (horseshoeing) and natural hoof wear as a science, and apprenticing in blacksmithing and equine veterinary medicine. Before that I was an academic, a professor of poetry and literature. But the horse touched me too strongly, like the inward pounding of the real world. I needed an earthly life—and the horse to me was the mood at the heart of the Earth. The first iteration of that vocation lasted fifteen years, a career that spanned continents, between America and Italy, and included all manner of horses, from elite competition horses to beloved backyard pets. Now, in Northern New Mexico, I work with horses because their very being is what in the realm of philosophy I have tried to describe as "a religion of sensitivity." Their kinetic power, beauty, and fragility, and their locus of emotion as communication is to me a kind of existential justice, a rightness of being. I have tried to live toward that justice, that inconsolable mood of horse.
​
​
​
Toward Eternity
Anatomical Hoof Care
& Interspecies Communication
​
Zhenevere Sophia Dao
Farrier/Barefoot Trimmer/Trainer
The Equus Series
Using some of the Mythosomatic Forms that I have choreographed over the last 25 years, in addition to some new Mythosomatic Forms that I have created for the purpose, I have assembled an Equestrian Mythosomatic Series, The Equus Series, specifically designed for riders, trainers, and horse lovers to draw humans toward the fragile and powerful sensorium of the horse.
​
For more information, please go to my equestrian website, clickable below.
​
​
