Making Adjustments: Dr. Madi Rauch Serves the Entire Equine Athlete

For the last 10 years, Madi Rauch’s life has been all about making adjustments.

The 33-year-old is a familiar face for horses and humans alike — and plenty of other four-legged friends — at riding stables up and down the East Coast and in the South, having built up a strong following for her mobile chiropractic business, “On Dr. Madi Time.” She specializes in bio geometric integration, using her hands and a soft touch on “spines of all kinds,” to help create realignment for better function and overall health.

While Rauch is typically on a “Where’s Waldo?”-esque journey in her van (dubbed “Twyla”), going state to state to meet clients where they are, portable adjustment table in tow, earlier this week she could be spotted popping in and out of the tents on stable row at the Hampton Classic, serving horses and riders competing at the weeklong horse show.

In order to make a living out of making adjustments, Rauch had to first make a pretty big adjustment of her own.

In 2010, a year before she would graduate from Auburn University, Rauch put in time working at a veterinary clinic, preparing to go to veterinary school. During one week working there, she had an upsetting revelation that forced her to change course.

“We had a week where there were three colic surgeries in a row, and they didn’t get off the ground either because [the owner] didn’t have enough money, or it was a last resort,” she said. “The horses that got trailered in all ended up getting put down. It crushed me, and I was like, I can’t put animals to sleep. I realized it wasn’t going to work.”

Rauch was sharing her experience with her own chiropractor a few days later, wondering out loud what she was going to do next. Her chiropractor had an idea.

“I had always gotten adjusted and had my horses adjusted, and he said, ‘Why don’t you do this?’” she said in an interview earlier this week. “And I really never thought of that.”

Rauch, who has an easy laugh, ever present smile and effervescent personality, heeded that advice, but initially thought she’d only lay hands on horses, not people. She experienced another adjustment in her thinking once she enrolled in chiropractic school at Life University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2012.

“When you’re there and immersed in what this was, I was like, ‘Oh, I have to adjust the people with the horses,’” she said.

Rauch explained what she does, and what the type of chiropractic work she practices is intended to do.

“Your brain and body communicate via the spinal cord and spinal nerves,” she said. “What I do is very gentle and specific, but even the popping and cracking guys, every time we adjust, it’s creating more flexibility and adaptability in your main circuit board of communication.

“Chiropractic is not about feeling better,” she continued. “It’s about healing better because your brain and body is doing the work behind the scenes. It’s like updating your computer circuit board every time you get adjusted, and the side effect is feeling better.”

Rauch is an animal lover through and through, but has a special affinity for horses, and explained why she loves working with them.

“Horses are really fun because they’re prey animals, so when you adjust them, everything moves so much easier than it does with people because they’re flight preprogrammed, and they just move, move, move,” she said.

Horse owners, particularly those who compete regularly at shows like the Hampton Classic, say they find what Rauch does so valuable because of the way she treats horse and rider like one unit that needs to function seamlessly together. The gentle style of adjusting that Rauch practices carries with it the added bonus of allowing horses and riders to be back in action the same day they’re adjusted.

“I treat the horse and rider as a single unit,” she said. “The equine athletes as a whole, horse and rider, they’re jumping and doing things that are out of character for the normal fight or flight pattern. I create more ease within that system, so the horse and rider can communicate together most effectively.”

Anyone who has ridden horses in some kind of lesson program for a few years understands the intricate, body to body communication required for horse and rider to work together, whether it’s applying the right kind of pressure in the right area’s with legs, seat and hand, or achieving balance in the saddle. Every movement, intentional or unintentional, sends the horse a message, and if that body language communication isn’t carried out correctly, it leads to frustrating or even potentially dangerous results.

Many riders and trainers in the area praise her work. Dawn Hommel is the owner of Hedgewood Stables in Laurel, on the North Fork. She said her riders — and even the horses — get excited when they hear her voice in the barn.

“She is very passionate and caring about her clients, animals or humans,” Hommel said. “You can tell she truly cares about each patient. After she comes, you can feel the horses are more relaxed and more willing to do their job.”

Jay Strong and his wife, Laura Beth Strong, own and operate Laurel Crown Farms in East Quogue. Jay Strong spoke about the impact Rauch has had, and why she’s so good at what she does.

“What sets Madi apart from other equine chiropractors is her training and aptitude in working with the horse and rider as a singular system,” he said. “At first assessment, you don’t know if the horse or rider are the source of an issue. Once she identifies and works on the root cause of the issue, amazing things happen right away.”

Rauch built up her business the old fashioned way — calling on her connections in the horse world, and building a following based on word of mouth. Because her connections were spread out across the Northeast and the South, she found herself eventually being called to the open road. Other personal circumstances made a mobile business an attractive option as well. Rauch originally started practicing in a more traditional office setting in Vermont, where she moved after getting married. When her marriage ended, she decided she’d had enough of the cold weather and availed herself of the freedom to visit clients anywhere.

“I couldn’t really live in the cold anymore, and I was suddenly single with dogs, and I don’t need a whole lot, and I didn’t know where I wanted to settle, so why wouldn’t I just drive up and down the East Coast?” Rauch said with a laugh. “That’s where Twyla came in.”

Rauch embraced the “van life” moniker, picking up licenses in additional states while hitting the open road.

“A van life gypsy chiropractor, that’s me,” she said with a laugh. She gave up her apartment and bought Twyla, a 2019 Ram Pro Master 2500, in July 2022, and hasn’t looked back. Twyla had 70,000 miles on her when Rauch bought her — she’s up to 135,000 now, and has a new engine, which Rauch said she was lucky enough to get just before the warranty expired.

She travels in Twyla with her dog, a female husky shepherd “mystery” mutt named Dani, making them a “girl gang” of three on the road. When she’s not traveling to serve clients, Rauch spends time taking care of her 20-year-old Thoroughbred, Cooper, who has experienced some health challenges in recent months. She describes him as her “heart horse.” They’ve been together since he was 3 and she was 16. She has two other horses, Tux and Toaster.

In addition to her talent for putting horse and rider back in proper alignment with each other, Rauch also had a special touch with horses who need a little extra understanding, a new purpose in life, or a better situation as they ease into their golden years. Some of the horses that have been in her care in recent years, like the three she currently owns, have inspired her to start another business venture.

“The next thing I want to do is a not-for-profit that will be called ‘A Well-Adjusted Retirement,’” Rauch explained, saying she’d like to find a way to take serviceably sound horses, able to still be ridden lightly at the walk and trot, and give them a new life and purpose being part of “horse girl” retreats, or as subjects to practice techniques on, or give beginner lessons.

Owners could donate appropriate horses to the nonprofit, leaving them at the barns where they are but the organization would pay for board and feed and general upkeep, meaning the horses would be spared the fate of being sold around as they age and become less desirable to the general public.

If the success she’s had with her mobile chiropractic business is any indication, Rauch will find success in this next venture as well. No matter what happens, she says she’s already living the dream.

“I’m a horse girl that was like, how do I make enough money to have my own horses, and how do I spend every single day at a barn?” she said. “And I figured it out. I cracked the code.”