360 Equine body & mind

360 Equine body & mind You can't train pain.. Emmett 4 Horses combined with Good Horsemanship to encompass a happy content & balanced horse

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24/04/2024

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Making decisions about rugging is much easier when you realise just how different horses are from humans. The temperature range where we feel comfortable (our thermoneutral zone, or TNZ) is much higher and narrower than horses.

In general, horses are comfortable between 5-25℃, whilst humans are comfortable between 25-30℃. That means that we feel cold before horses do, but horses feel hot before we do.

Horses would feel the cold more if they are old, ill, injured and cannot move, or clipped.

The PCA Horse Welfare Policy advises owners to be aware of the horse’s ThermoNeutral Zone (5C – 25C) and use rugs appropriately to protect against cold but prevent overheating. Check rugs daily and horses weekly for signs of abrasions and rubbing.

If it is 3C when you leave home for school or work, but it will reach 20C, get the rugs off before you go.

Here’s a test for you:
If rugged, would the horse’s coat be dry (no sweat) underneath the rugs, if you checked under them during the warmest part of the day?

https://ponyclubaustralia.com.au/horse-welfare/

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07/04/2024

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After seeing multiple videos posted by various breeders bragging about their 2 ½ year olds/recently turned 3 year olds and sharing videos of them cantering around in the arena, I have decided to once again circulate the below article.

First of all, breeders *should* have the knowledge to understand a horse’s fragile and slow maturing musculoskeletal system. Breeders should not condone their own horses let along anyone’s horses being cantered around under saddle at an incredibly young age. Period. This sets a terrible example and is quite honestly animal abuse. Just because a horse does not object does not mean it is right. And quite frankly, most of the videos posted show animals that are already in pain or developing pain…

As breeders, we should strive to produce healthy and sound animals. We should promote horsemanship that produces long term soundness. No, starting a horse later does not guarantee soundness. But it certainly helps.

I am a firm believer in scientifically backed approaches to horsemanship. You can’t argue with science that has been proven time and time again. Let’s dispel some stupid rumors:

1. There is no such thing as a (skeletally) slow maturing horse or one that is fast maturing. No horse is skeletally mature before the age of 6. And that is on the low estimate for age.

2. Growth plates are not just in the knee. Every bone behind the skull has a growth plate. Not every single one needs to be converted to bone before starting. There is a schedule of when bone fuses…this is the information needed to know when to start a horse. Not their outward appearance. It is a known fact that during growth, proprioceptive awareness can regress, greatly increasing the risk of injury.

3. Starting a horse is not the same thing as riding a horse. Starting a horse does not mean cantering it 3-4 days a week in an arena.

4. Injecting a horse that is in pain does not mean you fixed a problem. You masked it.

5. You can build correct muscle and teach a horse how to move their body from the ground. This creates a solid foundation to work from once your horse is ready to actually be backed. Teach a horse to use its body correctly before backing and you’ll save yourself a lot of vet bills down the line.

Hocks are “late” for maturity. The growth plates on the tibial and fibular tarsals do not fuse until a horse is 3-3 ½. Ever wonder why so many horses seem to have hocks issues?? Horses need to learn to carry themselves and their own weight well before adding a rider.

The growth plates that are LAST to close are at the base of the neck. This area is where we ask a horse to raise the base of their neck and come round. If under too much stress, the growth plates can fracture or be permanently damaged.

There are DOZENS of activities you can do with a young horse to build healthy muscular development. None of them involve a saddle or your weight on their back. Teaching a horse to carry themselves correctly BEFORE adding a rider is essential and cannot be done in a week. A 2 ½ year old horse is a baby. Mentally and physically. We see far too many injured performance horses at VERY young ages - broken down and/or sour from work. It’s wrong. Period. They need slow and steady work and need time to recover from even the slightest of injuries.

PLEASE, if you are considering when you should start your horse and what that work load should look like, please read the below. There are some wonderful things you can do with your young developing horse. Please don’t rush a year out of greed.

http://www.equinestudies.org/ranger_2008/ranger_piece_2008_pdf1.pdf

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07/04/2024

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DESENSITISING – IT'S MORE COMPLICATED THAN YOU THINK‼

(A longish but important read)

This week, a very special horse was laid to rest. It was Bridget, and I will never forget her and the lesson she taught me.

Bridget spent her life with my good friend Zoe Beattie in Victoria, Australia. Zoe has a background in psychology and was one of the first people to introduce me to the idea that animal training was not just about getting a horse to do something but was layered with learning, emotions, associations, and much more.

When I met Zoe and Bridget, I was in the midst of discovering how to influence horses by using pressure. I was on a power trip💪, able to make horses do anything by combining determination, patience, and enough pressure to motivate them to do what I desired. Back then, I could only see behaviour; in other words, I could only recognise if a horse DID something I wanted them to do. I couldn't see or interpret any insight into HOW they did it. For example, I could see a horse transition from trot to canter, but I couldn't discern whether the horse exploded into the canter or eased into a relaxed lope. I was practising the typical "horsemanship program" exercises of sensitising (getting horses to learn and do things) and balancing them with desensitising exercises by throwing ropes, striking whips on the ground, throwing tarps, etc. If the horse had too much 'whoa', you did more 'go'. If the horse had too much 'go', you balanced it out.

My belief back then was straightforward - desensitising exercises worked by getting horses to "relax" and become accustomed to things that moved, touched them, and made noise. It helped horses be less reactive and spooky. I would throw ropes, whip the ground, throw tarps, and look for the all-important "signs" of relaxation - lowering the head, blinking, exhaling, cocking a hind leg, licking, chewing, yawning, etc.

It was very effective and I started playing around with more and more horses. Learning to work with pressure and be effective at it gave me a great ability to influence horses and my confidence at handling horses seriously soared. To this day, it gives me a great sense of competence in being able to handle horses that are confused or troubled, keeping myself and others safe. It also freed up space in my mind to see more and experiment more with other ideas, and I am grateful for the development of my skills as it has allowed me to consider the horse on more levels than just behaviour. It is the cement that has allowed me to become the nuanced trainer and educator I am today.

Back to Bridget and Zoe…

One day, Zoe mentioned something very curious. When she desensitised Bridget with a rope, the mare would drop her head as a "sign of relaxation" very quickly when a rope was swung over her back. But she was still anxious when asked to move. Zoe observed this and felt that even when Bridget had dropped her head, she didn’t think she was relaxed either. In fact, Zoe wondered if Bridget had just learnt to drop her head when she swung a rope.....😎

This observation changed everything for me - it made me re-evaluate the horses I was working with...and suddenly, I saw it. While some horses I was "desensitising" did seem to relax and simply accept the ropes, noises, and things I waved around and threw at them, others were not; they were doing something different. These horses appeared to have "learnt" the "signs of relaxation" and were performing them on cue whenever I started desensitising them! I began to experiment. The horses that seemed to accept, or maybe tolerate, what I was doing didn't care when I ignored their "signs of relaxation" and just kept going. They just stood there, letting me do what I wanted. But the ones I was suspicious about did something different. When I DIDN'T stop swinging a rope at them as soon as they performed their "sign of relaxation", they completely reverted into a horse that had never been desensitised and became completely anxious and worried. Interestingly, these were also the horses that were proving to be a bit more tricky to train!

At the time, I was starting to understand the principles of Operant Conditioning in a practical way. My hypothesis for the horses learning the "signs of relaxation" instead of actually relaxing and accepting/tolerating the desensitising exercise was that ceasing the throwing, swinging, flapping, or whatever tool I was using in the exercise was marking a behaviour, and the horse was learning the action. This meant that I wasn’t swinging between "sensitising" (teaching exercises) and "desensitising" (relaxing exercises); it was just all "sensitising" or teaching! There was no "balancing" the horse out; it was relentless training.

When I didn’t cease desensitising when these horses performed a "sign of relaxation", they just flipped into an "extinction burst", as what they had learnt they had to do to make me stop suddenly didn't work, causing them frustration and worry.

I realised that desensitising exercises were more loaded and nuanced than they appeared. They can get a horse used to or accepting of things, flooded into tolerance or shutdown, or teach them to perform specific actions.

Horses learn from the release of pressure - what they learn is not necessarily straightforward and is layered. There is nothing "desensitising" about them! I will always be grateful to Bridget and Zoe for showing me this.

I will never forget Bridget. I have gone on to show people the difference and get them to see things that she and Zoe showed me all those years ago. This insight has given me the edge to help many horses that have been misunderstood.

Rest easy, beautiful mare. Thank you for the lessons and for connecting me to a great friend with a fabulous curious mind. Thinking of you, Zoe❤

Photo of me meeting Bridge & Zoe in person for the first time back in 2016 😃

The start of Axe's float training ..30 mins in
14/03/2024

The start of Axe's float training ..30 mins in

Nobody wants to make this decision, but eventually the day will come. Be brave for your horse and do whats right💔https:/...
17/02/2024

Nobody wants to make this decision, but eventually the day will come. Be brave for your horse and do whats right💔

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Today I want to talk about the problem with being really good at taking care of horses:

You will have to decide when their life ends.

Not always - once in a blue moon a horse will do you the favor of tipping over quietly and instantly. I've seen it happen. It happened to our Perry last year, who was about 30 years old, and laid down and left the world in excellent weight with a shiny coat, sounder than the day he arrived, and no apparent issue that would have prompted a call to the vet.

But most of the time, when you're good enough at taking care of horses that your horses live to be 25+, you will have to make the call. Not only is this a big responsibility, but it's so hard for some people that animal control is kept busy every day with situations like horse owners who cannot accept reality and call the vet for a horse who can no longer get up on his own, or hasn't even tried for days. While you probably would make a better choice if you're here on my page - my content does tend to attract horsepeople who think mostly with their heads - I think we can all understand the emotions that make someone think, well, let's just call the fire department for help getting him up. Look, he's eating, he wants to live!

(Wanting to live does not = not wanting to die by starvation. They are two different things, even for human beings.)

Since we're mostly a senior horse sanctuary at this point, I'm going to share the guidelines we use here and maybe they will help someone else. There are other rescues with different standards, and we align with that more when it goes in the direction of "a day too soon" than months too late. This is just what we think, not necessarily the one true answer, and it's all debatable obviously because it tends to be a hot button issue -- but we need to normalize the discussion because that helps people make better and more humane choices for their animals.

Lameness: A horse can live quite happily, unridden, with a bit of chronic lameness even on a straight line - if that level of lameness is not inhibiting him from normal behavior. What's normal behavior? When the herd runs, he runs - he isn't gimping along far behind the others at a creaky trot. He still has a buck & fart in him on a cold morning. He can get down for a good roll and get up again without falling or needing assistance. He doesn't look worse than stiff like an old person would be at the walk - he isn't head-bobbing lame. He doesn't have a leg so arthritic that it looks like the letter C. He gets some pain management drugs if needed and he gets a quality joint supplement. Ideally he lives on turnout or if that's absolutely not available, someone gets him out of the stall every day for a long walk that will help him not to feel so stiff.

I saw a video from another "rescue" of a horse that was three legged lame trying to get back to the barn (on a downhill, ffs) at the most painful walk I have ever seen, and they thought it was great that he was such a "fighter." Ugh, no, he's only "fighting" because he has no way to put himself down.

Colic: Look, call it early. Either you have the money to go to the hospital, or you need to put them down if there's no improvement in a few hours. If they're really painful, that window of time is shorter. Horses have varying pain tolerances and there is absolutely the drama llama that will look like they are going to die for sure when the vet arrives and after an oiling and a walk, are perfectly fine and screaming for food six hours later. (Don't feed them. As a vet I know says, nothing ever died from not eating for 24 hours, but a lot of horses die from colic.)

Either way, you cannot screw around - get the vet out, make a decision. I do not think anybody is a bad person for not racing horses to the hospital for thousands of dollars they simply may not have any access to. We don't do it. If there's an infinite amount of money somewhere, we surely have not identified its location and we understand that many horse owners are in the same boat. A swift veterinary euthanasia is never a morally wrong choice, full stop - our duty to our horses is to prevent suffering, not make sure they live to see the next election. They don't care.

Accidents: These are hard. Your vet is going to explain to you all of the rehab options available to you -- that's their job. If a horse is 30 years old and steps in a gopher hole, do you really think a year of stall rest is how he wants to spend the last part of his life? Would you? We always have to think about the fact that a horse is designed to run with friends. If the odds are they'll never have that ability back - call it. It's going to be the right thing for both the horse and your financial situation. It absolutely pains me to see someone, often someone who doesn't have much of an income to begin with, bankrupting themselves trying to keep an animal alive. I know they are your best friend. I know death sucks. But you're not giving them a quality of life they even want, and you're annihilating your own life. It is absolutely fine to make the call.

Neurological conditions: This is a hot button for me. I cannot comprehend people keeping a horse alive who walks sideways, falls down, loses control of his hind end, etc. Please stop. A horse isn't you - he can't lie in bed comfortably, scrolling Instagram reels and watching reality television when he's unable to move around safely due to an injury or illness. It's incredibly scary for a horse to be out of balance and at risk of falling. He is a prey animal in nature - one of his intrinsic needs is being able to run away from a threat. If the neurological issues are from a disease like EPM, you can certainly try treatment but you should see improvement within a month or so if it's going to happen. If the neurological issues are from an injury and not getting any better - please, please do the right thing and put them down before they get stuck in a fence with a broken leg or neck from falling the wrong way. You do not want that to be your last memory of them.

Foals with serious problems: I could write pages on this but I already addressed some of it in my recent post about things you should know about if you're going to breed. A foal that will be permanently crippled has a very poor chance of any quality of life or of being fed and cared for and not coming to a bad end. If the vet can correct the issue with surgery, and you can afford the surgery, and it has a good chance of success, by all means go for it. But sometimes all you're doing is creating a $10,000 pasture pet that someone will have to care for forever, and the number of people who want to take care of any pasture pet (even their OWN that they used to show and compete with!) is a tiny percentage of the horse owning population and getting smaller by the day. No one enjoys putting down a foal but it's always a possible outcome when you breed your mare.

While I'm on this topic, please stop keeping mares alive long enough to give birth if something has gone horribly wrong for them. If they can't walk, put them down. I saw some moron once that had a pregnant DSLD mare in a sling after her tendons ruptured because they just had to get that baby. This is animal cruelty.

General quality of life: Sometimes there is not one specific bad thing, but a collection of things. Your elderly horse is arthritic and needs a lot to keep them comfortable day to day. They've also got Cushing's and need daily meds. Now they have a chronic eye issue. They won't take meds in food. Every day, you have a struggle trying to syringe meds into their mouth and treat their eye, while they bang you against the fence. You do all this just for them to continually rub the eye, making it worse, no matter what kind of hooded contraption you put on their head. The vet is at your house constantly, trying to patch this horse back together. You can't afford it and, worse yet, the horse isn't getting any better. At a certain point, some of them just sort of melt down - it's very common with the Cushing's horses, because that disease tends to make them prone to other infections. If there is a lot wrong, every day is a struggle to treat the issues, and there's no improvement, it may be time to make the call.

They just quit: Sometimes, without a clear diagnosis even after you spend the money for bloodwork and have carefully examined the mouth and the vitals, horses just quit. They go off food. They start staring into the middle distance. They don't interact with other horses anymore. They are borderline cranky or just dull to everything. I've seen them where they'll only eat cookies, and are even unenthusiastic about that. The life has left their eyes. We all want a diagnosis, but sometimes you are not going to get one, and you will have to call it. It's just part of being a senior horse owner. You can certainly necropsy, if you can afford it, and that may give you a clear answer, but when we see horses in this state who are not in this state due to long term starvation and neglect - if they are normal weight and well cared for but acting like this? Our experience is they are not coming back, and it is time.

What things have you seen and experienced that let you know it was time to make the call? Pictured is Orca, who is 38 and has Cushing's and looks old, but runs toward her breakfast mush like this every morning. She is making it clear she isn't done yet, and the day that changes, we'll help her out of this world into the next.

Geldings afternoon meeting under the old pine trees on The Track
08/01/2024

Geldings afternoon meeting under the old pine trees on The Track

60 mm total over the last 3 days. Enough now please 🙏
10/12/2023

60 mm total over the last 3 days. Enough now please 🙏

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30/11/2023

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3 of the most important things to remember regarding ethical horsemanship .
1 . Work at the horses pace . Slow steady
consistant movement .
The slower you go the faster you get there .this is especially true when it comes to hand movements, keep you hands slow ( unless you’re releasing pressure in that case you do that quickly, but slowly;)
2 Flow . Horses understand flow . It’s how they roll day in day out
If you’re jumpy and jittery and stop /start suddenly the horses you’re working on are going to get triggered by this .
So practice getting in the flow state . With everything ewe do .
3 . Have the correct visa ..
If you’re coming to Australia to run clinics and illegally poach clients and customers from your Australian counterparts while you’re here on a tourist visa know that you’re not freakin welcome and you should p**s off home . This is especially true when there’s so freakin many of you doing it .
So there you go kids . A few helpful tips from yours truly .
Lunge long live long and stay ethical 💥💥💥

Days on the track ❤️
25/11/2023

Days on the track ❤️

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