Equine Nutrition Australasia (ENA)

06/11/2025

Tamarack Hill Farm Thanks

06/11/2025

Horse Lovers Community Thanks - The Magnificent SEA BIRD

In the quiet paddocks of Chantilly, 1962, a chestnut c**t with a white blaze and two white stockings stepped into the world—unassuming, unheralded, and bred from a sire who’d faltered in English classics and a dam who’d never won a race. His name was Sea Bird, and his pedigree whispered nothing of greatness.

Yet from that modest beginning rose the most commanding performance Europe had ever witnessed.

Trained by the meticulous Étienne Pollet and owned by French textile magnate M. Jean Ternynck, Sea Bird’s brilliance revealed itself slowly at first. A winning debut in the Prix de Blaison, then a convincing triumph over top juveniles in the Critérium de Maisons-Laffitte. His only defeat—a narrow loss to stablemate Grey Dawn—was blamed on a slow start and a wide trip. His supporters knew: this c**t was just getting started.

At three, he exploded.

In the Prix Greffulhe, he won “in a canter.” In the Prix Lupin, he demolished a field that included the French 2,000 Guineas winner Cambremont and the unbeaten Diatome—future winner of the Washington, D.C. International—by 6 lengths, as if racing had become a solo exercise.

Then came Epsom, June 1965.

Unimposing in the paddock, almost “spare” in build, Sea Bird slipped quietly into the Derby field. But once the gates opened, poetry began. Tucked in sixth through Tattenham Corner, he waited. At the turn, jockey Pat Glennon gave him his head—and like a Rolls-Royce gliding through silence, Sea Bird surged.

He passed the field as though they were standing still. By the final furlong, he led by 4 lengths. Glennon eased him in the last 50 yards; even so, he won by 2 lengths, leaving Meadow Court (future Irish Derby and King George winner) and I Say looking like work riders.

Witnesses called it the easiest Derby ever run—a masterpiece of controlled power.

But Epsom was only the prelude.

At Saint-Cloud, he brushed aside older horses and Grey Dawn once more, winning the Grand Prix by 2½ lengths without ever being asked.

Then, Longchamp. October 3, 1965.

The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe that year wasn’t just strong—it was historic. The field read like a who’s who of global racing:

Tom Rolfe (Kentucky Derby & Preakness winner)
Meadow Court (King George champion)
Reliance (French Derby and Grand Prix de Paris hero)
Diatome (Washington International victor)
Anilin (Russian champion)
Oncidium (Coronation Cup winner)
For much of the race, it was anyone’s. But two furlongs out, Sea Bird and Reliance broke clear like lightning splitting the sky. Then—Glennon asked.

What happened next defied description.

Sea Bird propelled forward like a rocket, opening a 6-length chasm—the widest margin in Arc history. Reliance, no slouch himself (Timeform 137), finished 6 lengths ahead of third. That meant Sea Bird beat Diatome by 12 lengths—a titan, trounced.

The crowd erupted. Some wept. One observer said the ovation rivaled Napoleon’s return from victory. In that moment, Sea Bird wasn’t just a racehorse—he was a myth made flesh, a force so complete he was likened to “Christ or Mao” in stature within the racing world.

Timeform awarded him 145—the highest rating ever given to a European c**t.

Why does Sea Bird stand among the century’s greatest?

He beat the deepest Arc field ever assembled—stronger than those faced by Ribot, Nijinsky, or even Dancing Brave.
His Epsom Derby remains one of the most effortless classics ever run.
While Ribot was unbeaten in 16 starts and Brigadier Gerard ruled the mile, Sea Bird owned the mile and a half like no European before or since.
Only Secretariat’s 31-length Belmont eclipses his raw, awe-inspiring dominance.
Retired to John Galbreath’s Darby Dan Farm in Kentucky, Sea Bird sired not just winners, but legends:

Allez France—Arc winner, French Oaks and Guineas heroine, one of Europe’s greatest fillies
Gyr, Great Heron, Arctic Tern, and the champion jumper Sea Pigeon
He died in 1973, just as Secretariat was electrifying America—a quiet end to a silent storm.

Sea Bird never shouted. He didn’t need to.
He simply rose, once, in the rain at Longchamp—
and the world has been bowing ever since.

06/11/2025

AAEP.ORG Thanks

06/11/2025

Equus Magazine Thanks

Don't let your guard down against ticks. This insidious infection is a persistent threat to horse health in some parts of the country. Here's what you need to know to protect your horse. Click the link in the comments to learn more.

06/11/2025

Hoofology Thank You Regina Fränken Many Thanks

THE UNHOLY TRINITY OF HOOF CARE

(The Client, The Weather, and The Facebook Comment Section)

And lo, having created the Holy Trinity, the gods of hoof care looked down upon their work and said,
“Too much peace. Too much competence. Let’s fix that.”

And from the mud, three new entities crawled forth — uninvited, unkillable, and determined to test the faith of every professional in the land.
They are the Unholy Trinity: The Client, The Weather, and The Facebook Comment Section.
Beware them all, for they walk among us.

THE CLIENT: TESTER OF SANITY, DESTROYER OF SCHEDULES

The Client was created first — a necessary evil wrapped in fleece and optimism.
They arrive smiling, clutching a coffee and a crisis.
They open with: “He’s been a bit footy,” and close with, “He’s never done that before.”
They have read every article, ignored every one of them, and can pronounce “laminitis” with the confidence of a man explaining space travel to NASA.

Their horse hasn’t seen a hard surface since 2019.
Their field is a swamp. Their rug collection has its own postcode.
They believe hoof boots are magical artefacts that cure every known disease, provided you fasten them under the full moon.

And yet — we love them.
For without them, there would be no stories, no invoices, and no one to text at 10 p.m. about “those lines on his hoof.”
They are our burden and our business.
Forgive them, for they know not what magnesium is.

THE WEATHER: THE ETERNAL ADVERSARY

The second of the Unholy Three.
It obeys no law, no season, no god but chaos.
Forecasts are fairy tales — “light showers” means biblical floods, “mild breeze” means sideways sleet and a flying bucket.

You set out in sunshine; by yard two, you’re waterboarding yourself with your own hood.
Your gloves weigh a kilo, your rasp has oxidised before your eyes, and the horse is standing in a puddle that’s technically tidal.
Then comes summer — flies, concrete hooves, and clients who say, “Could we do 2 p.m.? He’s in the shade then.”
There is no shade. There is only regret.

We do not battle the weather; we negotiate terms of surrender.
It wins every time.

THE FACEBOOK COMMENT SECTION: ABANDON ALL REASON

The final trial. The abyss. The ninth circle of hoof care hell.

Here, experts are born fully formed from the ether, armed with screenshots, Google citations, and zero experience.
They speak in absolutes, quote memes as gospel, and preface every insult with “just my opinion.”
No photograph is safe; no nuance survives.

You post a sound horse, and someone declares it crippled.
You post a pathology, and they recommend turmeric and grounding mats.
There are factions, cults, and people who sincerely believe that a hoof can “breathe.”
It is a spiritual wasteland littered with broken professionals and screenshots of old Pollitt papers no one has actually read.

You cannot win. You cannot reason. You can only scroll faster.

THE CREED OF THE UNHOLY

We, the weary, accept these trials as proof of life.
For every client who ghosts us, there’s one who brings cake.
For every storm, there’s a horse who stands like a saint.
And for every idiotic thread online, there’s one quiet message that says, “thank you — that helped.”

So we endure.
We patch the boots, wring out the socks, close the browser, and live to rasp another day.

And lo, the gods of hoof care looked again upon their creation and said,
“They’re still standing. Perhaps we should add farrier conferences next.”

06/11/2025

Dr Shelley Appleton Thanks

When You Care About Everything

“When you care about everything, you do nothing well, which then compels you to try even harder. Welcome to being tired.”
- Kendra Adachi, The Lazy Genius Way

Social media has made it almost impossible to know what to care about anymore.
Every scroll screams a new priority: the bit, the barefoot trim, the blink, the blink rate, the triangulated eye wrinkles when the horse blinks (because apparently there are thirteen categories of blink now) 🫠 the rug, the no rug, the lick, the chew, the yes, the no, the vertical, the topline, the hoof boot, the bare hoof, the saddle, the pad, and of course... the blink. Again. 👁️

Everyone wants to do the best for their horse. Everyone. But out there in the wild west of the horse world, good advice, bad advice, and pure outrage collide creating so much noise.

Gurus, experts, and equestrian vigilantes line the fences, ready to tell you what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s ethical, what’s cruel, and exactly how far behind the vertical your horse was in a single freeze-framed screenshot.

It’s chaos. And it’s exhausting. 😩

The problem is that when you try to care about everything everyone tells you to, you end up caring effectively about nothing. You get tired. Paralysed. You start second-guessing everything you do. Progress stalls. Motivation collapses. What once brought you joy now feels like guilt and shame.

I’ve had people tell me they’ve thought about selling their horses, even their whole property, because it’s all just too much. It’s not fun anymore. It’s an expensive way to feel perpetually guilty, crushed and resentful.

BUT! Let me explain something important....
This isn’t a lack of love. It’s cognitive overload.

Humans are intelligent, but our brains can only juggle so much. When you’re trying to coordinate your body, learn new skills, interpret every twitch and blink (and the moral implications of that blink🙄), and manage your own fear... that’s a mental pile-up. The brain throws its hands in the air and shouts, “Nope!”

So I do something radical: I reduce the load. 💡

We start with 22 simple things. Clear, teachable skills for the horse, and learnable, repeatable patterns for the human. Once those are in place, the brain can breathe again. You build competence, and with it comes confidence. Suddenly, you can see more, do more, be more - not because you’re forcing it, but because your mind finally has CAPACITY.

That’s what progress looks like. Not perfect care about everything, just meaningful care about the right most effective things.

Take Stacey in this photograph, one of my favourite clients. She’s only owned horses for three years. We built her plan step by step, and she followed it. She got so proficient with her first horse that she brought an older mare, long retired, back into work and is turning her into a happy, willing partner. Now they’re working under saddle to really get stuck into some specific training to support her body and they are doing so well.

Stacey can notice a lot now - her timing, her horse’s balance, the small shifts that matter. But that didn’t happen because she tried to care about everything all at once. It happened because she was disciplined enough to care about a couple of things at a time.

That’s what learning what to care about looks like: clarity, skill, and confidence that builds strategically over time.

It’s not that you stop caring — it’s that you focus your care on the big things that really matter.
And the best part? Stacey’s having a ball. Her horses are her fun. She has great progress and even if she has to go backwards in one of the horse's training - she knows this is part of the process.

I would be grateful if you hit SHARE on this one to raise awareness of what is sitting behind this endemic of “stuckness”.

IMAGE📸: Stacey & Z at the beautiful Sutton Farm in Sutton Forrest. Where the movie Pharlap was filmed. I invite all of you that feel stuck to discover Project Reboot. It's a community event I run where we run through the 22 exercises with my feedback. It works. If you want to know more DM me for more info ℹ️

06/11/2025

EquiMed - Horse Health Matters
Thanks

Judging a horse's conformation takes careful study and knowledge of horse anatomy. Because of their importance to the performance and soundness of a horse, the legs are the major area of focus in judging conformation.

06/11/2025

Dr Shelley Appleton Calm Willing Confident Horses
Thanks

Word: Balance
(aka If the word “connection” made your head spin, wait till you hear this one!)

One of the holy trinity of horsemanship: timing, feel, and balance.
Sounds simple, right? Except balance, like connection, is a word used so often - and in so many ways - it can make your head spin.

The legendary horseman Tom Dorrance once used a broom to explain it. You know the drill: balance the broom upright on your hand. To keep it there, your hand has to keep shifting beneath the centre of mass. Stop adjusting, and the broom falls. The physics is boringly simple; the lesson isn’t. Because that constant, tiny readjustment - that’s balance in action. It’s all the micro-decisions and movements we make every second when working with a living, breathing, thinking animal that has a brain of its own.
We’re doing the same thing every time we interact with a horse - whether caring, handling, or riding. We’re respecting not only the centre of mass in the body, but also the centre of emotion and the centre of thought. Because balance in horses isn’t just physical. It’s a full-body, full-brain, full-heart experience.
Physical balance is the gymnastic one - distributing weight, force, and load evenly through the horse’s body and joints. It’s what keeps them from falling, tripping, or wearing out joints prematurely. And it takes a lot of training, because horses aren’t born symmetrical - and they certainly didn’t evolve to carry a human on their back, which makes the job about a thousand percent harder.
Mental balance means the horse isn’t switched off or switched on like a motion-sensor floodlight. Not too dull, not too reactive - just calm, thinking, responsive, and able to perform without panic.

Emotional balance is the nervous system version of the broom - recovering quickly when startled, not melting down when asked, and feeling safe enough to try. That comes from how we nurture them, what we expose them to, and what we help them understand. They need to trust that we are not a threat - that when they’re with us, they’re safe.

And then there’s the rider’s balance - the human component of the equation. A centred, stable load who moves with the horse, not like a sack of potatoes pretending to have a core.

But wait, there’s more. Nutrition must be balanced. Hooves must be balanced. Saddles must be balanced. Training schedules, work–rest ratios, feed ratios, even our emotional investment - all need balancing. Because every imbalance, however small, ripples through the whole system.

And this is where things get messy. Because there are so many dimensions of the horse that need balancing, people often get stuck defending their favourite one. The bodyworker will say physical balance is everything. The mindset coach will swear it’s emotional balance. The nutritionist, the farrier, the saddle fitter - each believes their balance matters most. But the truth is, all of them matter.

Anyone who truly understands physical balance also knows it can’t exist without mental and emotional balance - because tension, confusion, or fear will throw the body out of sync. Nutritional imbalance will quietly undo everything else. And if you get all that right but ride in an unbalanced saddle, you can kiss the rest goodbye. Every balance connects to the next. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The secret of balance - in horses, life, or broomsticks - isn’t perfection. It’s noticing imbalance quickly and adjusting before the whole thing crashes down.

Balance is not fixed - it’s fluid. It changes, it’s influenced, it’s lived in motion. What impacts balance impacts the horse’s life, because nothing unsettles a horse more than feeling unbalanced. A horse’s primary defence is movement - take away their ability to move with confidence, and they feel vulnerable.

So yes, balance runs deep. When you hear the word and feel your eyes glaze over, remember this: it exists on many levels - physical, mental, emotional - but it all boils down to one thing:

Balance from our side of the fence - is your the ability to adjust with awareness - supporting the horse physically, mentally, and emotionally, and protecting them so they can manage the stresses of life and thrive.

PS. If you have another type of "balance" I might have missed, please add it below in the comments 😆‼

This is Collectable Advice Entry 73/365 of my challenge examining the words and terminology we use to decode them. You can SAVE it or hit the SHARE button. But please do not copy and paste these words.❤

06/11/2025

Meghan Brady: Equine Wellness & Mentorship
Thanks

What is a “Social Licence to Operate” — and why does it matter to us as horse owners, practitioners, and riders?

It sounds formal, but it really comes down to one thing: trust.
Public trust that what we do with horses aligns with care, compassion, and ethics.

That trust allows our work — from training to competition to therapeutic practices — to continue. But it’s not guaranteed. It exists only as long as people believe we’re putting welfare first.

And lately, that belief is being tested.
People are seeing:
• Horses isolated without movement or social connection
• Equipment used for control instead of communication
• Tension and fear portrayed as “normal”
• Injuries and exhaustion accepted as part of the process

These are not one-off moments. They are patterns — and the public is right to question them.

If our industry requires horses to suffer to exist, then something is deeply out of alignment.

I don’t want to protect traditions that compromise welfare.
I want to help rebuild systems that honor the horse’s voice, body, and spirit.

If that means redefining what equestrian sport and practice look like, that’s not loss — that’s evolution.

Because our social licence isn’t permanent.
It’s something we earn every day — through awareness, compassion, and change. 🕊️

06/11/2025

Thanks