Dunroven Ranch

Dunroven Ranch A small ranch located in the Sierra foothills. Boarding for retired horses. Natural Barehoof Trimming care available on and off site by appointment.
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Dunroven Ranch is a full-service retirement ranch for your beloved equine friend. We are located in the beautiful foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Central California. We provide the best loving care and natural lifestyle for your retired horse; large natural terrain paddocks with shady trees, run-in stalls, covered feed stalls for the worst of inclement weather, and daily turn-out for play with c

ompatible pals and natural active movement. We feed only high-quality grass hays scattered in small piles to encourage natural "foraging" behavior, clean fresh well-water, and supplements as needed. We provide natural bare-hoof trimming on the mustang model by an experienced bare-hoof trimmer. We also provide boarding for the purposes of natural bare-hoof lameness rehabilitation for laminitic equines and equines suffering from other lameness issues. Our boarding fee is $275.00 a month and includes all services, including a monthly "digital diary" of photos and story about your horse and his or her activities and life at Dunroven. Trimming is billed separately as needed. Visits to see and play with your retired horse are by scheduled appointment. Bare-hoof practitioner and ranch co-owner, Amy Farrell, was farrier-trained and certified in the 1980s at the Porterville Horseshoeing School. Now exclusively bare-hoof in her practice, Amy trims horses on and off site and has a large clientele of trim clients in the Tulare County/Fresno County area. Amy is available for free consultations on facebook. She loves to help people help their horses bare-hoofedly! We love horses!

After watching the episode on Yellowstone which featured reining horses, this explanation is in line with my thinking on...
03/20/2022

After watching the episode on Yellowstone which featured reining horses, this explanation is in line with my thinking on the matter of asking horses to do repetitive motion that is so far outside of their natural movement.

from Foxtail Forge and Farriery: GOING IN CIRCLES

When horses roamed the plains, they did exactly that: they roamed. They drifted along, grazing and mostly walking in straight lines. When horses worked for a living, they continued to walk those straight lines, pulling a plow from one end of the field to the other, pulling a milk wagon from one end of town to the other, or pushing cattle from one end of Texas to the other. As they transitioned from work animals to recreation vehicles, they generally continued walking, jogging, or cantering in reasonably straight lines, going from one end of a trail to the other.

Of course, not all work or recreation involved strict, straight line movement. They were asked to cut cattle, which often required them to work laterally, with sudden starts and stops and jolts and jerks. They were asked to perform military/dressage maneuvers, with significant lateral movement and transitions. They were asked to foxhunt, which required them to work over fences and around obstacles. They were asked to participate in sport, such as polo, which again required stops, starts, bursts of speed and lateral work. And, of course, they were asked to race, which required speed, but generally on straight line tracks or long ovals.

As they transitioned into show and competition arenas, however, they shifted away from straight line activity. We changed the game and asked them to become focused athletes and runway models. In doing so, we put them into smaller and smaller spaces and asked them to perform more and more patterned behaviors. Basically, we put them into patterned, repetitive movements—mostly in circles... little, tight circles. And they started to fall apart, experiencing more and more issues with joint problems, soft tissue injuries, and general lameness concerns.

We blamed their failures and breakdowns on bad breeding practices and poor genetics; we blamed their failures on bad farriers and inadequate veterinarians; we blamed their breakdowns on poor training and conditioning, poor horse keeping practices, bad nutritional practices, and any number of other things. And, while none of these should be disallowed, the fact remains that we changed the game and put them into those little, tiny circles and repetitive activities. So, let’s look at equine anatomy, and specifically, let’s look at that in relation to athletic maneuvers and activities.

First and foremost, the horse is designed to be heavy on the forehand. We fight against that concept, asking them to engage their hindquarters, to “collect,” and to give us impulsion. And they’re capable of doing so… but they’re not designed or “programmed” to sustain such activity for any length of time. When they do this in “natural” settings and situations, they’re playing, they’re being startled or frightened, or they’re showing off. None of these are sustained activities.

Likewise, when they do engage, they’re generally bolting forward, jumping sideways, or leaping upwards. And they're typically doing that with a burst of speed and energy, not in slow motion. Ultimately, their design is simply not conducive to circular work. Each joint, from the shoulder to the ground is designed for flexion and extension—for forward motion, not lateral motion. In fact, these joints are designed to minimize and restrict lateral or side-to-side movement.

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51090 Eshom Valley Drive
Badger, CA
93603

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