Cross Creek Farms

  • Home
  • Cross Creek Farms

Cross Creek Farms Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Cross Creek Farms, Equestrian Center, 1906 Landrum Road, .
(16)

21/09/2024
Thanks David
21/09/2024

Thanks David

21/09/2024

Suppenkasper that Steffen Peters rode to historic silver medals on USA teams at Tokyo Olympics, 2018 Tryon World Games, retired after KWPN gelding's second Olympics in Paris seven weeks ago; with Mopsie's retirement, 60-year-old Steffen will focus on training clinics.

Important read!“Horses have survived through evolution by being highly aware of their environments. Change is a signific...
20/09/2024

Important read!

“Horses have survived through evolution by being highly aware of their environments. Change is a significant challenge for them….
Therefore, when you move a horse to a new home or get a new horse, your horse will go through a phase called "New Home Syndrome," and it will be significant for them. Appreciating this helps them get through it because they are incredible and can succeed. The more you understand and help the horse learn it is safe in its new environment and navigate the new routines and habits you introduce, the faster "New Home Syndrome" will pass.
"New Home Syndrome" will be prevalent in a horse’s life until they have learned to trust the safety of the environment (and all that entails) and the humans they meet and interact with. With strategic and understanding approaches, this may take weeks, and their nervous systems will start downgrading their high alert status. However, for some horses, it can take a couple of years to fully feel at ease in their new home…..”

"New Home Syndrome"🤓

I am coining this term to bring recognition, respect, and understanding to what happens to horses when they move homes. This situation involves removing them from an environment and set of routines they have become familiar with, and placing them somewhere completely different with new people and different ways of doing things.

Why call it a syndrome?

Well, really it is! A syndrome is a term used to describe a set of symptoms that consistently occur together and can be tied to certain factors such as infections, genetic predispositions, conditions, or environmental influences. It is also used when the exact cause of the symptoms is not fully understood or when it is not connected with a well-defined disease. In this case, "New Home Syndrome" is connected to a horse being placed in a new home where its entire world changes, leading to psychological and physiological impacts. While it might be transient, the ramifications can be significant for both the horse and anyone handling or riding it.

Let me explain...

Think about how good it feels to get home after a busy day. How comfortable your favourite clothes are, how well you sleep in your own bed compared to a strange bed, and how you can really relax at home. This is because home is safe and familiar. At home, the part of you that keeps an eye out for potential danger turns down to a low setting. It does this because home is your safe place (and if it is not, this blog will also explain why a lack of a safe place is detrimental).

Therefore, the first symptom of horses experiencing "New Home Syndrome" is being unsettled, prone to anxiety, or difficult behaviour. If you have owned them before you moved them, you struggle to recognise your horse, feeling as if your horse has been replaced by a frustrating version. If the horse is new to you, you might wonder if you were conned, if the horse was drugged when you rode it, or if you were lied to about the horse's true nature.

A horse with "New Home Syndrome" will be a stressed version of itself, on high alert, with a drastically reduced ability to cope. Horses don't handle change like humans do. If you appreciate the comfort of your own home and how you can relax there, you should be able to understand what the horse is experiencing.

Respecting that horses interpret and process their environments differently from us helps in understanding why your horse is being frustrating and recognising that there is a good chance you were not lied to or that the horse was not drugged.

Horses have survived through evolution by being highly aware of their environments. Change is a significant challenge for them because they notice the slightest differences, not just visually but also through sound, smell, feel, and other senses. Humans generalise and categorise, making it easy for us to navigate familiar environments like shopping centres. Horses do not generalise in the same way; everything new is different to them, and they need proof of safety before they can habituate and feel secure. When their entire world changes, it is deeply stressful.

They struggle to sleep until they feel safe, leading to sleep deprivation and increased difficulty.

But there is more...

Not only do you find comfort in your home environment and your nervous system downregulates, but you also find comfort in routines. Routines are habits, and habits are easy. When a routine changes or something has to be navigated differently, things get difficult. For example, my local supermarket is undergoing renovations. After four years of shopping there, it is extremely frustrating to have to work out where everything is now. Every day it gets moved due to the store being refitted section by section. This annoyance is shared by other shoppers and even the staff.

So, consider the horse. Not only are they confronted with the challenge of figuring out whether they are safe in all aspects of their new home while being sleep deprived, but every single routine and encounter is different. Then, their owner or new owner starts getting critical and concerned because the horse suddenly seems untrained or difficult. The horse they thought they owned or bought is not meeting their expectations, leading to conflict, resistance, explosiveness, hypersensitivity, and frustration.

The horse acts as if it knows little because it is stressed and because the routines and habits it has learned have disappeared. If you are a new human for the horse, you feel, move, and communicate differently from what it is used to. The way you hold the reins, your body movements in the saddle, the position of your leg – every single routine of communication between horse and person is now different. I explain to people that when you get a new horse, you have to imprint yourself and your way of communicating onto the horse. You have to introduce yourself and take the time to spell out your cues so that they get to know you.

Therefore, when you move a horse to a new home or get a new horse, your horse will go through a phase called "New Home Syndrome," and it will be significant for them. Appreciating this helps them get through it because they are incredible and can succeed. The more you understand and help the horse learn it is safe in its new environment and navigate the new routines and habits you introduce, the faster "New Home Syndrome" will pass.
"New Home Syndrome" will be prevalent in a horse’s life until they have learned to trust the safety of the environment (and all that entails) and the humans they meet and interact with. With strategic and understanding approaches, this may take weeks, and their nervous systems will start downgrading their high alert status. However, for some horses, it can take a couple of years to fully feel at ease in their new home.

So, next time you move your horse or acquire a new horse and it starts behaving erratically or being difficult, it is not being "stupid", you might not have been lied to or the horse "drugged" - your horse is just experiencing an episode of understandable "New Home Syndrome." And you can help this.❤

I would be grateful if you could please share, this reality for horses needs to be better appreciated ❤
‼️When I say SHARE that does not mean plagiarise my work…it is seriously not cool to copy and paste these words and make out you have written it yourself‼️

19/09/2024
19/09/2024

Another clue to success from Janet. And, in second level, it’s 60 points due to coefficients!

19/09/2024

My last blog was about our triumphant 2024 Paris Paralympic Games for American dressage enthusiasts. Gold after gold, a brilliant week of consistent and extraordinary excellence. It was a contrast to the Olympic Games, where our team suffered the two most inconveniently timed hiccups ever, followi...

16/09/2024

“I would say my greatest accomplishment with Shorts is finding the confidence to continue doing what I love most in the world: riding dressage and riding in general. I owe a debt of gratitude to Shorts and Kathleen for being so determined to help me get back to being me. The confidence I regained while riding helped me get back out into society, and realize that I didn’t have to be uncomfortable or ashamed of my disability.”

In this exclusive story, a para equestrian shares how an amazing pony, dubbed “The Little Engine That Could” changed everything for her: https://yourdressage.org/2024/08/06/the-little-engine-that-could/

16/09/2024

Call for Opinions: FEI Stakeholder Meeting on "Dressage Challenges" 1 October 2024. Link in comments section

15/09/2024
15/09/2024

An 18.2hh police horse who loves bananas and chin scratches – and is “the best boy” – has arrived at his last home to enjoy a well-earned retirement. H&H reported in June that Thames Valley Police (TVP) stalwart Atlas, who led The late Queen’s funeral procession, was to be on patrol at the...

15/09/2024

We are no longer allowing video or photography at our farm except by designated rider’s representative, and we will no longer allow anyone to post photo or video from our farm on social media without written permission from head trainer Lauren Sprieser.

Why? We are correct and compassionate trainers of horses and riders. We are proud of the training and instruction we offer here. We are proud of our consistent production of happy sound horses with long careers, and we have nothing to hide. But we are also deeply distressed by a trend towards vile and disgusting harassment online. The misinformation out there about dressage and horse training in general, the painting of an entire sport with the brush of a few bad actors, and a disgusting lack of humanity from social media commenters have us, frankly, pretty freaked out.

We’ve received many, many ludicrous and hateful comments, messages and emails over totally banal photographs on social media (like the Concerned Citizen who wanted us to know we could cause our horses to drown on their own saliva because we use nosebands. Yep.) We’ve seen other riders dragged through the mud over brief moments of imperfection. And while yes, we believe real honest-to-God horse abuse must be identified and punished, the mob mentality of the largely uninformed internet public is a disservice to animal welfare and to sport, and we simply refuse to participate.

We are proud of how we train and manage our horses, and our doors are always open (by appointment, please, not because we feel we have anything to hide, but just because we’d prefer random strangers not turn up unannounced) to watch how we create happy athletes at the highest levels of sport. We are also only human, and the internet has become lawless and spiteful. So out of respect for the privacy and sanity of our customers, our horses and our staff, we are changing our rules. We appreciate your understanding.

“Horses on the high-starch diet had more anaerobic bacteria (that do not need oxygen to grow), lactate-utilizing bacteri...
15/09/2024

“Horses on the high-starch diet had more anaerobic bacteria (that do not need oxygen to grow), lactate-utilizing bacteria (lactate is produced by rapidly fermented starch in the hindgut—the GI tract beyond the small intestine), and amylolytic bacteria (that break down starch). Murray says these results are not surprising, as previous studies have noted these bacteria in the microbiomes of horses on high-starch diets.
Vigilant behavior expressed by horses fed high-starch diets tended to increase when the amylolytic bacteria concentrations increased.”

Is your horse’s diet and microbiome to blame for bad behavior? In this article we'll break down the research.

15/09/2024

Horses that live in group pasture settings showed an increased ability to learn human cues, regardless of their relationship to the person.

14/09/2024
14/09/2024

The Olympic showjumping champion shares the most important lessons he's learned for successful horsemanship

What would you add?

14/09/2024

Nothing can ruin an autumn afternoon quicker than an angry wasp. Why are they so dang aggressive this time of year? Read this article to find out. >>>https://bit.ly/EQWaspsInFall

14/09/2024

Good Illustration of what the extended trot should look like

10/01/2024

American Grand Prix rider Alice Tarjan has sold her number one Grand Prix horse in the barn, Serenade MF, to fellow countrymate Jessica Howington.

08/01/2024

Harmon Field Dog Parks are closed!!

08/01/2024

A season with a 2025 breed back to Cody's Wish (Curlin) has been added to the Thoroughbred Charities of America's (TCA) Live Auction and Celebration scheduled to run Sunday, Jan. 7, with the majority of the proceeds going to support the local chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, announced the TCA....

07/01/2024

Christine Traurig has been named as the United States dressage development coach to lead America's team for the Paris Olympics where she will also be chef d'equipe

07/01/2024

US Equestrian is pleased to announce updates to the U.S. Dressage coaching structure within the program pathways, an initiative in the work for months, leveraging key stakeholder feedback and athlete participation throughout the process.

Address

1906 Landrum Road
Columbus, NC
28722

Telephone

(828) 817-5353

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Cross Creek Farms posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

  • Address
  • Telephone
  • Alerts
  • Claim ownership or report listing
  • Want your business to be the top-listed Pet Store/pet Service?

Share