Free Rein Stables & Horsemanship

08/16/2024

🙃😂

08/14/2024

🫶

Wednesday Wisdom from Tom ❤️🐴

08/14/2024

"Horses are very keen on body language, and what I refer to as “presence”, and expression. They know quite a bit about you before you ever get to ‘em. They can read things about you clear across an arena." ~ Buck⁠

08/08/2024

08/07/2024

One of my all time favorite Buck quotes ❤️❤️

08/04/2024

Tomorrow is the big day, and we would like to welcome our friends from Sound Equine Options to the lineup. They will be raffling off a Pendleton Wool Blanket at their booth!
In Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington, as in the rest of the country, the number of unwanted horses and horses not receiving basic care exceeds the resources available to accommodate them. Since 2009, Sound Equine Options has grown into a licensed rescue focusing on ending the cycle of abuse, neglect, abandonment and suffering for local horses. Sound Equine Options assists with law enforcement cases, often in partnership with Oregon Humane Society.
If you're keen on lending a hoof to these lucky ponies, trot on over and have a chat with the SEO gang!

07/25/2024

Truth 👌

Wednesday Wisdom 🐴

07/22/2024

All horses at our place are supplemented 😎 Keeping horses happy, and a balanced, well supported diet is vital to keeping happy horses and happy owners!!

Fresh pasture provides an abundance of vitamin E but hay is devoid of vitamins after harvesting.

My horses have always been on VE supplementation during the winter & since moving to Arizona they have been on it full time.

However as of late I’m learning it’s not enough. 😖

The NRC recommends a daily intake of about 1000 IU per day for the average horse in light work, although many experts insist this should be higher.

I typically provide 2-3000 IU to my horses depending on their workload however after my best boy Prowler displaying odd and unusual behavior, off to the vet we went.

Over the last few months he has been becoming unpredictable, overreacting at the smallest thing, feeling out of control even at a trot & exploding for no reason (the latter resulted in bucking me off very badly).

After cervical xrays, ultrasounds, THO & hyoid scopes, the vet came up with nothing. But she agreed something was “wrong” as Prowler seemed to have vision impairment & failed his baseline neuro exam.

We started with running blood work for EPM which came back negative, so her next idea was testing for Vitamin E through which we uncovered he is dangerously low in this essential piece of nutrition. 🏥

Symptoms of VE deficiency that look like other common problems:
🩺Eye & vision changes aka: becoming spooky, reactive or nervous
🩺Muscle pain & stiffness: we often reach for the magnesium here
🩺Dry/damaged coat: more omegas are typically toted as the answer
🩺Neurological problems: often we reach for trial treatment of EPM & Lyme.

Untreated - vitamin E deficiency can cause severe issues including permanent vision problems as well as equine motor neuron disease and equine degenerative myeloencephalopathy (this is fatal).

Although we finally have a direction of Prowler’s problems, now begs the question if we found it soon enough. For me, as the ever advocate of prehab & prevention, it feels like I’ve failed my horses once again by having to learn the hard way.

He’s now on 10,000IU of natural VE per day and we will retest in 3 months 🙏 Natural VE is also the key, with liquid form being more bioavailable than powder, but both are better than synthetic. If you do feed a powder it is essential to feed an oil alongside it for optimal absorption.

Running testing for vitamin E will become a regular part of my veterinary workups for all my horses - how about you?

07/19/2024

07/19/2024

Perfect two nights spent in the woods with the best horses and people a girl could ask for 🥰🐎🏕️ Soaking up summer while it’s here!!!

07/03/2024

Why yes, yes, they do ♾️🐎

07/02/2024

Sooo many details and nuance to study for YEARS!!! This has been a favorite of mine to play with since Joel Conner had us working on it this past spring.

06/30/2024

“…confident in my ability to start over…”
👌👌👌

06/30/2024

♾️The journey is never a straight line ♾️

06/18/2024

"It's a matter of timing... to approach a horse with a so-called philosophy where you wait til the horse does something wrong and then you beat on him or punish him afterwards - it's not even logical. Yet the horse isn't so different from us - in order to learn, you have to make mistakes. Then you re-calibrate, make a decision, try something different and try again. And the idea with a horse is when you see things going in the wrong direction, then you redirect his mind. You don't wait for him to get into trouble, you try to keep him out of trouble. Parenting is very similar - you know a long time before something's going to go wrong, so if you redirect them and you're going to be the parent and help to guide them, there's no reason you should have to beat on a kid (or a horse) to get him to respond to you." - Buck Brannaman