Marcia Rosenberger, Animal Communicator

12/01/2024

A must watch for horse owners!

Dr. Hancock shares with us some important parts of our horse's nervous system that we may be influencing without really knowing it. The more we understand ab...

11/24/2024

Backed by Warwick Schiller

10/30/2024

Learning how the nervous system connects the Skin, Muscles, Bones, Nerves, Blood vessels and Organs together gives Osteopaths a unique perspective on whole body health. This is why a shoulder problem might tell us to look for ulcers, or Why a poll restriction my predispose your horse for EPM or Lyme....
Any thoughts? Please respond and ask questions!

10/10/2024

Fall Tip:

How do I know when to deworm my horse?

At a minimum, we should perform f***l egg counts twice per year before making a decision about whether our horses need to be dewormed.

A horse with a f***l egg count result between 0 and 200 EPG is classified as a low shedder. A medium or moderate shedder has an EPG between 201 to 500, and a high shedder has an EPG of above 500. F***l egg counts are an estimate of your horse’s parasite burden or worm load.

If you haven't done a FEC this year, contact your primary care veterinarian today.

07/17/2024

"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‼️

07/14/2024

Sometimes in my practice I come across an owner who wants to normalize something that isn’t normal.

This sounds like:

❌ My horse works out of the stiffness/lameness after 15 minutes under saddle.
❌ He always crow hops after a bigger jump.
❌She throws her head around in the arena but not on the trail (or vise versa).
❌He always makes a face when I do the girth up.
❌It usually takes me 15 minutes to catch her and I need food to do it.
❌The left lead is always harder to get.
❌She’s always weaved in her stall.

These kinds of statements are usually followed by “that’s just the way he/she is.”

This is your horse speaking to you, over and over and over again. Please listen, before they have to get louder. Stop and think about what behaviors your horse demonstrates that maybe don’t seem totally right to you but you’ve just accepted them as “normal”.

This is a question very much worth asking of yourself, then your horse, then work with your trainer/horse care professionals to get to the bottom of it.

Answer the question as best you can, and you build a deeper, more solid partnership with your horse. Why? Because you listened. And then you did something about it. And your horse knows it.

07/03/2024

Electricity or electromagnetic fields communicate. This interaction, perceived by our hearts, brains, and bodies as well as plants and animals IS communication.
Think cell phones. This is why sound is not always necessary for communication. You just have to be able to perceive these small changes in fields to communicate telepathically. Most of us can do this to some degree. To do it well, like an animal communicator or a medium, you have to be aware of the signal and practice. All languages are energy transmission whether we hear them or not.

05/11/2024

To shave or not to shave your Golden?? .. I share this excellent article each year and with the warmer weather upon us, this is a reminder on why not to be tempted to shave your Golden ..

Wait! By Nancy Bynes, NCMG of Nevada City

With warmer temperatures finally coming to Nevada County, many dog owners are exploring options to help their pets stay comfortable. Shaving off all that hair is probably the most popular option. Indeed, for some coat types, this is an ideal solution. Not for all. With the exception of hard-coated terriers, dogs come in one of two coat types: single coated and double coated.

Examples of single-coated breeds are poodles, shih-tzus, bichons, etc. This type of coat will continue to grow longer and longer, much like human hair, with genetics being the final determination in reference to length. Double-coated or fur-bearing breeds have coats that grow to a predetermined length. They can be further separated into open coats and closed coats. These breeds have a hard, protective outer coat (guard hairs) and a soft, dense undercoat. Examples of open, double-coated breeds are any of the spitz-type breeds, such as Siberian huskies, Pomeranians and chows.

This coat is designed to shed snow or ice and provide maximum protection against freezing weather. Closed, double-coated breeds have noticeably longer guard hairs, which lay down over the undercoat, sort of like a blanket. While the outer, or guard, hairs get wet, the undercoat works to keep the dog's skin dry. Examples include golden retrievers, Australian shepherds and Newfoundlands.

Single-coated breeds can be clipped down to the skin, and the coat will grow back pretty much as it was before. The same is not true for double-coated breeds. For this reason, shaving these dogs down is not a solution to summer heat.

Think of a healthy double coat as an old-growth forest. There is a balance with different parts providing different benefits. If you clear-cut an old growth forest, there will be immediate regrowth of a lot of young trees very soon. Unfortunately, they won't initially be the same kind as those you cut down. Instead, the forest has to start from scratch and spend decades, first growing ground cover and softwoods that provide an environment for slower growing hardwood varieties. It takes generations before the natural balance is restored. While on a much shorter timeline, it's the same thing with a double-coated dog. Guard hairs represent old growth, and undercoat represents ground covering vegetation.

The act of shaving a double coat removes the dog's natural insulation and causes his system to kick into high gear. He'll now produce coat to protect himself from extreme temperatures, sunburn and sharp objects. Since the top coat or guard hairs take a long time to grow, what the dog's body produces first is soft undercoat. That's why we hear people say, “I shaved my dog, and it grew back twice as thick and really fuzzy!” In reality, what happens is that the original coat isn't restored at all. What grows in instead is thick, prolific undercoat mixed with short new guard hairs. We call it false coat or coat funk.

So, why is this bad? Picture this scenario: It's 90 degrees outside. You're getting dressed to go work in your yard. Are you going to put on a light cotton T-shirt and sunblock or thermal underwear and a sweatshirt? A dog's shaved-down false coat is like that sweatshirt. It's dull, soft and soaks up water like a sponge. Burrs and foxtails stick like Velcro. Above all else, it's way too thick for hot weather. By the time that false coat grows out enough to protect the dog from sunburn, scrapes and bites (the usual job of the top coat), it is so thick that the poor dog might as well be wearing thermal underwear and a sweatshirt.

Remember, Mother Nature designed the undercoat to be extremely heat-retentive. Do you take your dog to a grooming salon? You can request a bath and blow-out. Virtually all modern professional grooming salons have high velocity blow dryers in their work areas. These powerhouses can literally blast the dead undercoat out of your dog's hair after a thorough bathing with minimal brushing and combing needed. The benefit to your dog is a healthy, balanced coat you can both live with. Sure, you could opt for the shave-down, but you'll more than likely be back in a month or so for another “shave-down” because your dog is cooking in its own hair.

Then, if you're like most owners who fall into this cycle, you'll intentionally let your dog's woolly false coat grow out all winter “for warmth,” only to have it shaved off again in the spring. In reality, all winter long while you're under the false notion that your dog is staying warm and dry under that thick layer of fuzz, his coat is matting, retaining water and mud and possibly even mildewing. It will stay cold and wet for hours. Do you see the vicious cycle that started?

In some cases, owners really don't have a choice. If there's an underlying skin condition, requiring removal of the hair, obviously shaving is the lesser of two evils. Same applies if the coat is so matted that shaving is truly the most humane option, affording the owner a chance to start over and improve their brushing skills. These are situations to thoroughly discuss with both your veterinarian and your groomer so you can make an informed decision.

However, if your sole motivation for shaving your dog in the spring is to “keep him cool,” you need to know that you're actually creating a far worse situation than you think. Aside from destroying coat integrity, shaved dogs are susceptible to a multitude of complications, including, but not limited to, alopecia, heat stroke and skin cancer, specifically Solar-induced Squamous Cell Carcinomas and Dermal Hemangiosarcomas. Sometimes, these complications are not reversible.

Nancy Bynes is a certified master groomer with more than 38 years of experience. She lives in Nevada City.

This article was originally published in the Nevada City Union, June, 2011.

05/09/2024

Do it for the love of the horse, or don't do it at all.

When people find out I have 9 of my own horses at my little 10 acre farm in Northern Virginia, they gasp.

"WOW! That's a lot." They say. And they're right. It is an enormous amount of responsibility, but each one of these horses have come to me for a reason.

Whether they have been emotionally or phyiscally neglected, or let down by human after human. They are here to teach me how to support other horses. They're here to show me how to advocate for the best interest of horses across the globe. Not just those in my personal barn.

Each horse I have has a myriad of issues. Several OTTBs, a few retired lesson horses. Metabolic diagnoses, chronic tick dieases, Fibrotic myopathy that doesn't present normally, old factures, emotional baggage that is so heartbreakingly deep it would make any empathetic person ill. --And these horses weren't starvation cases. They weren't with animal abusers as society would define them. Every horse here was once a PERFORMANCE horse.

Which brings me to the long winded point of this post:

Do it for the love of the horse.

Not the ribbon or the applause.
Not to prove anything to anyone else.
Not to fuel your ego.
Not to control or dominate.
Not for fame or fortune.

DO IT FOR THE LOVE OF THE HORSE. Or don't do it at all.

The core of my work is to restore horses to optimal health. Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally as well. To open the eyes, hearts, and minds of owners, to understand that these noble creatures are sentient beings who willingly submit to our requests. Because they love us.

So please. For the love of all horses everywhere, stop and listen. Not with your ears, but your hearts. Connect, feel, sympathize, see things from their perspective. Because when you put your ego and own agenda aside, they will tell you exactly what is wrong. Exactly what they need.

Be your horse's advocate.

05/04/2024

How well do you know equine gastric ulcers?

Did you know there are 3 very distinct types and that healing and preventing them are ever so slightly different? Want to learn how to prevent gastric ulcers regardless of type? Like and follow this page so you don't miss anything!

Equie Glandular Gastric Disease (EGGD)

These types of ulcers are poorly understood as classification and study didn't begin until about 2016. EGGD affects the lower half of the stomach and pyloris (the sphincter that connects the stomach to the duodenum (small intestine)). It is allegedly not a disease of the diet, however, I can always make an argument that diet directly correlates to inflammation, and inflammation is the root cause of all dis-ease. Causes of EGGD include "forced" exercise, for example, riding, training, showing, and it is directly linked to the number of days per week horses are worked rather than the intensity at which they are working. Additional causes include NSAID use, ( like Bute, Banamine, Equioxx), even at NORMALLY PRESCRIBED doses in as little as 7 days, and unlike ESGD, stress has been found to induce EGGD. It is not caused by Helicobacter Pylori (H. Pylori) as it is in humans.

Symptoms include: Loss of appetite, aggression or grouchiness, weight loss, decreased performance, and recurrent colic. Horse affected by EGGD will sometimes also refuse their grain-based feed but continue to eat hay and/or grass.

More often than not, your conventional veterinarian would reach for omperazole (such as Gastro Guard or Ulcerguard), but studies have shown that omeprazole is actually more DETRIMENTAL than it is helpful. (We'll go further into the details of omeprazole and why it does more harm than good in upcoming posts.) Now, leading ulcer researchers have found that the gold standard for ulcer treatment, regardless of type, should be misoprostol and sucralfate. (Again, we'll discuss why in later posts.)

So how do we prevent EGGD?

- Forage first. ALWAYS. 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. Never ever, ever, EVER running out. Additional studies have shown that if I horse goes without forage for as little as 1-2 hours, that is long enough for gastric ulcers to occur. Chewing increases saliva output which produces natural bicarbonate to help buffer the acid in the stomach that is also natural and necessary!

- Increase healthy fats and avoid conventional soy, wheat, corn, molasses, and canola. (Among other things.) All of these ingredients are highly inflammatory.

- Be mindful of your training regime and ride only 4-5 days per week. Lots of working walk. Some of the most fit horses in the world spend tons of time "working" at the walk, so don't be fooled into thinking you have to trot, canter, gallop to get your horse fit!

- Increase turnout time to reduce stress

- Balance micronutrients to your horse's bio-individual needs. Every horse is not the same!

And just a little louder, one more time for the people in the back: HAVE HAY AVAILABLE AT ALL, YES ALL, TIMES!

Want a deeper dive into understanding EGGD? Google Dr. Ben Sykes and listen to his ulcer videos on youtube.

Stuck on the never ending omeprazole carousel? Have questions? Leave a comment or send us a DM. We're happy to help!

Nutrition consultations are also available to anyone in North America.

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