Nahshon Cook Horsemanship

09/24/2025

To see and be seen. To know and be known.
To not wish, or pretend, I was someone else.
The miracle of acceptance.

This being what matters most, is what my life and practice as an aspiring horseman, and helper of the inconvenient horses and their people, is all about.

Life is so precious. Everyday is a gift.

I'm so thankful.

09/23/2025

I retired a very good polo horse at age 16. While some can play into their 20s, this horse was showing the strain of the quick hard stops with a rollback that the game of polo demands of a horse's hocks. Anybody could ride this horse, and he was a favorite of my kids, so he stayed at the farm. I had a BHS Pony Club then, and I leased this horse to new D1 and D2 Pony Clubbers until he died at age 34.

My advice for older horse owners is to give them a job. Just as it is with humans, the body has to move if it is going to be comfortable into the senior years. The more the horse has done, the more likely it has experienced injuries of several kinds. As a horse ages, those injuries, however small, turn into increasingly ouchy or painful daily struggles. Scar tissue hardens and makes movement more difficult. That tissue needs to stretch to stay supple. Arthritis and various levels of bone calcification can increase low pain into discomfort. Joints need to be kept as fluid as possible.

You can call the vet and get a rundown of what the senior horse is experiencing and why, but when a horse gets past their 20s I don't bother with a diagnosis when I can feel the pain and its location in a horse. I treat the pain, not worrying what the source might be, and I keep older horses moving.

There is a simple rule with injured horses, "When you work them, they either get better or worse." Most older horses get better with work. If they get worse, you have to stop and rethink it.

It is possible to raise an older horse's threshold of pain with regular movement. It's hell getting old no matter if it's a horse or a person. Movement can be painful, but not moving results in a growing intensity of pain until the body just doesn't want to move.

My go to treatment for aging ouchy horses is Glucosamine in their daily feed and Bute before every ride. Some people believe that Bute will irritate the stomach lining and put a horse off their feed. But back in the 80s Cornell Vet School did a study that found this was generally a myth. They might be off their feed from the pain and not from Bute issues.

Another technique I learned is to put an older horse in the pasture with a controlling pony mare that won't let a horse stand still for very long. This works well with colicly horses too. I say pony because they don't eat much and get the job done. I highly recommend cranky POA mares for the job.

I know many horse owners' approach with an aging horse is to feel "they deserve an easy retirement" and they do nothing with an older horse but watch them graze in a field. I think this is a mistake.

Another adjustment we must make as horses age in their senior years is their feed. Teeth can become less efficient, and guts can slow down. Exercise helps with some of these issues, but feed adjustments must be part of the picture. Fortunately, the most recent advancements in horsemanship have been in nutrition and we now have many more solutions than in the past. Do your research.

Another trick I learned to keep horses feeling young is to take an older horse along to something they used to do. As the older polo horse I mentioned aged, once in a while I'd load him up with the other polo horses and take him to a game. He'd stand in the line of horses tied to the trailer where he could hear the announcer, the crack of a ball being hit and experience the typical game day activity around the trailer. I swear, every time I did this, he looked ten years younger.

What methods have you discovered to help an aging horse?

09/19/2025

This is a great visual of how the thoracic sling is activated by dynamic movement.

It helps me to think of there being four slings:

The left and right upper slings that provide rotational stabilization of the spine towards vertical balance, and the left and right lower slings that ‘collect’ the body back over the limbs toward vertical alignment, using the adductor muscles (orange and yellow).

This is why lateral work is important!

We can start working on the lower sling with shoulder-in and turn on the hindquarters, but work like haunches-in and counterbent turns starts to work the upper sling. Halfpass requires the most of all the slings.

Of course, none of this works in isolation. We have to simultaneously develop the ‘gluteal bridge,’ (my own term for the combined structure and function of the glutes and longissimus back muscle). But that’s a different post for a different time. 

Image from Animal-Balance

09/16/2025

This is true for 26 year old Welsh, too. That fourth paragraph is Gem's story.

Those tough, sound, athletic Thoroughbreds (and other breeds) are out there, but not necessarily in places that most searchers think to look.

Case in point, Dakota Swift, a North Dakota bred, foaled in 1983, by Chase Winterish x Swift Cima, by La Cima. He raced in Juarez, Mexico, Billings, Montana, and at Wyoming Downs in Evanston, Montana, hardly on the beaten track of those on the lookout for showing and eventing prospects.

You have to beat some unlikely bushes, and here is something that I learned years ago, That one you’ve been looking for may not be miles away, across states, across continents, across oceans. That special horse might be within a few miles of where you live, hidden in plain sight in a field that you drive past 5 days a week taking your kids to school, or going shopping.

And here’s another thought---THE horse may be right this second in YOUR OWN BARN. But somehow its potential has remained hidden and undiscovered.

Finding horses so often involves learning HOW to look as well as WHERE to look. Think about what that means?

09/13/2025

Follow the horse and find heaven in every step.

09/10/2025

Gem: A twenty-five year old, 14h, Welsh Cob schooling a few of his forward piaffe steps, to a few passage steps, to stretchy-chewy trot today. He's been in training with me for nine months.

08/18/2025

Here's the second re-post about Xodo that some people asked me to share again.

08/18/2025

Here's the first post about Xodo that some people asked me to post again.

08/16/2025

Inca: Inca is a twelve year old, Grand Prix, Lusitano gelding. In this clip we're working on out three-tempi canter changes on the diagonal.

08/16/2025

Pal: A 12 year old Iberian Sport Horse gelding who has just begun his training at the Grand Prix Level (with me) schooling piaffe in-hand on the wall.

He used to be terrified of in-hand work on the wall because of previous traning from his past situationship.

This is our first shot of extended work in-hand on the wall in about a year. Pal did an absolutely brilliant job.

08/16/2025

Jay: A 12 year old Lusitano gelding in trot work. In this clip we school half-steps, a little piaffe, trot-walk-trot transitions in half-pass and some extended trot.

In the piaffe work, there are moments that he dips behind the verticle for a moment. This is because he was originally taught to piaffe on the forehand by holding his face in while being touched on the croup with the stick.

We've gotten the triangulation pretty much fixed, and his head position is staying more consistent.

08/16/2025

Tobold: 25 year old Grand Prix Lusitano stallion doing canter work today in a snaffle bit with no noseband. He's 14.3h.

In this video go from do a transition from. Two to one-time lead changes on the diagonal. The missed changes in the one's were my fault.