Lms Stable

06/10/2024

04/13/2024

🌼🌷Spring is here and blanket services ARE BACK!! 🌷🌼
Reach out today to schedule drop offs, pick ups or request a label kit for your big pickups! We appreciate all the returning customers who have already reached out, and look forward to helping many new customers this year.

03/11/2024

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

03/06/2024

Where everybody be!?

03/06/2024

Where they be!?!?

03/04/2024

Light therapy can be very beneficial for your horse. Here's a list of the 3 types and what they're best used for.
For more info or to schedule an appointment if you're local, contact our friends at Trinity Equine Services, LLC

02/22/2024

Yup nothing going on today

01/07/2024

Yup no drama here

11/25/2023

Deck the halls...

10/29/2023

It's that time of year again... 🙄😒🥴

10/20/2023

“How do I know if he’s in pain?” I get asked this question a lot when students are trying to rehab their horse through a particular gait deficiency or movement dysfunction. How do we tell when a conditioning plan is working and, more importantly, that the exercises are not causing further disc...

10/20/2023

**THURSDAY RESEARCH MEME**

Todays meme relates to the saddle twist/waist for the rider AND horse.

Some riders prefer a narrow twist/waist of the saddle to optimise hip function, comfort and to be closer to the horse. Whilst this maybe useful, it is important that the twist/waist of the saddle is suitable and can accommodate the horse’s conformation and back shape

Previously in trot, jump and gallop we have shown that areas of high pressure in the region of T10-T13 (region of the twist/waist) can have a significant affect on equine locomotion. Reinforcing the importance and complexities of correct saddle fit for both horse and rider
🤓

www.centaurbiomechanics.co.uk/blog/

10/11/2023

Did you hear the News? The wait is finally over!
The GVEC client education event is BACK and better than ever.
New name, new place but still the first Saturday morning in February!
GVEC’s Courses on Horses will be held on Saturday February 3, 2024, from 8 am - noon at Allendale Columbia School in Pittsford. We have speakers coming from Cornell and New Bolton Center to talk to you about how they collaborate with clients and farm vets to provide comprehensive care to horses. The gymnasium will be full of vendors who will be handing out lots of information about products and services and they will indeed provide door prizes. And do not despair; REFRESHMENTS will be provided and there is still NO CHARGE for our event!
Please mark your calendars and tell all your friends because you do not want to miss this!

09/20/2023

09/12/2023

So here’s a question to ask ourselves before we get angry at our horse----“How much damage control do I want to have to do?”

Think about it---We have many reasons to lose our temper at horses because training horses is extremely time consuming and it requires the patience of a saint, which most of us are not.

So something that we want the horse to do, the horse is not doing to our satisfaction. Now the real reason might be all sorts of things, poor fitting tack, improper preparation, poor riding from us, whatever, but it doesn’t FEEL like that, not at this moment. It feels as though the horse is willfully being a pain in the ass.

And so the temptation is HUGE to respond by getting rough, by drilling, by getting frustrated, we have all been there, I suspect.

BUT---And here’s the gigantic “but”----But if we DO lose it with the horse, whatever the problem was that made us get annoyed or angry in the first place is going to get worse. Count on it. The “lesson” we think we are teaching our horse, not to be “bad” is absolutely going to backfire. The horse did not know why he was getting rammed around. All it will do is scare him and confuse him, so now we have to undo the harm we did to even get back to the place we were before we lost our temper.

We have to do damage control, and the worst thing about it is that WE did the damage.

Hard? You bet. One of the hardest things about riding horses is self control. It is the ONE vital piece that so often keeps an otherwise good trainer from reaching full potential---.

08/19/2023

PAIN

Often pain is interpreted in different ways by many people, and the sufferer of pain will also interpret it in many ways and often the person interpreting the pain will tell you how you should feel, how you should manage it and your recovery time, and often when you need to stop whining about it especially if the pain is not a result of injury and no one can find out the why or where its coming from

Now imagine if you are the horse.

As a therapist we are often working on what we find on that day, we can tell if it has been there a long time and often the pain has receded, but the restriction has taken over, often depending on how restricted the horse is can tell us how long the horse has been like this, that will often determine how much we do because if we do too much in one go will we end up with blob of jelly of a horse not knowing where to place itself, if you do too much in one go you may just be taking away the one thing that was holding the horse together.

Chronic pain is not something anyone or animal gets used to it they just learn to live with it but often then it is reflected in the personality and often a horse gets the label of grumpy, aggressive, wont mix with other horses (can you imagine being in pain and along comes another horse to groom you with their teeth ouch), their reputation proceeds them so any future encounters with people will come from the person being defensive and the horse being reactive and a vicious circle starts with only the horse getting the raw deal

Spasms are unpredictable so can you imagine a horse that has a burst of pain, and it has to figure out what caused it, was it the saddle?? Was it the corner of the school?? Was it being led from the field?? So the horse puts up caution to everything just in case one of those things may have been the culprit and remember a shot of pain often means the reaction is visceral, and out of control, think if your back spasms as you stand up you have no control over how your body reacts

Intermittent pain is often when changes may be occurring, and the place is reactive while changes are happening for example bony changes and unless you have a scanner or Xray machine on tap we have to look at the horse and assess when work should continue, the bone is changing searching for an anchor and until it anchors pain will be there and then we may have restriction afterwards

I often find we dismiss pain in horses even if the pain is localised the whole body will be focused into that one area to try and deal with it, so if your horse has a lack of concentration after pain has been diagnosed then it might be because the brain is trying to figure out what to do and how to cope

We cannot wipe away years of pain or restriction in a one-hour session, that’s having an unrealistic goal for either your therapist or the horse, we cannot be expected to have all the answers to the why we are there to work on the how, we are only opening a window of change for the horse,

I often try to get the owner to think how they would feel if they had a similar injury or illness or pain reaction, how would they feel about going on a 20 mile hike with a back pack, how would they feel about going out and socializing, how would they feel if someone said we can't see it therefore we will dismiss it

Pain is pain no matter what species you are it still hurts

08/06/2023

07/10/2023

I just got back from about an 8 day stint in the hospital, and since I was dealing with pain and was watching any number of others dealing with pain, it got me thinking about the difference between the way humans are able to express discomfort compared to the more stoic way that injured horses have to endure it.

Horses have all kinds of issues that are not created by humans, but they have ever so many which are.

It is so easy to assume that because horses are unable to verbally express discomfort and anxiety that they are not feeling those emotions and feelings.

Which leads me to these thoughts: we need to ask ourselves, since we all profess to love horses, whether what we are doing or failing to do Is causing pain that if it were happening to us would leave us begging for relief.

If we wouldn't want it done to ourselves we shouldn't ask it of our horses. In our daily riding are we demanding performances that our horses are not fit enough to accomplish without fatigue and stress? Are we doing sports or activities that take horses too far toward the outer limits of their abilities making it more likely that they will be injured? If we are, and we know it, are we getting involved in making positive changes to those sports or are we simply going along with the crowd and letting the horses take the hits?

Horses are completely vulnerable and powerless to escape what humans make them do. More and more I feel that the true definition of a good horseman, a good horse woman, is someone who puts the best interest of the horse as a number one priority. Competitive success is not a measure of being a good horse person. What is that measure is doing right by our horses.

Being in pain ourselves for a while lets us better appreciate how important it becomes to avoid doing it to creatures with limited abilities to let us know what they are feeling.