Kozy-Manor Stables

08/13/2024

Something for everyone to think about as you all transition to your new homes.

"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 If you have owned them before you moved them, you struggle to recognise your horse, feeling as if your horse has been replaced by a frustrating version.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‼️

06/25/2024

Jenny Trainer Parelli Professional and Gaited horse expert was here this past weekend. Gaited horse clinic.
We had a great turnout of participants and auditors. Fun times!!

05/06/2024

Yup!

Looks about right.

02/18/2024

Lots to think about owning a horse. Some decisions are just hard. When is the right time?

Today I want to talk about the problem with being really good at taking care of horses:

You will have to decide when their life ends.

Not always - once in a blue moon a horse will do you the favor of tipping over quietly and instantly. I've seen it happen. It happened to our Perry last year, who was about 30 years old, and laid down and left the world in excellent weight with a shiny coat, sounder than the day he arrived, and no apparent issue that would have prompted a call to the vet.

But most of the time, when you're good enough at taking care of horses that your horses live to be 25+, you will have to make the call. Not only is this a big responsibility, but it's so hard for some people that animal control is kept busy every day with situations like horse owners who cannot accept reality and call the vet for a horse who can no longer get up on his own, or hasn't even tried for days. While you probably would make a better choice if you're here on my page - my content does tend to attract horsepeople who think mostly with their heads - I think we can all understand the emotions that make someone think, well, let's just call the fire department for help getting him up. Look, he's eating, he wants to live!

(Wanting to live does not = not wanting to die by starvation. They are two different things, even for human beings.)

Since we're mostly a senior horse sanctuary at this point, I'm going to share the guidelines we use here and maybe they will help someone else. There are other rescues with different standards, and we align with that more when it goes in the direction of "a day too soon" than months too late. This is just what we think, not necessarily the one true answer, and it's all debatable obviously because it tends to be a hot button issue -- but we need to normalize the discussion because that helps people make better and more humane choices for their animals.

Lameness: A horse can live quite happily, unridden, with a bit of chronic lameness even on a straight line - if that level of lameness is not inhibiting him from normal behavior. What's normal behavior? When the herd runs, he runs - he isn't gimping along far behind the others at a creaky trot. He still has a buck & fart in him on a cold morning. He can get down for a good roll and get up again without falling or needing assistance. He doesn't look worse than stiff like an old person would be at the walk - he isn't head-bobbing lame. He doesn't have a leg so arthritic that it looks like the letter C. He gets some pain management drugs if needed and he gets a quality joint supplement. Ideally he lives on turnout or if that's absolutely not available, someone gets him out of the stall every day for a long walk that will help him not to feel so stiff.

I saw a video from another "rescue" of a horse that was three legged lame trying to get back to the barn (on a downhill, ffs) at the most painful walk I have ever seen, and they thought it was great that he was such a "fighter." Ugh, no, he's only "fighting" because he has no way to put himself down.

Colic: Look, call it early. Either you have the money to go to the hospital, or you need to put them down if there's no improvement in a few hours. If they're really painful, that window of time is shorter. Horses have varying pain tolerances and there is absolutely the drama llama that will look like they are going to die for sure when the vet arrives and after an oiling and a walk, are perfectly fine and screaming for food six hours later. (Don't feed them. As a vet I know says, nothing ever died from not eating for 24 hours, but a lot of horses die from colic.)

Either way, you cannot screw around - get the vet out, make a decision. I do not think anybody is a bad person for not racing horses to the hospital for thousands of dollars they simply may not have any access to. We don't do it. If there's an infinite amount of money somewhere, we surely have not identified its location and we understand that many horse owners are in the same boat. A swift veterinary euthanasia is never a morally wrong choice, full stop - our duty to our horses is to prevent suffering, not make sure they live to see the next election. They don't care.

Accidents: These are hard. Your vet is going to explain to you all of the rehab options available to you -- that's their job. If a horse is 30 years old and steps in a gopher hole, do you really think a year of stall rest is how he wants to spend the last part of his life? Would you? We always have to think about the fact that a horse is designed to run with friends. If the odds are they'll never have that ability back - call it. It's going to be the right thing for both the horse and your financial situation. It absolutely pains me to see someone, often someone who doesn't have much of an income to begin with, bankrupting themselves trying to keep an animal alive. I know they are your best friend. I know death sucks. But you're not giving them a quality of life they even want, and you're annihilating your own life. It is absolutely fine to make the call.

Neurological conditions: This is a hot button for me. I cannot comprehend people keeping a horse alive who walks sideways, falls down, loses control of his hind end, etc. Please stop. A horse isn't you - he can't lie in bed comfortably, scrolling Instagram reels and watching reality television when he's unable to move around safely due to an injury or illness. It's incredibly scary for a horse to be out of balance and at risk of falling. He is a prey animal in nature - one of his intrinsic needs is being able to run away from a threat. If the neurological issues are from a disease like EPM, you can certainly try treatment but you should see improvement within a month or so if it's going to happen. If the neurological issues are from an injury and not getting any better - please, please do the right thing and put them down before they get stuck in a fence with a broken leg or neck from falling the wrong way. You do not want that to be your last memory of them.

Foals with serious problems: I could write pages on this but I already addressed some of it in my recent post about things you should know about if you're going to breed. A foal that will be permanently crippled has a very poor chance of any quality of life or of being fed and cared for and not coming to a bad end. If the vet can correct the issue with surgery, and you can afford the surgery, and it has a good chance of success, by all means go for it. But sometimes all you're doing is creating a $10,000 pasture pet that someone will have to care for forever, and the number of people who want to take care of any pasture pet (even their OWN that they used to show and compete with!) is a tiny percentage of the horse owning population and getting smaller by the day. No one enjoys putting down a foal but it's always a possible outcome when you breed your mare.

While I'm on this topic, please stop keeping mares alive long enough to give birth if something has gone horribly wrong for them. If they can't walk, put them down. I saw some moron once that had a pregnant DSLD mare in a sling after her tendons ruptured because they just had to get that baby. This is animal cruelty.

General quality of life: Sometimes there is not one specific bad thing, but a collection of things. Your elderly horse is arthritic and needs a lot to keep them comfortable day to day. They've also got Cushing's and need daily meds. Now they have a chronic eye issue. They won't take meds in food. Every day, you have a struggle trying to syringe meds into their mouth and treat their eye, while they bang you against the fence. You do all this just for them to continually rub the eye, making it worse, no matter what kind of hooded contraption you put on their head. The vet is at your house constantly, trying to patch this horse back together. You can't afford it and, worse yet, the horse isn't getting any better. At a certain point, some of them just sort of melt down - it's very common with the Cushing's horses, because that disease tends to make them prone to other infections. If there is a lot wrong, every day is a struggle to treat the issues, and there's no improvement, it may be time to make the call.

They just quit: Sometimes, without a clear diagnosis even after you spend the money for bloodwork and have carefully examined the mouth and the vitals, horses just quit. They go off food. They start staring into the middle distance. They don't interact with other horses anymore. They are borderline cranky or just dull to everything. I've seen them where they'll only eat cookies, and are even unenthusiastic about that. The life has left their eyes. We all want a diagnosis, but sometimes you are not going to get one, and you will have to call it. It's just part of being a senior horse owner. You can certainly necropsy, if you can afford it, and that may give you a clear answer, but when we see horses in this state who are not in this state due to long term starvation and neglect - if they are normal weight and well cared for but acting like this? Our experience is they are not coming back, and it is time.

What things have you seen and experienced that let you know it was time to make the call? Pictured is Orca, who is 38 and has Cushing's and looks old, but runs toward her breakfast mush like this every morning. She is making it clear she isn't done yet, and the day that changes, we'll help her out of this world into the next.