Eye on Equine Bodywork

03/29/2023

Starting April 2023, back working on horses!

08/04/2022

Hats off to Grace, Hunter, Angela and Katie!!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻😊

Grace and Hunter took 4th out of 80+ today in KY in the USHJA 2.3 Hunter

07/31/2022

🐴💯🐴

07/11/2022

Beautiful "Medicine Hat" c**t
The Medicine Hat horse with unique markings and a fascinating history steeped in Native American legend.
These horses are white or mostly white with darker hair covering their ears and tops of heads, also know as a “War Bonnet”. Some have a “Shield” on their chest. Medicine Hat horses with one or two blue eyes are valued even more.
According to Native American history, these horses were said to have magical powers and therefore were highly prized. Mythology and tradition say that some of those powers protected from injury or death and warned of danger in battle.
Medicine Hat horses were considered sacred and it was the highest honor to ride one, a privilege given only to tribal chiefs, medicine men, and the greatest warriors.
Enemy tribes would even attempt to steal the closely guarded Medicine Hat horse in order to receive that horse’s protection and magic as well as take that same protection away from the enemy tribe!

06/19/2022

He'll find you

05/27/2022

It bears repeating...

Saddle length is a hugely important component when assessing saddle fit and a saddle that is too long can have so many detrimental effects that can manifest as lameness, bad behavior and more.

Some of the issues caused by a saddle that is too long are:
- Bucking
- Lateral walk
- 4 Beat canter
- Saddle slip
- Muscle Atrophy
- Inability to pick up canter/get certain leads
- Hollow back
- Kissing spine
- Broken spinous processes
- Broken transverse processes of the lumbar vertebrae

When a saddle is too long it sits on the lumbar vertebrae. The biggest difference between the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae is that the thoracic vertebrae are connected to the ribs and have an additional support structure whereas the lumbar do not. The transverse processes of the lumbar vertebrae come straight outwards and are extremely delicate - easily injured by the concussion of saddle and rider when the saddle is not fitted properly.

Additionally, a saddle that is too long also blocks the movement of the back which is why many horses will be unable to pick up certain canter leads, or the canter all together. They will also buck to try and relieve the pressure off the lumbar - where many think bucking is simply bad behavior, it is, more often than not, a reaction to pain.

With longer saddles, riders typically sit further back, especially if they are not in a gender appropriate saddle. This only exacerbates the issue as there is now excess pressure behind the last thoracic vertebrae, to which the horse will react by dropping and tensing their back. They can no longer move softly or utilize their body appropriately to carry the rider and thus causes additional stress on not just the back, but now also the legs and other parts of the body.

Unfortunately, a huge majority of the saddles we see are far too long for the horse and the consequences of the incorrect fit are obvious.

05/06/2022

05/05/2022

Good morning🤩

04/04/2022

Not a joke...

Have you ever wondered why you can have a 15 acre field and part of it is chewed down to nubs and the other part has grass a hand high, But your horse is constantly grazing in the chewed down part?

Grass 6 inches and taller has less sugars than grass under 6 inches.

For every inch drop below 6 inches, the fructan (sugar) content rises.

Grass under 6 inches is stressed like it's a Monday morning with a project deadline. It uses sugar to repair itself.

Stop mowing your fields short.

Stop grazing your chubbys on chewed down grass. (this is why grazing muzzles are so touted...they keep the horse from being able to get much short grass)

(We aren't saying let your fields be 3 feet tall, by the way. The optimal thing to do is keep them 6-8 inches tall and graze them in small areas there)

03/12/2022

Icelandic Horse

Photo 📸

https://instagram.com/canonnordic?utm_medium=copy_link

03/09/2022

It’s magic!

03/08/2022

😂🐴

03/04/2022

02/22/2022

02/21/2022

A two week old HONOR A.P. C**t

02/12/2022

Union Rags always loves to put on a show 🎩

01/28/2022

Sweet Toby has some sore shoulders and lats. I used PEMF, cold laser, massage and some kinesiology tape. He seems happy and relaxed.

01/27/2022

Today we honor Helen "Penny" Chenery on her 100th birthday. As a girl, she inherited her father’s passion for horses. “I had the horse bug," she recalled. "I wasn’t 'National Velvet.' Horses were just my friends.” 🎂

01/25/2022

"Encampment on the Great Plains" 1890

01/16/2022

Sunday Roast is a digital media for people who want to know more about history, biology, science and

01/15/2022

The curse of perfectionism, and the power of "pretty good."

All over the world, every day, riders are schooling horses.

Horses do not "want" to be schooled. If you think that, you are a dreamer, still thinking like an eight year old, which is OK if you are 8, not so productive as you become more mature.

And good trainers know that training is "hard" on horses, just as soccer practice or track practice or basketball practice or any sport that requires running and high energy expenditure is "hard" on human athletes.

It is called athletically induced discomfort, and any human who is any kind of athlete will remember (or currently be experiencing) the pain of tired muscles, racing heart, panting breath, the feeling that running hard down that lacrosse field "one more time" near the end of a game is taking her/him out toward the end of her/his strength and endurance.

But human athletes have goals, like earning a varsity letter, or having the esteem of the other kids, or winning a State Championship, and to attain those goals, they are willing to push through the pain.

Horses have "goals", too, to eat grass, and hang in pastures with other horses. These goals have zero to do with "pleasing my darling owner who loves me."

And when our horses are "being resistant", it is almost always because of either not understanding the aids being applied, or understanding them, but being tired and starting to get to that point, like the lacrosse player at the end of the game, where "one more time" is about the last straw.

But perfectionist humans tend to be all over "one more time", because that last attempt wasn't good enough. And neither is this one, so do it again. And again. And again-----

Learn to accept "pretty good" as good, and quit after a couple of "pretty goods."

Don't keep drilling and drilling and grinding for perfection, because that will make the horse hate and dread the work. Get a little, quit for the day. Loose reins, a nice little pat, go for a walk.

Lots of days of "pretty good" can turn into very good indeed, in ways that an insistence on "perfect" never can.

Every time I hear that "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect", in relationship to horse training, it makes me cringe.

If you are one of those people with a visceral "need" to be perfect, take it out on some inanimate object like a musical instrument or a baseball bat, not on some living creature.

01/06/2022

Hubba hubba. 😍

Because of production issues, we will not be publishing a 2022 calendar. Instead we will release a monthly series of never-before-published photos from Steve Haskin's personal collection featuring Secretariat, Riva Ridge and many other legends from racing's golden age of the 1970s. We are kicking off this series with a pre-publication offer of "Secretariat Proud." Order yours at http://ow.ly/82Tw50HmZAo.

12/24/2021

Seasons greetings from the Secretariat.com Team! 🎄

12/21/2021

12/21/2021

We have an early Christmas gift for California "Chromies" with Steve Haskin's column this week: http://ow.ly/Ue1T50HfRYC.

12/19/2021

'Not to be opened until Christmas'
Not long now.

12/14/2021

Merry Christmas to all from Thelwell
'the ambush'

12/13/2021

When a horse touches your heart, he invades your soul. 🐴

12/11/2021

Horse racing fans have spoken, and they have chosen Hot Rod Charlie, the gutsy 3-year-old c**t who was a force along the Triple Crown trail, as the winner of the 2021 Secretariat "Vox Populi" Award. Read the announcement at http://ow.ly/BrUh50H8glO. 🏆

12/06/2021

Horse Show Photo of the Day from the World Equestrian Center - Ocala Fall Show!!! Straight from the horses mouth: rider for sale cheap to a good home. Can be spooky and known to jump ship. (Yes, both horse and rider are perfectly fine...and they approved this photo).