Kaylie Eaves Horsemanship LLC

12/06/2025

✨This is the time of year colic can be pretty common, but colic can be prevented!✨

Prevention:
🔹Always keep clean water available (and unfrozen in the winter).
🔹 Horses' stomachs and GI tracts are designed to have food moving through them continuously. It's vital to ensure your horse has access to forage at all times or, in the very least, doesn't go hours without something in their stomach. If your horse overindulges in hay, hay nets with smaller holes will encourage them to eat more slowly.
🔹Hay type matters: some horses can't have rich hay, and some can't have stemmy hay; make sure you're getting the right kind of hay for YOUR horse.
🔹 When the weather goes from one extreme to another, it is not the time to make changes to their diet or massive changes to their lifestyle unless you plan to keep them calm, warm/cool, and use a gut aid.
🔹Plan, be prepared, and have emergency meds on hand in case colic does happen; ask your vet for Banamine and have them show you how to use it.

COLIC

The length from end to end of the average horse’s intestinal tract is approximately 100 ft.

With that much GI tract no wonder there are so many tight turns in the abdomen. All the turns are contributing factors to colic along the GI tract.

Colic can range from mild to extreme and is one of the leading causes of death in horses. Depending on the cause of the bout of colic treatment and recovery outcome can vary greatly.

GAS COLIC is the most common and can come from feed changes, weather changes and routine changes.
Impaction colic is when things just get stuck along the GI tract and this type can be quite severe. Dehydration and changes in feed can be causes.

SAND COLIC is when sand is ingested when eating and builds up over time in a low point along the tract and irritates the lining of the bowel.

DISPLACEMENT is when a loop of intestine is out of place.

STRANGULATION colic is when a twist happens and the blood supply is cut off to part of the intestines.

ENTEROLITHS—when a mineral build up happens around a foreign body causing a stone along the tract. They can get lodged along the tract.

Signs:
🐎Pawing
🐎Kicking or biting at flanks
🐎Sweating
🐎Laying down and getting up
🐎Rolling
🐎Straining
🐎Lip curling
🐎Restlessness
🐎Increased respiratory rate
🐎Increased heart rate

💥TREATMENT💥
🩺Pain management
At times sedatives are needed
🩺Passing nasogastric tube and giving warm water, mineral oil and electrolytes
🩺Fluid therapy
🩺Surgery

👓Watching your horses carefully and knowing their normal behavior is key to getting treatment started early.

If you notice any changes or symptoms we recommend calling your veterinarian sooner rather than trying to walk your horse to death and waiting until after hours and not being able to get any help or having it be too late.

12/05/2025

✨Why selling horses is hard✨

Why I Don't Sell Horses

After yesterday's post about why I dont train for the public anymore, which is apparently a hot topic with over 100k views and counting, lets dig into another one.

A really nice lady recently asked me why I dont sell many horses, especially in the current horse market. My answer was, because the upside is not worth the down side to me.

There are two very big reasons for me and they aren't related. Here is the long and the short of the first reason. Most people refuse to hold themselves accountable. We all know of sellers that do not accurately represent horses for sale and then don't stand behind what they say.
Yes, horses have been drugged etc. But at the same time, do buyers accurately and honesty represent themselves?

I am so sick of hearing people blame a seller saying that, after a couple of months, the horse "has changed." Why did it change? Is there a chance that your horsemanship allowed it? Is there a chance that your leadership, or lack of, is causing the change?

And because the easier answer is to accuse the worst and pass blame on someone else than it is to take accountability. That is what most will do, and then to make matters worse, then go buy another horse and repeat the scenario. Now, if anyone is offended, on either side of what I have said, there are exceptions to most every rule, but at the same time lets go through life with some humility. After all, this should be about the horse.

Now, the second reason is much simpler, in short, I get attached. And then at the same time I can't bear the thought of having a horse go through what I just described.

I am not saying that others should do what I do. The industry must have people both selling and buying for it all to work. So lets honestly represent what we are, what we are selling, and take some accountability. And stop with the greed and put the horse first. Yes, I am aware that will never happen.

Pc Tracey Buyce Photography

12/05/2025

📍Sunbury, OH

12/05/2025

🎄Trail Horse ISO his partner!🎄

🇺🇸Justice is a Paso Fino grade gelding, standing 14.3, and is 7/8 years old! He’s very sweet, affectionate, curious, playful, and so intelligent.

✨He is a caregiver horse; he pays attention to the needs of his handlers and herdmates; he’d be great as a lead-line horse for beginners or a therapeutic horse. Or if you want to go trail riding on a comfy, forward moving, handsome horse, he’s your guy!

PM to schedule a trying!
📍Sunbury, OH

12/04/2025

✨Thank you, J’s EQ Massage 💆‍♀️ for coming out and massaging our horses on this cold day! You’re the best 🥰 Spartan enjoyed his first massage!✨

12/04/2025

12/03/2025

✨Justice doing so well with another lesson student today!✨

Don’t miss out on this sweet boy, he’d look so good with a big red bow on him for Christmas!🎄

12/03/2025

We need to accept the fact that we are never going to know…..
 Was that bad ride last week, and that mild swelling we found the next day related?
There’s no way to know for sure.
Did he injure himself out in the field, or was this directly training related, or something old that’s just bothering him now?
There’s no way to know for sure.
Is this behavior, pain related or all a reaction to the rider?
There’s absolutely no way to know for sure…. Even if the horse is great for someone else that doesn’t mean that he didn’t have pain. And even if we find out that the horse is definitely in pain doesn’t mean that 100% of the behavior is coming from it.

A lot of times behavior and pain are cyclical…. Maybe they did something tiny that caused a little bit of pain. But also their human doesn’t have the best leadership. The poor leadership thing was already building into some poor behavior, but then the girth that was a little uncomfortable in the elbows, or the sharp teeth, or that little bit of back pain from slipping in the mud last night, was just enough to make the horse super crabby and just not having it when his owner mounted up this morning, and what might have been a mean face and a tail swish on a better day turned into a rear/a buck/a stop and refuse to go forward, or whatever big evasion took place.
It sure felt like the horse was in pain and maybe the new expensive girth and/or the massage therapist , dentist, or the joint injections, or whatever seemed to make the horse more comfortable…. But it still doesn’t fix the fact that the owner’s poor leadership was already causing issues that just hadn’t come out until the catalyst of additional discomfort. And the horse being bracey sure isn’t helping his lumbar back to relax, or make the girth more comfortable, so even if those were just tiny issues, they might grow to be bigger ones.

A better Rider might be able to get the horse to work through the back pain, ultimately getting it to release and relax. The uncomfortable girth might not be a big problem by itself- just a mild annoyance that the horse can and does easily ignore when a competent rider tells them to get to work. If a writer has super educated hands, they might be able to get the horse to relax his jaw and poll in spite of his jagged teeth

Obviously, I’m not saying to ignore your horses discomfort. But I am saying that I have some bras that are a little tighter around my rib cage than I would like, but they do hold my bo***es down,  and if I haven’t gotten around to washing my more comfy ones, I will wear them, and if it’s otherwise good day, I totally forget that it’s a little tight. If it’s a stressful day, mentally or physically,  and if I have other factors that are overstimulating as well, I might have to stop everything I’m doing and go pull a different bra out of the dirty laundry bin.

If you are in any type of relationship that has some resentment building, you might just go along, pretending everything is okay for quite a long time. Add ANYTHING! A migraine, a virus, a sore shoulder, a terrible customer, bad traffic on the way home, or maybe just you’re really hungry….. and that’s all the catalyst you need to open the floodgates towards the person you’ve been barely tolerating.

Similarly, you might say something really nasty to your Bestie, who you absolutely adore and have no beef with whatsoever, because something else has you emotionally distraught!!!!

When it comes to our Horses, it’s really hard to know which side of the scale we are on. 🫣
I can’t tell you how many times a horse acts like it’s in pain with their owner, and I climb on, and they initially do the same thing with me, but within 20 minutes they go around just fine.

Does that mean it’s completely behavioral?
Does that mean I’m getting them to mask the pain? If so, is it a really mild pain that they should be able to mask and carry on with life? Or am I getting them to mask a serious pain that I would prefer they don’t be stoic about????

Often times I help the owner and maybe it takes a year, but we eventually work through it. Maybe the horse did have pain but we got a dentist, balance the feet, tried some new tack, time heals and we taught the owner more leadership, and both things are better now. Maybe there never was any pain- other than the owner was a pain in the horse’s ass because they lacked basic foundation. 🤷‍♀️ Maybe the dentist and the new girth did the trick, but it took a while before the horse trusted it.

I don’t know
And you don’t know either
And the vet can’t say with any certainty

Hell, even if you get x-rays …. I don’t have any numbers in front of me, but I saw where LOTS of totally sound Horses that display no signs of back pain, show kissing spine on their x-rays.

WE. JUST. DON’T. KNOW.

We’re all out here just doing the best we can. 

12/03/2025

💖Basil’s first time carrying the saddle!💖

12/03/2025

✨Justice being the bestest boy for Ada’s lesson last night 🥰✨