Balanced Horse Training

10/24/2024

Great advice about being with and asking from your horse.

SLOOOOOW DOWN!

SLOW your walking down to 1 step per second with and without your horse next to you.
SLOW your hand movements down as you touch or do things.
SLOW your talking down.
SLOW your breathing down.
SLOW your pulls and pushes down on the leadrope.

SLOW to FLOW!

Humans are WAAAAY to fast for horses and this is one of the leading causes of reactivity and opposition reflex in horses.

Speed = stress.

Let me teach you what speed does...

When the brain perceives a threat, it causes the body to release the stress response hormone cortisol. Cortisol levels and speed go hand in hand.
Cortisol provides the body with the fuel it needs to flee a scary situation or fight against it.

The thing with the mind-body relationship is that the brain feels an emotion such as fear, which create a physical response in the body, but the body can also move at a certain speed or in a particular way and create an emotion in the brain. It can be reverse engineered.

This is how special the intimate relationship is between the brain and body.

The other thing to remember is that, collectively as a social animal, when speed is noticed by another mammal (no matter the species), it alerts the unconscious brain to threat.

Speed is an alarm system in a social system (consciously and unconsciously).

If you walked down a road and everyone started running, you'd find it hard not to run even if you didn't know what the cause was. You are noticing that others are running and in a direction, so you mirror them to increase your chances of survival. You don't need the reasoning part of your brain for this. You just activated your primal (survival) part of the brain.

One other thing to remember: HORSES CAN SMELL CORTISOL. So not only does your speed act as a visual alarm system to your horse, it also acts as an olfactory one!

Would you want to interact with someone who caused you to feel constantly on alert?

These little things are the beginnings of what ripples into chronic stress in both humans and horses.
You spend enough time around someone who is fast in their movement, your nervous system will condition itself to being on high alert.
HELLO 👋 CHRONIC STRESS!!!

Slow your movement down = slow your thoughts down.
Slow your movement down = lower your cortisol.
Slow your movement down = feel connected with yourself, the world and others in it.
Slow your movement down = slow your alarm systems down and eventually they'll turn off.

Slow down so much that it is uncomfortable. It won't be uncomfortable for long, I promise 😉

Happy brain training 🧠
Charlotte 🙂

10/18/2024

About your Winter pasture safety.

Pastures, nonstructural carbohydrates, and frost 🌱🍂❄️

Because it is that season, I want to discuss horse pastures and nonstructural carbohydrates, specifically as they relate to the beginning and end of a grazing season. Let’s begin by breaking this down by each topic before we add them all together:

Nonstructural carbohydrates, often abbreviated as NSCs, are comprised of water soluble carbohydrates (simple sugars and fructans) and starch. This class of carbohydrates is an important source of energy for the horse and they are digested and absorbed in the foregut, leading to an increase in blood glucose and insulin. As a result, high levels of NSCs in the diet can be an issue for horses with metabolic concerns specifically related to insulin dysregulation such as equine metabolic syndrome (EMS), Cushing’s (PPID), and laminitis/founder. While NSCs can be more consistent and documented in manufactured concentrates, more variation is observed in pasture or hay due to outside factors such as plant maturity, time of day, and weather conditions.

In pasture plants, NSCs are produced via photosynthesis, a process in which sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide generate glucose and oxygen. A separate but complementary process known as respiration is responsible for breaking down the glucose created during photosynthesis and releasing that energy for cellular use. As a result, increased photosynthesis leads to an accumulation of NSCs and increased cellular respiration leads to a decrease of NSCs. There are many weather conditions that can alter the balance between these processes in plants.

So how are these two factors connected to frost and the swing in temperatures observed in the spring and fall when horses are either being introduced to or removed from pasture? Well, when temperatures fall below 40°F, the enzymes involved in cellular respiration become significantly less active. And when temperatures fall below freezing, the enzymes can become denatured, stopping respiration altogether. This means low temperatures can lead to an accumulation of NSCs in the forage which can be problematic for grazing horses.

As a result, it is important to look at the nightly lows, and if these temperatures are sustained for more than a few hours, change your management practices accordingly, especially for glucose-sensitive horses. Furthermore, a hard frost occurs when temperatures drop below 28°F for more than four consecutive hours and will not only result in NSC accumulation but also marks the end of the growing season. While current recommendations allow grazing to resume 7 days following a hard frost, pastures require a minimum height of 3” to 4” going into the winter to support pasture productivity the following grazing season. Since grasses will no longer grow after a hard frost, continuing to graze can put undue stress on the pasture.

Additionally, sudden changes in the diet that would occur from removing horses from pasture abruptly, keeping horses on dried forage for 7 days, and then reintroducing horses to pasture, could lead to digestive upset or other health problems and the process will be time intensive for owners. When shifting the diet, even between different forages, it is critical to plan intentional transitions that allow the gut microbiota to sufficiently adapt. While the transition back to pasture can be accelerated in the fall compared to beginning grazing in the spring, it should still be done with care.

I hope this information is helpful as you make decisions on horse management and grazing this season!

- Dr. DeBoer

10/12/2024

Helpful anatomical graphics.

09/30/2024

So many reaching out to help horses in danger from this very destructive storm,

The Ocala venue once again steps up to help its community weather the storm

09/23/2024

When we’re taught to ride, lessons don’t include so much required to be adept handlers, riders and trainers. A list of behaviors indicating pain are in the link. People who own and work with horses need to see and acknowledge when horses are in pain.

09/10/2024

Exemplary position, timing and self-carriage of the rider.

“MILITARY” Riders---

Anyone who started to ride 50 or more years ago in any of the so called Olympic disciplines, dressage, show jumping and eventing, will remember just how many of the instructors we had were either former or current military men.

And from so many different countries, Poland, England, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Holland, USA, Canada, France, Czechoslovakia, others, and many of them here in the USA were recent arrivals from war ravaged Europe.

I don’t know who this rider in the photo is, or where he came from, or what year this was, but he exemplifies the solid and classical correctness that used to be a hallmark of riders who’d been taught by cavalry officers.

Most of them taught in similar fashion to the way they themselves had learned, rather formal, probably too “disciplined” in approach to be tolerated by modern Americans----Yes sir, no sir, thank you very much sir---Strict but almost never insulting, although some equated the two.

But the riders who could handle the discipline and the structure came away as good riders. That era is now quite far in the rear view mirror. And it’s like that meme we see---“Most of you never took lessons from military riders and it shows---.”

09/06/2024

The subtleties of the seat. Impossible to develop with force of lower leg, force into the knee roll and back from the bit. This is how we have so many horses on their forehands, rarely ever achieving relaxed, balanced self carriage necessary for soundness much less moving up through the levels.

Enhancing the upswing of the horse’s back can be accomplished by extending your hip and knee joints slightly as the horse lifts up into the suspension phase of the trot so as to create a little space underneath your seat bones which the horse can fill with his back. When the horse lands again after the suspension phase the rider’s hip and knee joints flex again and she can let her weight rest more on her seat bones again. If we want to lighten the seat by swinging a little higher with our pelvis, we need to support ourselves not with our seat bones at that moment, but somewhere lower down. The insides of our knees and thighs can temporarily receive some of the weight (but without gripping!) that was resting on our seat bones before. This gives the seat greater stability and greater mobility at the same time. When you can find additional support somewhere below the horse’s spine and below your seat bones you actually end up sitting deeper in the horse, whereas if all your weight rests on your seat bones you end up feeling stuck on top of the horse’s back.

Of course, if you focus exclusively on swinging up and lightening your seat, the horse will pretty soon start to fill the space underneath your seat by pushing his croup up and falling onto the forehand. So we need to emphasize the downswing after the suspension phase occasionally as well, when a hind leg lands and flexes its joints.

09/06/2024

"You've got to be awake and alert every minute, every stride, because you're working with something alive that thinks and feels. He makes decisions. If we're not there to help him, he may make a decision we don't want him to make. Then we blame it on the horse. But, I grant you, it's not the horse's fault." - Ray Hunt

This is different than micromanaging your horse over-aiding with ill-timed, confusing aids. Good training develops connection, trust and willingness through consistent rider equitation and feel requiring less aids over time.

09/05/2024

Regarding the Helgstrand and elite competitive dressage.

Rebekka Klubien graduated from Roskilde University in 2021 and started working at the public broadcast tv station TV2 in 2022. Currently, she holds the position

09/01/2024

There is no classically diagonal seat with backward thrusts which requires both the high cantel and thick knee roll to execute the modern extended trot and canter.

08/29/2024

Equitation of rider vs competition goal for the horse.

08/21/2024

Where to start.

Testing equine intelligence: Method. Clarity. Consistency. Timing. Patience. Perception. Meaningfulness. Unintended human error. Judgment.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/science/horses-more-intelligent-than-thought-study/ #:~:text=(NewsNation)%20%E2%80%94%20A%20new%20study,of%20card%20with%20their%20nose.

“Horses are not natural geniuses, they are thought of as mediocre, but this study shows they’re not average.”: Researcher

08/15/2024

Interesting study results. Has that been your experience? I’ve been inclined to think some horses will seek shade for heat control as I would and do. If a shelter is full of manure, I’d think there’ll be biting bugs there as well.

08/15/2024

We wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment and advice in this article. We must stop defending harmful practices and can only do so when we’re educated and as long as we ride, own or care for horses, it’s imperative we never assume we know all we need to know. We must not stop questioning and learning.

While I’m not at all a fan of racing, I recognize that most horses benefit in some part from the veterinary science and care that has developed in the care of these elite equine athletes, many whose lives are sacrificed. What if we continue the development of science and care without the sacrifice? What if we continue to show without breaking down horses physically and mentally? But first, we have to know what that looks like, how it happens and how we can change our practices to not have that happen.

Horse racing has a problem, but it doesn’t stop there. Learn why all equestrian sports may be at risk, and what you can do to help.

08/04/2024

A technical and worthwhile presentation on kissing spines. We don’t study it enough and need to recognize how prominent it is. This rehab vet’s conclusion: if diagnosed with proper testing, don’t ride the horse, ride the test results.

‎Science · 2023

08/08/2022

It’s important to understand self-carriage in the horse. Long and low doesn’t promote self-carriage if the poll is far below the withers, and if there’s no impulsion it’s likely the horse is even more on the forehand.

08/08/2022

07/24/2022

Nothing more to add to Kim Walnes’ excellent advice. Take your time to read and look long at the photos.

https://www.facebook.com/780640416/posts/10166299759570417/?d=n