Spotted Pony

27/11/2024

06/11/2024

A great way to leverage winter to achieve the needed weight loss for our “ fatties” 😁

Is It Fair To Clip For Weight Loss?

This may help you decide.
At our rehab facility we are often in the scenario of wanting to aid successful weight loss. This can be the difference between recovery or, in the worst case scenario, deterioration with eventual euthanasia.

I’ve seen several posts recently discussing the merits of clipping but also those who think it cruel.

To help me explain our reasoning and choices we have our friend Zorro modelling a fetching green line for us, we will get to him in a bit.

I want to address the concerns of people who worry that clipping is unethical as the horse will be left cold and shivering. I personally wouldn’t recommend a full body clip for weight loss. You would then need to rug which in my opinion defeats the object.

Firstly, If a horse is overweight, they will have the insulation provided by a layer of fat to stop them becoming painfully or dangerously cold so in essence they will not feel the cold in the same way a lean, clipped horse would.

Secondly, the idea of this exercise is to promote weight loss and by encouraging the horse to feel the cold a little more, we also encourage the mobilisation of those fat stores to be processed to produce heat within the body (this happens via the process of ‘brown fat’ in the body generating heat whilst also encouraging areas of ‘white fat’ to break down to replenish energy stores).

So how do we decide how much hair to remove when we clip? For me it’s a fairly simple observation exercise.
Zorro is one of the much more resource dominant horses in our group meaning that in winter he needs some encouragement to tip the scales back in the right direction.
You can see his coat after a night of rain and you can see exactly which parts of his coat he needs to protect him from the elements because they are wet.

Ergo, everything above the green line stays. He needs that to keep his back warm, to keep the internal organs close to the surface protected and essentially just to protect his skin from the rain.

Everything below the green line you can see isn’t helping to protect from the rain so we can afford to lose that.

The aim is never to make the horse uncomfortable and if after clipping through observation they are showing signs of being too cold then I would absolutely rug and not leave them in discomfort.

The percentage of overweight horses in the U.K. is thought to be around 40% with up to 70% of native ponies being classed as obese. Laminitis is thought to affect as many as 1 in 10 horses every year (although many cases are not caused purely by excess weight). Those figures should really give us something to think about and with those in mind we should look at using the winter to slim our horses down as one of the most important aspects of our yearly care.

21/07/2024

It’s here!!!! Straight from Italy! It is AMAZING !!! Works better than expected !!!🥰

12/07/2024

This is the best part of our job, getting to watch this!
This young lady has worked her butt off. From the mare that wouldn’t go, to the mare that’s taking her flying!
So proud of these two!

25/04/2024

Down to the finish work and a Iititle bit of concrete!🤩

16/04/2024

All in a days work!😳🤩
The excitement is growing daily!

06/04/2024

Ready for the next round of concrete!

04/04/2024

Keeps feeling more and more real!!

12/03/2024

Owning a horse is a choice—a privilege. Behind every healthy and happy horse stands a team of dedicated professionals, who are often complained about because their services cost money.

Let's remember, their expertise is not a luxury; it's a necessity. It's not about making horse ownership affordable; it's about providing the best care possible.

Appreciate the value they bring to your horse's life.

Owning horses is a choice - your choice!

08/03/2024

It’s here!!!!

05/01/2024

One thread that constantly weaves through horse training that is “dressage based” is the use of the HALF-HALT.

If you read the works of the masters, most of them will devote a section specifically to describing this aid. Here is a section taken from the FEI page, and if you study this and think about this, it makes clear that the half halt is not simply one aid but an interplay of aids.

https://www.fei.org/stories/lifestyle/teach-me/whats-half-halt-anyway

If you have ANY interest in classical equitation, study this and perhaps print this out for consistent study. The half halt is one of the basic building blocks of horse riding and training.

All three of the Olympic horse sports, grand prix dressage, grand prix show jumping, and eventing employ training systems based in large measure on using the half halt to regain balance without loss of impulsion.

My former USET 3-day coach, Jack LeGoff, talked constantly about the need, at all gaits, for a fine balance between impulsion and balance. Impulsion is the feeling of positive forward motion, while balance is the feeling that the horse is up and light. With too much driving aid, the impulsion over-rules balance. Too much use of containing hand, the attempt at balance stifles the forward action. Jack called the application if the half halt, “the link between impulsion and balance.”

The half halt is so important that one of the USET’s dressage coaches, Robert Dover, perhaps, said something along these lines---“Every lesson I teach is some variation of the half halt.”

At its simplest, I have heard the half halt described as “Go/Don’t go.” A brief encouragement forward into a brief retardation with core and hand designed to reengage the hocks under the body.

As you can ascertain by reading the FEI directives, the half halt is a clear example of the interplay between driving aids and restraining aids, again, one more example of training the horse through a system of pressures and releases.