Greyhaven Sport Horses

09/04/2024

“The Princely Tahneen🐲” Maturing into a magnificent individual full of confidence and kindness 🥰 and beauty 💕The perfect boy🦄

09/03/2024

09/03/2024

The great Dr Reiner Klimke told us:
“The rider who is sitting a little bit forward, who doesn’t make himself heavy, is what I like. When I ride, I always try to not make myself heavy and bring the horse down, but to go with the movement and keep light, this is not one of our inventions.”
https://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2021/07/wisdom-from-reiner-klimke/

09/02/2024

https://youtu.be/u05sxQY52O4?si=rEyKqZcxVqEiM8ti
Cha⚡️e - full story to come on the Greyhaven Horse Channel
Like and subscribe 😊

Cha⚡️e on his way to Voltra

09/02/2024

This is an original 1941 photo showing the great gelding Exterminator and his companion Peanuts leading the post parade for the 1941 Exterminator Handicap.

Alfred G. Vanderbilt purchased controlling interest in Pimlico Race Track after an acrimonious debate in the Maryland Jockey Club over the introduction of liquor onto the premises.

In his quest to restore Pimlico to her former glory, he introduced the first Clay-Puett mechanical starting gate and a public address system so that all the bettors could follow the racing action.

He spent over $58,000 removing the hill in the infield that earned Old Hill Top it's nickname because racing patrons complained that it blocked their view of the horses.

Enamored of stamina racing, he started the Exterminator Handicap in 1940 at a robust two and a quarter miles. Old Bones was unable to make the inaugural running, but the mighty gelding, accompanied by his fractious stable companion, a Shetland pony named Peanuts, led the post parade for the 1941 race to the sustained applause of 38,000 patrons.

Filistio would be the winner of the two mile and seventy yards race that day.

The next day one turf writer commented that none of the starters in the race that day were fit to carry Exterminator’s blanket.

09/02/2024

Today was a momentus occasion for Cha⚡️se🐻 and myself 🔥❤️

08/31/2024

Cool

83.6K likes, 410 comments. “ Cool Things Everyone Loves in My Barn!! Among the auto hose reel, auto latching doors, and sweet sprinklers, you’ll also find Boots I love to use these over Zeena’s sliders when we want to hit the trails, or when I need her to have some grip for letting o...

08/30/2024

The Pie❤️❤️❤️🥰

Man o' War's grandson King Charles starred as "The Pie" in the 1944 film National Velvet starring Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney. He was a 7-yr-old thoroughbred that was trained as a show hunter and jumper. King Charles was purchased for $800 for the movie. Eleven year old Taylor underwent an extensive training program riding King Charles daily. A special bond grew between the two of them. After filing National Velvet, King Charles was given to Taylor as a present for her 13th birthday. King Charles would then retire and spend the rest of his life with his new owner Elizabeth Taylor.

08/30/2024

🐴 POSITION POINTERS: To maintain a correct upper body position through corners ...⁣ 🐴
"Imagine you are balancing on an exercise ball. If you lean your torso into a turn, your seat bones will push the ball (your horse) in the opposite direction. To help your horse balance, keep your spine straight and use your shoulders to turn. Your seat bones will follow. Try it on a ball, it works!⁣"
~Jane Kelly⁣, USDF gold, silver and bronze medalist

We initially shared this handy visualization via our sister brand Dressage Today, but I think it certainly applies across English disciplines. If you're like me, we all have a tendency to lean more going in a certain direction. (I'm going to attempt to put this concept into action going left!)

08/30/2024

https://youtu.be/INVyVbT5ez0?si=xeBWMFEGNAaXcfMr
THE SIMPLE THINGS MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE

The simple things are what make all the difference at Greyhaven🥰

08/30/2024

No one knows this truth better than me 🙄😊🥰

Working with young horses is tough.

And not just in the "hold on and hope you stay in the saddle" kind of way.

No one warns you how challenging it truly is. How often you'll doubt yourself, wondering: Am I doing this right? Am I moving too fast? Too slow? Is this too much? Not enough? You'll constantly be questioning your approach, trying to figure out the best way forward while tuning out the opinions of the trainer down the road or the livery next door, who throws judgmental glances every time you do groundwork.

No one tells you how, on some days, you'll feel like you're failing. You'll question if this horse would be better off with someone else, convincing yourself you're either wasting their potential or outright ruining them. After all, there are four-year-olds excelling in young horse classes while yours is still struggling to trot in a straight line.

No one tells you how attached you'll become. This horse is your baby, maybe one you helped bring into the world. Every setback feels personal, like a wound to your heart. You care so deeply about their well-being that it physically hurts when things go wrong. You’ll also become fiercely protective—God help anyone who dares to criticize your horse.

No one tells you how humbling, even brutal, these horses can be. They'll expose every weakness you have and practically shout it from the rooftops. While they are forgiving, they have a way of knocking you down a peg, reminding you there's always more work to be done.

No one tells you how these horses will change you. They'll force you to look inwards, to question everything you thought you knew. If you thought you had everything figured out, this horse will quickly show you that you don't. But they'll also ignite in you a fierce determination to prove everyone wrong and show them what you saw in this horse from the very beginning.

No one quite tells you how difficult young horses can be, but anyone who's been through it knows...

As tough as they are, they’re absolutely worth it.

08/30/2024

Beautiful creatures and flowers and unique items bring so much joy every day💕

08/25/2024

https://youtu.be/63x2VbfF3YE?si=885293lt7WqNrnSs
Greyhaven is happy to welcome our new beauty “Above Par” aka Paris🦄 Last raced August 9th Arriving mid week! Stay tuned to follow along on her journey of retraining 😊

Above Par home stretch

08/24/2024

😱😱😱😱😱😝screaming face🤣

08/23/2024

🤔 What do the following horses all have in common?

Standardbred - not vaccinated - Madison Co.
2y Belgian - not vaccinated - St. Lawrence Co.
18m Thoroughbred - not vaccinated - Orange Co.
1y QH- only vaccinated in 2023 - Oneida Co.
2y Quarter Horse - not vaccinated - Ulster Co.
3y Percheron - vaccinated in 2023 - Cayuga Co.
18y Draft x - not vaccinated - St. Lawrence Co.
3y Belgian - not vaccinated - Wayne Co.
Standardbred - not vaccinated - Washington Co.

Give up? They are all horses that have died recently in NY state from Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) and there are many more. This is a 100% preventable disease through vaccination (you know, the “E” in your EWT). 🥺

🦟 Sometimes we hear, “my horse doesn’t travel so he doesn’t need these vaccines.” Nothing could be more false. EEE (and West Nile Virus) are transmitted through mosquitoes. Horses don’t need to travel to be exposed to mosquitoes.

Don’t skip a simple and affordable vaccine that will prevent a deadly, and increasingly more common, disease that IS in our area.

08/21/2024

Beautiful

08/21/2024

It’s World Horse Day.

Wait no it isn’t. Someone said it was on LinkedIn. Should have checked. Didn’t. Anyway-

I never really have understood the whole horse-human thing, if I’m honest. They are the most disastrous and dramatic of creatures, and I have on occasion thought that the first person who ever decided to ride one has a lot to answer for.

Horses are expensive, unpredictable, and they will ALWAYS break your heart. The amount of effort, worry and hardship is staggering. I mean if you take a step back and look at it practically, it really makes no sense at all how completely obsessed we tend to get.

But we don’t look at it practically. We look at it far more deeply than that.

Horses have many times tried to kill me, but they have more times than that somehow saved me. They have been the one constant throughout my life. They have taught me to be a better person, to always ask ‘why?’ and to appreciate to my core the immense privilege of having them in my life.

Horses teach me every day. They are patient when I don’t understand. They are forgiving when I f**k up. They try so hard to give me everything they can, when there’s not really that much in it for them. I don’t believe that any other animal on the planet is as generous or as selfless.

If I’m sad, I go to my horses. If I’m happy, it’s often because of them. If I’m struggling in life, they hold space for me. If I need kindness, they give it readily and in abundance. If I need a good nip and to get over myself, they give me that too 😂

Most of my best days, my favourite memories and my happiest achievements have come because my horses made it so.

Yes I complain about the nonsense and the expense and the lemming behaviour. Yes it’s a ridiculous pursuit. Yes I probably could be wasting my time in more industriously productive directions instead.

But no horse, no me. They are hardwired in my DNA. They are necessary for me to be ME. I can only hope that I give them the same kind of peace and love that they give to me, every day.

‘As I said I wanted it
As you said you wanted it
As we said we wanted it.’

Photo of my big best friend by Louise O'Brien Equestrian Photography

08/18/2024

Take a look

I went for a little walk around the local show park yesterday during the season opener hunter/jumper show. I try not to look down at horse feet unless someone asks for my opinion, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t stop noticing that most of the horses there, from the low level hunters to the 1.20m jumper class I watched for a while are very obviously NPA and/or showed obvious signs of caudal failure. NPA means “negative palmar angle” on front feet or “negative plantar angle” on hinds. It means that the back of the coffin bone is lower than the front. It is supposed to be the other way around! A normal palmar/plantar angle is 2°-10° yet soooo many horses work on feet with palmar/plantar angles of less than zero. It is so common that by most people it is seen as normal. Caudal failure means structural collapse of the caudal (back) part of the foot.

Horses may not be obviously lame with this condition, however there are often subtle signs. Reluctance to go forward, forging (stepping on or hitting the backs of the front shoes with the hind feet), overreaching, not tracking up, refusing jumps, bucking after jumps (because landing hurts), lack of hindquarter engagement, decreased gait quality all around, behavioural issues under saddle, etc. These symptoms can be easily mistaken for other things or riders and trainers can tend to use punishment to try to change some behaviours that have their root in hoof pain. It is also very hard on the legs and most specifically the DDFT (deep digital flexor tendon) and navicular area of the foot because of the biomechanics of a foot with an improper angle cause increased friction where the DDFT runs under the navicular bone to attach to the back of the coffin bone. This is why low heeled horses are at increased risk of developing navicular syndrome.

We need to retrain our eyes to know what is normal. We also need to realize that asking horses to work hard when their feet are a mess is not fair and causes sometimes irreparable damage, both to their feet and to their opinions about working.

How do we fix it? First we need to acknowledge that NPA is a systemic issue in farriery and we need to change the way we trim and shoe. Owners need to recognize NPA and find a farrier who recognizes NPA and knows how to fix it. Farriers need to stop trimming off the back of the foot and add frog support to our shoeing packages. Frog support needs to be normalized. More than one client has remarked to me that if we put frog pads on the horse, potential buyers will think there is something wrong with the horse. This is because what is normalized currently in farriery are open heeled regular metal shoes, which are a huge part of what causes NPA. When we lift up the foot off the ground and provide no structural support to the frog, the center of the foot collapses. This is a very simple concept, yet we are still doing things the same way we have always done and expecting a different result. This is the definition of insanity and it is killing our horses slowly. If I help to change only one thing in my time as a farrier, I hope for it to be this.

For reference, normal/ideal angles are generally as follows:
Hairline: about 20°
Dorsal wall (toe): about 50-55°, steeper on some breeds
Heel: equal to toe angle or perhaps 5° less than dorsal wall

This horse’s toe is close to 50° however the heel is 23° lower than the toe and I could not even measure the heel at the back because the bulb is sitting on the shoe! I had to measure it where I could see the angle of the tubules on the wall. The hairline is far too low. This foot is not helping this horse at all and this horse is one of many. I might get some angry messages for this, but we need to acknowledge that most of our performance horses are NPA and/or have some degree of caudal failure and then then we need to do something about it.

——-

Addendum: This post has pi**ed off some people. Fair enough. It’s also been shared all over the world, which has been great and also quite the experience. Wayne over at Progressive Equine has been writing about caudal failure and NPA for a few years now, as have others. This topic is not new. For whatever reason, this post in particular has caught peoples’ attention.

What I ask of those who are angry about it, or indignant that I dared to challenge the status quo is this: if you think I’m wrong, ok. Go prove it. If I’m wrong, why are you angry? If I am wrong, then this post is irrelevant to you and irrelevant to your work and there is nothing to be angry about. I did not (and will not) name any particular farrier. Who did the job is not even relevant, because this problem is not about one person. I am not trash talking anyone. I am saying that there is a systemic issue in how farriers are taught to trim and shoe and that it is on us, as a group, to correct it by continuing to learn and grow. That is my perspective. If you think I’m wrong then disregard it. And yes, some horses manage in regular shoes and to the owners and farriers of those horses I am glad for you. For everyone else, maybe what I wrote here will help you. That is all I am trying to do.