Bob Wood Horses For Life

02/01/2025

Fit or Fat? People constantly complain about high Vet bills. The fact is, if you are feeding a balanced diet and giving your horse enough work to maintain fitness, you won't have as many Vet bills.

Look at the muscle definition in the legs and shoulders along with the tucked up belly in the left horse. The horse on the right has zero muscle definition and its gut is hanging down. If this overweight, under worked condition continues, the owner can expect everything from digestive issues to leg issues.

One way I kept horses at high levels of fitness was to offer students half leases where they could ride a horse that could benefit from more work at any time the horse was not scheduled for lessons. The lease cost was very reasonable because I wanted the horse ridden. The small extra income from the lease helped pay the horse's board.

Equines have very specific digestive requirements mostly due to the length of the digestive tract. Depending on the size of the horse, the small intestine length ranges from 50 to 70 feet long (15 to 21 meters) and the large intestine ranges from 24 to 26 feet (7.5 to 8 meters) in length. To move food intake effectively through this lengthy intestinal tract requires a gut friendly diet and true fitness. You can buy supplements to aid digestion, but the required fitness cannot be purchased in the form of a product. Although, you can hire an exercise rider.

I see way too many overweight and unfit horses today, even in competitions. They are not pets.

01/30/2025

These two pictured horses with more or less similar conformation are reaching very differently with their hind legs. Both horses are in a trot, on different diagonals but that doesn't matter. The top horse's hind footfall will land behind the forehand footfall on the same side. The bottom horse's hind footfall with land in or ahead of the forehand footfall.

The bottom horse is reaching further under itself with the hind than the top horse. The bottom horse is more balanced because keeping the hind footfalls landing in or a head of the forehand footfalls means that there is one center of balance under the horse's belly in a trot stride.

The top horse is not reaching under with their hind and the footfall will not reach far enough ahead to land in the forehand footfalls. There is a gap between the hind and forehand footfall, meaning the center of balance under the belly is not shared but separated. This creates a front-hind-front-hind-front-hind, back and forth balance point under the belly in the trot.

The reach indicates that the top horse is pulling the trot stride forward with the shoulders while the bottom horse is pushing the trot stride forward from the hind. Pushing from the hind is better. As they say, we want to ride a horse "back to front" to achieve lightness and optimum balance with suspension. We do not want a horse pulling its hind around as if it is a little red wagon.

I use a garden rake to smooth a section of arena footing 6 feet (2 meters) wide and three trot stride long. We then trot a horse through the smooth footing lane so we can see the footfalls and the reach, or lack thereof. To correct a lazy hind that is not reaching, we must do the work of engagement.

This means engaging the hind muscles to increase hind reach in order to achieve a truly centered balance point under the belly. Collection work is not cranking down the reins to cork up the energy of the forehand so the hind energy can catch up. That would be false "collection" that creates a false frame of balance, something we see a lot of today. Instead, we need to carefully and deftly hold the forehand together while, with a deep seat and leg, we encourage our horse's push from its hind.

It is good to always observe footfalls and reach. For me it is the first step in evaluating a horse's movement.

01/30/2025

The Clinical Director of the locked mental health facility where the equine therapy program was based told me, "They're crazy but they're not stupid". Good advice. A boy named Lemar was in the program. He was very, very smart. He craved attention and with his insightful understanding of the rules required in a facility, he made me and almost everyone else there laugh at one time or another. This is one of the funniest Lemar stories.

Imagine the massive number of State and Federal laws that govern how to manage a situation where a minor gets up on the roof of a two story mental health facility building. You can't just grab a ladder, go up and get the kid and haul him down. There are "procedures" that require a lot of time and many people.

Meanwhile, the other boys, knowing it is just a prank, gather on the ground below and yell "Jump! Jump!" Of course, Lemar would pretend to start to jump. What a circus, but it broke the unending boredom that is life in a youth mental health facility.

Lemar was at the age when he was trying to get a handle on puberty. The facility hired pretty young psychology graduates, paid them nothing and gave them a title to essentially be babysitters. They had to go through all the training that included learning to do a safe takedown that was required by law to be used in certain circumstances.

Lemar knew the take down rules and the minimum number of required staff members to do it, which was two staff. One instance that triggered the take down rule was when a resident threatened anyone while holding a weapon of any kind.

I was walking up from the barn about 30 yards behind Lemar after a horse training session. Coming toward him on the path were two attractive young staffers. He immediately looked all around and bolted toward a nearby old wooden picket fence. I stopped to watch his curious behavior. He ripped a picket off the fence and quickly returned to the path as the two young staff members approached him. When they got close, Lemar pulled the fence piece out from behind his back and waved it at the women in a threatening manner.

The young ladies told him to put it down or they would have to take him down, and he would receive punishment. He didn't stop and they proceeded to take him down. In the take down picture below, the person is face down on the ground, but that is not always the case.

Lemar went down on his back as I watched. He resisted with his upper body, which caused both staffers to lay on his chest one on top of the other. Lemar, feet still, shook and twisted his upper body to resist as one woman pressed her upper body against his.

I walked up to the three of them on the ground and said, "Can I be next?" The woman on top of the other woman turned her head to me saying, "What do you mean?" I answered, "When you are done, will you two lay on top of me and press your breasts against my face?" She let out a long, loud, "Ewwwwww" and got up with a disgusted face. Lemar stopped moving and looked at me as if to say, "Hey man, why did you ruin my thing?" Like I said, Lemar was very smart and craved attention. Embarrassed, the two staffers walked away and never reported the "incident".

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Other Equine Therapy Posts

Brian a boy changes -
www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid025xiqNfYo8NZ8hTFgj3t8h6DPbRisiuQwfUC9KYSVvzLizPM7QntkeGWpChZVec1ml

Ranger a horse saved -
www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid0ErCFgUoCTwpVvBwuN3TtH2kXFR97nG87hntmzH9Qu7vXRZo3nZBVyQmPvEgWNH8Bl

Dysfunctional mental health system -
www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid08n72zxec7mDk3XNX1YBBHVHh6U4hv4b638BfUbad5EYZbmaYtpnzGGRmyzhVt3jKl

01/29/2025

In a recent conversation with my friend Jim Groesbeck Horsemanship about the current state of horse training, he came up with an analogy that perfectly describes today's new horse training process. Jim is one of the most educated and experienced horsemen I know. This insight of his is so sadly true.

Jim's analogy parallels a hypothetical way of teaching an art student how to paint a picture. The analogy begins with a requirement that before the student can start painting a picture, they have to completely understand the chemistry of paint.

Prior to painting a picture students have to study all the scientific elements of paint that include the pigments, binders, solvents, additives and the other ingredients of paint. Art students must understand all the science of how the chemicals interact, how they facilitate the flow of the paint on the paintbrush and how the combination of these chemical elements determine colors.

Only after this complete study of the science, can a student be prepared to dip their brush into the paint and put the brush to canvas.

I totally get Jim's analogy because I read so many posts and comments from young horse trainers who go on and on about the biomechanics of the horse, the horse thoracic sling and the science of behavior and pain. These scientific horse trainers seem to have replaced the skill or experience involved in training horses, gained from many years working many horses, with a concept of "relationship training" combined with their focus on science.

This "do the chemistry lab work first" approach to horse training lacks the feel for movement and balance in a horse. There is no mention of the use of mutual balance in training to open up all the possibilities of shared movement. Science based horse training is based on intellectual understanding instead.

Jim's summary was, "At some point we have to just get on the horse and teach it something useful." Call me stupid, but that is what I too have always thought training horses is about, getting on the horse and discovering its unique movement and balance, then improving it. Horse training is not at all about a science lab.

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01/28/2025

I am a horse trainer who also taught riding. One of my riders was first in Pony Club regionals at C eventing one year and came in second at Nationals. Another of my students was sixth nationally at Training Level US Eventing Association. I think my teaching method works.

My new riders begin in a small fenced arena with rounded corners I called the "baby pool". They ride my bulletproof lesson horses in there until they find their balance, get comfortable with the walk doing figure eights, backing up, and doing a few trotting strides along the fence. The main thing is to get them comfortable on a horse while not abusing the horse, and having them develop enough control so they can safely transition to my large unfenced outdoor arena.

In the left image you see young riders in the baby pool that is 40 feet (12 meters) by 20 feet (6 Meters). You can also see part of the baby pool in the background of the middle picture. I put it there by the big arena so the baby pool riders could see others riding in the open arena. Sometimes, I'd stop a baby pool lesson to watch the more advanced riders. On graduation, I opened the baby pool gate, and the students walked out of it to the large open arena.

This is how I learned to ride in the early 1950s. I think it is extremely important to get riders out of fenced rings as soon as they can safely ride a reliable safe horse out in the open.

Once they ride in the open arena, students learn to trot more than just a few strides with the goal being to trot the whole way around the perimeter. They learn to trot circles and figure eights. When a student can trot these comfortably and safely, they begin to do a few canter strides, then back to the trot. They learn to walk over a single ground pole in a 2-point while grabbing the jumping strap around their horse's neck.

Most students spend at least a year in the open arena before riding out on the cross country course. In the arena they learn to canter and to bend and turn a horse while cantering. They learn to transition up from the walk, to the trot, then to the canter, and then back down to the trot, then the walk. They learn to trot a small series of ground poles in the 2-point and canter over one ground pole in the jumping position using the strap. Graduation from the big arena starts with a series of short trips out to the nearby orchard where, in season, they can allow their horse to reach down and grab an apple that has fallen off the trees, then we ride back to the arena or to the barn.

After a few orchard trips, we slowly ride out to easy parts of the cross country course. In time, they learn the entire course with slopes, the creek and changing footing. Eventually students ride out by the road with traffic in the front of the property. Coordinated with the cross country riding, students receive jumping instruction back in the arena. When they become safe and competent at arena jumps, they begin to jump small cross country jumps out on the xc course.

This is the general sequence of learning I used when I taught. However, students might return to the baby pool to ride a new prospect in training to experience an untrained horse. It is so important for students to ride unfinished horses to learn that horses do not come "right out of the box" fully trained. When the better young riders experience this they also learn that a rider can easily untrain a horse if they are not constantly focused on correct riding.

The better students could move out of the baby pool with a developing prospect in training as a horse progresses. The best riders could take a prospect, as it progresses, out to the cross country course. This is teaching using different context for riding with different horses to give students a feel for the range of real riding from made horses to green horses.

The end result is confident riders with a diverse skill base who have high situational awareness. After learning this sequence of riding instruction, they can go on to whatever type of riding, disciplines or competitions they like. One of my best students in her early 20s went on to become a paid Whipper-in with a hunt club that has a great pack of hounds. Few riders achieve this who are twice her age.

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Jumping Strap post -

www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid02FXQC5FVEA3bcMMiqCeXVoxQEJ1qGGzmYrtw8CboJMSSzJ1D8L7Yuh2vArG7v9pzCl

01/27/2025

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I was 29 when I scraped together enough money for a down payment on my first farm. The horse and barn were run down, pastures were overgrown, and the fencing was a joke. The mortgage required that I have insurance on the house and even that was a burden. Insurance is expensive and getting more so. If you don't have it, you are self insured, meaning anything that goes wrong, you pay.

My journey from buying my first farm to having a complete facility caused me to think now about how I might help people like me who are coming up and growing their horse life dream. I thought about how local shows are dying out because of insurance costs. I remember buying a new tractor and worrying that if it got destroyed, the payments would keep coming. I was super careful how I stacked my hay so I wouldn't have a barn fire and was I careful where I parked my tractor and horse trailer so a tree wouldn't fall on them in a storm.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about horse related insurance concerns and one of my readers, Cat, contacted me to tell me her husband was in the insurance business. It turned out he is a lot more than a local insurance salesman. He is a global expert with a team that creates big solutions. For the last several months I have been working with this team to find a way to make insurance for what we do and what we have with our horses more affordable.

These insurance experts have come up with an insurance program where we all, in a way, share these risks together by purchasing our individual insurance coverages from a program that as the group grows, our costs would be reduced. This program wouldn't be a huge insurance company that has to pay their stockholders dividends. It would be a lean and mean program that over time could create meaningful savings.

We are at a point now where we need to understand what everybody sees as their risks and what insurance they need to cover those risks. I am putting up a link to a survey below and I hope you all will complete it. It's not long. It asks about individual and business needs related to horses, horse properties, horse farm equipment and insurance for horse illness and accident vet costs.

We need thousands of horse people to complete this survey to get a proper reading of our collective needs. Please complete the survey and be sure to share the survey post on your page so we can reach other horse people. This survey, and the potential group insurance program that I hope will come out of it, will be the horse community doing something together to help make having a horse more affordable. Let's do this together.

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01/24/2025

The image is of the actual barn where the program I have been writing about was. That is me on the right. The boys had to wear bright yellow shirts when we rode out so they could be easily seen from a distance. The site was 43 acres and once in a while a kid felt full of himself and took off. Most of the time they fell off when they did that, but sometimes I had to catch them on horseback. The room image is accurate and sad. The food was awful but the kids we had in the program made real progress.

I want to explain why there are so few equine therapy programs in mental health facilities like the one I have been writing about. The mental health system is based on a short term business model, not on a healing model. My program in a locked facility for boys addressed the most challenging cases including extremely violent boys, clinically depressed and incredibly abused boys and it was very effective. In some cases, boys who were predicted to age out at 18 and be moved to an adult locked facility, transitioned to lower security residences or outpatient programs after returning home.

So why are these kinds of programs so hard to find? Each time a boy was healed to the degree that he could leave, it generated a vacancy. The payment or reimbursement model for residential treatment is based on occupied beds per day. Success with a resident creates a loss for a facility by creating vacant beds that must be filled and that takes time, sometimes weeks or months of losses.

In the big picture, successfully getting a patient out of the high cost residential setting to an outpatient setting saves a lot of money, but the payment model is not big picture. It is based on day to day payments to facilities. Keeping a resident in a facility as long as possible is incentivized by this payment system. A rational system would pay facilities not to keep patients as long as possible, but rather to move patients out to a less costly treatment program as soon as possible.

The facility Administrator and I fought constantly over money. The program had the most challenging boys in the facility. Those boys were considered guaranteed long term, uninterrupted bed fillers whose payments could be counted on for years. But we were successful at moving them on. In a healing model, or a big picture payment model, our program saved money and reduced the pain these kids suffered.

Keeping horses is not cheap, but it saves money for the mental health system over the long term and it helps children. Our success with kids and horses was not valued simply because we emptied beds, which cost the facility money.


Our program was powerful but eventually I had to leave. While the support from the clinical staff kept me going, the constant opposition from the administration wore me down. I heard that two weeks after I left, the Clinical Director resigned.

Other recent posts about the program -

www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid025xiqNfYo8NZ8hTFgj3t8h6DPbRisiuQwfUC9KYSVvzLizPM7QntkeGWpChZVec1ml

www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid0ErCFgUoCTwpVvBwuN3TtH2kXFR97nG87hntmzH9Qu7vXRZo3nZBVyQmPvEgWNH8Bl

01/24/2025

The horse world's competitions need to change. The pictures are of the US Olympic dressage horse Jane and her rider Marcus Orlob. They were eliminated from the Paris Olympics due to a written rule that automatically eliminates any horse with blood on it. You can see the tiny patch of blood on the right hind sock from a small scratch. Rules based governance is void of investigation or judgement.

Before rules based governance there were human beings called Stewards who made the necessary judgements along with Vets regarding whether or not a horse was fit to compete. Stewards were experienced horsemen with sufficient power to make decisions regarding horses' and riders' safety and the well being.

What changed was lawyers, accounts and bureaucrats started running our US equestrian organizations that govern equestrian competitions. Starting with the USEF, an organization with a $37.2million annual budget, and their affiliates, the community of experienced horsemen and women, who kept horse shows and other competitions safe, were pushed aside to build the hugely profitable current horse industry.

The results of the industry's rise include the fact that horses are now routinely drugged so inadequate riders can win show ribbons. A young teen was killed in an equitation class when her horse stumbled and fell on her. No blood was taken from the horse by the governing association, a Vet or the police, that we know of. It was deemed a "freak accident" and forgotten. A freak accident is when a meteorite falls on you. When horses fall on a rider in flat groomed footing, there is a cause.

The old Stewardship model worked well until people got obsessed with filing lawsuits. Human common sense and judgement was then removed and replaced with rules in black and white. That scratch on Jane that got her eliminated was nothing. A speck of blood like that would have been determined to be immaterial by any Steward. Nevertheless, after years of preparation for the Olympics and demanding selection, Jane and her rider Marcus Orlob were out without a word.

Rules based governance is not working. A perfectly fit and capable horse got eliminated, a teen rider was killed in an equitation class, horses are commonly competing under the influence of drugs and it's all OK according to the rules.

We, the real horse community, must end rules based governance and replace it with standards based governance. Here is a hypothetical example of the difference: Rule - a horse under seven years old should not be allowed to jump 3 feet (one meter) or more. Standard - Horses must be properly fit in order to jump 3 feet (one meter) or more. The required level of fitness would be determined by a Steward, sometimes with the aid of a Vet. This worked for countless decades, and it could work again. It would do a much better job that we see now.

There will be lawsuits against Stewards and Vets under this system. That is an insurable risk. We could stack the deck against dissenters against a standards based system. All competition entry forms could include an ironclad agreement, that entrants would be required to sign, that riders, owners and parents would agree to accept the judgement of the Stewards and Vets. That entry form agreement could include an agreement to go to binding arbitration and the person filing a complaint would pay for the complaint process. Experienced lawyers could figure this out.

PETA is gaining ground in their effort to "free horses from human slavery" under the current system. They successfully intimidated the FEI Olympic governing body in Paris. Riders and horses are getting injured under today's system when judgment from experienced Stewards with the authority to intervene, could limit injuries and correctly allow fit horses to compete.

01/23/2025

This is another equine therapy program repost. The last one was about a boy. This is about a horse.

For six years I ran an equine therapy program for boys who were locked up in a mental health facility sent there by Judges' court orders. I collaborated with skilled clinicians to come up with treatments based on offering boys a new kind of relationship with horses. The residents had failed to form healthy human relationships and horses offer a far less complicated, more predictable relationship. Horses have a very simple, easy to read if you know how, agenda.

The most powerful concept we developed was getting the boys to "identify" with abused horses and then having the boys fix those horses as a healing process for both. With my horse training experience and the PhDs' and other clinicians' insights, the program worked. The program was selective and took on the most difficult cases.

I bought very damaged horses that were abused in training mostly at auctions. We named one horse, a white QH type with dark eyes, Ranger. After winning the auction bid, I went to the seller, a Pennsylvania cowboy with a dinner plate size belt buckle and chaw in his cheek, with a question. Since I now owned the horse, I said I'd appreciate an honest answer to the question of why he sold him. He said, "That horse will step on your head." It turned out to be true. The horse reared and struck downward with practiced intention. Ranger was among the most highly defended horses I ever encountered, just like many of the locked up boys.

Fortunately, the stalls in a barn had low ceilings that discouraged Ranger's impulse to rear. I assigned Ranger to one of the most dangerous boys, Corey, who was a top athlete. He could dunk a basketball behind his head. He had thrown a desk at a teacher among other things that got him locked up. Corey was a very defensive kid with an iron shell. I schooled him on how to get a halter on a horse like Ranger with his head up so high. I told him to stand at Ranger's shoulder and slowly run his hand up Ranger's neck until he allows you to touch his head. Slow was not in Corey's vocabulary. It took him weeks, but he got a halter on that horse and eventually he got Ranger to put his head down to be haltered. I believe Corey, at first, was motivated by peer pressure to succeed in order to maintain his respected rank among the other boys.

Ranger's defensiveness required this very overcompensating boy to act softly. At times he appeared uncharacteristically feminine. Much later, when Corey could ride Ranger, another boy came into the barn demanding that Corey hurry up saddling Ranger because everyone was waiting. I watched Corey, who was being slow and soft with Ranger, transform in a split second into his killer ego self when he said, "I'll bust you up mother f***er, you wait!" Corey had learned the first part of the program, a healthy relationship with a horse but not yet the second part, how to transfer that learning to people.

A year and a half later I posted Ranger for sale on the internet. It was the first time I ever used that new fangled way of selling. Not long after a beautiful truck and trailer rig showed up at the barn. With the dangerous boys at a distance observing, a young girl and her family followed in a really nice car. This young girl got out as her trainer exited the truck, and we began.

Both the trainer and the girl loved Ranger at first sight. The boys had done a great job with him. He was friendly and he did his transitions and lead changes perfectly, largely due to Corey's athletic feel and ability. We got $3,800 for Ranger, a pile of money back then. I think his auction price was $800. We reinvested the profit into the program. Ranger went to a very nice barn. Afterward the boys joked with envy about how their eventual fate was to end up like Ranger with a classy place to live.

Horse training is about forming relationships. It is not so much doing something right as it is not doing something wrong, which means taking the horse's point of view and working with it. That was the identification phase of the program. These severely damaged boys completely understood abuse, which made them effective horse trainers for damaged horses. They say that we humans have to join the horse's herd to improve a horse. Ranger and the boys were a perfect herd.

Prior post on Equine Therapy program -

www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid027H8BzcyGuNfBtnhVQEjVxUefuMmGKmPp2gq7QLnRGzBJL1e56AArmp3Ak4AjxXMl

01/21/2025

I haven't been commenting on very much on the new Federal Horse Protection Act because I see it as unenforceable due to its unmanageable scope. Selective enforcement will be the only possible approach to enforcement that the US Dept. of Agriculture will have. In America, selective enforcement is illegal. Additionally, we are beginning to see resistance to the Act as in this official statement from Texas.

OPINION
NEW HORSE PROTECTION ACT RULE: MORE HARM THAN GOOD?

An Editorial by Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller
January 17, 2025

The Biden Administration’s new Horse Protection Act (HPA) rule might sound like a good idea on paper, but let me tell you—it’s a disaster in practice. This rule isn’t about protecting horses; it’s about federal bureaucrats grabbing more control over an industry they clearly don’t understand. The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) new rule is so absurd that it makes using fly spray on a horse a potential violation. That’s not a joke—they can’t be serious!

The HPA was enacted in 1970 with good intentions—to regulate the Tennessee Walking Horse industry and to outlaw the showing, sale, auction, exhibition, or transport of sored horses. Soring is the intentional infliction of pain on a horse’s legs or hooves using chemicals, devices, or other harmful methods to force an exaggerated, high-stepping gait. This is common in competitive show circuits for breeds like Tennessee Walking Horses and racking horses.

Due to my heavy involvement in the equine industry, I know firsthand the importance of protecting this sector and these animals. But we’ve got to do it with practical, enforceable regulations. The new HPA rule will devastate the equine community, especially breeders, trainers, and horse owners in Texas and nationwide.

Anyone who’s ever owned a horse—whether for work, hobby, or show—knows we treat these animals better than most folks treat their favorite family members. For Texans, horses are more than just animals. They’re part of our families, our livelihoods, and a driving force of our economy.

If the HPA rule change is implemented, horse owners will have many headaches. The rules would ban anything that might cause irritation. Even a minor rub from a bell boot or sore muscles from training could be labeled as intentional soring. Before long, every 4-H horse event, barrel race, cutting, rodeo, horse show, trail ride, reining event, and team penning could face burdensome regulations.

Event organizers would have to provide advance notice and hire USDA-approved veterinarians or vet techs to inspect every horse and reinspect the class winner. Even something as simple as applying show sheen to a horse’s coat could result in disqualification.

This new rule doesn’t just target owners—they drag in haulers, trainers, vendors, and sponsors, making everyone liable. Horses would need to be blemish-free, undergo invasive inspections, and face strict shipping regulations. Even basic therapeutic treatments would require a vet’s oversight, and winners in the ring would face mandatory reinspection. It’s government overreach at its worst, and this isn’t even the complete list of what they’re pushing.

Soring is an issue that is largely specific to the state of Tennessee, so I question why the national equine industry must suffer under smothering regulations that overrule what should be dealt with at the state level. I’ll tell you. They are trying to rewrite the rules to expand the definition of “soring” so broadly that it could rope in nearly the entire horse industry. Animal rights extremists just won’t quit. The new HPA rule is a direct result of their meddling. Believe it or not, the USDA’s lead veterinarian, Dr. Aaron Rhyner, had the gall to suggest that even the simple act of riding a horse could somehow be considered “soring.”

The USDA's new rule forcing the equine industry to hire, train, and implement inspectors—that we have to pay for—at every event classified as a horse show is impossible. They don’t have the funding or resources. They also promise to hire qualified industry-experienced veterinarians, which we know is a role that is currently seeing staffing shortages already. What will they be forced to do instead? Send inspectors—most of whom lack fundamental knowledge about horses or rural life—to tell us how to care for our animals? Give me a break!

Here’s the bigger picture: This government overreach won’t stop with horses. If we don’t push back now, what’s next? Farmers, ranchers, and eventually, pet owners will all be in the USDA’s crosshairs. Today, it’s the equine industry. It could be your cattle, pets, or way of life tomorrow.

The bottom line is that these new rules won’t protect horses. They’ll devastate the equine industry, punish responsible horse owners, and destroy rural communities across the nation. Instead of promoting animal welfare, the USDA imposes senseless regulations that will do more harm than good.

It’s time to rein in these runaway bureaucrats and restore some common sense to Washington, D.C. It is my hope that the incoming Trump Administration will withdraw this new rule.

An eighth-generation Texas farmer and rancher, Sid Miller is the 12th Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA). A twenty-six-time world champion rodeo cowboy, he has devoted his life to promoting Texas agriculture, rural communities, and the western heritage of Texas. Commissioner Miller will be available for television, Zoom, and phone interviews.