Achievements of Barefoot horses. Informative articles on bare hoof health.

Iron behaving badly

27/1/2016

There are a lot of numbers and a lot of letters and with all due respect to the author it is rather laborious to listen to for the lay person, but please do. The man is a doctor, not a public speaker, and he does have some very important, knowledge to share. What has this to do with horses? Listen, and you will figure it out ;)

(Some rather important information for all you menopausal, and pre-menopausal girls out there, is also to be found in this link!)

https://vimeo.com/68409731

Three day camel ride - Much more than!

7/1/2016

When your horse goes off (not escaped you!), be that anything from slightly off track to screamingly lame, in many cases it is something that has been brewing for a long time. Such stoic creatures, they are able to continue seemingly fine for quite some time, even though things are beginning to crumble and breakdown, unseen by their owners, or any vets, eye. But the day the vet starts making noises about remedial shoeing or box rest or considering a different discipline for your horse, namely that of pasture ornament, is the day you must decide if you are going to pull your socks up and go in for the long haul, to get your precious equine back on the right road, or if you are going to throw your hands up and walk away! If you are reading this, you are not a throw your hands up type of person.

Loose the guilt trip. Many horses suffer sub-clinical or chronic issues which they often learn to compensate for as they have developed, with little chance of you noticing. You may have even developed a compensatory posture yourself, when riding, without having realised. It´s not your fault! But, once things have gone wrong if you now don´t put in the hours and necessary exercises, diet, change of management etc to get your fur-baby back on the right road, it most surely is. And something that has been brewing for months, maybe even years, is not going to be resolved in a trice! When I say the long haul I really do mean far more than a three-day camel ride. We are talking an open-ended “prescription”. You can have no time limits. Rehabilitation is a commitment. You need to roll your sleeves up and knuckle down. Taking guilt along for the ride only serves to make an owner look for quick fixes. Desperate to redeem themselves in the eyes of their horse/the yard gossip/themselves (!) people want short cuts to a solution. Any of those WILL ´ONLY´ be temporary.

First things first, you need to look beyond the symptoms and find the true cause. This can be a process of elimination over a period of time. For example, a seemingly unbalanced front hoof can be re-balanced, and a horse appears to go well again, only to find a week or more later lameness has reoccurred. If you didn´t check his shoulders and the alignment and angle of his hinds, for example, it´s a case of; “he held out as best he could. He tried for you. But it was just not going to last without further complications”. Or, same scenario, you can re-balance an obvious imbalance to find the horse is worse - because the re-balance puts stress on another part of the body, that had been compensating for the problem.

A QUICK FIX!

You need to treat the obvious issue that bought him to this point in the first place and during the process watch carefully for what unravels and reveals itself. This is where you begin to appreciate professionals in the whole horse protocol, and just what their work entails.

Patching up, only looking at and addressing what ever is staring you in the face, is only a short term fix. As with many lameness issues that appear because just one straw finally broke that camels back, the original cause is not immediately clear. Thus the process of recovery takes time, and frustrating time on those occasions when your horse may go from bad to worse as his body re-adjusts through the transition back to health.

An OTTB has taken 6 years to recover from all the imbalances and mental stress of his previous life. The psychological affects of ailments are so often overlooked. A TB X performed faultlessly for 10 years at intermediate level dressage, jumping and cross country, then one day just started to keep clipping the jumps and coming short. Two years of remedial work to hooves and body and he now jumps and moves out better than ever before. A foundered pony was back popping over jumps and hitting the trail just a remarkable 9 months after being quite literally unable to walk at all. What manifested as an abscess uncovered all manner of toxicity and general breakdown in a horse, who, 12 months later was healthier than they had ever been their entire life. Destined for the meat wagon because everyone said he was dangerous, a bucking, kicking, ´wild beast´, became a trophy winning childs mount after his hoof and back problems were found to be the cause of his "symptoms". All these success stories have one thing in common; The owners were prepared to comply with all the directives given (changes to environment, diet, exercise and hoof care) and take the time it took to get their horses truly healthy. They were prepared to consider the whole horse as a cause and work with the relevant professionals where necessary to truly and permanently rehabilitate their horse.

But, whilst we can not keep them wrapped up in bubble to avoid any problems in the first place, we can get better educated to be sure we don´t just dodge a few bullets, we actually maintain our horses on far healthier footing to begin with (yes, pun intended). Thus reducing the possibility of getting sand in our pants.

Hoof News

Keeping you informed of new (once we´ve thoroughly tried and tested them) products that are complimentary to healthy hooves.

Updates on our equine clients.

Achievements of barefoot horses.

Iron behaving badly

Three day camel ride - Much more than!

Hoof News

Archives

Categories