Total success, first time at a new location, first time with a new organization, Side by Side, and I was flying solo with only junior volunteers to help. A nice change for me was that I did not provide any transportation for clients. It makes a HUGE difference. All clients arrived on time, completed some extra paperwork (without complaint) and parents left without a backward glance. One mom, however, asked if she could stay with her daughter due to anxiety. I took one look at Mary and said sure, she had tears starting. Her mom turned out to be a nice asset to the program and supported her daughter in a quiet manner, drifting away when she was no longer needed. That was the first miracle. Mary started out in tears and finished strong, riding the horse with a proud, shy smile.
Next miracle was when Jess climbed out of the car, a young black boy and he got to pair up right away with Siem, my awesome African volunteer. They got to hang out and it was obvious Jess felt way more comfortable because Siem was there. Siem told me later, Jess kept saying, I’m not gonna walk the horse, then he walked the horse, and I’m not gonna groom the horse, then we see him helping Kamio pick out DD’s feet, then Jess tells me, I’m not gonna ride a horse, and there he is a few minutes later riding around on QT and loving it. His miracle.
And finally there was Donna who got to be my role model and brave girl to ride QT first. She gained confidence & kinda glowed with that as she went through the other 2 stations. Nice to witness her success. I liked that we were able to incorporate many horses, QT to ride, DD, Bob & Pawnee to groom, and Reilly and Hugo to hand walk in the pasture.
Both junior volunteers did great Kamio, her first time really liked it and did well helping me with horse chores. Siem has done this before with me but at a different barn and a few years ago. Hopefully he will wear long pants and boots next time.
After we finished, Kaylee came to see her horse and brought her puppy.
Student’s Work
Riding Bitless
I mention it to all my students. “ I will never use a bit on a horse”. It’s true partly because there are so many other choices and the bit has always seemed harsh to me, even with the gentlest of hands. Pictured here is the basic bitless bridle with cross over and the reins attached. It works fine for my beginner lessons. Another type of bitless bridle is the hackamore, it can be used if you need more brakes, there is also a western style bosel which can stop most any horse. We can move more toward ‘liberty’ riding in which the horse wears a neck ring and no bridle at all.
The first step is pictured here using both neck ring and bridle together. I notice when using the neck ring only it allows the horse to control the set of his head thus using his muscles and frame more in a natural way. I also teach Liberty connection from the ground with no riding. There’s nothing like having a horse walk by your side just because they want to, with no ropes or whip at all, another fun way to connect with a horse from the ground is to jog next to them as they trot. It’s quite a workout.
Our choice is our power.
Change starts now, you can enter the discussion by asking, why use a bit if it’s not necessary? Many people ask me that exact question, and I’m still working on an authentic, non-judgmental answer for that question:
Why use a bit ?
Cozette and Judy
Here I am with Cozette many years ago. She was my true ‘Heart’ horse. Smokey was my first horse but Cozette will always be in my heart. She left the land of the living 4 years ago and is an ancestor now. She taught me many important life lessons, maybe the most useful to “Never Give Up” it has given me strength and courage to go forward even when life gets hard. Cozette survived the Tubbs fire - the rescue a story in itself. She be-friended so many people and gave us inspiration to be fine. Cozette taught me the benefits of ground work with horses. It helps in so many ways, training and especially connection. Riding on their back is fun and learning to play with them on the safely on the ground is another way to be with horses. I honor and remember Cozette when I play with Ginger, another chestnut Arabian mare at the barn. Thank you Cozette your spirit shines.
Not a normal Day at the Barn
By Jordan Reis
Paisley had wanted a horse since she was 11 years old. Finally on her 14th birthday she got a horse, but it wasn’t any old horse, it was the horse of her dreams. It was a 13 year old Buckskin and she called him Bandit. He was a gelding and trained to be ridden. English style.
Paisley was so excited when she got to visit her horse each day. It was what she most looked forward to every afternoon. She was a home-schooler, so she didn’t have to spend most of her day at school, but she did have to get her school work done before her mom would let her go to the barn. She loved the barn, not only because Bandit was there but because it was out in the county and quiet. Paisley lived in the city, where it was loud. She appreciated the peacefulness of the county where the barn was located. There were over 30 horses at the barn. It was huge. All kinds of breeds, colors, sizes and personalities. Paisley loved them all, but mostly she loved Bandit.
There was a riding trail nearby that led to a dried-up creek. It was a sunny trail with only a few places to stop under the trees for shade. The trail path was concrete and was hot and still. Paisley always felt a little sticky in the wide, open trail. In the arena, the ground was soft dirt and there was a nice breeze. She preferred the arena to the trail because there was more to do there. The trail felt less exciting because all they could do was walk. In the arena, they could walk, canter, trot and eventually jump the horse.
The barn was 15 minutes by car, away from Paisley’s house. The barn owner’s name was Judy and she had a stable full of horses. She also taught riding lessons, all the time, to many different kids. Judy was funny and was a true horse person. She had grown up with horses and made them her life.
One day when Paisley got to the barn, she realized there was something wrong. Judy was nowhere to be found and several horses were out of the barn wandering around, out of place. Paisley knew she had to round up the horses as it wouldn’t be safe for the horses to get out onto the road or to break away and run. She couldn’t do it by herself, or at least, she thought she couldn't.
She looked around and called for Judy. She was nowhere in sight. Suddenly she saw her boot sticking out of one of the stalls. Oh no, thought Paisley, She’s been knocked out! And the horses are loose. Do I help Judy first or gather the horses? She ran over to Judy and saw that she was still breathing. She had recently taken a CPR course and knew how to resuscitate. Before giving her CPR, Paisley called around for help. She didn’t hear anyone. She had a cell phone, so she called 911 and frantically began pushing up and down on her chest the way she had learned in her training. It had been a joke in class when they had practiced with dolls, but this was the real deal. Paisley was shaking, she was so scared, but she kept compressing up and down, up and down.
After a couple of minutes of CPR, Paisley could hear sirens of the ambulance approaching. Soon there were EMTs at her side, helping. Paisley knew that she now had to turn her attention to the wandering horses, because Judy was in good hands.
By Jordan Reis
Horse Lessons
Student Work: Horse Anatomy
Equine Dental Terms
Routine dental care for your horse is important. Horses evolved as grazing animals and their mouths are perfect for it. The front teeth, known as incisors, pull and shear off the grass. The cheek teeth, including the molars and premolars, grind the grass with a sideways motion into a mash to be easily swallowed. Pastured horses will graze 10 to 12 hours a day. Stabled horses are fed two to three times a day leading to less jaw movement and little opportunity to use their incisors to shear grass.
To enable a horse to stay healthy, a good working mouth is essential. Some reasons why your horses’ teeth need regular treatment by a qualified equine dentist follow:
- Horse teeth continue to erupt throughout the life of a horse.
- The horses upper jaw is wider than the lower jaw. Normal use, sideways grinding of food, can create sharp points on the cheek surface of the upper teeth and the tongue surface of the lower teeth. The points can damage cheek or tongue causing discomfort and pain.
- Horses need teeth of an even heigh so that the roughage they eat is ground properly. If not, it can cause digestion problems leading to colic.
- Due to domestication and stabling of horses, feeding patterns have changed resulting in the front teeth, incisors, not wearing at the same rate as the premolars (1st three sets of large cheek teeth) and molars (2nd three sets of large cheek teeth)
- Horses chew in a figure of 8 type pattern.
Scheduling routine treatment with an equine dentist is simple, but understanding them as they explain your horse’s mouth and what they are doing might be confusing.
You may have heard that it is important to “float” your horses teeth but didn’t understand exactly what that meant. Historically, routine maintenance of a horse’s teeth has been referred to as “floating”. It means to smooth or contour the teeth using a file also known as a rasp and historically called a ‘float”. Other terms that you may your horse’s dentist use are defined below:
• Arcade: a row of teeth
• Cap: a baby tooth covering the permanent tooth ready to erupt. It is shed when the permanent tooth is ready to erupt. If a cap is not shed, it may delay the permanent tooth to erupt causing cysts
• Caudal Hooks: The lower or upper last molar overhanging opposing molar.
• Cheek teeth: term used to describe all teeth behind the incisors, top and bottom, used to grind food. Includes premolars and molars
• Crown: The portion of the tooth that gradually erupts into the mouth and is used for grinding, not the root.
• Deciduous: “Baby” teeth.
• Diastema: A space between teeth. This may be the normal space between the incisors and the cheek teeth or an abnormal space that develops between one or more cheek teeth.
• Eruption: when a tooth moves out from the bone of jaw into the mouth.
• Hook: A pointed end or protuberance on a tooth through abnormal wear.
• Malocclusion: Abnormal contact between opposing teeth.
• Mastication: The act of chewing or grinding food.
• Occlusion: Refers to chewing or biting surfaces and is the contact points.
• Permanent: “Adult” teeth. A horse will have these by 2 or 2 1/2 years old. They are intended to remain for the horse’s life.
• Quidding : The dropping of partly chewed food from the mouth.
• Rostral Hooks: Dominant upper front premolars overhang lower premolars.
• Shearmouth : Through abnormal wear, the angle of contact between the top and bottom cheek teeth has become greater than the normal 10-15 degrees and may have reached 45 degrees.
• Slant Mouth : Contact between the top and bottom incisors at an angle instead of being horizontal.
• Step Mouth : Through abnormal wear, the grinding surface of the cheek teeth arcade is arranged in step like fashion instead of the normal smooth curve.
• Tushes or Tusks : The canine teeth found between the incisors and the cheek teeth. Theoretically used for fighting and present in most male horses. Usually very small or absent in mares.
• Wave Mouth : Due to uneven wear, the grinding surface of the cheek teeth arcade has a wavelike appearance instead of a smooth curve.
• Wolf Tooth: Small shallow rooted teeth in front of premolars.
by A.C.
https://aaep.org/horsehealth/importance-maintaining-health-your-horses-mouth
http://www.aboutyourhorse.com/what-does-floating-teeth-mean-why-it-necessary
https://www.localriding.com/horse-teeth.html
Premarin Information
Premarin is an estrogen-replacement drug. It is used for treating menopause symptoms and to prevent osteoporosis. It is also used to replace estrogen in women with ovarian failure. The drug’s name is short for PREgnant MARe’s urINe (PMU). This name tells you that premarin is made from horse urine, specifically pregnant mares. Although the number of PMU ranches in the U.S. and Canada have decreased in recent years, Pfizer is still producing hormone replacement therapy drugs. At the height of the industry in the 1990’s, 750,000 mares were being impregnated each year for the sole purpose of collecting their estrogen-rich urine.
To develop the drugs using the urine, horses are subjected to horrific cruelty. As a prey animal, horses have a heightened sense of the fight or flee reaction necessary for a prey to survive. Because of this protective instinct, horses are wanderers by nature. A PMU mare is tied in a small stall that is only 4 to 5 feet wide with a tube attached to her groin to collect the urine. In this condition, she is unable to move but maybe a step or two forward and back but not turn around or lie down. The tube causes sores on her legs as well as the tight space. Her food and water intake are restricted in order to concentrate the urine so she is constantly thirsty. She is kept in this stall for 6-7 months until the end of her pregnancy when the estrogen levels decrease and it is no longer financially prudent.
After the birth of her foal, she is impregnated again and her foal is taken from her at 3 months of age. Mares are reluctant to give up a foal this young so they are often whipped or beaten with an electric cattle prod until she relents. She is then subjected to the stall again. This cycle repeats for up to twelve years. Not surprisingly, PMU mares have many health issues such has dehydration, hoof injuries, leg sores, swollen joints, edema, liver and kidney disorders and premature death. In addition, her stress level is at a constant high as she is unable to flee her deplorable conditions or care for her foal. Mares are sent to the slaughterhouse when they are unable to reproduce quickly. Not only do the mares suffer in a PMU ranch, the foals are considered by products of the industry and deal with horrible treatment as well. A foal suffers its first highly stressful situation at three months of age when weaned too young and removed from its mother.
Some females are kept as replacement mares if their mother is no longer able to reproduce. Most foals are sent to auction, along with the mares whose production has ended. They can be bought for recreational use but most are bought by kill buyers who send them to feedlots to be fattened up for slaughter. Horse meat sells well in Japan or Europe. In 2002, a study was done that concluded the use of PMU drugs is dangerous for humans. The study showed that stroke risk was increased by 41%, heart attack risk by 29% and breast cancer risk by 29%. It also concluded that hormone replacement therapy drugs have no meaningful effects on menopause symptoms.
At the time of the study, many doctors in the U.S. and Canada stopped prescribing PMU drugs, thereby reducing the number of mares needed to continue producing but not ending it completely. Despite this study, more research has been conducted and the common thread now is that HRT helps for short term but is dangerous taken long term. Therefore, HRT drugs are still prescribed. Because this study put the HRT drugs in the limelight, the conditions of the PMU ranches also became more known and local regulations started appearing. As of 2019, the number of PMU ranches is down from 500 in the 1990’s to 19 in Canada and none in the U.S.A. However, Pfizer saw what was coming and began moving production abroad (China, Poland and Kazakhstan) where regulations are more lax and less inspectors available to monitor production.
This move resulted in more terrible conditions for the mares and less oversight in the manufacturing of an already dangerous drug. To help end the manufacture of this drug and the horrible abuse of the mares needed to produce the drug, we can do a few things. First and foremost, don’t take Premarin. There are alternative humane drugs that a woman can request from her doctor. Also, a healthy diet and lifestyle will help to mitigate some of the menopause symptoms without the use of drugs. And, lastly, we can make some noise and educate others.
https://www.lcanimal.org/index.php/campaigns/other-issues/horses
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3995076/ns/dateline_nbc/t/hrt-horses/#.Xo5TW1NKjOQhttps://www.producer.com/2019/04/pmu-ranchers-feel-pinch-as-cuts-announced/
Dealing with Colic
Colic in horses is often thought of as abdominal pain. Many people think that it is similar to a stomach ache and that by walking their horse until the pain passes is enough to treat it. In actuality, abdominal pain is only a symptom rather than a diagnosis. It indicates a problem with the gut itself such as gas, impaction, spasmodic gut, twisted gut or sand gut, or a problem with other organs within the abdomen that requires vet intervention. To properly care for your horse’s health, it is helpful to know the symptoms of colic, how to treat it if you encounter it and how to prevent it.
Early detection of colic improves a horses chances to good recovery. There are many symptoms that a horse will exhibit when having discomfort in the abdomen. A horse might do any of the following actions:
- look at his flank
- curl his upper lip
- paw the ground
- kick back leg to abdomen
- have no interest in eating
- lay down and get up and repeat
- stretch as if he is going to urinate
- dog sit
- groan
- increase breathing
- sweat
- look bloated
- roll on back
- produce no manure or have diarrhea
Knowing your horse well allows you to recognize discomfort early. If a horse is having any of these symptoms, it is best to treat it as an emergency and call the vet. While waiting for the vet to arrive, all hay and food should be removed and the horse kept in a safe area. If symptoms are mild, the owner can gently walk the horse and offer comfort. If the horse is restless and anxious, an owner should just watch the horse to ensure both the horse and the owner are safe.
A vet will ask questions regarding type of feed and feeding routine, any medications given, recent travel or changes to routine and deworming/vaccination schedule. Then he will do a physical exam including a rectal exam, bloodwork, a nasogastric tube to check for reflux, ultrasound and possible X-rays. After the vet does his exam and makes his diagnosis, he will give treatment guidelines.
There are two treatments for a horse with colic, medical or surgical. The vet may administer a pain relief, given intravenously and/or a laxative administered through the nasogastric tube directly into the stomach. IV fluids will also be administered as rehydration is important. Surgery is considered if a horse remains uncomfortable despite medical intervention. The best treatment for colic in horses is prevention.
There are four risk factors that contribute to colic but these risks can be managed to help prevent a horse from falling ill. Digestive disorders such as teeth problems, worms or previous surgery; stress such as travel, change in diet or routine; poor feeding such as soiled food, incorrect amount of food, lack of water or fibre or sudden change in diet; and access to poor and over grazed pasture increase a horse’s chance to have colic. Understanding a horse’s makeup and needs helps us understand what needs to be done to keep them healthy.
Establishing a daily routine and reducing stress is one step in preventing colic. This routine includes feeding, exercising, turnouts and resting. A horse should be fed high quality hay two to three times a day and always have fresh, clean water available. Avoid feeding on sandy areas and only feed grain or pellets when the need arises. Daily exercise or pasture turnouts is important to keep digestive systems healthy.
Having a consistent, daily routine reduces stress and allows a horse owner to learn their horse’s habits and body language. If a horse starts exhibiting discomfort, an owner will recognize it early if they know their horse well. In addition to the daily routines, having routine worming and the teeth floated every six months will also keep the digestive system healthy. Colic is common but can be managed. Horses evolved on a different diet than they eat today but their digestive system did not evolve to today’s life. Natural feeding habits of horses meant for them to eat all day long while on the move. Today, they often eat only two to three meals a day and are stabled for long hours. Their digestive system is sensitive and will react to any added stress but adhering to the prevention guidelines outlined above will give a horse the best ability to stay healthy and happy.
https://www.acvs.org/large-animal/colic-in-horses
https://www.bluecross.org.uk/pet-advice/horse-colic-prevention-and-management
https://extension.umn.edu/horse-health/colic-your-horse#preventing-colic-71560
http://csu-cvmbs.colostate.edu/Documents/colic.pdf
https://foranequine.com/expert-advice/colic-in-horses-types-symptoms-and-treatment/
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