Hannah Morgan Horsemanship

Hannah Morgan Horsemanship I practice an equine-first approach to training, specializing in behavioral and performance challenges.

Went to collect some composting hooves today and was surprised with this pristine hoof capsule! It’s gorgeous, so many d...
05/02/2025

Went to collect some composting hooves today and was surprised with this pristine hoof capsule! It’s gorgeous, so many details intact. And yes, I’m going to try to preserve it too! A real treat for this hoof nerd.

When they're aging in reverse 😍Jack is back on the feed, because he just keeps blowing me away with his capacity for imp...
12/09/2024

When they're aging in reverse 😍

Jack is back on the feed, because he just keeps blowing me away with his capacity for improvement! This older guy had pretty low and under-run heels when I first started trimming him in February of this year. Less than a year later, we've gotten those heels under him, and it's created a cascade of changes in his whole body! The flaring on the lateral heel is particularly interesting, since I didn't ever really do anything to try to "fix it". I gave him a balanced trim every four weeks, his owner got him in some padded hoof boots, and he did the rest! It's a good potential example of how excess unworn hoof tissue or an imbalanced trim can create leverage which leads to distortion over time.

I'm excited to see the changes in his body too. You can see a bit of a contraction along his top line in March. He's using tension in his neck to hold himself up. He tended to stand "over" his front legs, something I see a lot accompanying long toes. In the recent photo, he just looks so much softer. His front legs fall perpendicular to his body, the dip in front of his wither has softened significantly, and his wither has come up a bit so that he looks more squarely balanced over his limbs instead of pushed out over the front. You'd hardly know he was a senior citizen!

This week on the blog, my hot take on choosing a boarding barn! Also, this is the LAST WEEK to preorder my book "A Trimm...
12/06/2024

This week on the blog, my hot take on choosing a boarding barn!

Also, this is the LAST WEEK to preorder my book "A Trimmer's Guide to Horse Training" at the discounted price before I publish it on Dec 13. Next Friday my blog subscribers will get to see the whole first chapter 👀

https://hmhorsemanship.com/blog-post-modern-horsemanship

Post-Modern Horsemanship..I struggle with social media. I hate being subject to the algorithm, I hate seeing peers lose ...
11/25/2024

Post-Modern Horsemanship..

I struggle with social media. I hate being subject to the algorithm, I hate seeing peers lose access to their accounts and lose years of hard work. So I'm going old-school! I'm moving my writings over to a blog format, to better control my own content and create a space that feels a little more manageable. I'll still be here letting you know what's happening, but if you enjoy my more in-depth writing it'll be on the blog!

It's free, I only ask that you sign up. I've called it "post-modern horsemanship", because that's what my work feels like now. I've pursued so much education and have learned a staggering amount about horses and horsemanship. Given what I know now, the big question looming in my mind is...what now? Where do we go from here? How do we change the industry in a way that honors horses and our work with them?

This blog is going to be grittier and more raw than my social media page has been. I want to tell real stories from this industry, and let you in on the big questions I have as a professional in this space. If you've followed my work, or appreciate my thoughts, I invite you to come with me!


https://hmhorsemanship.com/blog-post-modern-horsemanship

I have started doing some consulting with other hoof care pros, and it has been so much fun! Here's what Erin had to say...
11/18/2024

I have started doing some consulting with other hoof care pros, and it has been so much fun! Here's what Erin had to say after consults with two of her clients. If you're looking for a second opinion, or you're a pro who would like another set of eyes, reach out! I love taking the whole horse into consideration on tough cases. I travel within ~ 1 hour of Brevard NC, and have some remote options in the works.

A happy update for this OTTB rescue who’s had me scratching my head for the last 8 months. The first photo was our first...
11/11/2024

A happy update for this OTTB rescue who’s had me scratching my head for the last 8 months. The first photo was our first appointment. This was perhaps the most distorted foot I’d seen yet, and the last 8 months I’ve thrown everything I know into getting this mare to hold onto her foot. As you can see in the second photo, it seemed like her hoof just crumbled no matter what I did. I put her back into glue ones that first day, then we transitioned her to cloud boots, and there was a cycle in casts as well. She was on a forage based diet.

What I *didn’t* think of when I looked at this horse was cushings. Her brilliant owner caught it, and sure enough she tested positive. I’m kicking myself in hindsight sight of course, but you can bet it’s an oversight I won’t make again! Don’t underestimate the role of underlying metabolic issues in hoof health. That diagnosis and corresponding treatment is the change from the June photo to the November one. Not much else changed. Hoof tissue has an incredible ability to heal given the opportunity. This mare has taught me so much, and I’m relieved she’s feeling better.

Exciting news!! This horse-first guide to hoof care and handling has been my passion project for over a year now. I see ...
10/29/2024

Exciting news!!

This horse-first guide to hoof care and handling has been my passion project for over a year now. I see many horses struggle with hoof care, and I've been able to use my behavioral and physiological knowledge of the horse to help create lasting change. I want gentle, efficient handling to be accessible to every horse, owner and hoof care pro!

This guide is nearly 60 pages long, packed with training philosophy, practical techniques, exercises to help horse and practitioner succeed in hoof care, and case studies from my own trimming practice.

It's available for the discounted pre-order price of $39 until I publish it on December 13. Get it here:

https://hmhorsemanship.com/products/p/a-trimmers-guide-to-horse-training

I love continuing education. It would be easy to teach a particular method, but I'm so glad I found a teacher in Ida who...
10/15/2024

I love continuing education. It would be easy to teach a particular method, but I'm so glad I found a teacher in Ida who's guiding principle is the horse. Every foot, every trim tailored to the body it belongs to and informed by anatomy. Even if you have no aspirations to become a hoof care pro, do yourself and your horses a favor and learn from her if you get the chance. As always, it was a refreshing and inspiring weekend!

I'm heartbroken for my corner of the world. I'm ok, everyone I know is ok. We got incredibly lucky that we were spared t...
10/02/2024

I'm heartbroken for my corner of the world. I'm ok, everyone I know is ok. We got incredibly lucky that we were spared the devastation of nearby communities we know and love. Climate change is real. Community is life. People deserve support when they need it. Especially now, but every day too.

Let's talk about stress, baby (Part I)We'll start with the kind of stress that the horse's body is actually physiologica...
09/28/2024

Let's talk about stress, baby (Part I)

We'll start with the kind of stress that the horse's body is actually physiologically adapted to cope with. A horse in a herd is alerted to a threat. The nervous system processes the threat and induces a stress response that can include increased respiration, blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature. The herd flees, and puts a comfortable distance between themselves and the threat. One horse goes back to eating, then another. This kind of short, intense burst of stress is exactly what the horse is built to handle. In the wild, a horse is also capable of "closing the stress loop" by having the freedom of movement to allow to body and nervous system to move through stress.

So how is the stress response of our domesticated horses different than the example above? Chronic stress and acute stress take two different biological pathways to the adrenals, and the processes are modulated by different hormones. In that way, chronic stress is physiologically different than acute stress. Prolonged activation of that chronic pathway is what can lead to long term health consequences for our horses. We know that long term over-production of cortisol in particular can cause "aggressive behavior, decreased growth and reproductive capability, inhibition of the immune system, increased risk of gastric ulceration, colic and diarrhea" (Rutgers).

We should include that even measuring cortisol in our horses, though, is not always a reliable indicator of chronic stress. Studies have found that abnormally low cortisol levels could also be an indicator of stress and welfare issues. It could be that horses exposed to chronic, prolonged levels of stress experience a breakdown in the stress response system as a whole. In theory this leaves the horse less capable of coping with even the acute stress it's body is better equipped to deal with.

So why does all this matter? It matters for welfare, but it also has huge implications for our goals with horses. In the next part of this series, we'll talk about how a horse's stress impacts the expectations we have for them, and why prevention (as usual) is so critical!

Breath (Exercise physiology part III)We talked about how lactic acidosis and the resulting effects are triggered by a la...
09/25/2024

Breath (Exercise physiology part III)

We talked about how lactic acidosis and the resulting effects are triggered by a lack of oxygen in the tissues. Well, breathing is the way the oxygen gets there! So let's talk about breath, and why it's just as important for our horses as it is for us.

If you're an athlete you probably already know all this. For me, this has been a more specific education about things I'd always heard, but had never been explained to me. We know it's important to breathe. But do we really know if our horses are breathing? I'll tell you, I see a whole lot of horses that have abnormal breathing patterns for all kinds of reasons. This can have many effects on the horse (and humans too!) but for the purposes of this post, we'll focus on the metabolic ones.

One of the dysfunctional breathing patterns I see is over-breathing, in which the horse's respiratory rate is increased because they're habitually breathing shallow, or trying to compensate for periods of holding their breath during certain activities. It makes sense that this might be triggered by cinching up a girth, or carrying a rider. This is why it's important to know if our horses are breathing in a healthy way, so we can address it and keep it from becoming a pattern. Learn to take your horse's respiratory rate- you can look at the rise and fall of the flank, or hold a hand in front of the nostril to feel the expiration. If your horse is taking more than 15 breaths/min at rest, they may be "over-breathing". So what does that mean for metabolic health and fitness?

Over-breathing, akin to hyperventilation, is associated with reduced CO2 in the in the blood, which in turn results in lower oxygen available as well. If you read part I, you already know that lower oxygenation in the blood lowers the anaerobic threshold (anaerobic metabolism begins sooner at a lower heart rate, lactic acid begins to build up more quickly). Put this all together, and we can connect the idea that horses with dysfunctional breathing won't have the same potential for performance and fitness gains. Again, this makes sense but actually understanding the physiology behind it has been fascinating to me!

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