LBM Equestrian

03/02/2025

A horse trained with patience and lightness will outshine one trained with force. 📚 Visit our bookshop: www.elaineheneybooks.com 🐴 Documentary: www.listeningtothehorse.com

02/17/2025

This is proper horsemanship at its best. What a beautiful quality training experience this horse received, in a way that wasn’t forceful.

08/24/2024

Dropping The Knives

We are going to talk about this meme a bit, because I’ve seen it pop up a lot and it makes me a bit sad.

I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to hoofcare friends around the world lately, and we have all come to a similar conclusion:

This job can be really dang hard, my friends.

For those of us in hoofcare, summer starts “burn out season”- not only does it often feel like 800 degrees in our bodies as we are working to hold up a couple hundred pounds of horse limbs while they try to use us for balance while simultaneously stomping at a fly, but it’s also the season when owners are often riding more, doing more, and wanting more from their horses- and expecting that we will make all their riding dreams come true with our rasp and nippers.

We want that, too. We want to make your horses comfortable and sound. We want to do our best to advocate for your horses and set them up for success.

And I feel like every year, I still have to do a post about how it’s also not all up to us as the hoofcare provider to make that happen.

When it comes to soundness, yes- the trim and whatever we do to the foot as professionals is incredibly important. We can cripple the horse in a second, we can also bring relief. Of course, that’s not the only thing responsible for a horses’ soundness. Their diet, environment, turn out schedule, stress levels, gut health, biomechanics, saddle fit, dental status, metabolic status, and so much more all play a role in how comfortable they are before and after a hoofcare appointment.

I was chatting with some friends today and all of us had stories about how we often are expected to be “Mr. Fix It”- with the silver bullet, magic wand answer to get your horse back out showing tomorrow - and it can be an immense amount of pressure.

Add in the fact that often, if anything goes sideways soundness wise, we are the first to get the blame.. even if the owner hasn’t called us in 3 months, or the horse is fed a straight corn cob diet and kept on lush grass fields during the day with enough fat pads to become a literal couch. It can be hard to not just feel like everyone is throwing the hoofcare pro under the bus (hence the meme).

If we read the foot and do the same trim that kept them sound and comfortable 3+ years in a row, and that horse isn’t happy after we see them, my first thought is “what has changed in their diet? Their environment? Their health or stress or whatever else to cause inflammation in the hoof that hasn’t been there in the past?” But it can be easy to just blame the farrier.

Most of us spend a huge amount of our “free” time reading, talking to others, going to clinics and conferences, sitting in on webinars, documenting and learning to “read” the foot, talking to vets/bodyworkers/trainers/other farriers, and working hard to learn to do the best we can. This job takes a huge amount of critical thinking, decision making that we know can go either way in many cases, and none of us are right all of the time. None of us - hoofcare pro, owner, vet, bodyworker, … no one.

Are there times when our hoofcare decisions aren’t right for the horses? 10000%, absolutely you bet. And as many times as that is true, there are times when something else is causing an issue and we are only able to work with the feet we are presented with- we can’t work miracles.

To the clients who view us as team members collaborating to keep your horse in top shape- you’re the real MVPs. Thank you for trusting us, for working with us, for looking for ways you can improve your horse’s hoof health and soundness and make our job easier. If all of our books were filled with clients like you, our jobs would be a breeze.

I am so thankful to have so many amazing owners and professionals I work with, and working on horses with them makes the hard days worth it.

For others who have had difficult times with your horse and are working to get them sound, remember we are on your team. We want to see your horse comfortable. And we love when we are able to be a part of the collaboration to get that done ❤️

08/15/2024

What constitutes a circle? It’s probably the most mis understood, over done and poorly executed exercise in the mainstream horse world

A poorly done circle is a wet noodle flopping around, a disconnected body with a nose pointed onto a figure, while the hind legs flail around and the rib cage collapses.
A poorly done circle is a plywood board that someone is attempting to pound softness into, by pulling pieces and parts around

A well done circle is a masterpiece, a thing of beauty
A well connected body, straight on a curve

But the horse has to know how to turn with the shoulders, and to keep the hind legs behind them
A horse has to learn how to keep their neck center
A horse has to know how to expand the rib cage to the outside
A horse has to know how to stretch the outside of the body

That’s no small feat, and it’s quite the athletic endeavor, not to be taken lightly, and nothing to flop around on mindlessly

A circle deserves our respect, awareness, and time put in to develop it well

05/27/2024

05/14/2024

Welcome to Trainer Tuesday! Each week we ask trainers a question and gather their answers for you. These trainers have a range of experience, backgrounds, and focus points of their programs, so the answers have as much variation as you would expect and also probably much more similarity. This week....

04/03/2024

Have you ever just come to the abrupt realization that you don't see anything the same anymore?

The two year old that you once would have approved of starting under saddle now looks like an incredibly immature baby that you can't imagine asking to carry a load.

Physical issues that lead to training and performance issues you no longer view as the problem but perhaps the solution to the actual problem.

All of the things you would have considered behavioral issues you can now see as the balance issues that they are. You no longer want to address the behavior but instead the reason for the behavior.

You are no longer fooled by words. Anyone can say anything about their training and approach...but the horse will tell you a lot about whether the words match the action, if you're educated enough to see it. Some things are debatable...other things definitely aren't.

You now recognize that you are a nervous system and your horse is a nervous system...and that the priority is to keep you upright and alive. That matters, A LOT.

You recognize that developing a horse is an endeavor that takes years. YEARS. Years of a lot of time and a lot of commitment. There's truly no substitute.

You also realize that getting here has meant admitting that there were times when you were wrong. That there were times when you did harm with the best of your intentions. That you had to walk away from circles of people whose beliefs and approach no longer lined up with what you now know...or maybe they walked away from you? Either way, it's hard to stand alone sometimes.

You realize you've had to become a beginner a thousand times over...and you'll continue to find yourself in that spot a thousand more times in the future, plus some. Maybe even at some point today.

You realize that even when it feels like you haven't grown at all...you actually have. That growth is something to be proud of, no matter where you're at on your journey.

- Terra