Horses in Harmony

11/27/2024

As we enter Thanksgiving week in the US, many of your vets will be out of town or spending much needed time with their families.

It’s times like these that horse owners need to practice preventative caregiving.

During this holiday time, as an emergency only vet, I recommend the following:

- Don’t deworm your horse right now.

- Don’t start a new feed right now.

- Don’t get a new round bale of coastal hay right now if you’ve let the last one go to dust (give small amounts at a time or mix with a stemmy hay until they’ve had their fill, then give the round bale).

- Don’t change schedules.

- Don’t vaccinate your horse right now, especially if you have a known reactor.

- Don’t be in a rush and fail to soak your feed for long enough (choke risk) - especially if you’re late to feed due to holiday errands/get togethers.

- If you have visitors, limit treats. Ensure gates are closed. Make sure feed doors and bins locked.

There is already a shortage of equine vets - and the few we do have will likely be out of town or trying to enjoy the holiday.

Let’s all have a very Happy Thanksgiving. And let’s let our vets stay home with family!

Remember: Proper Preparation Prevents Postponed Potlucks! 😂🥴

02/08/2023

11/19/2022

The Frustration Trap

Getting frustrated while schooling a horse tends to lead to at least some degree of confrontation. That easily snowballs into fighting and force. The rider wants one feeling, the horse provides something different, the rider’s requests escalate into demands, the horse gets anxious and does more of what the rider doesn’t want, and it all starts to go downhill.

Now the horse gets put away fried---to some degree---the rider walks away unhappy with the result. So the next schooling session can easily turn into more of the same, frustrated and demanding rider, worried and resistant horse. We all know of some riders who are in a constant war with their horses, not nice to witness.

Humans are easily frustrated. Not to the point of throwing tantrums like three year olds, but neither are most of us islands of inner peace, like some ascetic monk, sitting on some mountain side, chanting OOOM for forty years.

So we need to ride with a self-guided frustration meter, and we need to use that self-awareness to tone it down when we feel ourselves getting tight, both physically and emotionally.

Maybe think---“This horse in a progression. What he knows right now, what he is capable of doing right now is what it is. I can carefully ask for little changes, or I can lose my cool and start to grind on him to DAMN WELL DO WHAT I SAY.

But if I do get angry and forceful, is this going to make this horse better? No, it is going to make this horse worse. If I get into it with him, not only have I not gone forward in my schooling, I have gone backwards, so now, in order to win back the trust I have lost by using force, it’s going to take even longer.

There are some people who can exercise this sort of self-control, and, generally, these people make better horse trainers than those who can’t.

photo---HLM Van Schaik---I never once saw him get forceful with a horse.

11/05/2022

A meme that DOES exist, and a meme that SHOULD exist----

The one we see all the time is this---“Everything you have ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”

And one we don’t see---“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fitness.”

This is truth telling at its most unpopular as it pertains to too many riders. Take most sports, track and field, soccer, skiing, football, lacrosse, hockey, so many others, and it is simply assumed that the athletes who participate will be fit and tough.

You do not expect to go to a track meet and see unfit participants, right? But you can go to many horse shows and see unfit riders.

Those SAME riders, if they would get anywhere near as serious about being athletes as do participants in almost every other sport would be far more competent, be far more confident, and have far more success than they will experience while being weak and out of shape.

Many years ago, in New Jersey, I was watching a dressage clinic being given by a former Hungarian military officer. He had a group of riders practicing the sitting trot. More bouncing, lurching, sweating, panting you never saw.

He lined them up, and announced in no uncertain terms---
“Ladies and gentlemen---May I respectfully suggest to you that dressage riding is not the last refuge of the non-athlete.”

Harsh? Or truth? Think about it----

The photo is of 75 year old Walt Gervais, a a life-long fitness proponent, about to head out on steeplechase in his first long format 3-day event. As an example.

11/02/2022

In riding terms, the word “aids” refers to a system of communication between horse and rider.

Now, to get into and endless and unwinnable argument, try to explain WHAT aids are better to use than some other aids---That said, some aids are intrinsically gentler and less forceful than others.

If we are teaching downward transitions, and we walk calmly, sit up, take a bit more rein contact, say “whoa,” and release contact when the horse stops, and we repeat this sequence over days and weeks, gradually the horse will begin to associate our signals with his response, which is to stop. Conditioned response to non pain inducing aids.

Or, we can take a double twisted wire bit, like this pictured here, specifically designed to cause pain, and we can jerk on the reins to FORCE him to stop. He stops because it hurts too much to keep going.

And there are riders who understand this, and there still are riders who don’t, even in this age of highly available information.

Force, drugging, leverage devices like draw reins, sharp bits, endless lunging, withholding of water, all these adversarial methods should have gone away as education became more easily accessed. You almost have to work at being ignorant in the age of Google.

And despite that, all across the globe today horses will have stuff like this, and worse, stuck in their mouths, held by rough hands, by people who don’t know what they don’t know, and for many, who are proud of it.

10/22/2022

Being gentle with a horse does not mean letting the horse push you around and place you in danger. Horses need to have ground manners. They need to stand reliably for the farrier and the veterinarian. They need to stand quietly while you are mounting or dismounting. They need to let you groom them, bridle them, saddle them without dancing around.

It is not that the horse is allowed free rein. Teaching basic manners, though, is a lot different from routinely smacking a horse around, yanking on the bit with rough hands, grinding on the horse in schooling sessions, or cranking the horse into draw reins or other leverage devices.

Part of being well trained is that the horse respects human boundaries, but the good trainers use only as much pressure as needed to create respect and only in situations that to do otherwise allows dangerous behavior.

10/11/2022

YES!

Ritter Dressage