Imagine if you were held back in the face every time you went to take a full step. Ooh no sorry! Can’t allow you to do that! Slow up! You’d be walking around a little odd, right? Short steps, maybe a little choppy, uneven, gimpy almost. You just don’t want your face to get jammed on again. That’s natural. Now you’re getting sick of this after a few minutes, just want to get up a go normally down the street. You’re muscles are sore from being held tight to keep a small little stride and you’re stressing. You go to take your regular full step again- Damn it! Ouch! You just got pulled back in the face again, slow it up!

Now imagine this is your little western pleasure prospect horse you’re riding. Time to start training! Every time you think he starts to go faster you think “Oh no, slow down there bud, that’s not right, we have to fix this,” and you pull him in the face because that’s how to get a horse to slow down. Your nice level headed horse seems to understand and you go about training. Down the road you may have a pretty nice western pleasure horse just like all the other people at your shows. A slow going, dull and pleasantly ‘pokey’ horse. Look! Its a horse in a box! Yay. NOT!

Okay everyone; COLLECTION. Learn it. Live it. Love it. Eat it. Remember it. Do it. “Collection is when a horse can carry more of its weight on its hindquarters than on the forelegs when ridden or driven. His back will be raised as he engages his stomach muscles. He will be flexing at the poll and will carry himself lightly. This makes the impulsion that comes from the hindquarters much greater while the horse is traveling and jumping. The horse can be more easily maneuvered and can carry a rider with greater ease. The horse will reach further underneath its body with its hind legs making stops and turns much more precise” (definition used from About.com/Horses).” Yes, this pertains to you lovely western pleasure riders. COLLECTION IS ACHIEVED THROUGH YOUR BODY (If you read and walk away with anything from this writing…). You want your horse to be collected in a class, bright eyed, alert, unflappable, composed, and tick-toking underneath you. A western horse should by no means ever go SLOW. Slow is a very bad word to have in your head when training and riding. Slow means, I’d like to go down a gait or even stop. It means stopping energy and throwing it out the window. It means shortened stride. It means stress. It means muscle damage. It means an unhappy animal. It means you’ve held your a horse back and tried to squish it into a box it can’t fit in. Slower… Slower… Slower… Almost fitting… Slower…. Tighter… Tighter… There perfect! Now the hind end is walking and the front is tripping! Brilliant jog! All the while you’re still jousting a horse in the mouth after months of training.

To use the jog as a reference, you’re horse should merely pick himself up more, keep a nice stride length and collect himself. Thus you still have the energy but you are controlling the rate at which it is released. Just try it one day with your own breathing. Simply holding your breath for a collection or letting out one for a transition. The horse will do what you’re body is doing, its a matter of learning how to use seat. 

This all goes back to learning and teaching FEEL. Its an odd, ugly subject that I’m still learning about. This was just a little rant of mine to some how get my thoughts down into text. I hope someone understands this point of view and I could save a rider some hardship. A book I would refer everyone to is called “Centered Riding” by Sally Swift, she explains everything about how to work with your horse through what your body is doing and how to hone everything that may seem to be science down to the simplest things of holding a few baby birds. Thanks for reading!

-H&H

I think its a simple question. Many people de-worm their horses every eight weeks, or two! There are only so many de-wormers people! Even ask your vet what happens when you use one tube of ivermectin for example. He might tell you how even though you’ve “helped” your horse, the parasites are building up immunity to your poisons and you should switch off de-wormers all the time.

So, the big question here is; Did wild horses get tubes of poison shoved down their throats all the time? NO! They de-wormed themselves! With enough pasture space horses are able to find the plants they need that naturally de-worm themselves. Unless your horses eat exactly where they shit then you don’t need to de-worm as excessively as  vets tell you to. Now, if a horse came to me from a stall laden with manure I would worm him, but other then that we don’t worm our horses, and they are just fine. I know that may sound scary to some people but we haven’t had problems.

Notice after you de-worm your horse it starts to get lose stools. This is because the body is so overwhelmed with what was just put into it that it goes on a fit trying to clean its self out. I don’t blame it. Its almost the same thing as eating some food gone bad, you get lose stools trying to clear up your system.

The mind of a horse may be domesticated, but that doesn’t mean the body is. Can we let nature be natural? Just the word “worm” or “parasite” has become such a bad thing. What about the ones that actually aid in digestion? Or those who are completely harmless? You can always get a stool test if you’re not sure, but make sure it tests for everything, many don’t unless you ask. There is a lab in Virginia that tests five dollars per stool and tests for everything, we’d tested all our horses and out of ten only about two had a trace amount of some worms that we were able to get rid of. If anything I would only worm once in the winter when vegetation isn’t available to horses.

I suppose I can just start out with the book definition “Strangles is a highly contagious disease that affects a horse’s lymph nodes in its upper respiratory tract. It is caused by a bacterium called streptococcus equi.” Sounds fun, huh? Has anyone thought about what causes the lymph nodes to swell up so much? Has anyone looked toxin levels in your horse? My guess is no.

“Good” barns will bring their vet in every six months and have people sign up and pay for their horses vaccines. Its no big deal, right? Vet comes, horse gets shot up, and you carry on. How many vaccines did your horse just get? Do you know what’s in those little syringes? I didn’t know. I didn’t know that I was pumping poison into my animals, and even myself! This leads me to the answer to my previous question; what about the lymph nodes? Lymph nodes are all over a horse’s body and ours too, amazing things that filter toxins out of our bodies, much of which gets sweat out.

When a horse get vaccinated it also gets a whole array of poisons put into its body. Some of which include formaldehyde and mercury. I know vaccines are a very controversial topic and I’m not trying to start a debate here, just trying to open some eyes. What I hope you open up to that these vaccines are what your horse’s body is trying to filter out. This “highly contagious disease” is nothing more then nature not being able to filter out the synthetics that it has been subjected to. Everyone knows that the term “strangles” comes from these swollen lymph nodes that get big enough to strangle a horse, by blocking off its airways. When the lymphatic systems can’t work properly they begin to capture these poisons yet never get rid of them. Thus you have a big ball of pus and synthetics that proceed to grow and strangle your horse.

Think about these grand prix show horses who travel the world, they get tons of vaccinations just before they get on a plane. This kills the body, and on top of that stress its even worse. So they get off the plane drugged and sick. What I don’t understand is why no one has made the connection between vaccinations and the disease. A WHOLE barn gets their vaccinations, and week later when the body’s immune system starts to fail the WHOLE barn gets sick. Connection? Maybe? I’ll let you be the judge of that. In my mind this isn’t as contagious a disease as they’ve made it sound. What do all show horses get just before a big show? Vaccines. I could go on forever… Sadly, if a horse has gotten to the point of oversized lymph nodes there isn’t any medication that can help this. From what I’ve seen, cutting the lymph node and letting it drain can be the best thing. There is also a treatment that I’ve been looking into called, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. If you like the sound of that its all over the internet, just type it into google and start learning. Its for everyone and everything.

I encurage you to research the vaccines you and your horse has been given and will get, if you can find a source that will tell you what is in these vaccines- even better! Send me some links if you ever find anything interesting.

-H&H

Its a an unexplainable occurrence in horses! “My horse became moon blind when he was nine and I had to put him down.” Yes, its a sad statement, yet apparently its permanent. Permanent? Is that what your vet says? Of course, that’s what all those good medical minds have come up with. Bravo! What if I told you that there was a cure? A completely simple cure that no vet has or will acknowledge thus far. 

Have you ever played around with a rubber band around your finger? When you tie it too tight, your finger starts to lose its blood supply and discolor. Now imagine that with the small nerve endings around your horses eye and instead of a rubber band, its a tight muscle. Horses have tons of muscles in their faces, and many of them cross over blood vessels and nerves. A major nerve that goes to the eye is called the Lacrimal Nerve and can easily be tightened over and causes the eye to blur over and cause blindness. Once the facial muscles are released the nerves and blood vessels are able to work correctly so the eye can return to normal? Its almost a paralysis of the eye. How do you fix this? SCRATCH! Scratch around the eye and all over the face. Even if the horse seems to be hurt at first, its just because of the tight muscles causing him pain. With more scratching they’ll soon let out a breath, drop their heads, and lick and chew with their mouths. Once this sign is seen then you’ve gotten a release. The more you scratch the better the horse will feel.

Uveitis can also be caused by worms. Worms? How does that affect the eye you ask? I’ve treated a mare who had signs of worms, with a lumpy neck and constant itching of it. Vet’s said she wouldn’t be cured, it was just another case of moon blindness. I’m glad we didn’t take that for an answer, since she now has her eye back. With some extensive use of the internet we learned that an old dog worming medicine from a compounding pharmacy would be useful. After some nonsense arguing with the vet we finally persuaded him to prescribe the the compound, at a low dose to begin with. This wormer comes in tubes and is called- Are you ready for this? Better write it down- Diethylcarbamazine. I’m not one to agree with medications but sometimes the old are better then the new. After about a month her eye started to clear up and she could see just fine. I wouldn’t try this in big doses just start out small to let the body get used to it. These little neck threadworms that cause “crusty necks” are tied to recurrent uveitis. The reason the uveitis keeps coming back is because these worms attack the eye and the natural way that the eye protects it’s self is to put up the cloudy barrier that causes the horse to lose sight in the eye. As the eye healed itself we noticed that the heat would pour out of the area and burn off the hair around her eyes at the same time the eye drained out.

-H&H