Books with Spirit – Joyfulness between horses and people

Kissing spine is considered un-fixable by most – but I strongly disagree.

Kissing spine happens because the horse is arching their back the wrong way, sagging like a saggy mattress with the human sitting on the saggy bit.  And the angles of the sag have the bones of the back wearing in ways it was not designed to do.

My horse Bobby had it.  With Bobby I did that damage a long time ago – before the days of writing Bobby’s Diaries even.  It’s lovely to think that he actually wanted to come back and be ridden after that and that as he lifted his back properly (no more saggy mattress!) he could carry me comfortably and with strength.

There’s a bunch of things that can make a horse sag his back when we ride.
• Poor saddle fit.
• Being out of their comfort zone – a horse IN their comfort zone lifts his back and carries us with strength and power and soft rhythm.
• Our riding posture not being as good as it should be.

I have done the hard yards with all of these issues, making the “mistakes”, learning from them and teaching other people how to avoid them.

Click here for the rest of this story…

Spring is officially here in  good old OZ and earlier than I can ever remember.  The grass is running away.

We have just separated our herd for spring grass growth – with the miniatures, the Connemara Stardust, Mel’s horse 3/4  Arab but very heavy Bucky and Simone’s Morgan Sirocco  unfortunately put into the pony paddock for the duration of spring. 

The pony paddock here  means restricted grass but as much hay as they can eat.

We cut hay last year, deliberately  for low sugar content and have some organic, hand weeded, low sugar hay available for sale if anyone is looking for it around the Warragul area.  It is VERY suitable for getting horses who are at risk of founder through spring!

I am a passionate believer in feeding horses as much as they can eat – even the tiny ponies.  Horses digestive systems are designed to have roughage passing through almost constantly.  They are at major risk of getting stomach ulcers when their last roughage feed is 4 hours old or longer.

Yes you read that right, but I will repeat it a different way to make sure that you are all quite clear on this.

If your horse last ate roughage 4 hours ago or longer, they are in danger of developing stomach ulcers, i.e. for stabled or yarded horses or horses on bare dirt diet restrictions –  if they run out of hay for 4 hours or longer, they are in danger of developing stomach ulcers.

Kentucky Equine Research did a study where they stuck a camera down into the stomachs of a fairly big number of horses.  (Sorry I can’t remember how many now, 100 horses sticks in my memory but don’t hold me to it.)

These horses were stabled, so the results may be slightly skewed by the added stress of stabling, but when we lock ponies away in yards to control their grass eating, they are stressed too.

The Centre  scoped horses with clean stomachs and no ulcers who were fed no hay and had visble stomach ulcers already started when they were scoped 4 hours later. 

On top of the stomach ulcer problem, I believe that one factor behind Cushings Disease is a restricted diet.  So far, every horse I know that has had Cushings, has had periods during the day of no food.  Now don’t chew my head off anyone!  I know we were taught to restrict ponies’ food intake in that fashion, but from what I have learned in my years as an alternative therapist specialising in horses, I have changed my mind from what I was taught.

So how can we do what has to be done, reduce their sugar intake, reduce the amount of “goodness” in the feed they are getting so that they don’t founder from being overweight and keep the little beggars happy?

1. I always have them with a friend when they are locked up in smaller areas for spring.  A friend is essential to a horses’s well being and happiness.  Always assuming that you are not up for sleeping in the paddock to keep them company and help them feel safe enough to sleep, then another horse or pony is the answer.
2. I try to have plenty of room for them to run around and get a bit of movement happening.  Horse’s bodies are designed to move around and standing in a small yard all day is a seriously unhealthy thing for them to do.  It also makes them very sad.   A long narrow laneway is often a good spring paddock for our smaller and fatter friends.
3. I always give them as much plain grass hay as they can eat, with some minerals to lick occasionally.  Preferably low sugar hay, definitely low or no clover, no lucerne or alfalfa or any of the fancy high protein hays.  I also don’t think oaten hay has enough nutrition in it for ponies to live off under no grass circumstances. 
4. At our old farm we had a heavly treed paddock where I had the grass very long and dry and put the horses in for spring – that was quite successsful for the bigger horses, but I was never quite game to try it for the miniatures.
5. If your ponies or overweight horses can’t move around enough in your circumstances, then start walking folks!  I have hand walked my little guys in the past, then I got sick of that (there’s 4 of them and I have other things to do in a day!)  so I taught them to lead out the car window to get some excercise.  They loved it!
6.  Some of you will need to get creative to follow these sugegstions – but where there is a will there is way.  If you only have one horse at risk, what about finding someone else with the same problem and put your horses together for spring?

Play with them at liberty?

Another creative idea - Sirocco and Bucky are seriously unimpressed at being locked away from their herd mates, so Simone came up with the idea of a “playdate”.  We are going to let them out for an hour each day that we can manage.  Playing time – good for the body, good for the mind!  We’ll have to rethink that if they just stand there and gorge on green grass though!

A playdate indeed!  What will we come up with next?!

Mark Mottershead of HorseConscious.com has kindly made the recording of our call on Sunday night available free to everyone.

On that call, I made a big surprise announcement and led a very short connection “meditation” with you and your horse. 

Just a note about that connection meditation with your horse… 

• Firstly, because of the circumstances, my talk about how to actually notice the connection is very short – and will be too short for some people - or visualising doesn’t come easy to you – whatever.  Please take this scanning and noticing technique out and do it in your horse’s presence – that will make a big difference for you.   
• Secondly, for some people, it takes practice to quieten the mind enough to do the noticing that I talk about in the meditation.  Of all the people who do this with their horses, you will get the biggest gift – so the practice is going to be worth it – I promise!
• And if, after the firstly and the secondly, you are still having trouble - but your heart and desire to do it are big – then email me and we will together figure out how to get past that blockage.   I have met people who THOUGHT they couldn’t do this, but I have never met anyone who cannot do this – only people who do it differently… 

So here’s the link for Kim McMuldrow and me, Jenny Pearce, being interviewed by Mark Mottershead on the subject “Nurture and Heal Your Horse with Love – 5 Holistic Health Experts Explain How and Why Fear in Horses is so Damaging”.
Click here for the discussion recording and enjoy!

For those of you who are not familiar with Horseconscious.com, it is committed to providing a home for those horse lovers who think there must be a gentler way to be with horses.   A way that doesn’t involve force or pressure.

As well as providing a community, where people can meet and exchange ideas, HorseConscious.com is also to be a focal point for education in these methods.

The site is free for all and they are continually adding new articles and features. You can also become a Member of HorseConscious and get a free CD as well as special access to the Teachers.

Click here to have a look at the Horseconscious website

For some of you who are reading this, this fact is going to come as a surprise -  whether we are talking about horses or whether we are talking about humans,  just about every illness or condition is either caused by emotions or made worse by emotions – and for our horses that specially includes conditions like chronic founder, insulin resistance and Cushings disease (lots of other conditions too.)

I know that’s a big statement, but I’ve been working at helping people and horses recover by natural means for 14 years now, have supervised and aided in what must be thousands of recoveries by now and have personally seen this to be true.

So how does it happen that emotions can have such a huge physical effect?  I’ll talk about humans first, because once we have related it to ourselves, it will be easier to understand our horse.

Click here for the rest of this article.

I have had two healing sessions lately, where male horses were complaining about castration and asking us to not castrate on auto-pilot, but to think through the whole process.

Well, OK, now I’ve thought about it … and from a practical point of view, I would probably still castrate my young colts and I expect that I would do it before they had a chance to learn what they were missing.

In the past, castrations have typically been done for two reasons – one to stop the colt or stallion from being able to make a mare pregnant and secondly to make them quieter and more amenable to being handled.  Geldings typically have a much more even temperament than stallions and even mares.

However, for those of you thinking about gelding your colt just for behavioural reasons, there is a good reason to think again.

Click here for the rest of this article, including what castration can mean to a gelding.

Well folks, the results are in – the results of the study here in Australia where GPS units were used to track horse movement.  Hampson and his colleagues tracked horse movement in the wild and also domestic horses under all kinds of circumstances, including our famous “paddock paradise” and all the other creative ways that we have come up with of fostering horse movement for horse health. 

And I am afraid that, after all that work (darn it!), the most movement travelled by domestic horses was done  in a basic big paddock of four fenced-off sides.

I guess there is no substitute for playful companions that promote a good gallop around, enough room to do that romping in and plenty of happy work and play with their humans to get miles under their feet.

Here’s a photo of me getting creative about getting some miles under the feet of my miniatures - keeping them healthy during the spring growth.  Please note, this is only possible because the ponies are completely unafraid and very co-operative!

The researchers of the horse movement study, Hampson and his colleagues,  ”tested five pasture structures to see if they tended to encourage more movement in horses – a thought that has been gaining popularity among some horse owners.  The “racetrack” style fencing system, which blocks off the center area of the pasture, made no major difference in movement and actually seemed to make the horses move less, Hampson said.  A maze pattern also slightly reduced average movement, and a spiral fence pattern lowered the average even more.  Fencing off a tree to keep horses from stagnating in the shade seemed to cause little changes in their movement habits.

In fact, the pasture structure which yielded the greatest daily travel distance was the basic open pasture system of four fenced-off sides, he said.”

This quote was from the Horseconscious newsletter, click here and scroll down about a third of the page to get the rest of their article for the horse movement study.   Their article was in turn taken from  thehorse.com, Christa Leste-Lasserre June 15 2010, Article 16515.

As I said “darn!  All that work!”

We were very sad to lose our barefoot trimmer Cat Wyley to America for study (although thrilled for her) and are very happy that Gene Hutcheon re-located here from Tasmania at exactly the right time.

To us, a good barefoot trimmer is more than just a person who trims our horses’ feet.  He is the person who works with our horse when they are just about at their most vulnerable – with their leg in the air and unable to run away easily.

We are so lucky that not only are Gene’s trimming skills excellent, he is brilliant with the horses – gentle, sensitive and responsive to their emotional as well as their physical needs. 

I laughed when I read what I wrote.  It sounds like a great recommendation for a man, let alone a feet trimmer.  But unfortunately for you single ladies, this one’s married to the beautiful Kylie!

It is not going to be too long before a guy with this sort of horse talent has a full book, so if you are looking for someone who really knows his stuff about barefoot trimming, transitioning from shoes to barefoot, fitting easy boots for endurance and other performance horses, foundered horses and other specialist horse podiatry – then I suggest that you get on to him.

Gene is living just outside of Gormondale, near Traralgon and is working through South Gippsland, areas of the Mornington Peninsula, down the Princes Highway, past us at Moe to Pakenham and Cranbourne, Beaconsfield and across into the Dandenongs to Monbulk and Cockatoo.  Obviously East Gippsland is also on his doorstep.

Click here for the link to Gene’s website.  His phone number is 03 5194 2286 and his Mobile is 0488 421 189   

I read a news article this morning that there is a shortage of snake bite anti-venine’s around the world.  And to pay for giving a horse anti-venine you would nearly have to take a new mortgage out to pay for it (and yes I am exaggerating, but it IS expensive. Someone I know recently paid over $1000 for anti-venine for a dog, so I shudder to think about the cost for something the size of a horse!)

These techniques work for people as well as for horses and other animals, so I thought that I would share with you some techniques that I have learned over my many years of training, that can beat poisonous snakebite.  Maybe knowing these techniques might help you save a loved one’s life one day.

Click here for the rest of this article

A student’s horses were recently treated by a vet for pinworm infestation by treating them for 5 days in a row of an Ivermectin based chemical wormer. 

I’m anti toxic chemicals, but even so, I was shocked at that kind of toxic overload for worms that are not harmful to the horse’s health (they don’t migrate through organs or body tissue for their life cycle).  They are unpleasant little critturs though, who can cause the horse to itch like crazy, so I decided to post this simple remedy for pin worms.

Click here for the rest of this article.

I enjoyed reading Linda Parelli’s article on Hill Therapy that is in the Fluidity program.  Since that is a particularly strong area of expertise for me, I much enjoyed seeing a focus on restoring horses to good muscular and skeletal health.  

You can add a powerful improvement for your horse to that Hill Therapy Program – by adding an emotional aspect to the work.  

“What?” you’re probably thinking…

What have emotions got to do with bad posture, poor musculature, short, choppy, uneven strides and even skeletal damage? 

Well, emotions have a HUGE effect on our horse’s  physical body.  Click here for the rest of this article.