General

Curing the Cribbing Horse – Clue #5

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After our first trip to eastern Washington the previous summer, my horse, Chaco and I visited the same place again a year later.  This time I had learned a new way to trim his feet that did not cause him pain.  I was looking forward to two weeks of no cribbing.

A few days into our trip he started cribbing.   I hadn’t trimmed his feet, so I knew that wasn’t the cause, but two days earlier we had opened the gate to another field.  I asked the owner, what was growing in that field.  The answer was some clover.  I later learned that clover can be high in starch (so can grain), and that causes him to crib.

That same summer the local vet had a record number of founders in horses.  For whatever reason with the weather and the plants, horses were foundering and my horse was cribbing.

Clue #5 – Starch causes Chaco to crib.

Stress in Horses

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We hear about the harmful effects of long-term stress in people.  We often hear of ways to reduce stress in our lives.  Stress management in people is a fairly common topic.

What about horses?  Do horses experience long-term stress like people do?  If so, what are the long-term effects on their body?

Wild horse researcher, Mary Ann Simonds, wrote a book about stress management in horses.  Unfortunately, it is only available in German.  She said the Germans were more receptive to the topic than the English speaking world.

Equine nutritionist, Juliet Getty, PhD, in her book, Equine Cushings Disease – Nutritional Management, writes about stress and its relationship to cushings.  The following excerpt is a fascinating look at stress inside the horse’s physical body:

http://gettyequinenutrition.biz/TeleSeminars/TeleseminarBooks/ExcerptCushings.htm

Stress is a normal part of being alive, whether horse or human.  However, a long-term chronic stress state can cause damage to the physical body.

In my work of rehabbing old horses, I see the effects of long-term chronic stress when a horse first comes to me.  The good news is simple measures can be taken to reverse the downward spiral of diminishing health.  Given the right environment, nutrition, exercise and emotional/mental support, senior horses can thrive in their golden years.  What an inspiring process to witness.

My first horse the day I picked him up. 26 years old.
My first horse the day I picked him up. 26 years old.
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Same horse six years later. Age 32.

 

 

Curing the Cribbing Horse – Clue #5

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The following summer my horse, Chaco, and I, took another trip to the same place in eastern Washington.  (See earlier post for the first part of this story).   This time I had learned a new way to trim his feet that did not cause him pain.  I was looking forward to two weeks of no cribbing.

A few days into our trip he started cribbing.   I hadn’t trimmed his feet, so I knew that wasn’t the cause, but two days earlier we had opened the gate to another field.  I asked the owner, what was growing in that field.  The answer was some clover.  I later learned that clover can be high in starch (so can grain), and that causes him to crib.

That same summer the local vet had a record number of founders in horses.  For whatever reason with the weather and the plants, horses were foundering and my horse was cribbing.

Clue #5 – Starch causes Chaco to crib.

Hair Coat Color and Nutrition

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100_0642Have you ever seen a black horse with reddish colored hairs in its mane or tail?  Or how about a black horse with areas in its coat where instead of black, it is faded and brown?  What’s going on?

Typically, these coat color changes are associated with nutritional deficiencies.  A healthy coat on a black horse will be all black with no “faded” areas.

The picture on the right is an example of fading in a black coat.  Also notice the reddish hairs in the tail.  If I see this in a horse, I want to take a close look at the diet to make sure the horse is getting all the nutrients it needs.  (Sometimes the horse is being fed a nutritionally balanced diet, but another problem is going on and the body can’t absorb all the nutrients).

As long as a body is alive it wants to heal itself.  Proper nutrition supports the body in this endeavor.  When a horse lacks good nutrition the body will use whatever nutrients it does have where it is most needed for its survival.  The coat is the last place the body will spend nutrients.  A really healthy horse has enough nutrients to go around to maintain a spectacular coat as well.

Senior horses can thrive in their golden years, but it requires a good diet.  Taking a nutrition class or consulting an equine nutritionist is well worth the effort.  If you are short on time, Platinum Performance offers quality supplements.  They have an equine nutritionist on staff and advisors to answer your questions.    Your horse will thank you, and you will have more wonderful years to spend with your horse.

Petting Animals

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I go for regular walks through the country neighborhood with my horses.  A few times a year we cross paths with a young boy who lives nearby.  He’s fascinated by my horse, Chaco, and wants to pet him.  One particular afternoon I suggest that he approach Chaco at his shoulder, but don’t look directly in his eyes.  (A straight on approach is the move a predator would make.  Prey animals, like horses, feel safer with a less direct approach).  Instead come up alongside him with your eyes looking past him, then see if you can pet his shoulder.

The boy reached out his hand with his eyes averted, and in his exuberance, pet Chaco with short, quick strokes.  I watched Chaco’s eyes, and they were big and held open.  They indicated stress to me.  He was tolerating being touched.

I suggested to the boy to pet slower.  Way slower.  As best as a little boy can, he pet Chaco with his version of slower, which was still fairly quick, and Chaco’s eyes stayed big.  I then suggested he pet Chaco even slower, as if he were a slug.  Slower…  Slower…  Even slower…  How slow can you go and still call it petting?  And then Chaco’s eyes started to change.  He blinked.  His eyes softened.  He no longer held them wide open.  In relaxation, he dropped his head slightly and curled his neck around the boy, breathing on him in acknowledgment.  (Horses breathe into each other nostrils as a greeting).

The boy was thrilled.  Yes, he wanted to pet Chaco, but perhaps more than that, he wanted to connect with this big animal and be seen.  He received more than he expected, and was soon saying goodbye to us and bounding down the road.

Petting animals is so common place as humans, but how often do we read the body language of the animal to see if how we are touching feels good to them?  Watching the eyes is a great first place to start.  Blinking = yes.  Fixed eyes = no.  (Try holding your own eyes open with no blinking for 30 seconds.  It’s stressful).

Learning to read the eyes will open lines of communication between you and your animal friend.  Many times, just moving considerably slower ourselves, and even consciously breathing while touching will bring about a whole new level of understanding.

What is your experience with petting your animals?

Heart Rate

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I attended a classical dressage clinic that focused on in-hand work, in other words, dressage moves from the ground.  We learned exercises to promote self-carriage in the horse.  In this class the instructor pointed out that the resting heart rate of a horse is around 40 beats per minute.  The resting heart rate of a human is about 70 beats per minute.  Interestingly enough, the heart rate of a horse at the trot is about 70 beats per minute.  A friend of mine once commented, “No wonder I felt most at east at the trot.”  Her resting heart rate and the horse’s heart rate at the trot must have been synchronized.

As I thought about the difference in resting heart rate between horses and humans, I marveled at what it must feel like for a horse to be around us.  To us, we’re relaxed, but to a horse it feels like we’re trotting.  What if we really are move quickly?  They must think we’re crazy.

Over the several years I’ve been rehabbing horses, I’ve found that what used take an hour or two, now takes more like 4 or 5.  The more I am with them, the slower I go myself.  There is no, “Quick.  Do this.”  Instead, I find that the magical moments with horses abound when going slow, and it is what keeps bringing me back to them.

I came upon the following article that speaks to this magic and the science behind it.  The Science of the Horse Human Heart Connection.  Enjoy.

Curing the Cribbing Horse – Clue #3

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Pleasantly surprised at Chaco’s reduction in cribbing after starting his exercise program, I made it part of my own routine.  One sunny afternoon after I had just finished working with him, he was completely relaxed hanging out with me at the fence line of the round corral.  A young girl saw us and asked me if she could give Chaco a treat.  Sure, why not.  The girl held her hand out to Chaco with a piece of carrot and broccoli in it.  No sooner had the carrot touched his lips (he hadn’t even swallowed yet) that it was rolling back out of his mouth as he purchased his teeth on the fence rail and began to crib.

I was stunned.  We had just had a nice time exercising.  He was relaxed.  He had no need to crib.  Then the touch of a carrot triggered that need.

Clue #3:  Carrots (and I later found out apples) cause Chaco to crib.

Curing the Cribbing Horse – Clue #2

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The year and a half before Chaco retired from therapy work with at-risk youth, he cribbed constantly.  There was never a moment when I saw him and he wasn’t cribbing.  He seemed to be in his own world.  There was talk of retiring him.  Eager to help him, I suggested an exercise program for him might help.  I offered to do it, so several times a week I came early to pull him out of his paddock, let him roll in the corral and then do some ground work, followed by riding.

About two weeks into this new routine, I arrived one day and saw him in his paddock not cribbing.  I was shocked.  I didn’t recall ever seeing him not cribbing.  The only thing that had changed in his routine was the addition of an exercise program.

Clue #2:  Exercise reduced the amount of cribbing Chaco did.

Curing the Cribbing Horse – Clue #1

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What would become my work of rehabbing senior horses began by accident with a bay gelding in his twenties who cribbed constantly at the farm where I worked.  I first met him when he arrived there at 18 years old to do therapy work with at-risk youth.  He came as a cribber, and his name was Chaco.  The farm tried putting tobasco sauce on the railing on which he cribbed.  They tried putting a cribbing strap around his neck.  None of it slowed him down or stopped him from cribbing.  Over the eight years he worked as a therapy horse, his cribbing gradually increased until he was cribbing every moment of every day.

The year before his retirement I worked as the barn manager at the farm.  Everyone wanted to try and figure out a way to get him to stop cribbing.  I agreed, but another question was forming in my mind: “What drives him to crib?”  If we could answer that question, then we could resolve his need to crib.

Because he usually spent more time cribbing than eating, he had trouble maintaining his weight. Therefore, he was fed senior horse grain daily along with hay. As the barn manager, I fed the farm animals several times a week and began to notice that he started cribbing after eating for about 10 minutes.

So one day I did an experiment.  I led him out into the large fenced yard, put his grain bucket in the middle of it, and let him eat.  Sure enough, after about 10 minutes he left his grain bucket and walked 15 feet away to find a place to crib at a hitching rail.

Another person at the farm that morning saw what I saw.  We were both putting two and two together.

She asked, “Did he just leave his grain bucket to go crib?”

“Yes,” I replied.

This marked the beginning of a several year journey of unwinding the mystery of why he cribbed, but one thing was for sure:  within 10 minutes of eating grain he had a need to crib that was stronger than his need to eat.

Clue #1: Grain causes Chaco to crib.

If you have a horse that cribs, the most comprehensive article I’ve ever read on the subject is in The Horse Journal.  http://seniorhorserehab.com/cribbing-article-from-horse-journal/ While I don’t agree with the use of a cribbing strap there is excellent information on ways to manage cribbing.

Introduction to Chiropractic

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My first year of horse ownership was a straight-up learning curve about how to care for horses.  However, it was not just any horse, but this bay gelding named Chaco.  He came to me at 26 years-old, in chronic pain and cribbing constantly.  He had difficulty maintaining weight, and his top line had some protruding vertebrae in his lumbar area.  I turned him out 24/7 on acreage with another horse and a shelter.  I fed him the highest quality hay I could find and took him off grain.  In the back of my mind was chiropractic.

Chiropractic has been part of my life since I was young, so it wasn’t a big stretch for me to consider chiropractic to help Chaco feel good again.  The first equine chiropractor that adjusted him used just their hands.  Chaco was still in too much pain, and he tried to bite her.  As much as I believed in chiropractic I couldn’t put him through the pain.  So I temporarily put chiropractic on the shelf.

A year or more went by when Chaco slipped and fell.  I noticed that his right hind was not tracking straight with his right front leg.  I knew a chiropractor could fix it.  I found a chiropractor who adjusted people and animals, using an activator.  The advantage to an activator is that it is so quick when adjusting that it is ahead of the person’s or animal’s pain response.  I thought this just might work for Chaco.

Within two adjustments Chaco’s right hind was tracking straight again with his right front leg.  There was also a new relaxation and roundness in his hip muscles that had never been there before.  Even the raised vertebrae in his low back that disrupted his top line were visibly more relaxed.  In addition, he never tried to bite this chiropractor.  Instead he closed his eyes, relaxed, and licked and chewed.  I knew I had found the chiropractor for Chaco.

With Chaco’s warm response to the chiropractor, and the positive changes in his back and right hind leg, the chiropractor has become a regular part of Chaco’s care team.

Consider chiropractic for your horse.  Not only can it can help with acute situations where there has been a trauma to the body, but it also keeps the nervous system functioning properly, which in turn supports overall health.

To see a video of a chiropractor adjusting a horse using an activator, click here.

Post First Adjustment
Post First Adjustment
Two days later after 2nd adjustment
Two days later after 2nd adjustment