Winter can be a challenge to horse health

Winter is a time that can lead to an increased risk of colic. Colic is a general term for gastro-intestinal problems in horses and in a previous post, you can take a look at the horse's digestive system.

The increased risk of gastrointestinal problems comes from the quality of forage, feeding routines, including the way the horse is served water, and how much the horse moves.

A horse needs to eat 2.5 -3% of their body weight of dry matter ie fiber to keep the digestion working. Feeding routines are very important for the horses wellbeing. A horse has a need to chew, in the wild the horse eats around 14-18 a day. It is noticed that time spent to eat is slightly longer in the winter and it is explained by the fact that horses stay warm through the fermentation that occurs in the colon and therefor they need to eat and chew more. Horses do not keep warm by moving, if they have no reason to move (read: food or water) they are most likely to stand still. As in us humans movement promote intestinal activity and being still increases the risk of constipation.
One way to extend eating time is to feed the forage in hay net placed in various places in the paddock. This increases the time spent eating and chewing as well as movement. To fed the horses in the pasture with hay you have to spread it out in several small piles with a distance between the piles. It gives a slight increase in the time spent eating and when the hay is eaten the horses tend to wander around and look for any left overs. Giving all the hay in one or two large piles allows horses to eat faster and then they stand still and wait for the next feed.
A number of hay net or piles of hay makes the stress connected to feeding decreases. Horses with lower rank is chased by those with a higher rank, if there are plenty of net/piles to eat from the low ranked horse gets a chance to eat in peace.
Water is often a concern in the winter. Horses prefer luke warm water and in the winter it can be difficult to keep water ice-free and with a comfortable drinking temperature. Although the temperature is not perspiring in the winter, training with winter coat and drier feed increase the need for water. Nowadays, there are heated water troughs that will keep the water from freezing and warmer than ice cold. (You can get ideas of how to make those water troughs yourself on the internet.) Even in the winter you need to clean the water troughs, bacterias grow in luke warm water.  If you have many horses in the pasture you should have a couple of water troughs in order to ensure that even the low ranked individuals are getting enough water.
The access to food and water can affect both the horse's abdomen and the risk of injuries among horses. If horses gets stressed by shortage of food and water it increases the risk of conflict, if the horses are shod, they also have studs, and studs can cause major damage.
The origins of this post is a tragic loss that a friend of mine experienced when a gastrointestinal disorder were treated as constipation instead of a colon inflammation.
If you live in a horse-dense area, you may have access to veterinarians who are expert on horses but here where I live, most veterinarians have a general skills and their horse knowledge varies. This means that there is a standard procedure in gastrointestinal disorders in horses, giving paraffin and water to dissolve any constipation.
As a horse owners you need to do careful observations if the horse is showing signs of pain in the abdominal region. What about the horses droppings? When was the last time he defecated? How does it look? How does it smell?
If the horse does not defecate and have almost non-existent bowel sounds, it is most likely a form of constipation colic. But if the horse feces gets looser and looser and smell sour and acidic, it is an indication that there is a disturbance in the fermentation in the colon and then a treatment with praffin and water is akin to extinguish fire with gasoline.
Diarrhea is a sign of an ongoing faulty fermentation in the colon, the horse's natural bacterial flora is eliminated and it may be due to mold in roughage killing intestinal bacteria (penicillin is a mold). The faulty fermentation in turn leads to acidosis, a toxic condition and an increase of gases in the colon. The toxins formed in the colon, is transported via the blood into the body and may for example lead to laminitis. The gas that is formed in the colon can cause the colon to swell and actually prevent the diaphragm to move enough and thereby render in breathing difficulties.
If your horse have diarrhea, you should see it as a serious condition! One way to try to help the horse through the crisis is to give it analgesic and antispasmodic. In human health care any form of laxatives is prohibited unless you are absolutely sure it is an issue of constipation, instead you give fluid with electrolytes that will help to buffer against toxic substances in the intestines. That may be applied to horses and to aid the horse's intestinal bacterias you can give 0.5 kg normal yeast solved in water.
Now this winter is coming to an end but it'll return. Do what you can to prepare for the next winter. Buy forage of good quality, adjust your feeding routines and plan for a good solution for the supplie of water.

Ethics, moral and the law

Maybe daily reflections on ethics/moral and law would help us see what's going on in front of our eyes. The news in Sweden has been dominated by the story of horse meat being used in fast food under the name of beef, on Facebook images and movie clips that show questionable horsemanship are being spread and on Swedish television the program "Pony Panic" is commented.

I feel I need to mention ISES Conference 2010 again. There was a lecture on ethics and moral in horse handling and trainig and the lecturer pointed out that even if it is unethical or immoral it is not necessarily illegal. And it is important to keep that in mind when the blood is boiling within or when the heart bleeds that the things one long to do in the name of ethics and moral may well be illegal and therefore punishable.We start with the  horse meat in lasagne from Findus and adds a couple of Swedish meat scandals and take a look at them. In the case of Findus, changing beef to horse is illegal. Beef is cow meat and nothing else.I myself have been to a restaurant with a butcher and she said that I did get pork but not fillet as said on the menu. There was a short talk with the chef who offered the evening's dessert when they realized they just couldn't win. It wasn't an illegal act but  an immoral.We have had minced meat that passed best before date and was given a new date,  expired meat that has been turned into minced meat and pork that has been dyed and sold as fillet of beef. All this is both illegal, unethical and immoral but particularly questionable in the case of pork, because it can have trichinae which really can affect people. The fried pork is no problem but how many people do not usually like to have their beef a little red in the middle? Then fillet of pork a problem ...In the case of lasagne something happened, the bias in the news became more on the unethical than illegal aspect and I think that is due to our attitude to eating horse. Horse meat is not dangerous for humans to eat, unlike pork.Now over to the horses that are still alive and whose life is documented and passed around on Facebook. An image etched into my memory is the image of the Iberian horse placed with his forehead against a brick wall and a string tied around the lower jaw and over the withers. The horse will probably move in this position and be seen as well ridden and maybe even be applauded when ridden but the way that outline was acchieved  - beneath contempt.Movies on blue tongues, role kür, slide stops straight up to the walls, too many turns in the spin, corrections with such harsh hands that the bit must cut like razorblades in the horse's mouth, spurs hacked into the horse's sides. And this, my friends, is just a few examples, and probably only the tip of an iceberg. What appears on riding courses and competitions grounds are founded at home ..."Pony Panic", is a programs with a good purpose but I never the less thinks it misses the target. The program is based on problems that can be either in the child in the form of fear or in the horse in unwanted behavior. Now it is important to remember that this is television and that means there is  a lot that has been filmed and from that material appropriate scenes are selected. What happens between the chosen scenes we really don't knowI have not followed this season, I just quickly looked through some of the programmes and I think the pattern from previous years (nota bene: in what is presented) is followed. The horse is held responsible and it is the one that should be corrected. In a situation (section 5) a professional rider is brought in to ride a horse with bucking issues. She rides the horse with auxiliary reins a so called rubber band, the chin is brought to the chest - a common sight. It is not illegal to ride horses squezed together with the reins, but I think it goes against ethics and moral.From the sequense I saw when the horse bucked it was the rider who had not learned to mount properly and the horse was hind shy (if that's an expression that works in English). To me, it would have better to deal with the two issues separately, teach the rider to mount and desensetice the horse.The majority of these young riders would benefit from a basic course in seat training. As I see it many problems is due to a bad seat, which results in poor balance and suppleness, which in turn creates tension and fear and it all ends with the ponies being held to much in the reins.With regard to competitions it is generally known that the winner earns money and the winner may also be lucky enough to have a sponsor that allows a full-time venture. We are all consumers, if we turn to the sponsors with our views on horse management and ask them if they really want to be associated with morally and ethically questionable methods it may be a more efficient way to go than via the equestrian channels. It is not illegal to tell those who pay dearly to be seen that we are not seing them because of what's going on in the arena...ändringarna

Alpha

A short note on training

A short note on training as a response to a question ont he Swedish blog.

Anyone who can say with certainty how we can train our horses, for whatever purpose, without causing damage need not worry about their livelihood. There are as many training philosophies as there are trainers and what works for one horse do not necessarily fit another.

A horse can always move with their own weight on their legs, so to speak. A good paddock can encourage  and help horses to train themselves. In many training stables they build paddocks that are long and narrow and place them in a row next to each other. In this way, the horses gallop back and forth in the pasture and if one starts to run the others soon follow. Another way to encourage movement, be it at a slower pace, is to have food and water and shelter located far from each other. In this way, the horses must walk to satisfy their needs.

Training is basically about preparing a body for the work it is expected to do. In the body there are different tissues that require different amount of time to adapt to the loads it is subjected. Heart and lungs = condition, it is quick to respond, while the tendons, ligaments and bones take longer to adapt to an increased load.

The foundation for all training is walk, a walk with good impulsion works as stretching and strength training at the same time. The work in walk can be varied. It may be in hand walking, long reining, work over cavaletti, work in hand with sideways movements or a walk infront of a wagon /sleigh.

Walk is beneficial for all horses regardless of orientation. Other training varies with the chosen ara of competition or use. A good friend of mine has been a training rider at Janow in Poland. They worked the race horses under rider 6 days a week with fast job on Monday and then reduced the pace down to a ride in the woods the day before the day of rest. Each day, the horses was placed in a walker.

Something that I think is valuable when training horses is to have learned to feel the horse's muscles systematically. It makes it is easier to notice changes in muscle tone early, thus preventing injury. I use Equine Touch when I run through my horses. I also think a heart rate monitor can be useful, the horse's heart rate tells a lot about the state of fitness. Is there an infection in the body an light job gives a higher heart rate, an indication that you might need to take it easy.

Another relevant question is, am I too heavy for my horse? The answer to that question depends on how well balanced you are as a rider, how often and how long you ride, what you do when you are riding and the horse you have. Do you know that you are heavier that you figure your horse can handle pay attention to the horse's reactions during the ride. If the horse bevomes tired, lowers his back and raise its head (become U-shaped), it does not help to pull down the head with draw reins (something I actually seen) - it is much better to dismount and work the horse in hand for a while and gradually extend the time mounted. No matter how light or heavy we are as we mount we put pressure on the horse's muscles in the back and push away the blood from the tissue.

What we should keep in mind when we train our horses is to vary the work, switch between mounted and dismounted, vary surfaces and tempo and give the horse the opportunity to rest, preferably in a field that encourages movement in the gait the horse choose.

Horse conformation

Yesterday we had the kick-off meeting for the course in Applied Equine Podiatry, June 15 to 19 in Boden. This really is a course I recommend all horse owners (and horses interested for that matter!) . The course is not primarily about learning to trim yourself, even if it is a part of the curriculum, but to learn to recognize a healthy hoof. We collected a few hooves yesterday and I'm really looking forward to see and hear the story hiding in those feet, because they all had something to say!

I had a question on the Swedish blog on horse conformation and weight bearing ability and riding trotters,  it'll be the topic for today.

Horses can be described in many ways, the starting point may be the color, breed, conformation, performance or behavior. The exterior that we see when we look at a horse is a mixture of bone structure and musculature. A skinny horse can look dreadful, but have a better skeletal conformation than a seemingly well-muscled and athletic horse.

From a sustainability standpoint, horse conformation is important but actually not always conclusive. Beyond question that a horse with well aligned bones, good relationship between the different parts of the body, a well-set neck and a muscle suit that is proportional is well equipped to take the strain of an active life. But there is no guarantee. Hambletonian, a fantastic breeder in harness racing, had plenty of exterior deviations but it did not prevent him from being both strong and fast.

The horse's skeleton consists of 205-210 bones, depending on how they are classified.



The horse's engine sits in the back, the angles that is talked about is how the pelvic angle affects the angle of the femur and it in turn affects the horse's ability to carry weight and pushing the horse forward. Power is transmitted via the lumbar spine - the part of the spine that allowes for some movement between the vertebrae. The legs are responsible to take the horse forward and the way the bones of the legs are stacked affects both movement patterns, hoof form and shock absorbing. Here's a spread that shows different leg conformation from the book The horse exterior by Lars-Erik Magnusson.



No horse is actually designed to carry any other weight than their own, be it trotters or riding horse. Since we choose to mount up and ride them, it is important to be observant of how the horse reacts to our training and to vary both training and ground we train on.

I would like to quote a farrier in Luleå, Bengt-Erik Källsenius. "You do not buy a retired trotter, you buy a bred trotter." Trotters can be very fine horses, provided that those who train them remember that they are bred to trot fast, and it has brought exterior customizations and a movement pattern that corresponds to the requirement.

Trotters are usually lower in height (about 155 cm), has a strong back to be able to handle the power coming from the hindquarter. A trotter usually begins its training in early years and made it in a reasonable manner based on the young horse it will build the body, both in terms of bone mass and muscular strenght. A trotter trained for racing, even if it does not measure up to race quality, can become a nice riding horse, with the advantage that it can also be harnessed and driven for a change.

I recommend Lars-Erik Magnusson's book The horse's conformation and a book in English The Horse Conformation Handbook by Heather Smith Thomas. And it's never wrong to take a crayon and mark the various joints, bones, etc on a real horse, and then measure the angles, lengths and widths. All that trains the eye and makes it easier to see the horse as it is.

Hooves

Happy new year! Right now it's a beautiful winter day in Kalix with moderate -10, winter blue skies and sun-kissed pine tops. Hope your Thursday is as beautiful where ever you are!

For my part, I started as early as 1 January with something that I think will be a theme for the year, hooves.

Here are the hooves that I, along with Kerstin Kemlén and photografer Anki Lundberg, where evaluating. At a first glance they look like completely normal riding horse hooves to me. For the evaluation, we looked at; heel (landing), frog, bars, hoof walls on quarter and toe, coronary band, sole and toe (push off) and we use a score from 1-9.

When the legs are separated from the horse and it is not a horse you know from before, it is actually not easy to know what is the right or left side of each pair. I certainly thought that would be the easy part...

The picture above is of the hind feet and you can see how the nails are set in the white line. It is not unusual that the nails ends up there, though it  does not cause tendering preassure it means that bacteria have a way into the white line and the risk of white line dissease increases markedly.

In this picture you can also see that the outer bars has fallen and that the shape of the hoof is deformed in both the outer regions, the hoof capsule is a bit rotated and the toe is cut at an off angle relative to the frog.

A toe that is cut in this way robs the horse of its push off ability at the front of the hoof. In turn, this means that the work load will be more directly on the front of the coffin bone and it was visible in the sole, nature had padded the coffin bone by adding on to the sole.

Since I am new in the area and most hooves I've seen looks like these I missed all this with the toe, sure, I could see that the toe was cut off angle - but the consequence of the cut and removal of the tip of the toe for the horse Kerstin enlighten me of.

Here we nippered the toe of the hoof, the structures you can see in the picture are (from folding rule and down) the insensitive sole, the blood supplied part (red dots) of the sole nearest the coffin bone, inner wall and the black stripe at the end is the outer hoof wall.

In the current hoof the hoof capsule had migrated forward more than 2 cm in relation to the foot. I guess the feeling for the horse is as if I (size 39) would walk around in a pair of 45's, I would have a hard time knowing where I really have my feet and where I put them in the world.

As with anything else, it was life itself that brought hooves in focus and I'm learning everything I can to give my horses hooves that fit their feet. Everything under the motto: No hoof, no horse.

What can a horse carry?

The last blog post this year will be about the horse's back. The purpose of the blog entries on hoof, mouth and back is to make us, who spend part of our time with horses and make use of their abilities, more aware that we are asking for something that the horse certainly can perform (and with honor!) but at the same time is contrary to its nature as an animal called horse.

When one gets involved in a thoughts it often happens several things simultaneously that really sets the own thoughts on spin. One student told me the following. During a visit to a friend in a barn, a horse was standing in the aisle. My student stroked the horse over the back and the horse lowerd its back - Don't tuch him over the back, the owner said, he is in pain. And that was obvious, but when the box was cleaned out the owner saddled the sore horse and took it for a ride. Where is the logic in this? One would expect a back that touchy would hurt bad when ridden.

Later that week I got a tip on an article written by Stormy May that added a few more sticks on the fire light going on in my head. The article is about what happens to the horse when we place our weight on its back. My post is a mixture of extracts from the article and my own words.

In "Journal of Veterinary Science" Volume (Vol14 (11), 1994)  the well-known veterinarian and saddle fitter Dr. Joyce Harman published an outcome of a study.

"For the purposes of this study, saddles with pressure up to 1.93 psi (pound force per square inch)  were assessed to have good fit, between 2.0 and 3.38 psi, but persistent pressure points, to have moderate fit and saddles that exceeded 3,4 psi or had persistent pressure points throughout the session was considered poor fit. These figures come from preliminary data showing that it was difficult to find an English saddle with a lower pressure than 0.75 psi, which is the highest pressure in the capillary bed, pressure exceeding 0.75 psi shuts off the blood flow in the arterial capillary bed. "

It is important to note that Saddle Tech preassure measuring tool, used in these studies, had sensors that have been developed to evaluate the risks of pressure sores in bedridden people and only measures pressure up to 4 psi. Modern sensors, such as the FSA (Force Sensing Array) developed by Vision Engineering Resaerch group (verg Inc) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada can read a lot more pressure. In a test with Western saddles with good padding, measured normal "pressure spikes" between 8.25 and 14 psi. (Wesley, ED, McCullough, E, Eckels, S, Davis, E, Article # 9329, 2007, "The Horse" magazine).

The pressure that occurs on the tissues under the saddle is propagated down through the muscles to the bone structures found underneath. Research on pressure ulcers in humans have shown that tissue death begins near the bone long before redness and skin lesion is present.What have happened with the horses that have visible wounds or scars in the saddle area?

The muscles longissimus dorsi and trapezius, which the rider sits on, the horse has developed since Eohippus (between 60 million and 45 million years ago) to facilitate mobility. This structure was never designed to carry weight in the form of a pressure from above. In many horses, you can see a marked muscular atrophy just behind the scapula up at the withers. Nevertheless, I have heard a coach say that he did not want to have horses with muscular backs because they become so difficult to saddle.

Pressure from the saddle and rider on the horse's back occurs independent of use. When blood is pushed out of the tissue and comes back, it feels like a thousand needles sticking in the body part. We have embedded sensors that ensure that we change position from time to time, when the pressure on a single point has been too high for too long. For a horse that is ridden, it is difficult to stow the weight on his body that way. It can try to attract your attention by taking shorter steps, swishing tail, scratching himselves against the fence /riding school wall, nip at the leg, have ears back or even bolt or buck.

What is emphasized in the article is that it is all too common with today's horsemanship, to dismiss the horse only possible way of communicating, body language,  as disobedience and as such it should be corrected - often with "stronger pain in the mouth, on the head, ribs and flanks, probably in combination with a longer session under saddle" writes Stormy May.

Now neither the author nor I are proposing to forbid riding but I share the conclusion that increased knowledge of the horse's movement mechanics would be a fantastic Christmas gift that would please both rider and horse.

I have searched both articles Stormy May refer to online but without success. It seems like an interesting task for 2013 to gain more knowledge on the issue. I would like to know more about how each study has been done.

As always, when it comes to our relationship with the horse, it is we who must strive to interpret the horse's signals/language - the horse already has full notion of us, as the true humanist it is.
Now I take Christmas holiday and will return after Twelfth Night. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Bitting, episode 3

We who choose to engage in horses, be it pleasure riding, competative riding, driving, harnessed horses or racing must at all times be aware that we choose to do something that the horse was not originally intended to make.

The horse is not designed to bear weight on his back, pulling heavy loads, have metal shoes (or any hoof protection for that matter) on the hooves or bit in his mouth. That it allows to let us make use of it is due to the fact that the survival strategy of the horse is silence. The horse is basically a docile animal, an animal that seeks to minimize conflicts because, in the wild, that has saved lives. The horse devotes no time to unnecessary quarrel, it is pre-programmed to find their place in a hierarchy, and to be responsive.

The horse, like the dog, has proven to be a useful companion for us. Their different characteristics has improved and simplified our lives and now that we who live in developed countries no longer need them for our livelihood they enhance our leisure time.

I have no moral qualms about owning and have a horse (or dog). What I strive for is to make the life that my horses will live with me as "a little bad as possible" by learning everything I can about the well fare of horses. Keeping a horse is compromising the horse as a biological being and the better compromise the fewer degrees in hell for the horse - a little brutally expressed.

Dr. Cook has devoted much of his professional life to research and to issues that he defines as bit-related problems. Just as Lena pointed out, some of the behavioral problems he connects to bitting can occur for other reasons. To me, it means that there are more variables to consider in this multifactorial equation that horse ownership entails. Leave no stone unturned ...

In his research, Dr. Cook compared the skulls of domestic and wild horses. What he has seen in the tame horses are so called bone spurs, micro cracks in the bars and deformed teeth, damage completely absent in the wild horse. That is damage to the hard tissue, a horse dentist may see friction damage to the tongue from a bit that slid back and forth across the tongue, sores on the inside of the cheek, crushing, pressure sores on the palate, etc.

Certainly, many of the injuries are resulting from careless handling and improper fitting of the equipment, absolutely! With better educated of horse owners, many of the problems are eliminated. Note bene! Not even bitless bridle is completely without effect on the horse if they are ill fitted or handled roughly.

Dr. Cook notes"By removing the metal bit out of the horse's mouth, you can address many problems, but one can not expect that all problems are cured.

A horse that previously had recurring throat noise will not stop sounding bad, a horse who developed permanent deformities of the airways as a result of bit use will still be handicapped by deformations.

If you remove the bit it heals no lameness other than "rein lameness" nor can it replace proper training of the horse so it correctly understands rein aids (slow down, stop and turn). All horses with bit caused nerve pain does not stop shaking its head from one day to another when the bit is removed. A few never stop. " (this is a translation from a swedish translation so...this one can deviate from the original english text.)

We need as riders and drivers to understand that the horse does not automatically understand our signals, that we need to train the horse to the language of signals we choose to use. When I was with Rune Olofsson in Sollebrunn he told me that 98% of the horses he had re-educated in riding had problems because they had never been taught the signals for start and stop properly, they did not know what was expected of them. The basis for all training is that the horse understand the signal for forward, stop, back up, left and right. When the response to those signals is established, the horse is ready to perform movements that combine these directions.

But there is another aspect of bit that concern the horse's physiology. When the horse has a bit in the mouth it stimulates the digestive system, which means that the horse's body is programmed to low activity and a lowered head/neck position while you want the horse to be alert, ready to perform and with raised the head/neck.

In the horse's throat, there is a switch function which opens or closes the passage of the air ways and esophagus. The horse breathes through the nose and when breathing, the lips must be sealed so that the mouth is free of air. With a bit in the mouth the lip seal is broken and air is swirling into the oral cavity, at the same time the stimulus on the tongue results in production of saliva that needs to be handled. When the horse swallows, it can not breathe and when breathing it can not swallow. It is a physiological impact of the horse as biological beings, and it has consequences.

A short note on why I chosed Dr. Cook's bridle. Amaretto has a convex nose and thus makes a rope halter or bosal tipp forward/downward and end up being in the wrong place. The nose band on the bitless bridle can be fasten and is thus kept better in place.

The signaling system is similar to the one I have when I worked Amaretto in rope halter, the headstall also conveys the signals from the reins that the direct and indirect rein aids create. Hackamore has never been an issue and the bridle that looks like a wheel with spokes I have not tried.

I was at a lecture given by Per Larsson on bit and bitting, he showed a picture of a bit called "Liberty", he graded it to be hot, really hot actually and it could "correct" the horse inducing so much pain that the horse either surrendered or went crazy ... we have an ability to paraphrase we humans, Liberty - freedom to whom?