HEALTH & EDUCATION

Health & Education

We all want the best care possible for our horses. The Heath & Education section covers both Learning Institutions, Organizations as well as many sources for equine assistance including Veterinarians and Farriers.

For those who want a to formally study horses, the Education section includes College Riding, Equine Studies, and Veterinary Schools. Learn about the wide variety of horses in the Horse Breeds section. Supplements and Treatments Therapy are also included in the section.

Everyone can learn from Fine Art and there are some specialty Museums that might surprise you.

Horses as a therapy partner enrich the lives of the disabled. These facilities are listed in our Therapeutic Riding section. To help children and young adults build confidence and grow emotionally, please see the resources available on the Youth Outreach page.

Looking for a place to keep your horse? You can find it in the Horse Boarding section. Traveling? Find a Shipping company or Horse Sitting service if your horse is staying home!

Want to stay up to date with the latest training clinics or professional conferences? Take a look at our Calendar of Events for Health & Education for the dates and locations of upcoming events.

Do we need to add more? Please use the useful feedback link and let us know!

Photo courtesy of Holistic Horse Academy

by Missy Wryn

Are you baffled by a sudden change in your horse’s behavior? Did it seem to come on suddenly, out of the blue with no warning? Is your horse trying to bite you or kick at you, or is he getting pushy or bucking for no apparent reason? Behavior changes in your horse can be baffling, frustrating and sometimes downright dangerous! If gone unaddressed horses can end up being abused, sold or even euthanized unnecessarily.

I have often been the last stop for a horse that is otherwise on their way to be auctioned or euthanized due to problem and dangerous behavior. In order to get to the source of the behavior, I have a lengthy intake process where the answers to my numerous questions are a road map to the source of the problem behavior. Here are some questions I ask that the answers can be very telling:

When did you first notice the behavior change?
Think back, was your horse trying to tell you something before the behavior became a problem?
- If so, in what way was your horse trying to tell you, for example little nips, pinny ears, cinchy, crow hopping?
Did you and/or your horse have an accident?
- If so what were the details?
Was there anything going on at the barn at the time the behavior changed?
- Did anything change in your horse’s environment i.e. did your horse lose a barn mate to moving or death?
Has there been any change in feed or supplements?
Has your horse ever had dental work?
- If so when was the last time?
- Were power tools used?
- Was sedation used and if so was it heavy or light?
- Did the dental specialist or veterinarian work with your horse’s head high in the air or did the specialist/vet work from their knees with your horse’s head down?
If your horse is in a stall, how many hours a day does your horse spend in the stall?
- Does your horse pace, crib or have stall bound behaviors?
What position in the herd is your horse with other horses?
- Does your horse get picked on?

As you go through this exercise don’t dismiss even the silliest thought that comes to mind, it may be a clue to unraveling your horse’s change in behavior; write down everything that you can think of.

Jan 19, 2023 - Monty Roberts welcomes a group of combat veterans to his ranch for a weekend of his renowned program Horse Sense & Healing. The film follows three veterans as they experience their first Join-Up® with a horse and begin to build back a sense of trust and a reduction in anxiety.

Join-Up is that moment when a horse (a flight animal) decides it can follow a person because they use a body language that Monty learned from the wild mustangs in Nevada.

Monty believes that Post Traumatic Stress is an injury, not a disorder (PTSI not PTSD). For more click HERE.

by Eleanor Kellon, VMD

The only carbohydrate fractions that matter are those that increase insulin.

HYDROLYZABLE CARBOHYDRATES (HC)

Hydrolyzable carbohydrates (HC) are defined as those digestible in the small intestine. Microbial fermentation is much less in the small intestine than the hind gut, so those carbohydrates will be absorbed intact.

Starch is digested entirely to glucose. Simple monosaccharide sugars like glucose and fructose are absorbed intact. Disaccharide sugars like sucrose (table sugar) and lactose (milk sugar), and the trisaccharide trehalose, are broken down into monosaccharides by enzymes present at the brush border of the small intestinal cells, then absorbed. These are the HC and the only components that increase blood glucose and therefore insulin.

FERMENTABLE CARBOHYDRATES

More complex plant sugars like cellobiose and raffinose cannot be digested and pass through to the hind gut where they are fermented to volatile fatty acids. The same fate awaits all fiber fractions, "resistant" starch not accessible to the digestive enzymes and rapidly fermentable carbohydrates like pectin, fructan and beta-glucan.

The volatile fatty acids/fermentation products produced can substitute for glucose in energy pathways (acetate), be used to feed the colonic cells (butyrate), converted back to glucose or glycogen (propionate, lactate) or fat (butyrate, acetate). None of those substances or reactions will increase insulin.

EPISODE 50!! Dr. Barber's career started under the tutelage of Dr. Scott Pierce, focusing on reproduction. Over time, his practice morphed from reproduction into sales work, which includes endoscopy and radiographs and, most recently, the management of Rood & Riddle Veterinary Pharmacy. Barber talks about how changes in veterinary medicine and the importance of family have helped shape his career.

Teresa Kackert demonstrates how to safely catch a horse in a paddock, field or pasture when there are other horses present. This is a safety video from Certified Horsemanship Association (www.CHA.horse)

For more information on the largest certifying body of riding instructors and barn managers in North America, Certified Horsemanship Association, please visit www.CHA.horse.

Colic is the #1 killer of horses (photo courtesy of I-Stock)

Equine Guelph has announced that the month of February, Canada’s coldest month, will be Colic Prevention Education Month. The next four weeks will be dedicated to increasing awareness of ways for caregivers to decrease the risk of colic in their horses. Although horses can be afflicted with gut pain in any season, the cold weather months are a challenging time – especially with impaction-related colic.

Here are three simple rules for preventing winter colic in your horse: 1. increase forage in diet, 2. keep your horse hydrated and 3. maximize turnout and exercise.

With these easy tips in mind for the cold weather months, check out Equine Guelph’s highly popular online healthcare tool, the Colic Risk Rater (http://www.thehorseportal.ca/ColicTool), an interactive experience customized to your situation. Answer a simple questionnaire about your horse’s current management and watch the interactive dial move depending on your answer. Then, try redoing by changing your answers, using the three simple rules for preventing winter colic. You will be surprised to witness the rater’s dial move away from high colic risk as well as noticing the difference in your before and after scores!

Now that you have seen firsthand what these changes mean in reducing the risk of winter colic, the following explains why these three rules are so important.

Rule #1 – Increase Forage in Diet

Forage is critical for hind gut fermenters. An 1,100 pound horse should consume 2.0% to 2.5 % of their body weight per day in forage (22 to 28 lbs). Horses only produce saliva when they chew, therefore feeding forage ad-lib will increase the production of saliva – one of the best buffers for the horses' digestive system and the most effective way to reduce the chance of ulcers and impaction colic.

Rule #2 – Keep your Horse Hydrated

While on the topic of impaction, 24/7 access to clean water is always imperative to keep all that forage moving. Remember, horses tend to drink less in the winter and impactions usually form with dry feed. February is typically Canada’s coldest month – with water in buckets freezing within 6-12 hours of filling – so be sure your horse doesn’t become dehydrated due to a frozen water bucket situation.

By Nancy Thomas

Last week, I launched the first post in a series about the equine slaughter industry. This is not a series I planned to write. My eyes were blown open by a training module I completed as part of my veterinary continuing education requirements. In the week before Part One was posted, I crawled further and further down a rabbit hole as I spoke to countless individuals on different sides of this issue. Each door that I opened revealed several more doors to explore. To say that this is a complicated issue would be the ultimate understatement.

Before I delve into the history of equine slaughter in the United States, I want to address my personal viewpoint on this practice. Last week, I stated that I have been having conversations with Dr. Lorna Grande, a veterinarian with the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association. Lorna has taught classes on Animal Welfare.

"There are a lot of “Gotcha” things in the animal welfare world."
Dr. Lorna Grande, Program Director, Education and Outreach, Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association.

What does she mean by that? There are two aspects to that statement.

On the one hand, she is referring to the fact that we all have our sensitivities, and we manifest them in different ways. I personally cannot fathom sending my horse to an auction, knowing the high probability of my beloved horse landing in the horse trader or slaughter pipeline. But I’m not a vegetarian! My sentiments don’t preclude me from sending cattle to a slaughterhouse. Do I want to think about that hypocrisy? No, I don’t.

The other “GOTCHA” is how people perceive or dismiss your message if they don’t agree with absolutely everything you believe. I am educating myself about this industry as much as I am trying to educate you. There are many, many variables when one is talking about “animal welfare.” Let me give you an example in the small animal world…

As one of the most dedicated dog lovers on the planet, the concept that an animal shelter would have euthanized dogs piled up in a back room just devastates me. I find breed-specific legislation abhorrent. I am an advocate of “no kill” shelters… to a point. A medically or emotionally fragile or debilitated animal, or a dangerous one, might best be served by euthanasia, rather than prolonging their physical or mental suffering.

So I guess that means I am in favor of “mostly no-kill shelters” because there would certainly be times when a dog is simply not adoptable. If they are emotionally afraid of everything and everyone, can they really have a decent quality of life? At what cost? And at what danger to the public? ... So if you are a believer in total no-kill shelters, can you find my views and my research about equine slaughter credible?

As you read this series, there will be a multitude of twists and turns. Whereas I set out to uncover the veterinarian’s role in “regulating” this industry, I have realized that it is much, much bigger than that. Fasten your seatbelt, and try to keep an open mind about all of the information I hope to present.

My views on equine slaughter

Regardless of the fact that my eating habits subject cattle to a slaughterhouse, I am firm in my belief that horses are not livestock that should suffer the same fate. Their “fight or flight” mentality makes them extremely unsuited for a swift and painless execution in a slaughter box. This is just one aspect of this atrocity… what they experience when they finally get to Mexico or Canada.

A new imaging modality made available to veterinarians, the PET Scan (positron emission tomography), is not yet fully understood. Dr. Katie Garrett, Director of Imaging, and Dr. Jose Bras, lead surgeon at the Wellington practice, discuss the uses of the PET scan in practice. Diagnosing repetitive stress injuries early has been a challenge for veterinarians. An earlier diagnosis may be possible potentially saving the horse from a more devastating injury. The PET scan, in conjunction with other imaging modalities such as radiology, nuclear scintigraphy and ultrasound, will allow more complete investigations of the difficult lame horse.

Shoeing the Modern Horse by Steven Kraus, CJF, and Katie Navarra

By Steven Kraus, CJF, with Katie Navarra

To shoe or not to shoe? If you’ve ever wondered which is better for your horse, you’re not alone.

The internet is full of opinions for you to consider. People have strong beliefs on both sides of the debate, which has created confusion and philosophical disputes rather than focusing on what is best for the modern horse.

Rather than ask, Are shoes necessary? or Is going barefoot better than being shod?, think of each horse as an individual. You will find the best answer for any horse when you take this approach. Horses live in diverse environments and are in many types of work, which contribute to deciding the best option for each horse.

With that in mind, it’s impractical to think that one method of hoof care is the only way to take care of all horses’ feet. Horseshoes may all look the same in the back of your farrier’s truck, but there is no such thing as one method or one horseshoe for all horses. “Cookie cutter” style shoeing or trimming does not work. Whether you choose to leave a horse barefoot, or use a shoe, trimming is the foundation of your horse’s hoof care.

Making Objective Observations

Observation and analysis of each horse, and not emotions, must guide the decision-making process to determine the best management of any horse. Good horsemanship, such as knowing the horse, his function, how to properly train, care for and use him offers the best answer in the barefoot versus shoeing debate. Often, there is more than one solution to consider, and the decision of which method to use should be based on facts and data. The WIDTH Protocol (see below) can establish if any horse is a good candidate to remain barefoot or is better served with horseshoes from an objective rather than subjective point of view. This protocol was developed using my observations working on horses in the central New York State region, shoeing almost 250,000 hooves over a nearly 50-year career. Ask yourself the following questions:

Work: What Does the Horse Do?

There are a multitude of ways horses are kept and used. Some are highly competitive, others perform in harsh environments, and some spend most of their time on turnout doing nothing at all. Most horses live somewhere between. Considering how often the horse works, the surface he works on, and his natural hoof quality are all part of the equation.

Page 1 of 27