Why do we work with horses? Horse course, horse school, horse program, horse work, horse learning… whatever you want to call it; it is achieving a dream career for you and your horse. A Global Equine Assisted Learning Business Training™ (EABT™) company that works together to find success around the world, helping people to be empowered and helping them to change their lives while working with the horse. Through this powerful Horse Course which just isn't a dream; it's a reality, you will start your new business with your horse programs with confidence!

Read more: Equine Connection: International Horse Certification Course with Business Training

by Dr. Eleanor Kellon

With feral horses, by the time weaning occurs naturally both mare and foal are more than ready for it. When we hasten the process artificially, there is inevitable stress.

Foals depend on their dams for basic survival needs of nutrition and protection from predators or even other horses. The dam also gives the foal its social status in the band. Mares fulfill these functions because of the extremely powerful drive of their instincts and hormones.

Interfering with this bond predictably causes anxiety, even anguish. This means poor appetite, vocalizing, pacing (or running if room allows), poor concentration and diminished awareness of people, other animals, even physical barriers. In the worst-case scenario, they may be a danger both to themselves and others.

A variety of methods are used, from gradual lengthening of periods apart to abrupt complete separation. When separation is final, mare and foal should not be able to see or hear each other. Foals do best either housed in individual stalls or pastured in a group of familiar peers with at least one quiet and tolerant adult baby sitter.

Read more: Care of the Mare and Foal at Weaning

by Dr. Brad Tanner

Why float teeth, ancient wild horses seem to have done fine without dentist?

Good point and I agree it seems ancient wild horses did great without rasping of their teeth. The horse has evolved to be a grass consuming machine. Through the course of millennia, they have developed long teeth that continue to erupt (grow) throughout life. It is important to know that the horse evolved to graze and chew up to 16 hours daily on coarse, fibrous grasses. Modern domesticated horses may spend much of their time in stalls, eating concentrates and hay, chewing much less than those on pasture. Modern domesticated horses with pasture access typically graze on manicured grasses that are comparatively delicate and lack the gritty silica content consumed by their ancestors and cause less tooth wear. Additionally, as a horse chews grain its lower jaw does not move side to side with the same amount of travel as when chewing grass. This decrease in chewing motion results in much sharper points developing and at a quicker rate then in horses eating only grass.

Read more: Dental Basics: The Who, What, When, How and Why of Floating Teeth

by Margret Henkels

Clients often ask me how I got into horse myofascial bodywork. A passion for horses, and my own personal experience of being completely healed, brought me to this work—Conformation Balancing. A riding fall at 28 brought chronic injuries lasting years. I knew nothing about fascia (connective tissue) and its role in organizing the entire body. A synchronicity at a horse show introduced me to Steve Evans, a Heller Work practitioner. Heller Work is an offshoot of Rolfing and trains people in its particular approach to fascia. The weekly myofascial-release sessions transformed me into fitness. Each week, for 15 weeks, I drove to Taos where Steve lived and returned feeling better. I loved the changes I felt and the work itself. My experience is that Heller Work is much less strenuous tissue work and is comfortable for the patient, even in the first session, unlike Rolfing, which is known to be strenuous.

On his table, I talked about my horses often and told him stories of my rides. Steve suggested I consider getting into the horse bodywork field. “Just what I need, another startup,” I said with a laugh. His suggestion seed grew. The changes I felt transformed my goals. Paperwork and financial data of the business world lost their charm. I felt amazingly better and fit enough to work with horses. He referred me to Equine Natural Movement, Heller for Horses, in Battle Ground, Washington, where I took a module of training, before certifying.

In myofascial-release training, I heard the call of the physical world. And, I learned something completely new: how hidden feelings surface when myofascial cells open as they release compression, and in the process, release trauma that has been held in the body. The emotional and spiritual transformations that occurred during myofascial change fascinated me: this clearing of trauma by bodywork is part of the amazing miracle of myofascial change. In sessions with horses, I watched horses change emotionally and trust me. Horses in pain wanted help.

Read more: How Myofascial Bodywork Helps Horses

Timing is everything. Nowhere is this more relevant than when preparing an elite equine athlete for a race.

Thoroughbred trainers are critically aware of the importance of fine-tuning the feeding and exercise regimes of their charges in the months, weeks and days before a big event. Timing is also critical for the smooth functioning of a horse’s musculo-skeletal system for optimal performance. Understanding how the horse’s muscle physiology works in synchrony with its environment and reacts to the exercise regimes that we subject it to in our daily management has been the focus of much research at University College Dublin by Dr. Barbara Murphy and her team.

All animals possess an internal body clock that ensures functions such as muscle metabolism, digestion and tissue regeneration and repair peak at the most suitable time of day to ensure survival in the wild. This important system, called the circadian system, uses the continuous 24-hour transitions from night to day to generate rhythms in physiology and behavior that allow a horse to stay in harmony with its environment. Each organ in the horse’s body undergoes rhythmical 24-hour changes that respond to the environmental cues provided by the changing light-dark cycle, food availability and exercise. How we time feeding, and in particular, exercise, has important implications for equine performance and will be explored here.

Domestication has changed many aspects of a horse’s daily life. To understand the impact human intervention has had on the horse’s body clock we must first consider their natural behavior. As migrating herd animals bound by tight social bonds, horses evolved to spend up to 18 hours a day grazing as a group constantly on the move, covering anywhere from 40 -100 km in a day.

Now consider the lifestyle of today’s thoroughbreds in training – stabled for up to 23 hours a day, isolated from a herd, fed concentrated feed at set intervals and often only exercised once per day at the same time each day. Each of these factors is accompanied by impacts on a horse’s health and performance. Gastric ulcers, respiratory disorders and stereotypic behaviors are some of the common challenges faced by trainers and are often a direct consequence of an intensive indoor management regime – a necessary evil in the business of training elite athletes.

Read more: The Effects of Routine Morning Exercise on Muscle Response

by Adam Lusher

The breed that inspired War Horse and George Orwell is in danger of disappearing from Britain, a conservation charity warns. Having served faithfully in peace and war, they have become probably Britain’s three favourite breeds of working horse. Now, however, the Shire Horse, Suffolk Punch, and Clydesdale are in danger of becoming extinct in the UK.

The Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST), a charity dedicated to the conservation of farm animals, has warned that unless urgent action is taken, all three varieties of working horse could disappear from the British landscape within ten years.

Read more: Is the Great British Shire Horse About to Go Extinct?

by Sarah Nash

Dim red light or darkness at night is required to facilitate rest and recovery and, for the nightly rise in the circadian regulating hormone melatonin. Firstly, it is important to understand the role of the hormone melatonin. Melatonin is a protein hormone produced in the brain by the pineal gland at night and it is commonly referred to as the Hormone of Darkness. In the horse, melatonin is produced primarily during the dark hours and is turned off when light of the correct intensity and wavelength enters the eye. Low levels of melatonin by day and high levels at night time are important for a strengthened immune system and regulation of internal timing. White light at night disturbs this melatonin production and reduces rest, immune function and daytime performance capacity.

Ideal lighting facilitates rest and regeneration at night while permitting visibility for management routines. The low intensity red light at night provided by the Equilume Stable Light permits the nightly rise in melatonin, stabilising circadian rhythms while facilitating night time monitoring, management and feeding of horses while avoiding the negative consequences of white light at night.

Read more: Red Light at Night Facilitates Recovery and Rest

The equine respiratory system can be a major cause of poor performance or premature retirement from competition. A proven way to support the health of the respiratory system is by reducing resistance to breathing at the nose so horses breathe easier. To understand why, recall that when exercising horses don’t breathe through their mouth like humans, they only breathe through their nose. This means that oxygen which is vital for working muscles is not available if breathing through the nose is impaired.

If you place your hand a few inches above your horse’s nostrils, you’ll feel a region that is unsupported by bone or cartilage that collapses inward when you press into it.

During intensive exercise, this tissue overlying the nasal passage collapses inward which reduces the diameter of the nasal passage, causing increased resistance of airflow to the lungs when air is needed most. In fact, during exercise over 80% of the resistance to inhaling air into the lungs occurs in the upper airway and over 50% of the upper airway resistance is caused by the nasal passages.

FLAIR® Equine Nasal Strips are clinically proven to support the tissue that collapse into the nasal passages so horses breathe easier during intensive exercise.

Breathing easier helps horses optimize their stride, reduce fatigue and conserve energy. At the gallop, horses take a single breath with each stride. A horse struggling to move air in and out of the lungs will shorten its stride or consume more energy when taking in air that otherwise could be used to power the skeletal muscles. In other words, anything that makes breathing difficult will impair stride and performance. It can cause anxiousness or loss of concentration, too.

Read more: Breathing Easy: A Key to Equine Health and Performance