All the Creatures

On several of the horse message boards that I frequent, a new, as yet not developed, website was being discussed. The domain is ratemyhorsepro.com  At first glance it looks like many of the dozen or so websites that have popped up over the years to let people rant over the bad and good horse trainers, sellers and breeders. I thought that both the Fugly Blog and Horse Trainers from Hell had the horse industry pretty well covered when it came to the scum of the horse industry but I could be wrong.

I did a bit of digging around about this new website and found out on the COTH message board that a Debbie Hanson has the website in her signature. A bit more digging around and I found this article about Debbie (if indeed it is the same Debbie Hanson on the COTH board). The article is about a woman who got taken by 2 horse dealers that ripped her off for about $28K. She ended up getting the FBI involved and now there is legislation in the works to help expose horse dealers. If indeed this new website is this Debbie’s idea, all I can say is more power to her. I just wonder how the website will be done and how if any checking will be done on the contributors. I would like to see more of a clearing house of criminal records online so you can see who you are dealing with in any venue without having to pay for the information.

All the Creatures

If you have ever had an injured horse that needed to be stall bound then you would know that the horse can also get a little stir crazy when let out for hand walking. I had a mare that was injured years ago and I needed to keep her calm while she had a week’s worth of stall rest. Rather than put her on a sedative, I looked into herbs and vitamins. I asked fellow horse owners if they knew of the best multivitamin for mental calmness. None of them did, until I talked to someone who trained racehorses. He told be about adding vitamin B-1 to their daily diet. It seems that horses that are undergoing stress use up B-1 at a tremendous rate and then when they are not getting enough, stress out even more.

So I got some vitamin B-1 crumbles and added it to her diet. Boy, did I see a change overnight! She was no longer stressed out. I had another horse that would always get real vocal after we got to a horse show or got ready for a trail ride (after trailering to the spot). A few hours before the ride in the trailer I gave him some vitamin B-1 and when we arrived he was calm and not vocal!

I found my miracle drug for keeping a horse calm for trailering, stressful training and rehab…….a simple vitamin….vitamin B-1.

All the Creatures

The one thing I have learned as a horse owner and trainer is that you can never start too early training young horses. Sure, almost everyone knows that you train a foal to wear a halter and lead them around. In fact most experienced breeders will have the foal use to having it’s feet picked up and have had their feet trimmed at 6 weeks old.

I have found another very useful training tool for foal and weanlings, the horse blanket.

Foal wearing Techno fleece blanket

By putting a blanket on a foal or weanling horse you would not only keep them warm and clean, you will also teach them not to spook at items rubbing against their bodies. The sight feel of fabric moving around them will help desensitize them for saddle training later on. Use the blanket as a training tool. I don’t want to hear you say “my young horses don’t need blankets”, but instead “blankets will help de-spook my horses, so I use them”

You don’t even have to leave the blanket on for more than a few hours a day it you don’t want to. In fact it would help with their training if they got use to having the blanket taking off and put on again everyday. I also like to take the blanket off over their heads so they get use to having something block their vision once and awhile. It also gets them use to having something brush around their ears and head, making them less head shy.

So will you be using a horse blanket as a training tool from now on?

All the Creatures