Lameness. A dreaded word. Uttering it means that your horse may be out of commission. Determining the cause can be challenging, delaying treatment. Here are four keys to proactive care and communication with your veterinarian can help keep lameness from sidelining your horse and ruining your ride.
1. Commit to regular soundness exams
Prevention is the best treatment. While there’s no foolproof way to stop lameness from happening, there are ways to reduce its effects. Veterinarians agree that regular soundness exams are one of the best ways to catch problems before they’ve negatively impacted your horse. “Bringing the horse in twice a year for a lameness exam is what you can do that will undoubtedly prolong this horse’s athletic life. We can detect arthritis early and come up with a rational plan,” Dr. Allen said.
During a soundness examination, your veterinarian may:
Observe your horse walking, trotting and cantering
Examine your horse’s back, neck and joints
Complete a nerve block by using local anesthetic to temporarily desensitize certain areas of the limb to help identify potential issues
Complete X-rays, possibly sharing hoof images with your farrier to help ensure ongoing proper shoeing
By establishing your horse’s “normal,” you and your veterinarian will be able to identify potential issues earlier. This is especially important because lameness may not always be obvious. In early stages, subtle changes in gait, performance or willingness to work may be the only indication.
2. Keep your veterinarian in the know
Because early signs of lameness can be difficult to spot, it’s smart to consider your veterinarian as your first source of lameness information. Similarly, your veterinarian relies on you for information. So be sure to share observations about how your horse is moving, after all, you know your horse better than anyone else. Take note of any changes in gait as the more time-based information you can give the better.
3. Agree to diagnostics, especially for DJD
Speaking of diagnosis, communication becomes even more important if you suspect your horse is dealing with a lameness issue. When your horse is being evaluated for lameness, your veterinarian will ask you a number of questions ranging from your horse’s routine exercise to diet and supplement use to changes in housing to other therapies your horse is receiving. Your veterinarian will also ask you to describe any past lameness your horse has experienced. All this information is critical to supporting the diagnostic procedures, which may include radiographs, nerve blocks, ultrasound and more, depending on the suspected issue.
Degenerative joint disease (DJD), also called arthritis, is often to blame for lameness. In fact, DJD causes up to 60 percent of lameness in horses. DJD is characterized by progressive deterioration of articular cartilage, along with changes in the bone and soft tissues of the joint. If left untreated, DJD continues to get worse. Diagnosing DJD allows you and your veterinarian to begin treatment early, because once cartilage wears away completely, it cannot be restored.
4. Know product differences
To help overcome lameness and get your horse moving again, veterinarians will recommend a treatment plan tailored to the location, severity and cause of the lameness, plus your horse’s type and level of work. When DJD is diagnosed as the cause, using therapies to both reduce the symptoms (lameness) and slow disease progression is ideal.
Successfully managing DJD may require a combination of therapies, such as FDA-approved drugs, complementary modalities and biologics. The many joint therapies vary widely in effectiveness, safety and cost, so it’s important to talk with your veterinarian about the differences. Working together to choose what’s right for your horse can make a real difference in long-term health.
I did this video one day this past week. It was a beautiful Texas Spring day.
I took a nice and easy ride with my boy, Nick. I’d been home for a couple of days after quite a stint away.
Like everyone, when I expend a lot of emotional and physical energy, I need to step back and restore a bit.
The concept of being self-aware of how much expending energy affects us and then recovering energy is a favorite idea I learned and practice in my performance training.
Research shows the habit of retrieving spent energy is a powerful game changer. It is a strategy that transformed my horse training as I strategically practiced it and one that continues to help me in life challenges.
It applies to literally all expenditures of energy, whether it’s in a sequence of moments when you’re riding (during pauses when you give yourself and your horse whatever time is needed to take a deep breath, lower your heart rate, and release excess muscle tension)—or in the bigger picture of restful and adequate sleep—or in the context of traveling – after putting extra energy out and then coming home and allowing the mind, body, and emotions time to recharge.
That’s what this video is all about.
I have a little challenge with that because I tend to go, go, go.
This morning, I was thinking about the topic of this video. I realized I needed to get grounded and rested, so I decided to ride through the canopy of trees on our driveway.
We’ve been working on our beautiful trees, cleaning and trimming them a bit. I’ve wanted to be under the trees, walking with Nick, or taking a little walk on the ground. It feels energizing. So I wanted you to have a little ride with me this morning.
We have to train recovery—our ability to re-energize. By that, I mean we have to make a conscious effort to do so. Restoring our energy is the number one thing that allows us to sustain energy.
We expend energy and then get it back. The latter must be done deliberately, or else we deplete our energy reserves.
I’m doing that this morning, and I’m sharing it with you. I hope you have a wonderful week.
In my last article on May 13, I talked about what softness was and wasn’t, the benefits of your horse being soft, and how I go about it. If this topic interests you, you might want to go back and read it before you read this one. In this article, I’ll give you a few suggestions on simple ways to increase softness and responsiveness in your horse.
One thing that makes a horse softer and more responsive is being more ambidextrous. Your horse will be better able to respond to your aides and will be more supple doesn’t have one side stiffer or more hollow than the other. Imagine how much more fluid and coordinated we’d be if we didn’t favor one side more than the other. I’ve written several articles on this in the past, because I think it’s so important for everything we do with our horses to be equally flexible and balanced on both sides.
First, it’s important to understand that about 80% of horses are stiff to their left and hollow to their right side. It’s easy to feel because when executing a symmetric circle to their stiff side, they don’t want to tip their nose to the inside as easily and they tend to collapse that circle by trying to lead with their shoulder. The opposite is true to their hollow side. They’re too bendable bendable and tend to drift to the outside of that circle. Also, it’s harder to move their shoulder in to keep them on it. So, first try to walk a perfect circle both ways making it very round and see if you can tell. Once you’ve figured that out, the next thing is to make the stiff side more supple and the hollow side a bit stiffer until they’re as balanced one way as they are the other.
Another way to tell is when you’re walking a circle to the right (if they’re more hollow that way), you’ll feel their hip cocked to the inside. In other words, their hind feet don’t follow in the tracks of their front feet.
Once you’ve determined which side is which, I’ll give you some ideas on how to even them up. I’d love some guidance from all of you regarding what problems you encounter and areas that you could use some suggestions for also.
A woman I know often feels like she comes up short in her horse program.
She loves her horses, but thinks her horses are just ok, and that her riding isn’t good enough (and likely never will be), and that she doesn’t have enough time, money, or friends in the horse world.
While that sounds a bit dire, she’s certainly not alone. Dare I say, many of us feel some version of the same, to some degree.
It’s called scarcity. It’s characterized by the belief that who we are and what we have are never enough, and that we need something more from the outside world to come to us or to happen to be fulfilled.
The biggest challenge is that a scarcity mindset causes us to compare ourselves to others and overlook our unique qualities. If that ‘more’ does come to us in some form from the outside, it’s likely still not enough.
Scarcity is insatiable and toxic.
In the horse world, we may think we need to be a better rider because so-and-so person is at a higher level. Or, if we compete and win a big championship, in our minds, we think it was a fluke, so we need to win more classes to prove we’re the real deal.
When it comes to learning new skills with our horses, one way scarcity might manifest is in the desire to be ‘fixed’ by someone or something else.
If we go to a clinic and hear something we’ve understood before, we might think we already know how to do that, but what we know is the what, not the how. We confuse knowledge with learning.
In a scarcity mindset, we want to explore NEW ideas to develop our skills, rather than delve deeper into the nuances, sequences, and rhythms of fundamentals we’re familiar with.
New strategies and concepts are good, but in their own time. There’s an order and a process to learning. First comes getting solid with what comes first.
There’s a concept that’s the opposite of scarcity. It’s called ‘sufficiency’. The idea is that when we want to expand anything, an excellent strategy is to go deeper with what we already have.
In the currently available “You Hold the Reins” mini-podcast series, Dr. Stephanie Burns, an expert in adult learning, offers a glimpse into how the adult human brain works, including learning new skills and getting unstuck with skills you struggle with.
She helps us understand that there’s so much we can do to learn more effectively. Plus, it’s essential for efficient and effective learning.
Learning requires taking knowledge (information/understanding) and practicing it in specific ways. This is work typically done between lessons and without the presence of instructors, for example.
We do ‘hold the reins’ to advancing our skills in the most efficient and effective ways possible – and it does require knowing how to study skills on our own – and then doing it!.
Stephanie’s teaching on ‘deep learning’ has brought to light a multitude of multidimensional concepts about adult learning and what’s possible for us.
In podcast two, for example, she explains the necessity for clarity, breaking things down, and repetition in more detail.
I was coaching someone recently, and I just kept hearing Stephanie’s words about deep learning in my mind.
I was thinking about how I could break down the ideas I was sharing even more, and also how I could make it meaningful to my student and help her do the same when she wasn’t with me.
It was as if a brick hit me, highlighting the importance of these deep learning concepts and how they need to be applied. As I thought about ‘how’ to use them, a new whole world of clarity, creativity, and design opened up.
Because of what Stephanie teaches and how she’s teaching it, she’s helped me ‘go deeper’ – and boy, there’s a lot of room there to expand. 😊
Dr. Burns calls learning our superpower. It’s not a talent given to some and not others. We just need to know how to do our part. That’s up to us.
If you haven’t signed up to hear them (they’re free), I recommend doing so soon! You won’t regret it! There’s so much you can do to help yourself. You just need to know how and then follow through.
I’m thrilled to be learning this information for myself. To me, it’s life-changing.
It opens doors to learning whatever you want to learn by doing what you do for yourself.
I was ruminating the other day about what it is about a really broke horse that makes everything about them look so good, so comfortable and so effortless.
We all know what it’s not. It’s the absence of stiffness, nervousness and fear.
Ok, but what is it? For me, it’s a beautiful blend of a horse who knows his job and is confident in his rider. One that is physically and mentally capable, plus enjoys what he’s doing.
This kind of horse isn’t a 90 day wonder who’s been forced into compliance without time being taken to condition his body and mind, but rather the product of great genes for the event that he’s to be trained for, a compliant, forgiving mind, a big heart, the physical capacity to do the job, plus his rider has explained things in bite sized pieces until he offers them at the slightest suggestion.
If we’re lucky enough to have the kind of horse, who is that trainable, they almost train themselves…but what about the horse who barely checks those boxes? Is he still worth the effort? For most of us mere mortals, that’s the only kind we’re ever going to have! I believe that most horses can develop into better moving animals and we can help build desire in them to do what we need them to by knowing what we want and breaking it down into small “chunks”, being consistent and fair, and as Greg Ward used to say, “improving them 1% a day and in 100 days, they’ll be 100% better!”
That may not be enough for today’s competitive world, but it surely a start that will help ensure them a better life if you have to move on from them.
The single most important ingredient is to help your horse be soft and responsive. When I first get on a horse, I don’t have an “agenda” for that ride, but rather I try to feel for stiff spots. When I find one, I rub on it like water on a stone, until the sharp edges of fear and resistance get smooth. It’s often a long process and patience is a prerequisite. It’s like massaging a sore muscle, you start off finding the area, then working on it a little deeper each time, until it bends and shapes like you want. I work on their face as well as their ribs and shoulders until they’re capable of moving the way I need them to. It will go like that all through their training process, because each time you introduce a new thing or add speed, resistance occurs. No horse can learn when speed increases or lack of understanding their adrenaline anymore than we can learn something when we are in the throes of an adrenaline rush.
In my next few articles, I’d like to go into this more and give you some ideas how to get your horse softer and keep their adrenaline in check.
Please let me know if you have any things that work well for you!
It can be so elusive. What does that mean? And most importantly, how can you develop it?
To me “riding with feel” means being so connected to your horse that you can sense how to communicate seamlessly with him moment to moment (like a dance partner leading the dance.)
For example, you show him what to do next with just the right amount of cuing. Or you detect what he is going to do next before he actually does it. You sense his muscles tighten or his body parts barely move before he actually changes direction. Because you sense these subtle shifts, you are right there with just the right amount of seat, feet or leg support to guide him moment to moment.
So how do you acquire this elusive quality of “feel” in an efficient way?
Well nothing replaces hours in the saddle, but there is an exercise you can do to help your quest.
First, riding a horse with “feel” is a “soft” skill.
In any endeavor (not just horses) a “soft” skill means being responsive to a constantly changing situation. What’s going on is never exactly the same … similar to a quarter back making moment to moment decisions play by play.
“Hard” skills, by comparison are the things you do over and over in the same way (for the most part) … like how you position yourself in the saddle, or how you hold the reins.
It’s important to understand that soft skills take longer to develop because it takes multiple exposures to multiple changing scenarios to develop accurate responsiveness.
It’s also important to know that it’s common to get frustrated as you learn soft skills because there’s no short cut to the time and experience necessary to learn them.
However, I do have an exercise for you that I know will help you develop “feel” by helping you become more mindful of your horse’s movements.
Step one is to walk your horse with your chin up, shoulders back and eyes up.
Breathe as you walk.
Simple.
Now, connect to your core. By this I mean tighten your abs a bit. Push you belly button back and down towards your spine.
Keep walking with great posture, eyes up, an awareness of your core … and breathing. Take your time. Get comfortable, yet alert.
Now, stay in that same posture and core awareness as you connect to your legs. Feel your legs moving with your horse’s ribs and legs. You don’t need to analyze what leg is doing what. Just “feel” the movement.
Keep breathing. Keep you eyes up. Stay soft in your body. Make your elbows heavy. Breathe into any body part that feels tight. Don’t rush. Get loose and stay loose. Be aware. Tune into the movement.
Now, go deeper. Drop your awareness further down and into your horse’s feet. You don’t have to know exactly which foot is where. Just gently take your mind through your core, through your legs, and then through his legs and into his feet.
Stay mentally connected to the rhythm of his feet. As you turn a corner imagine his feet positions. Perhaps in a curve to the left, you notice that his right front foot reaches a bit over the left front foot. Again, there’s no need to be super analytical. Just feel it.
And as you do other things … stopping, backing, trotting, loping … do this same exercise. Connect to his feet. Imagine what they are doing.
If you want to extend a horse’s gait, before you ask your horse with your feet, imagine his feet moving faster. If you want to slow down, imagine his feet slowing down.
Remember, do this exercise slowly at first.
The keys are to keep looking up. Keep breathing, Keep connecting to your core. Then become mindful of his feet.
In my last article I talked about letting your horse help you decide which event he’s most suited for, and now I want to share the factors I believe are most important when selecting a trainer (if you don’t plan to do the training yourself).
1. Shared Values The most important consideration for me is ensuring that my values align with those of the trainer. If I value honesty and open communication, I need a trainer who returns calls promptly and provides honest evaluations of my horse’s ability (or lack thereof). If our values don’t match, I’d likely become frustrated trying to track my horse’s progress. Similarly, if I prefer a high-standard facility where the horses and grounds could pass a military inspection, I wouldn’t be happy with a trainer whose facilities leave my horse standing in the mud during winter.
2. Training Methods Next, I consider whether I appreciate the trainer’s methods. Are they sensitive to each horse’s individuality, or do they follow a cookie-cutter approach? Is it a rigid “my way or the highway” attitude, or does the trainer offer flexibility to accommodate different horses and clients?
3. Proven Track Record and Horse Care It’s also essential that the trainer has a proven track record in both training and showing for the event my horse seems naturally inclined toward. Even better is if they have a proactive program for maintaining their horses’ soundness. Do they take horses for regular soundness checks, nip potential issues in the bud, and ensure proper deworming and vaccination?
4. Facility and Staff Qualifications I always check if the facility is safe and if the staff are qualified. A well-maintained environment with knowledgeable support makes a significant difference in the training experience.
5. Geographical Location Finally, consider the trainer’s location. How often do you plan to visit your horse or observe its progress? If you’re a very hands-on owner, sending your horse to a trainer in a different state might not be ideal.
You might not get every box checked, but it’s important to know what matters most to you. Much like choosing a life partner, it helps to discuss your expectations openly so that everyone is on the same page.
I’d love to hear what other factors you consider important when choosing a trainer!
In this audio I discuss a friend’s experience of feeling self-conscious and distracted during a private riding lesson with a trainer she admired.
Her feeling is natural due to our innate desire to connect and be approved by others.
I then suggest a simple tool for handling such feelings: asking oneself what one’s job is at that moment. In this case, my friend’s job was to gather information and feedback.
I introduced the concept of “pinging” (recently learned by Dr. Stephanie Burns), which involves directing one’s brain to focus on something specific—in this case, hearing and integrating the trainer’s information into the ride—undistracted.
I emphasized the importance of setting an intention to tune into the experience’s purpose and integrate the feedback received.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
A friend of mine asked me this question this week.
But before I share my answer, here’s a little background.
She went to one of her favorite trainers to ride with him, and it was a private lesson. She was very excited and greatly admired him for how he teaches and for his kindness, clearness, helpfulness, and support.
But when she was there and riding with him, she felt self-conscious and distracted from being present with her horse and taking in his instruction.
So that’s what we’re doing here – talking about managing self-consciousness in lessons.
We can all relate to what she said because of our innate desire to connect with other people, to care for them, for them to care for us, for them to like us, and for them to approve of us. We’re hardwired for that as humans.
So that’s what I mean when I say it’s natural.
And while it was a great luxury to have his undivided attention, it is almost like he had laser vision! We imagine someone seeing every little flaw and maybe being judgmental.
And, of course, that’s the farthest from the truth.
Great teachers see what’s working, and then they see the next step we can take to help us in our weaker areas.
My friend knew why she was there and knew all that rationally, but she wanted help to sort out her feelings of distraction and self-consciousness.
A straightforward tool that can be very useful is asking ourselves, “What’s my job?”
At that moment, her job was gathering information to get feedback on what she was doing well and what she could do to keep improving.
I will tell you about this fun fact I learned from my friend, Dr. Stephanie Burns.
We can program our brains in a fun way; she calls it ‘pinging.’
Pinging is telling our brain to pay attention to something.
We can say, “Hey, brain, I want you to pay attention and take in the feedback I’m getting without judgment. I just want to hear it and integrate it. So, that’s what I want to pay attention to.”
When other thoughts arise, or someone else distracts me, I want my brain to say, “Thank you, but no thank you.”
In other words, I will program my brain to take in the information I want and leave the rest.
I’ll relax and take a breath. I’ll keep breathing; I’ll listen and feel my horse, and I’m going to play with the ideas. When appropriate, I’ll get clarification if I don’t understand something.
But my only job is to tune into the purpose of why I’m there.
In this case, the purpose was information and feedback – not to be my close circle of support.
That’s the job of a spouse or a good friend.
She could tell herself, “I’m not there for their approval. I’m there for the information. Before and as I ride, I will set an intention to ping or tune into the information I desire to learn, letting it come into my mind and body and integrate it. To the best of my ability, I will allow that ongoing information to soak in, incorporate feedback and understanding, relax into that cycle, and take in what this experience and mentor offer me.”
So there you go. It’s about directing your brain to be clear about an activity’s purpose, get grounded, and set an intention about where you will focus your attention.
When something distracts you, say to yourself, “Thank you, but no, thank you. I’m here to take in information, relax, hear, see, respond as best I can, and learn.”
Okay, enjoy. I hope that’s helpful.
I hope you have a great week. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
Believe it or not, spring is coming soon and if you have 2-year-olds, you might have to start deciding what route to take with them. How do you decide whether you should go cutting, cow horse or reining with them? It’s really important that the horse has the aptitude and physical ability to do the event that you want them to do, so sometimes it’s best to let them make the choice. Young horses usually show interest in cattle very early on if they want to cut or be a cow horse, but they can fool you and not get really interested in cattle until later. Caylee Wilson just wrote a really good article for the NRCHA news called “Aptitude Test”, and I’d like to quote him in a few places regarding this.
He said, “If you have a horse that’s a good, balanced mover, is cowy, stays light on its front end while using its hocks, and has a very appealing overall look, it makes it easy to do the cow horse on that particular horse. On a horse that can’t do these things naturally or isn’t a very pretty mover, it’s going to take a lot of work to get it to do what the natural horse can do easily, and it’s probably never going to be comparable to the natural moving horse. If that less appealing mover is cowy, has good footwork and is quick to get to the ground on the stop, he might be make a great cutting horse prospect. A smart owner will let the horse’s strengths dictate the horse’s career rather than pushing the horse into a predetermined discipline.”
“Here’s Cayley on a good moving, well balanced horse with lots of eye appeal, and the IT factor!” photo credit Abigail Boatwright
Some things you want to observe while starting him are; does he travel out comfortably, naturally, balanced and want to use his hocks? Is he feely or is he a horse with low energy vs perhaps having a Ferrari’s engine under the hood? Does he have a fragile or fractious mindset vs steady and forgiving? How interested is he in a cow? Does he take guidance from his rider easily on a cow? If he’s athletic but doesn’t like to be interfered while working a cow, cutting might be a better option. The reined cow horse has to be willing to take direction from the rider. Sometimes hotter horses make good cutters if they have athletic ability and enough interest in cattle where it would take a lot more work to make that one a cow horse. If he’s pretty, well balanced and a good mover without much cow, reining may be the best option.
Caylee also addressed a horse’s build and body balance. He said, “smaller horses can end up being really good cow horses. It has more to do with strength and power and whether the horse is strong enough to run and stop and get around for the fence turn. Usually, a bigger horse will be stronger, but they can also be a bit slower across the turn, however, that small horse might have more heart and try and can outperform the bigger horse even though he’s not as strong. Heart is a desire from within the horse himself to perform. I’ve learned over time you can have a perfectly balanced, conformationally correct horse that just doesn’t move well or have the desire to want to do it. I’ve learned that horses can defy their confirmation and size. This is typically an exception and not the rule. That innate drive in the horse is the key element,” Wilson said. I completely agree with Cayley on that!
Kaylee also addressed bloodlines, saying, “it’s nice to have a pedigree with desired bloodlines. The horse must also be a little bit special to make a career as a cow horse. Does it have presence, its own charisma and will it be crowd pleasing?”
Those are all important considerations when evaluating your 2-year-olds potential.
Then, will you be sending it to a trainer? If so, which one? I’ll be covering that in my next article. Also, a full set of x-rays before you get started is important so you know what potential issues you might face and be sure they’re manageable.
