Horse Health Care: Roach-Backed Horse Tests the Waters at his First Show

This past Sunday Fezzywig and I attended our first hunter/jumper show. Being that Fezzywig just started jumping, we attended this show just to test the waters and see how this big guy liked the show ring. The plan was that if he liked it, I would continue him in jumper training. If not, I would need a new plan.

We entered in the ... wait for it ... cross-rail division! Oh don't worry. I was prepared for the laughter as I entered the arena on my giant 16.2 roach-backed whale of a horse, going up against a bunch of kids on ponies.

The Results of Fezzywig's First Show
As you can probably already see, Fezzywig did great. He and I ended up with a first and two second-place ribbons, plus the Championship for the cross-rail division. Too hilarious, since he bucked in the flat class.

No matter. He LIKED jumping and was quite willing to trot over teensy-tiny cross-rails. He was also quite amenable for a Wood horse personality type, which tends to be very competitive in my mustang mare, Valentine. Apparently, when you put a Wood in a warmblood, it turns out to be a lot mellower!

What I Brought with Me to the Show
Although Fezzy and I did not hop over any jumps taller than 15", which was a total no-brainer for a 16.2 hand horse, he does have a history of back problems. So here's what I brought to the show, in addition to all the normal gear:

• Eleviv: To keep Fezzywig in his normal healing parasympathetic nervous system
• Homeopathic Arnica: In case he hurt something trotting over these teensy poles
• Horse Goo: To keep everything from his gut to his mind functioning normally (it has mangosteen juice, blue-green algae, probiotics, enzymes)
  

I gave Fezzy a double dose of the Horse Goo plus 2 Eleviv capsules starting the day before the show, and also the day of the show. Being a Wood horse personality type, Fezzywig was not fearful, but he did occasionally get a little goofy on me (like spooking at the same jump over and over again). Wood horses love mischief. But, between the Eleviv and the Horse Goo I think we more or less kept his mischief under control!

See? Even the most chronically hump-backed horse CAN be healed. For more thoughts on healing, click here.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader. Also, check out my ebook for wacky horses and humans, or holler at me if you want to know how I fund my horse addiction ... and you can, too!

Spooking Horse? The One Type You Can't Desensitize

Got a spooking horse?

Well, for every way that your horse can find to spook, there is a cowboy way to fix that spooking horse ... and some of them are downright scary.

The milder versions, which involve sacking out the horse with a burlap bag, often work just fine. It's the wilder versions that involve tying a horse under a set of train tracks for a day that scare me. These methods can be dangerous or life-threatening to the horse.

And then there's the spooking horse that you literally can't calm down by using desensitizing techniques. Which horse is that?

The Shao Yang personality type horse.

Forget trying to de-spook a horse of this personality (learn more about horse personalities here). Trust me. I have a Shao Yang, a lovely mare named Sammie Joe (that's her picture). My neighbor has a Shao Yang mare, too. De-spooking doesn't work.

Why You Can't Sack Out the Shao Yang Spooking Horse
Shao Yang horses are, according to the horse personality typing system developed by Dr. Madalyn Ward, a combination of Fire and Wood. The Fire aspect of this horse personality type makes this horse sensitive, flashy, and demanding of their human. The Wood part of this horse is competitive, athletic, and often bossy. Put the Fire and the Wood together and you get a horse who often spooks or jumps at the most unexpected moments.

And you can't "fix" this spooking horse with any of the traditional methods because they won't work. For instance, when I first adopted Sammie Joe, a mustang mare, she was spooky as heck. I tried sacking her out, which took a couple hours per session. The next day, I'd go to check the results of the previous day's session, only to discover that it was a whole new day for Sammie Joe. She reacted as if she had never seen the sack before. This happened over and over and over again.

Lesson learned: Every day is a new day for a spooky Shao Yang horse.

My neighbor's mare is the same way. She spooks at the RoboSteer we use for practice in our roping clinics. At the end of the day, she will accept the RoboSteer, but the next day she'll act as if she's never seen it before. Then she goes into the same spooking horse routine as the day before.

How to Deal with a Shao Yang Spooking Horse
The one and only way I have found to channel all that spooky energy, since sacking out doesn't really work, is to give the Shao Yang a job she likes. For Sammie Joe, that job is jumping. Put her in an arena filled with jumps and she stops spooking.

During warm up, she might still spook at all kinds of things, but when she is in the arena by herself, during the actual competition, she's all business. When I ride her in a jumper class, I feel like I'm riding a guided rocket. She'll wait for me to point her to a jump, then she literally "locks on" and starts counting strides to the jump ... and her math is NEVER wrong. She likes to do a challenging job (the Wood part of her personality), and she likes to do it perfectly (the Fire part of her personality). She never touches a single jump with her feet and she never meets a fence wrong. And she never spooks.

The same is true of my neighbor's mare. On the RoboSteer, she's spooky as heck, but put her on a live steer and all of sudden she can focus. She doesn't spook or jig. She goes for the steer. The Wood part of her personality, which really likes to push and chase things, steps up and she suddenly does her job without spooking.

Do You Have a Shao Yang Horse?
If you have a spooking horse you just can't desensitize, chances are that you have a Shao Yang horse. Some other characteristics of Shao Yang horses include:

• extreme athleticism
• tough feet when healthy
• strong opinions
• more likely to run than buck when troubled
• love of speed

Sound familiar? If so, then don't bother trying to de-spook your horse. Instead, put him to work in a job he loves. Once he learns his job, he'll do it with style, dependability, and no spooking!

If you're not sure what your horse's personality type is, check out these horse personality testing resources:

Horse Harmony Website
Horse Harmony Test
Horse Harmony Audios

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader. Also, check out my ebook for wacky horses and humans, or holler at me if you want to know how I fund my horse addiction ... and you can, too!

Photo credit: Barb Young Photography

Horse Health Care: Using the Trailer to Help a Roach-Backed Horse

Roach-backed horses can be very difficult for the average owner to treat, especially if they want to use a do-it-yourself approach. These horses have a "hump" in their spine, usually where the hips join the rest of the ribcage.

This hump is usually caused by some sort of accident or traumatic event, and is difficult to resolve because so many parts of the body are involved. The necessary adjustments can often be difficult for a horse owner to perform.

Fezzywig: A Case in Point
Fezzywig is my roach-backed adopted horse. He jumped out of a tall corral as a youngster, and thereafter had a hump in his back. Although his horse health care program involves a lot of daily bodywork, I still could not free up some of his lumbar vertebrae myself. He would also get continually stuck in his withers, so that in addition to his roached back, he had a downhill posture with a large dip behind his withers.

Adjusting him so that he stays in the correct posture is extremely difficult. For one thing, he's 16.2 hands and not always very cooperative when I want to adjust him. Second, he is so stuck that even if I do manage to adjust him (using Equine Touch, Bowen, network chiropractic, or stretching), his muscle memory flips him right back into his roach-backed posture within an hour or two.

Talk about frustrating!

Enter the Trailer for Horse Health Care Bodywork
At the height of my frustration, I called Dr. Madalyn Ward to help me. We decided that we needed to use some "tools" to shake his muscle memory loose ... and we needed to do it in a way that wouldn't cause my body to be too sore. She suggested that I continue my backing exercises, but also start backing him up a steep hill.

While we do have a steep hill in the neighborhood, it's about a mile away, and I needed some horse health care approaches I could use daily that were easy and convenient. I had tried to use some of the Linda Tellington-Jones approaches, such as having Fezzywig walk over poles of different heights to shake loose his muscle memory, but being a Wood horse personality (learn more about horse personality typing here) he just knocked them over and walked through him. No use.

Then Madalyn came up with the brilliant idea of using the trailer as my "hill." Instead of backing Fezzy up a hill, she wondered whether I could back him into the trailer. I decided to give it a try, since I don't have access to a chiropractor here, and I love to do my own horse health care.

The Trailer as a Bodywork and Body Awareness Tool
Our first attempts at backing into the trailer were less than useless. Although Fezzy understood what I wanted, he couldn't seem to manage it. So I broke the exercise down into smaller pieces to see what was getting in the way.

Walking In and Backing Out
First I walked Fezzy into the trailer so that all four feet were in. Next, I asked him to back out of the trailer, which is different than how we normally exit the trailer front feet first. It took him quite a while to get organized enough to back out. At first, he could not seem to hold his weight on one hind leg while stepping to the ground with the other. After about 5 tries, he was able to so, although his muscles quivered a bit. We did this exercise several times successfully, and he showed many releases. He licked and chewed, yawned, and moved his tongue around.

Then I tried a different variation. I walked him into the trailer so that only his front feet were in the trailer while his back feet remained on the ground. I praised him. Next, I asked him to step one foot at a time into the trailer. I was surprised that he had a lot of difficulty doing so.

He grunted and had to sort of "launch" himself into the trailer to get in. This told me that his stifles and hindquarters were still quite weak, despite the backing we had been doing. That was a good diagnostic piece of information. When he was able to do this exercise successfully a few times, I stopped and moved on. I did not want him to strain his stifles, which had been quite sore when I got him (though they are not sore anymore).

Walking In and Walking Out
Next I tried the opposite variation. I walked Fezzy into the trailer front feet first and with all four feet in the trailer. Then I turned him around so that he was facing the back of the trailer. From there, I asked him to step only his front feet to the ground and halt. This left his hind feet in the trailer.

This posture achieved the same kind of position I would look for had I been backing him up a steep hill-the position that would free up the stuck lumbar vertebrae. The posture also clearly knocked some of muscle memory loose. Fezzy was happy to stand there for 5 minutes or more. He licked and chewed and dropped his head straight to the ground. I had him rest alternate hind feet on the toe so that his pelvis would shift back and forth a bit, too. He was fine with holding his hind end on one leg while resting the other leg, both ways.

Finally, I asked him to back up and bring his front feet back into the trailer. This was considerably more difficult for him than stepping out of the trailer. He had to spend a few minutes getting organized and thinking through how to accomplish this. He finally managed to do so, with a bit of stumbling and bumbling. I showered him with praise. We then repeated the exercise several times. I can see that this maneuver works his core muscles ... a lot! This excites me because Fezzy has always appeared pot-bellied with a bulging bottom line. I believe this maneuver seriously engages his core abdominal muscles and will help him build strength in his hind end as well.

Wow, what a tool for my horse health care toolkit!

What I've Learned from the Trailer Exercises
Based on the responses Fezzy gave me during these exercises, I concluded that he does not have the strength in his hind end yet to back into the trailer by himself. However, I do think that the intermediate exercises that he was able to do will make changes to his posture and start engaging the correct muscles for movement. I also believe that daily use of this exercise will shake free some of the stuck lumbar vertebrae, as well as the areas stuck between his sternum and withers.

Fezzy certainly likes these exercises, and I noticed a great deal more movement across his hips after I turned him loose. I will continue to work with these exercises as a form a chiropractic adjustment and muscle retraining. Using a big immovable object like a trailer forces Fezzy to think about where his body parts are placed, and how to use them in a coordinated manner to complete these exercises. While he normally looks quite balanced in pasture, his inability to properly engage the right muscles in his back, abdominals, and hindquarters due to his injury means he is actually quite unbalanced.

I love the continuing journey of bodywork. I love the innovations, the learning, the growth, and the increasing bond I have with Fezzywig, who, despite being a Wood horse personality, tries really hard and fights me very little. Amazing. More updates to come, of course!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader. Also, check out my ebook for wacky horses and humans, or holler at me if you want to know how I fund my horse addiction ... and you can, too!

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sskennel/ / CC BY 2.0

Horse Training: Does Your Horse's Tail Tell Tales?

Here is an interesting experiment you can try on your horse: hold the base of your horse's tail in one hand and use your other hand to shape the tail into a question mark.

Now try rotating your horse's tale in a circle in either direction.

Was your horse's tail flexible or stiff as a board? The results of this tail test tell a tale!

What Tales Does Your Horse's Tail Tell?
I originally learned this bodywork technique when I was studying with a TTouch practitioner, so I believe it comes from the material created by Linda Tellington-Jones. According to this practitioner, the flexibility of a horse's tail tells you how flexible his personality is ... or how open he is to change.

Back then, I only had one horse and didn't think much of this test. I was more interested in showing and winning, so my horse basically had to do what I asked, flexible tail or not.

These days, I have a herd of five horses, each with a very distinctive horse personality. I suddenly remembered this little test, and tried it on each horse. Guess what? The results were very "telling," and matched each horse's personality to a tee.

The Results of the Tail Test
So the results are both surprising and predictable. Here's a list of my horses as well as each horse's personality type (based on the Horse Harmony personality typing system developed by Dr. Madalyn Ward).

Valentine: Wood (one who wants to win, also playful)
Samantha: Fire/Wood or Shao Yang (an ultimate competitor with speed)
Reyacita: Metal (needs to know her job, loves routine)
Walker: Fire/Water or Shao Yin (very smart, not very tough)
Fezzywig: Not sure

So the results of the tail test were:

Valentine: Fairly flexible
Samantha: Stiff as a board
Reyacita: Stiff as a board
Walker: Stiff as a board
Fezzywig: Flexible as a rubber hose

These results were very interesting to me. I could not have predicted some of these results. Here's why.

Valentine
I would have predicted that her personality, being fairly competitive and sometimes aggressive, would fairly stiff because she doesn't always agree with my training program. However, the playful side of the Wood personality means she is open to anything that might be fun or interesting (or get her in trouble, which she doesn't mind in the least). So that side of her makes her tail fairly flexible.

Samantha
The fact that her tail was stiff was no big surprise. Samantha has always been a "my way or the highway" kind of gal, willing to cooperate only to win. The Fire aspect of her personality makes her unbending, as Fire-type horses can be very rigid in their mental processes as well as their bodies.

Reyacita
Metal horses love routine and have to "know" their job description to feel comfortable. Messing around with the tail was not part of Reyacita's job description, so her tail was stiff. Also, anything "out of the ordinary" makes a Metal horse resist, so her stiff tail was also no surprise.

Walker
His tail was a big surprise. Normally Shoa Yin horses are all about "getting along." In fact, many Shao Yin horses will be so intent on pleasing their owner that they will literally go until they drop, all in the name of being pleasing. However, being that Walker has Fire in his temperament, he is also rigid in certain respects (as he has recently shown me). I had mistaken his easygoing temperament for that of a marshmallow, but his tail stiffness and recent clear demands to me tells me he's not a total softie. In fact, I'm discovering that many a Shao Yin horse will demand his way or literally die trying. They can be surprisingly rigid.

Fezzywig
I haven't yet figured out Fezzy's horse personality type, but his tail is as flexible as a rubber hose, so I'm guessing he has no Fire in him. He seems quite easygoing, fun-loving, and fearless. He also has a sweet tooth so I'm guessing he's either Earth or one of the Earth combination types. More will be revealed ...

Wintertime Tail Tales
I hope you enjoyed this little article, and maybe it will inspire you to go out and find out what tales your horse's tail tells you. After all, it's wintertime (at least here in Colorado) and there's not much riding to be done, so this might help keep cabin fever at bay ... at least for a day or two!

Enjoy ... oh, and please share your results if you get any. I'd love to know. If you want to personality type your horse (or yourself) or learn more about horse personality types, click the links below:

Horse Harmony Test
Horse Harmony Resources

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader. Also, holler at me if you want to know how I fund my horse addiction ... and you can, too!