I personally have a growing interest in horse health and all the many little jigsaw pieces that make up that phrase. My present horse Ellie has led me on a fascinating learning journey in this area as it became clear that without more knowledge and help in this area I was not going to get much further with her. I have met some amazing professionals on this quest and know that I am still learning and finding out more on a daily basis but thought it might be useful to share what I have learnt so far with you as from what I see many of us are in the same situation and it can often be so difficult to see what is caused by behaviour problems, health problems, education problems, balance and movement problems and so on so I hope that some of this may at least point you in the right direction.

 

The main thing I have learnt is that health is made up of a lot of ingredients (some larger than others but all just as vital). This seems fairly obvious but being able to take care of all these ingredients even if you know what they are is often really difficult and often requires a team of people with the right knowledge being able to see to/ treat your horse at the right time and finding the right people and the right information for your individual horse is not easy.

 

I have written my individual journey with my horse Ellie below as she had a lot of issues that we've had to work for you in the hope that it may help you find the right information for you and your horse. Obviously I am not a vet and am not a trained health care practitioner so am just sharing my own personal experiences and learnings from along the way.

 

To begin though the main areas that seems to be important to get right and will have a large affect if you get them wrong are:

 

The diet and keeping the digestive system including the horses gut healthy and working efficiently. - If the gut is unhealthy then it can become leaky and cause the body and its systems to become toxic. Things that should never leave the gut are able to pass through the gut wall and into the body causing problems such as toxicity and inflammation which in turn can cause many different problematic systems and diseases. Gut problems can be caused by many things but big factors include chemicals in the feed/ forage such as fertilisers and pesticides or airbourne chemicals such as when the farmer sprays the fields next door,  some of the richer 'cow grasses' such as Rye grass are just too rich for horses and again cause problems. Also some medications such as wormers and antibiotics can cause gut problems (these medications may be vital and do a good job too but can in some cases have the side affect of damaging the gut). too many cereals and unnatural products in feeds and also periods of not eating for too long (which builds up too much digestive acid and can cause ulcers) and stressful conditions such as travelling can upset the digestive system. Some horses have weaker systems than others and so therefore are more susceptible so have trouble eating thing things that other horses don't

 

The feet - If the horses feet are out of balance then it makes it almost impossible for your horse to move freely and carry it's body in balance. This causes stresses and strains on other areas of the body and often leads to physical breakdown somewhere. Tendons are a common area to go. Finding someone who is working on balancing and strengthening what is going on inside the hoof rather than just making it look pretty on the outside or just finding a way to keep shoes on is important. I have seen horses with horrendous shaped feet (long toe and flat foot) completely change shape and grow strong in a relatively short space of time (1 year) with the correct trimming so if you are told thats just the way his feet are then I would look elsewhere. I'm sure you can't get every horses feet perfect but from what I've seen I do think you can improve them a lot and make them and therefore the horse a lot stronger. Diet also plays a vital part in foot strength but that will be covered with a healthy diet anyway.

 

The teeth.

If the horses teeth are causing the jaw to not be balanced this will affect the tmj and have a massive knock on affect on the rest of the body. The horse will struggle with free movement, balance and straightness if the tmj is not working as it should. There is also a small bone under the jaw called the hyoid and this again affects balance if its out of place and it often is. My personal choice is to use a natural balance dental practioner ideally trained along the lines of Spencer La fleur. someone who understands how a horse's jaw is meant to move naturally. I have also learnt that having the gag on and open wide for too long can also cause problems with the tmj so its vital that they let the horse close its mouth regularly through the dental treatment. I personally also won't let anyone use power tools on my horses as it's way to easy to take too much tooth that way.

 

Exercise.

Horses need to learn to use the muscles when they move that will cause them to move in comfort and balance and be able to carry our weight without causing them injury. This is like us walking around with good posture, if you slouch all the time or favour one leg you'll eventually start to get stiffnesses and aches and pains and are more likely to injure yourself. Horses tend to be made to look 'pretty' by getting them to tuck their heads in but all this causes is problems later on. To help the horse you first need to have them going freely forwards in a calm relaxed manor and do suppling exercises to keep them equally supple each side over time they'll build strong back muscles and hind quarters. This takes a lot more time than most are willing to take and also involves teaching your horse to listen to your seat so you don't need to pull on the reins to stop and turn. When the horse has enough balance and strength you can then gradually shift their centre of balance back so the weight comes more onto the hind quarters and will naturally carry their heads in the sought after 'pretty' way. This is self carriage and has absolutely nothing to do with forcing a horse to tuck it's head in in any way. Very few people ever actually achieve this so its hard to find good examples. If you can help your horse find freely forwards without needing the reins to hold them back or need to be constantly nagging them to go and can keep them laterally supple then your horse should stay healthy and happy in this posture for most things most people wish to do such as hacking and low level fun competitions.

 

Medications

some medications are vital and life saving and I would always follow a vets advice but they can have some negative side affects and there are also many alternative herbal remedies that are worth trying too. If you have to medicate a lot you may end up being in the downward spiral of causing the toxicity thats building to cause new problems or exacerbate ongoing ones that you'll then need to medicate for or up the medication for causing more problems and so on.

 

Lifestyle

 

 

Training method and variety

 

mental, emotional and physical health in balance.

 

 

Ellies story....

 

When I bought Ellie she didn't appear unhealthy in anyway and the vets didn't spot any problems but now I look back there were little 'signs' that I didn't realise at the time were 'signs'. For example... When I first had her she had no clue where her feet were and tripped over everything and even fell over running down a slope a couple of times. I put it down to her being fairly young and still growing, her anxious nature, the fact that her feet were not a good natural shape (she had been regularly shod traditionally before I had her) and the fact that she had only lived on flat pasture and been trained in an arena up until this point. Other 'signs' included her tendency to get warts on her face and also that she was starting to get sarcoids around her groin area, inner thighs and tummy. They were only small but the flies made them multiply and they were starting to grow. She was extremely headshy and although I can normally help horses over come this pretty quickly, with her it never seemed to get much better. She was also extremely reactive to pressure of any kind, again I put this down to being sensitive by nature and previous training etc. and thought it would quickly get better. She also really struggled to find any kind of relaxation in any gait both with ground work and ridden, she never really blew out but would just run and run and run if I let her. I tried all the things I know that can help her with this (and again have helped many horses pretty quickly) but although things got slightly better nothing really changed. In the beginning I put a lot of this down to the fact that I wasn't spending enough time with her and so wasn't consistent enough etc. and I do think this was a little to do with it but from what I have since learnt it wasn't the main reason. Her health was the main problem and it was causing her problems with her balance, relaxation, her ability to think straight, giving her excess nervous energy and anxiety and also her ability to move properly.

 

Luckily I came across a lady called Donna Blinman who is a certified vet as well as a cranial osteopath and who has also studied the digestive system and internal systems of the horse. She is very holistic in her approach and has thankfully helped Ellie massively.

 

I first took Ellie to Donna because of her sarcoids. I really didn't want to go down the liverpool cream route as new it could be painful and had also heard they may be something to do with diet as I knew people often got good results from feeding certain herbs. The stories of which herbs to use and whether they worked or not varied though so I didn't want to just waste money by guessing. I had heard of Donna and knew she looked at diet and the horses gut health so thought it was worth a try... 

 

At our first appointment I said what I'd come for but was open to anything she found. She immediately told me that the sarcoids were not the problem at all and not to worry about them as they were just a symptom and if we treated the cause they'd go away and sure enough they did, they all were gone in just six weeks.

 

Donna examined Ellie and told me she had a lot of underlying problems that needed addressing and that it may take a couple of years to get her really right. The main thing she found was that her system was very toxic which had caused her organs to become congested so she had started to use her skin as a way of getting rid of the toxins. This is why she had the sarcoids and warts and was prone to mud fever (even in summer) and tended to get very sunburnt really easily (which is also a sign of toxicity). Donna then went on to explain that the reason her system was so toxic was because digestive system was toxic and her hind gut wasn't healthy. She had a leaky gut which means larger particles can get through the gut wall lining when they shouldn't and end up floating around the body causing problems. This had caused her organs such as her liver and kidneys to become congested and not function as they should leading to a toxic build up. This then had caused problems with her movement too as because her tummy had been painful she'd learnt to move in a protective way and wasn't able to move her sacroiliac joint properly so she couldn't use her hindquarters properly which was why she struggled with her balance and relaxation in movement so much. Added to this was the fact that because of the tension in her abdomen her diaphram had ended up getting stuck in the breath in position so she wasn't using it properly which is why I never heard her blow out - she couldn't!. Before I went to Donna I wouldn't have said that Ellie looked uncomfortable in her stomach, she didn't care if you touched her around that area, didn't mind her girth being done up and never pulled faces when being saddled or kicked at her tummy or anything like I would have expected her main symptoms were her skins issues and her anxious behaviour and difficulty finding relaxation whilst moving. Since then I have looked into gut health problems a lot more both for animals and humans and have come to realise that gut issues don't always show themselves as pain in the tummy at all but can cause all sorts of symptoms that we often see as diseases in their own right. From what I understand this is because having a leaky gut usually causes toxic build up and inflammation and depending on where the inflammation is this will show up as various different symptoms from minor acne to much more serious issues. For more information on gut health I'd really recommend some of the articles written by Chris Kresser.

 

In Ellie's case her hind gut issues were causing problems with her skin, her ability to move freely and were affecting her mental and emotional state. Donna told me one of the main reasons I was struggling to keep her mind connected and calm was because of her gut issues and that if we improved her gut health she'd find it much easier to concentrate and take in information. She told me the first thing we had to do was detox her system and then she would see her again in three months and we'd look at improving her hind gut health but she needed to detox first. Donna physically treated her and helped her organs 'drain' better and released her diaphram and sent me away with a list of three things to give her for the detox. Organic Artichoke tincture and Milk thistle powder for her liver and spleen and bentonite green clay for her digestive system. I added these to her feed and was amazed when within six weeks all the sarcoids were gone! also when playing with her she started to 'blow out and relax a little more than normal (but still not much). At this point nothing else much changed but I also wasn't expecting it as I knew we had only just started and Donna had said it would be a two year thing. Ellie saw Donna again and this time she was put on an 8 week protocol to kill off the 'bad bacteria' in her gut. She explained that Ellie might get quite unwell during this process and may be unhappy to have people in her space, During this time I had also slowly been changing my horses feeds over to all organic feeds from Thunderbrook and had made sure there were no cereals etc. in any of the feeds either.

 

After the 8 weeks Ellie seemed better again in terms of her anxiety levels and ability to relax. Again it wasn't a major change but just little things that I noticed were getting easier for her in general. At the same time as all this was going on I also had her treated by a natural balance dentist (who trained with Spencer la Fleurre) and this made a huge difference to her and meant that Donna was able to get more cranial releases on her next treatment and I also have had an equine podiatrist trim her regular which again has made a huge difference to her balance. 

 

She has continued to have a treatment from Donna every three months mainly working on her physical problems such as her sacroilliac joint and poll and I've also had her treated by other body workers too depending on what I feel she needs.

 

 

Ellie is now 90% there on the health side of things now and I think the next stage of our journey is now much more about strength, straightness and balance and building the correct muscles now that she physically can. She is still weak in the sacroilliac area so I am trying to build strength there slowly and develop her body so she can move feely and in balance. She still shows the odd lame/ unbalanced step but I'm hoping its just part of the process of learning to carry herself differently and working through uneveness. She is much happier and more centred both on the ground and ridden and I've seen a real shift in her emotions and ability to learn and focus in the last few months. We still have a long way to go as she is still innately a very clever, high spirited, high energy horse but it really feels like she 'can' now and that she is enjoying her work too.