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24.01.2022 With drought declared today for all of NSW, this is a timely read.

21.01.2022 Five core exercises for horses to improve performance Developing a horse’s core strength is vital in ensuring they are able to fulfill their athletic potential ...and avoid injury. CARROT STRETCHES These exercises recruit the core muscles and stretch out the back and neck muscles. Using a carrot, encourage the horse to bring his head down between his front legs. If he bends a front leg, that is fine. Encourage him to stretch as far as it is comfortable and hold the stretch for 10 seconds, avoiding any jerky movements. Next, stand with your back to the horse’s shoulder and encourage him to bend his head and neck around you, ideally keeping his head vertical, and aim for the direction of the back fetlock. Again, aim for a smooth stretch, not a snatch, and hold the stretch for l0 seconds. POLE WORK These exercises can be done in-hand or ridden. Any kind of pole work is great for core stability because it encourages the horse's head to drop and the core to lift, while increasing flexion and extension of the limbs. A simple pole exercise is to ride, walk or lunge the horse through a sequence of poles in a line. Start with one pole and build up as your horse gets more confident. You can then start to raise alternate ends of the poles and then the entire pole to challenge the horse further by asking him to flex his joints and lift his limbs higher. This can be done in both walk and trot, although, it is more effective in the walk as there is no moment of suspension, so the horse is constantly recruiting his muscles. HILLWORK Riding your horse up and down hills is great for targeting the core as it requires the horse to stabilise himself, particularly when walking down hill. The steadier you attack hill work, the more balanced the horse needs to be, and therefore the more he will recruit his core muscles to steady himself. BACKING UP Asking your horse to back up causes the hindleg to come underneath him and his core muscles to engage. In-hand, ask your horse for a square halt, then, by gently applying pressure to his chest, ask him for a backwards step. Try to encourage the head to stay low. Start with two to three steps, then increase as the horse gets more confident, building up to 20 steps if possible. LONG AND LOW Riding your horse long and low with his hindlegs underneath him and his back arching up like a bridge, engages the abdominal muscles and strengthens the back and topline. Being able to walk, trot and canter long and low in self-carriage will improve your horse's topline and core strength no end. Starting in walk, ask the horse to stretch the contact down, engage his hindquarters and step through underneath his body. You want to feel him come up through his back. In order to achieve this effectively, your horse needs to be relaxed, soft and able to carry himself. Note: The horse should be warmed up prior to performing the exercises

15.01.2022 Dry Weather & Coughing in Horses With the dry weather of late, many horses are struggling with coughing and dry airways. So we thought we’d share a few tips on ...how to help them out! For weeks, if not months, it’s been dust, dust, and more dust. Many riders will have noticed that after doing some arena work, blowing their noise will yield a tissue full of dust. Now think about your horse as you’re riding along, their nose is much closer to the ground, and of course they’re working hard so their air intake is much higher, too. They’re breathing in infinitely more dust than we are! The horse’s nose hairs are there to transport dust and other unwanted particles into the throat, through a protective, moist film along the inside of the nose. The idea behind that is that if the dust and particles go into the throat, they’ll be swallowed rather than ending up in the horse’s lungs. Between the nose hairs, there are glands which produce mucus, to keep the protective film moist. This also happens when there is an infection. When there is an infection of something else that uses the mucus, the glands keep producing more. But if the mucus is not transported off, we end up with that stuffy feeling i.e. our airways are full of mucus, but the mucus membrane is dry, so the glands keep producing more. Large amounts of dust have the same effect. Over time, the dust dries out the horse’s mucus membrane. The glands keep producing more and more mucus. When the horse is regularly or even constantly exposed to large amounts of dust, the glands are in constant overproduction and the mucus keeps building up in the lungs. The dust that the horse breathes in that isn’t completely transported off by the nose hairs turns the remaining, fluid mucus into a thick, sludge-like mucus. This very thick mucus can no longer be heard by the vet when listening to the horse’s breathing. The horse also doesn’t cough much anymore, because the mucus is so hard and stuck that it’s not moving and therefore doesn’t cause the irritation that makes the horse cough. Some horses will only cough once, once they first start trotting or cantering, because something briefly moved, but not again after that the mucus is just too firmly stuck. So what can we do? As we’re not vets, we won’t go into veterinary treatments to clear airways and dissolve mucus. But there is a few, simple, no-drugs remedies you can try at home to help your horse out through the dry times. The simplest one is to regularly clean out the horse’s nose with a wet cloth (preferably with warm water). You will notice you’ll pull a lot of dust out. The warm water will help dissolve some of the harder clumps that have formed, and will also help open the pores so the moisture can really sink in. After that, if your horse tolerates it, leave a warm, damp cloth over the horse’s nostrils for a while. The horse will breathe in the steam/moist air, and it will help get that moisture further into the airways than you can physically reach. You can also use some warm, herbal tea like peppermint, fennel, sage, or thyme on the cloth, to further help clear the airways. You can also pour various herbal teas over the horse’s feed to help clear the airways and dissolve mucus. Again, thyme and fennel teas work very well, as does licorice. Pour them over the feed when they’re quite hot as the horse eats, the steam will be breathed in through the nose and help further (that said, make sure it’s not so hot your horse burns their tongue!) Be careful with feeding large amounts of thyme if you are competing thyme is on the doping list. You can also wet the horse’s hay. When the weather is this dry, hay is often also quite dusty and a big contributor to the horse’s dust intake. By wetting the hay, you can at least take that bit of dust intake away. Lastly, feed on the ground! When you place the horse’s feed on the ground, it has to lower its head to eat. Any mucus that is soft enough to be disposed of, can only be disposed of if the horse’s head is lowered. Ideally, feed the horse just after riding (or let it graze in a non-dusty paddock) as the mucus tends to be softer after work. Try to find a nice grassy (or otherwise low in dust) place to put the horse’s feed, though You can also use our DIY herbal brew to help soothe - here is a link for the recipe https://www.facebook.com//a.3511460739/10154795522618906/ www.sonovetequinetherapy.com.au (Photo credit: Equino.de)

05.01.2022 Well It’s been a wild 3 weeks and I thought I’d better offer an explanation to anyone that’s had difficultly getting through to me (and I do apologies profusely!). Poor Inka (my own horse) has done quite an injury to herself, what started out as a little superficial cut above her knee has blown out into a hospital stay from an abscess that unfortunately formed and tracked down across her knee, 5 days in hospital with heavy antibiotics and 2 region limb profusions should have ...seen her home clean. Unfortunately and much to the surprise of the her attending vets, she appears to have a persistent infection that after 3 weeks on antibiotics hasn’t been able to clear up and has spread to her tendon sheath. Today Inka had the delight of having surgery to clean the tendon sheath and have cultures taken to try and identify the attacking pathogen. Obviously this has been quite a stressful time on top of being sick myself as well as Inka the bandage bandit ripping them all off! As we head towards a second go at recovery bare with me as I get back to anyone in regards to appointments. To everyone who has been so understanding In changing appointments so I can get Inka out to the vets or back home to fix bandages (so, so many times ) I thank you from the bottom of my heart you’ve made life much easier for me! If I’ve forgotten to get back to you, your horse and your journey is so important to me please send me a reminder and I will put you in ASAP, I have not deliberately forgotten about you’ve I just got caught up with the above drama!

01.01.2022 Happy Birthday ponies everywhere!