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Equine Athleticism
It All Hinges on the Joints
Equine athletic potential and subsequent performance, success, and longevity hinge on healthy joints. Learn about the various injuries and diseases that can affect your horse's joints, and which joints your preferred discipline stresses the most.
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Equine Joint Disease
To Inject Or Not?
Joint injections are often performed to treat joint inflammation and injury. Deciding which therapeutics to employ depends on multiple factors, and accurate diagnosis prior to treatment is essential to ensure appropriate therapeutic intervention.
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CF Fence
CF Fence founder and owner Alan Cossentine began making custom, light-weight, easier-to-open pipe gates to replace the old wooden ones on his property. Word spread, and he started CF Fence to answer the demand. Today, CF Fence manufactures quality products that are safe, reliable, user-friendly and cost effective, including continuous fencing, panels, gates, bale feeders, and fire sprinklers.
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Lunging Horses
Why Bother?
Lunging has many positive effects, for both the horse and for the rider. It’s worth pushing through any awkwardness you may have with it and perfecting the skill!
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Complex Rules Protect Canada’s Horses
In addition to federal legislation and regulations, several organizations in Canada provide standards and guidance for the day-to-day management, care, and handling of horses.
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Evaluating Equine Lameness Using New Technology
Keeping horses sound is one of the most difficult and important aspects of horse sport. Given that horses have an uncanny ability to injure themselves, at some point every rider or horse owner will need their veterinarian to conduct a lameness evaluation.
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Healthier Afoot
A Lifestyle Guide for Better Hooves
In a surprising number of cases, unhealthy hooves are not due to heritable weakness but instead to avoidable lifestyle factors. As hard as it is to admit, our daily horsekeeping decisions are sometimes the cause of our horses’ sore feet. The primary factors that have weakened modern horses’ feet include lack of movement, ground surfaces, diet and supplements, and practices related to weaning and early development.
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Too Cold to Ride
Cold weather can bring many hazards and discomforts to both horse and rider. But should you feel guilty about not continuing to work your horse during the harsher days of winter?
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Long schooling sessions at only the walk refines muscle recruitment, releases tension stored in poor postural habits, and stimulates the slow-twitch fibers used for stabilizing the skeleton. In other words, there is big value in workouts at the walk. | |
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Ride with Balance, Flexibility & Strength
Many coaches and their students focus the majority of their riding time and energy on improving their horses’ movement and overall carriage, and reducing resistance. Ironically, many of the issues they attempt to correct are the direct result of a blocking or restriction brought about by the rider’s imbalanced or asymmetrical position. Often, if these rider issues are corrected, the resistance held by the horse’s body magically disappears.
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How to Optimize Your Horse Schooling Sessions
Do you ever wander away from the mounting block, still adjusting your stirrups, pondering what to work on in today’s schooling session? Is time with your horse squeezed between life’s many daily responsibilities, and sometimes squeezed out altogether? If so, you need an effective, efficient and creative game plan for your training sessions.
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How Much to Give Away
Many of us make our horses stiffer with our attempts at kindness. Aiming for light and forgiving rein contact, we sometimes make the mistake of too much looseness, which feels erratic and unclear to the horse. Whether or not to interject releases of pressure with the contact is not the question; the question is when and how to do this.
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Building Your Dream Horse Barn
The right contractor makes all the difference.
If building a barn is on your horizon, the first step is to make your wish list. Whether it’s a perfect four-stall barn with walk-out paddocks, or a large training and boarding facility, your dream barn will be a major construction project that should create a safe and comfortable home for your horses and their people, both at work and at play.
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