My Pride & Joy

Well, not mine exactly! I talk often with Des Miller of HRCAV in Vic and she's just sent me pics of her beautiful horse.

"Here are some pics of JAYAY LET’S PARTY (Pru) – your ‘share horse’. She is 3yrs and 4 months, and is 70% TB, 20% WB amd 10% Arab – a true performance type. These pics were taken at the WB Gala. She unfortunately was the only one in her class (Filly 3yrs), but got great feedback from the German Judge. He said she was very beautiful, had a great head and neck set, a good strong topline, very good body for her age and a very good walk.
She won the BEST PRESENTED HORSE trophy, and I must say I am thrilled – considering there were over 60 horses. Makes all the hard work and scrubbing worthwhile. Maybe it was the H-10 Shampoo I washed her with!"

Our comment? Lovely horse and great grooming work made better with H10 grooming products!

Spoken Intro To The H10 Blog!!!

Yes...magic isn't it?!!
Apart from clicking on the right hand side to get our intro, you can also click here

Heard the One ABout The Old Woman Who Swallowed A Fly.....?

Well, here's the real thing. Not only did she swallow a fly, she went on to swallow a horse taking a diversion on the way to swallow a goat as well!!....not in the lyrics of the song but perhaps she was attracted in some way!

To quote the obvious from the article:
Critics stated that this litany of neglect was a damning indictment of Lewisham’s Social Services Department. ‘At each stage, Mrs Teasdale should have been given appropriate mental and medical attention, instead she was just left to continue swallowing these animals under the tragic misapprehension that each would somehow catch the last one – when it is clear that her plan was seriously flawed on several fronts. Who knows how many other old ladies there are swallowing large domesticated animals?’

Read the whole text here

A Slant On Horse Training.....

Here's a slant on horsetraining that you'll find interesting reading. You know, I wish there was more Australian material I could refer to but there ain't!!!
Anyway, I know people who will agree or disagree with this article and also with my comments. Personally I agree that training 'out' the bad habits that have been trained 'into' a horse is very difficult. Again, I liken it to humans (although a horse is generally intellectually a non-starter here) in that you have to have a realisation that something is wrong before you can get it fixed. There are some horses that come to that realisation quickly and are easy to fix. In my experience that's a real minority and so the process can be long, frustrating and may involve some pretty hard lessons. It's strange but we often use the phrase 'no pain, no gain' don't we when we set oursleves some physical goals and yet apply that phrase to a horse and you'll get the 'cruelty' accusation thrown at you!!! Perhaps it's all to do with voluntary and involuntary....but if a horse doesn't 'want' to be retrained then what do you do?

Enough banter from me, here's the article

Diarrrhoea - A Messy Business

My good friend Roger Bourdon has just published a short article on this 'moving' subject. Joking apart, just like humans, when you get this condition then something is wrong but happily it's usually self limiting....if it's chronic then there's a cause that should be found before any further damage is done. The article doesn't profess to be wide ranging...just interesting. Click here to read it.

US Overun With Horses No-One Wants

It's a very sad state of affairs and a dilemma all in one.
Kentucky, the horse capital of the world, famous for its sleek thoroughbreds, is being overrun with thousands of horses no one wants - some of them perfectly healthy, but many of them starving, broken-down nags. Other parts of the country are overwhelmed, too.

The reason: growing opposition in the U.S. to the slaughter of horses for human consumption overseas. Public backlash - and state bans or the threat of them - have led to the closure of several slaughterhouses that used to take in horses no longer suitable for racing or work. Auction houses are glutted with horses, and many rescue organizations have run out of room.

Unfortunately, it seems that as you try to solve one problem, you inadvertently create another....because the costs of looking after horses won't go down, neither will vet bills and so horses are being neglected and in some instances, left to die.

It's a sad story but worth reading

How To Stop A Horse Bucking

John Pinnell' DVD 'Problem Horses' covers just about every vice a horse will throw at you .....and how to fix them! Like us humans, bad behavior in a horse is usually inherited or taught. It's rarely in-bred.

In this series of 3 excerpts from the dvd, John shows us a few of his own well proven methods to stop this dangerous vice. The videos clips are posted on the H10 UTube site and the link to them is here

If you want to read more details of the John Pinnell dvd sets on horse training then they are here

Horse Massage - Much Kneaded?!

Sorry about the title!!

"Just like human athletes, we expect performance from our equine athletes. But just like people, massage is not just limited to athletes. It can be for show horses, race horses or just for your friends on the farm" so says Tami Bronstein who took up horse massage during the past year.

"It's a growing phenomenon, especially with performance horses," said Lisa Senus, administrative vice president of the New Jersey Horse Show Association. "Sometimes your horse is not quite right, even though traditional veterinary medicine might not find anything wrong. So, you find the horse might benefit from equine massage. They get sore and get tight the same way we do."

It's an interesting article - read it here

The Law Of Attraction

You've probably heard of it....like attracts like etc etc. How does that apply to horses? Well, here's an interesting 'psychological' example of the method used on a horse that just didn't drink as much as it should with the results that he was always suffering from various health problems.
It's from the Equine Teleseminar blog and makes good reading whether you believe it or not!!!

http://equineteleseminar.blogs.com/equineteleseminar/
There are also a couple of UTube videos showing a very clever horse!!

Gelding = Better Behaved Horses??

There are always questions regarding badly behaved stallions and whether gelding will solve the problems. I'm obliged to 'Horse Training Success' for this fairly comprehensive article on this subject....we've all heard the saying, "Stallions are from hell, Geldings are from heaven", and here's a discussion on the reasons for it!!!

The link is here: http://horsetrainingsuccess.blogspot.com/2007/03/does-gelding-improve-behavior.html

Good Reasons For Bad Behaviour? Read On......

Now I hadn't heard of the Tellington methods for looking into the way horses behave as they do. I have to say that I'm quite sceptical of the 'make a real friend of your horse' training methods because most of them are not based on an understanding of horses in the wild...their very nature in fact.
The system, called the Tellington Method and authored by Linda Tellington-Jones, is based on a discovery that working on a horse's body releases fear, tension, discomfort and pain in a way that changes his behavior, influences his personality and enhances his overall health and well-being.
Now I'm not sure that I agree with the some of the techniques put forward in this method, but the basis for this type of training is relatively sound. If any of you have ever heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs for humans, then none of this will sound strange to you albeit developed for the horse. If you want to know more about Maslow go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow
If you want to read the article, courtesy of Equisearch, go here:
http://equisearch.com/horses_care/health/behavior/tellingtonjones_121506/

Horse Trainer Uses Firm But Gentle Touch

Too many horses get away with all sorts of bad habits - simply because we let them AND we don't know how to stop them. We get used to them and put up with them....and we shouldn't because it's just bad behavior. Here's a nice little article from Michigan about a woman who was in just that position who used the services of an experienced horse trainer. She likes his even-tempered approach to training horses. "(He) just goes about it in a calmer manner and speaking the horse's language," she said.

The techniques he uses are very similar to those I read about in the Jesse Beery training books, and he uses the 'even tempered' approach used by John Pinnell, one of Australia's top horse trainers.
The article link is here...have a read! http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/michigan/index.ssf?/base/news-42/1172511582319690.xml&storylist=newsmichigan

Medication By Mouth - How Do You Do It?

Here's a great little article from Equisearch with a technique on how to get your horse to take medication by mouth. Difficult enough with children let alone horses!!! You might try this though - here's the link http://tinyurl.com/28sxjf