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Transcript

What Does This Horse Actually Need? · Two Point Perspective

• 0:00
  Okay.
• 0:00
  I'm curious, given Steve Gerda's recent success.
• 0:04
  I was listening to an interview with him about how he manages his horses and it was really interesting.
• 0:11
  He talked about riding them on grass, letting them walk on harder ground, even gravel, and how important it was to get them used to different footing and terrain.
• 0:24
  And it seems like that's pretty.
• 0:26
  A pretty different starting point from the way I see a lot of competition horses being managed.
• 0:33
  I think it's because we have so much available to us.
• 0:36
  It's not just the vet, farrier and dentist, but now we have bodywork, saddle fitting, different therapies, joint maintenance, supplements.
• 0:46
  I mean, there's always something else you can add, but I get it because I use plenty of it myself.
• 0:53
  But once all those options are there an idea like, hey, try this, it might help, can pretty quickly turn into, this is what we do for all the horses.
• 1:06
  This is two point perspective.
• 1:08
  Two riders with different viewpoints from different.
• 1:10
  Generations talking about the same sport.
• 1:15
  I was actually having a little bit of this conversation with my farrier this week, actually, and that there's so many technologies and advancements in science and all of that, just like in humans, but also in horses and vet
• 1:31
  medicine and stuff, that what's available to us at our fingertips can sometimes feel so overwhelming.
• 1:38
  And I think ultimately, like, I don't, I don't think any of it's bad.
• 1:42
  I think it's a matter of finding.
• 1:44
  What works for your horse the best.
• 1:47
  Because I think some horses that like chiropractic might not necessarily like pemf.
• 1:54
  I think some horses that love PEMF might not necessarily like what you're doing now.
• 1:59
  The fascial counterstrain, I think it's not a one size fits all.
• 2:04
  And so I think experimenting with it some, but then also maintaining some of the basic stuff that, you know, that works is important too.
• 2:11
  And you actually own a magnawave.
• 2:14
  And so this isn't even hypothetical for you.
• 2:17
  You have a business using it, so what made you buy one in the first place?
• 2:22
  So I ended up actually using Magna Wave the first time when we were down in Florida and Loki wasn't lame, but he was not himself.
• 2:31
  And, you know, he'd been fine earlier in the week.
• 2:34
  And then towards the end of the week, he just kind of.
• 2:36
  I was getting ready to show one day and I was like, I don't like the way he feels.
• 2:41
  Long story short, our vet happened to be there.
• 2:43
  He looked over him and he was like, you can't like, you know, like, he's flexing fine all of it, all of it's good.
• 2:48
  So we're like, well, maybe, like, maybe Magna Wave's not a bad idea.
• 2:51
  You know, it's not intrusive, shouldn't make him sore.
• 2:55
  Let's do it and see if we can, you know, whatever.
• 2:58
  It seems to be bugging him.
• 2:59
  Maybe he strained something, maybe he pulled something.
• 3:00
  He's just a little tender.
• 3:01
  See if we can give him some relief.
• 3:03
  And the lady came and worked on him and he is a total freak of nature about cords.
• 3:08
  I mean, you know that like God forbid you put a hose near him too close or a cord near him too close and he like bugs out.
• 3:16
  But so weird still to this day, 16.
• 3:21
  And he did not care.
• 3:23
  She put that thing on him and his head dropped so far to the ground.
• 3:27
  It was wild to me to watch.
• 3:31
  And so I saw it firsthand that he was really, really relaxed.
• 3:35
  And I was like, well, if nothing else, it feels good to him.
• 3:38
  And I got him on.
• 3:38
  I got on him the next day and he felt amazing because I was even thinking, like, well, I'm going to get on him first thing in the morning and see if I'm even going to like show this weekend.
• 3:46
  Because if he's not feeling good, then just forget it.
• 3:50
  But ultimately that's.
• 3:52
  That's sort of what made me the believer in it.
• 3:54
  And I think that's important because this can get reduced really quickly to.
• 3:59
  All this stuff is ridiculous.
• 4:01
  And I don't think it is.
• 4:02
  No.
• 4:03
  You've presumably had horses where you've obviously seen a response.
• 4:08
  You just described it.
• 4:09
  And I've.
• 4:09
  I've seen changes in Celine after Dave Schaefer has worked on her.
• 4:15
  And that's a different thing.
• 4:17
  But the Beamer comes with us to horse shows and I.
• 4:22
  I know it makes them feel good.
• 4:24
  And so now I started doing the inevitable horse.
• 4:29
  Horse person calculation.
• 4:31
  If I keep paying to use this thing, should I buy the thing?
• 4:35
  Which may be one of the most dangerous sentences in the horse world.
• 4:40
  I think that if you're using it enough and think that your investment in it will pay off in the end, I mean, I'm not going to use.
• 4:49
  For the investment that I made.
• 4:50
  I bought a machine that wasn't going to be for just personal use.
• 4:54
  So I knew going into it, I wanted something that was a little bit higher power and had a little bit more staying power than just something that I'd have for personal use.
• 5:03
  Because there was like, there's a step down machine or two from what I have.
• 5:06
  You're living this Example of what we're saying is, is that if I keep paying to use this thing, should I just buy one?
• 5:14
  And you did.
• 5:15
  Yeah, I did.
• 5:16
  Totally did.
• 5:17
  That was the part of Gerda's interview that got to me.
• 5:20
  Because if something helps, naturally you're going to use it again, and then it becomes part of the program.
• 5:27
  So pretty soon something that start it as a response to a particular problem becomes maintenance.
• 5:34
  And once it becomes maintenance, it doesn't take very long before maintenance starts to feel like basic care.
• 5:42
  And that's a pretty significant shift because 20 years ago, nobody would have accused you of neglecting your horse because it wasn't getting pmf.
• 5:54
  Now there's barns where it's completely normal for horses to have regular body work, therapeutic equipment, injection, supplements, and some kind of a recovery program.
• 6:06
  I've been in programs with treadmills, thera plates and other therapeutic equipment, and those things are available because people use them.
• 6:15
  And yes, there are charges attached to them, but.
• 6:19
  So how do we decide what a horse actually needs?
• 6:23
  You know, I think you're right in that it's.
• 6:26
  It's an added bonus, for sure.
• 6:28
  It's not like their basic needs aren't being met if you're not doing PEMF or massage therapy or something like that.
• 6:35
  But it.
• 6:36
  I think it kind of goes along with the principle of, you know, like, if you talk to somebody who grew up riding when.
• 6:43
  Well, you did, when none of it was available.
• 6:48
  Right.
• 6:49
  And then being like a little crotchety about it, though, and being like, well, we didn't have all of that when we grew up, that's just unnecessary.
• 6:56
  And just because you didn't have have it doesn't mean that having it now makes it unnecessary.
• 7:01
  It just means that we've come further and it's a good thing that we have it.
• 7:05
  Seline is probably why this hit me as hard as it did, because I spent a lot of time paying attention to her body because.
• 7:13
  Because she was so girthy from the minute that I tried her.
• 7:18
  I mean, even when we tried her in Florida, they were like, oh, you know, she's.
• 7:23
  She's girthy, she's a mare.
• 7:25
  Okay, whatever.
• 7:27
  So she's been really reactive in a lot of different places.
• 7:31
  So I tried really hard.
• 7:33
  We have dealt with her stomach just, you know, making sure that we're doing all the maintenance for any kind of ulcers.
• 7:41
  We've had her teeth done.
• 7:42
  I had the saddle, my saddle person come back out to just make sure that it fit.
• 7:49
  And now I've been doing this fascial counter strain.
• 7:54
  And we've watched how she uses herself and see where she's tight and how she reacts when somebody puts pressure in a particular place.
• 8:05
  And none of that started because I woke up one day and decided my horse needs a wellness program.
• 8:12
  It's clear that, you know, she's telling us stuff.
• 8:15
  It's so interesting because last week, on Friday, Dave came back to see her again, and one of the things that he found this time was that she was extremely sensitive around the area of her cecum, but the cecum
• 8:31
  is on the side of their body.
• 8:33
  And he was literally touching up by her hip, but that's where he could feel it.
• 8:39
  And I didn't tell him to look there.
• 8:42
  He found it with his hands.
• 8:44
  And so later I was mentioning it to Lindsay and she said that they had another mare in the barn.
• 8:52
  I didn't know this, but she's had two foals and has shown something very similar.
• 8:58
  So we were talking about whether that kind of discomfort could be part of some of the head tossing that I feel like she does, and I don't know if it is, but I find that it's so interesting about
• 9:12
  this kind of work that she can't tell you what.
• 9:15
  Where she's uncomfortable.
• 9:17
  Dave has to find it, he has to feel it.
• 9:20
  And that's exactly why I can't dismiss this stuff.
• 9:24
  If you have a horse that's reacting to something, then you investigate it.
• 9:29
  If you do something and the horse is visibly or measurably better after it, you're going to pay attention to that, too.
• 9:36
  Right.
• 9:37
  But there's another possibility.
• 9:38
  The better we become looking for all these tiny things, the more tiny things we're going to find.
• 9:46
  Sure.
• 9:46
  Because no horse is perfectly symmetrical.
• 9:50
  What you find on one side, you're going to find a little bit on the other side.
• 9:54
  So no athlete is perfectly loose every day, and nobody feels the same exactly on Monday as they did on Friday.
• 10:04
  And so at some point, are we recognizing discomfort that previous generations missed, like you said, or are we beginning to treat normal variation as something that needs to be fixed and I don't know.
• 10:21
  Right, right.
• 10:23
  Would you say that this is a horsemanship question just because the easy version of this conversation would be, we didn't do all this years ago and the horses were fine.
• 10:36
  I don't buy that, but, yeah, me either.
• 10:38
  Because it's kind of the same thing, being like, well, we used to just jump around on grass and the horses were fine.
• 10:43
  Okay, well, likewise.
• 10:45
  I'd arg.
• 10:46
  I I mean, to play devil's advocate, I think we've done too much with footing at this point, and I think it's a.
• 10:51
  That's a whole nother conversation.
• 10:52
  But that's what.
• 10:54
  That's what Steve G.
• 10:56
  Says.
• 10:56
  Yeah.
• 10:56
  I mean, he was saying that was part of his whole thing was like, you know, I just let the horses be horses and they go out and they.
• 11:04
  That's what my farrier and I were talking about.
• 11:07
  He was saying they need to walk on gravel, they need to travel on grass, on hard ground.
• 11:13
  Because if you don't prepare them for these situations, then if there is not great footing or different footing, then you're putting yourself in a situation where they could become injured.
• 11:29
  If they're not, like, prepared.
• 11:31
  Used to being.
• 11:32
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:34
  If we.
• 11:34
  If we sort of coddle, then they are animals.
• 11:38
  Yeah.
• 11:38
  When I was growing up, you would call a horse called back or girthy or difficult or resistant or lazy or just a horse that didn't like being touched in certain places.
• 11:49
  And I'll never forget my.
• 11:51
  My stepsister was just.
• 11:53
  She was an amazing rider and always had incredible horses, and she had this horse that really only she could deal with, and she had to do all these crazy things, like she could only get on him in his
• 12:06
  stall.
• 12:06
  And I don't remember what else, but when I think about that horse now, I would be shocked if there wasn't something like ulcers going on.
• 12:14
  But back then, we didn't have the ability to scope horses like we do now, at least not in a practical or any kind of affordable way.
• 12:25
  And saddle fit wasn't part of the language either.
• 12:30
  You had Stubens or Crosby's, and you put one on the horse, and that was that.
• 12:36
  And it was which one you like to ride in better, not what fit your horse, but people weren't ever talking about the shape of a horse's back or the withers or the panels or whether it actually even fit
• 12:50
  the horse.
• 12:51
  And back pain was another thing.
• 12:54
  Today we can X ray a horse's back and look for things like kissing spines.
• 12:59
  But 40 years ago, a lot of those horses were probably just called difficult or culled back.
• 13:06
  But just because we didn't treat something 40 years ago doesn't establish that the horse didn't need treatment.
• 13:12
  Right.
• 13:13
  Sometimes we were simply wrong about the horse, and we didn't have the ability to even pursue these problems from any kind of a diagnostic perspective.
• 13:24
  And I think, you know, that's where we're so lucky.
• 13:28
  Think about Fenway.
• 13:29
  He had A hard time, really hard time getting his lead changes.
• 13:34
  And for a long time, that could have looked like a training issue or just something he was being difficult about.
• 13:40
  And then we discovered he had arthritis in his neck.
• 13:43
  And suddenly now there's an explanation.
• 13:46
  I'm just so grateful that we have more tools and we know more now.
• 13:51
  We have so much better of a chance to figure out when a horse is uncomfortable rather than just simply deciding that they're difficult.
• 14:00
  And I do call that progress.
• 14:02
  But I think the harder question is what happens after progress gives us 20 possible explanations.
• 14:13
  And so I also think that we've changed the standard, because when I was younger, if somebody told you a horse was sound, then the meaning was fairly straightforward.
• 14:23
  The horse wasn't lame and it could do its job.
• 14:26
  And that used to be enough.
• 14:28
  But now we pay attention to things we probably would have missed before.
• 14:34
  Asymmetry.
• 14:35
  I know I've heard that before.
• 14:39
  Sometimes, like, you know, the horse isn't really lame, but for some reason didn't seem quite even behind, or there's this soreness, how they use their body.
• 14:52
  Just things just don't quite feel right.
• 14:55
  And so now it seems like we don't just treat injuries, we're maintaining athletes.
• 15:02
  As you said, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but I do think you're right.
• 15:05
  And it used to be like, oh, here's the sound horse, like, it's going to pass ppe.
• 15:09
  So there you go.
• 15:10
  And now everything is a lot more thorough.
• 15:13
  And because we have the tools for it to be.
• 15:16
  And so I think, like, while you're going to get 10 times more of the information than you used to, you also have to go into it knowing that horses are horses.
• 15:26
  Just like humans aren't perfect, horses aren't perfect.
• 15:29
  So you can have a perfectly sound horse and still have something come up.
• 15:31
  You have to essentially decide what you're willing to take or leave.
• 15:37
  What can I live with?
• 15:38
  Because it's a horse and it didn't just come out of its mom five minutes ago, like, you know, it's.
• 15:45
  It's been alive, it's been on the planet.
• 15:47
  But I think even more than that, we have to go back to the fact that these horses these days, and I don't know why it seems so different than it was before, but these horses are athletes.
• 15:58
  A grand prix horse is an athlete.
• 16:00
  An adult amateur hunter is an athlete, too.
• 16:03
  Even if that job is a little bit different.
• 16:06
  That's right.
• 16:06
  But we're asking a horse's body to perform and maintaining that Body makes a lot of sense, but athletic maintenance can become almost limitless.
• 16:17
  Take joints.
• 16:18
  We've got these oral supplements.
• 16:21
  We have new injectable products.
• 16:23
  Even with joint injections, you have price options.
• 16:27
  You can do simple, less expensive, or spend more on one of the newer products.
• 16:33
  And then there's also prp.
• 16:36
  There are all sorts of decisions now about when you begin, how often you do something, whether you're treating a diagnosed issue or trying to preserve something before there's a problem.
• 16:49
  And at some point the question becomes not just can we do something, but how far do we want to go?
• 16:57
  And even among very good veterinarians, you're not necessarily going to hear the exact same philosophy you've had that, I mean.
• 17:06
  Yep, with Loki, his lameness was so weird.
• 17:09
  I mean, it was just so bizarre because it wasn't all the time.
• 17:13
  It would be like he would take five steps of it being like he was crippled.
• 17:18
  Did you just break your leg?
• 17:20
  And then he would be fine.
• 17:23
  And getting to the bottom of what was really wrong with him ended up feeling like a merry go round, effectively.
• 17:30
  Eventually we figured out he has arthritis in his fetlock.
• 17:33
  And he was, I don't know, was he like 12, 12 ish at the time, I think.
• 17:41
  And he's had a pretty big career.
• 17:44
  And so at 12, I mean, that's.
• 17:46
  I wasn't shocked by that by any stretch of the imagination.
• 17:49
  And I think what was so cool about that is.
• 17:51
  Okay, so now we finally figured out like some areas of concern.
• 17:55
  Even when they blocked him, it was like hardly like he was so intermittently unlame effectively that blocking him didn't really do a whole lot.
• 18:05
  So we had to use a lot of diagnostic tools to.
• 18:07
  To really get in there to figure out what was going on.
• 18:10
  That's where it gets more interesting to me than whether one particular thing works.
• 18:16
  It's the whole philosophy.
• 18:18
  Are we responding to this horse or are we following a maintenance schedule?
• 18:24
  Just because this is what competition horses get, those can end up looking exactly the same from the outside.
• 18:32
  But there's also something psychological happening to the owner.
• 18:38
  Once somebody tells me that Celine has an area that's tight, I know it, I can't unknow it.
• 18:45
  And then I'm watching it.
• 18:47
  And so does she feel different today?
• 18:50
  Did she react differently when I put the saddle on?
• 18:54
  Was that lead change related?
• 18:57
  Did she make that face yesterday?
• 18:59
  And there is a point where being observant is good horsemanship, but there is probably also a point where you can drive yourself insane.
• 19:11
  And I totally I feel like I might be on the edge of that.
• 19:16
  Well, I mean, well, after Loki, it felt like an eternity getting to the bottom of what his problem was.
• 19:23
  And so I am hyper aware of it now.
• 19:26
  So even if he takes, like, a little bit of a short, I mean, it could literally just be because of, like, how the footing was.
• 19:31
  And I'm like, oh, my God, is he okay?
• 19:33
  Are we on the start of this?
• 19:34
  How are you feeling?
• 19:35
  I mean, I'm such a, like, freak about it now because I just want him to feel so comfortable.
• 19:39
  Well, I feel like for me, I am super in tune with it because, you know, horses can't tell us where it hurts.
• 19:47
  So if there's even a possibility that something's bothering them, I want to solve it.
• 19:54
  I hate it because I don't want her to become lame and I don't want her to be uncomfortable.
• 19:59
  And that's where money becomes part of this, without this needing to become another episode about how expensive horses are.
• 20:08
  But if someone says, this might help, then I'm always quick to say, well, it won't hurt, that's for sure.
• 20:15
  Right?
• 20:15
  And that's a really hard sentence for a horse owner to ignore, because what's the alternative?
• 20:21
  No, I'd rather save money even if my horse might be uncomfortable.
• 20:26
  But that's not how it feels in your head sometimes, because there is another option.
• 20:31
  It makes us feel like we should use it.
• 20:35
  This is really the bigger question.
• 20:36
  We've gotten really very good at managing horses.
• 20:40
  Their feed, their exercise, their recovery, their supplements, their treatments, their schedules.
• 20:45
  But management isn't exactly the same as giving a horse a good life.
• 20:51
  Sure, you can have a horse on a beautifully designed program and still control almost every minute of its day.
• 20:58
  So maybe part of this conversation isn't just about whether we're doing too much for the horses.
• 21:05
  It's whether in trying so hard to protect and maintain them, we've made it harder for them simply to be horses, like Gerdas said.
• 21:17
  And so you have something that a lot of us boarding horses don't have.
• 21:23
  Your horse is at home.
• 21:25
  Oh, yeah.
• 21:26
  We started this with my retired horse because it was really a lot better for him to be out and moving around.
• 21:31
  He would just.
• 21:32
  Would get so stocked up.
• 21:33
  And I just was.
• 21:35
  I was.
• 21:35
  Unless the weather, obviously, if the weather is, like, horrible, then they don't have access to do this.
• 21:40
  But we have a center aisle, and we have Dutch doors on the back and with an overhang that goes out to the dry lot paddock, and then the dry Lot paddock actually connects to the fields, so we will
• 21:53
  keep the Dutch doors open and the paddock gate to the field open so they can let themselves in and out as they please.
• 22:02
  But it's the craziest thing.
• 22:03
  You know, they'll be in when you think that, like, the weather's beautiful, why are they in their stall under the fans?
• 22:09
  And likewise they'll be out when it's thundering and raining from like for a 20 minute summer storm.
• 22:15
  Makes you insane.
• 22:17
  But the horses get tons of turnout.
• 22:20
  But at the same time, you know, there are real complications because these horses are valuable and turnout on its own isn't really risk free.
• 22:31
  I mean, they lose their shoes.
• 22:32
  Neither is being in a stall, though.
• 22:34
  That's true.
• 22:36
  They get bitten, they scrape themselves.
• 22:39
  Celine had a big fight with her fly sheet and literally removed the top layer of skin from three legs.
• 22:47
  And it was just lovely.
• 22:50
  Right before our second horse show.
• 22:51
  It was awful.
• 22:52
  Oh, my gosh.
• 22:53
  But some facilities don't always have enough land and there's of course, always the weather.
• 23:00
  But some horses don't even know how to behave in a big field because they've never had that much opportunity, you know, to learn with a bunch of other horses.
• 23:09
  So just turning them out isn't a complete management plan either.
• 23:15
  Oh, totally, totally.
• 23:16
  For sure.
• 23:17
  I.
• 23:17
  I completely agree.
• 23:18
  Is one contradiction in all of this that I just can't quite get past.
• 23:23
  And it seems like the more valuable horses have become, the more money we're willing to spend to maintain them.
• 23:30
  Yeah.
• 23:31
  Which is.
• 23:32
  But that same value can make us more afraid to let them live normally.
• 23:37
  Certainly, like you said, we're trying desperately to protect the investment.
• 23:42
  And sometimes protecting the investment may mean restricting the horse.
• 23:47
  And that doesn't mean turn a million dollar horse loose next to a barbed wire fence.
• 23:52
  But Gerard's argument is pretty compelling.
• 23:56
  We're protecting them because we're frightened that they'll hurt themselves being horses.
• 24:01
  And as Sarah always says, horses are either suicidal or homicidal, which is so true.
• 24:07
  Facts and then more facts and then we're asking them to gallop towards enormous jumps and I mean, there's a contradiction there.
• 24:16
  Oh, absolutely.
• 24:17
  Which brings us right back to.
• 24:20
  You're not selling your Magnum wave tomorrow, are you?
• 24:24
  No.
• 24:24
  And you can hire me anytime.
• 24:30
  Well, and I might still probably use that Beamer and I may still buy one and we can have that discussion later.
• 24:42
  But I can tell you that Dave is coming back to work some more on Celine and I'm not going to stop using the things that are helping her, but I just don't want every little thing to become something
• 24:55
  that I feel like we have to fix.
• 24:57
  So apparently, Steve Gerda has not converted me to a completely minimalist horse care program, but he may have changed the question just a little.
• 25:09
  Instead of, what can we do for this horse?
• 25:13
  Maybe it should be, why are we doing this particular thing for this particular horse?
• 25:20
  I think that might be a better filter.
• 25:23
  Well, I think that is how it should be done.
• 25:26
  And I think it's important to ask that question.
• 25:28
  As a horse owner, I'm always willing to try something once and then do a little research into it and say, okay, if this didn't really make a big difference, well, is there something else that we can try?
• 25:37
  And it's.
• 25:38
  It's not a one size fits all.
• 25:39
  Right.
• 25:40
  It's not really an argument about for doing less.
• 25:44
  It's an argument to do things for a reason.
• 25:48
  And sometimes the horse just needs to be a horse for a while.
• 25:51
  I think it depends on if people are comfortable to do nothing.
• 25:55
  Sometimes that is an answer.
• 25:57
  And the irony of all of this is that I started thinking about all this on my way to meet Dave.
• 26:03
  I was.
• 26:04
  He was coming to do saline, and I was thinking about all this on my way to meet him.
• 26:10
  So obviously, I'm not against any of it.
• 26:12
  I just think that having more options doesn't mean that every horse needs every option.
• 26:18
  And sometimes good horse care is knowing when to do something, and sometimes it's knowing when to leave the horse alone.
• 26:27
  So until next week, let's ride.