Recent content by brigantia

There might be some truly dangerous situations where getting off is the thing you have to do. But for naughty napping horses, if you get off each time they act up, you might inadvertantly be rewarding them for misbehaving. My mare also gets stubborn if I get too heavy handed with the...

I LOVE all the great responses here! This advice also works on older horses who have been wrestled into an outline by heavy handed use of various training aids. The best advice I got on the subject for my not so young horse who had been subjected to various devices before I owned her was...

What Amy May said. This is a situation where the YO HAS to intervene. Otherwise you will continue to be taken advantage of and the horse continues suffering. We had a similar situation at my yard that only ended when the YO gave the "no show" horse owner a very serious talk/ultimatum, and...

Actually, no. My horse reacted that way before I even knew what that building was. Other people's horses I've been out with react that way, also. It appears to have nothing to do with the rider's sensibilities or opinions on slaughter.

I totally agree with this. Horses know what abbatoirs are. There's a local one off a bridle path we hack out on. The horses *always* get disturbed and agitated when they have to go past it.

I believe most "bad" horses were made that way by incompetent or ignorant humans. But I've seen a few horses, ones with very competent owners, who were "crazy," like a mentally ill person might be. This is usually down to organic factors like illness, chronic pain, etc. The mare we had in...

Do you have to buy transport? Can't you rent it when you need it? Or borrow someone else's transport, paying them for petrol and expenses? What if you pay for transport and your daughter loses interest and everyone's unhappy? In your place, I would buy the horse. You could always hack to the...

OP, even a good, well drained field will get muddy in a British winter. This is the climate we live in. ANY horse exposed to mud can get mud rash. My horse gets daily turnout, but I need to brush off her legs thoroughly and cover them in barrier cream twice a week so she can enjoy her...

What she said. Checking your horse every day is part of responsible ownership. I'm totally fine with healthy horses living out 24/7 in any weather and unclipped horses being unrugged. But older or injured horses generally need a bit more pampering and shelter.

Glad you enjoyed it! I really love that website.

You might want to check out the Sustainable Dressage website for descriptions of how various dressage legal bits work. http://www.sustainabledressage.net/ You shouldn't need to use a gag bit when doing flatwork in the arena. If you really have no brakes in flatwork, then I'd second the...

Thanks for that great link, Angieandben!

Very informative thread! Thanks everyone. I think there should be a law requiring animal feed companies to state all their ingredients and nutritional information, as there is on human food products.

Thanks for your replies. Chestnut Cob, I wasn't suggesting that feed companies were lying about their info but sometimes they don't even give the data or even list their ingredients. I believe Top Spec Antilam doesn't list their ingredients on their website? I was buying it because a friend...

Hi, I posted this on Stable Yard and got no response. I thought I'd try posting it over here since New Lounge gets more traffic. :o I've been scanning the various threads on different horse feeds and wondered if anyone knew of an objective comparative site that compared the different feeds...