There is always more to learn about horses. You think you’ve seen it all – heard it all – done it all…… and then, Wham!!! there’s something new.

Of course there are always new findings, new products, new ways of doing the same old things, but sometimes you just hear of things that you’ve never heard of before.

Between my neighbor and I we’ve covered too many problems. We check in with each other to see if either of us have come up against any particular thing. If the answer is no, we spread the knowledge between us so we’re covered the next time.

I’ve had laser done on horses before, I could only assume it worked. I had it done on me last week and you know what? It really did work. Who would have known. Went through the same thing with acupuncture. I used it on the horses, but not until it really worked for me did I believe it. Now chiropractic I had first.

Millions of horses are flown all over the world, in airplanes of course, all the time. I hate to fly, but I never gave it much thought when it came to horses. I’ve seen how it’s done. Don’t like it much, but it works. Do they get peanuts and a complimentary drink? But lately I’ve encountered many horses that have been flown over and I can’t believe the amount of them that have physical problems from the flight. When speaking with an equine chiropractor, I can’t believe the percentages that have injuries (unseen) from the journey.

Now lets just look at the facts. If you are purchasing a horse in Europe and flying it over to the United States I’m sure they are not flying Economy. You’ve paid a great deal of money for this whole adventure. Why are so many horses injured in the process? Why aren’t people more aware of the injuries these poor animals are left with? Why isn’t something more being done to protect their safety?

The next thing I’ve come up against lately is head/neck trauma in horses.

Now I know my old TB was not right in the brain, and Bob’s Appendix would get weird. We always said that when God was passing out brains, Toy thought he said trains, and Toy said I’m a horse and don’t need trains. It was a standing joke, but now I’m thinking maybe there is more to it. We’d just say he was seeing “Red Rats” let it go. He’d lose focus, start violently backing up, his eyes kind of go blank, he’d slip into the abyss, and we’d wait for him to return. He would back into trees, barbed wire, walls, other horses, whatever was behind him. You could beat him on the butt, but nothing would get his focus back. I had a TB mare that would just freeze, lock up, you’d wait it out and then she would just blow up, and it wasn’t pretty when she would land on a horse in front of her. When these episodes were done, you had a normal??? horse again. It was just something you learned to ride out. It was like her brain went on overload and shut down. Toy’s was more like a panic attack. My first TB I just chalked up to temper tantrums.

But now I’m finding different explanations. More scientific explanations.

My one friends has a horse, and she would say, his brain has checked out. Okay, I hear you, I’ve been there, but she wasn’t just going to work around it. She found people who believed her and offered real explanations. Vertebrates that are out of alignment either pinching nerves or blocking blood to the brain. She’s going to have a specialist look at him and see if there is anyway of correcting the problem. She would always tell me that he just wasn’t there (mentally). I guess she was right.

It’s funny. Years ago we figured there was really something wrong with these horses, but we didn’t know any better. We didn’t know we could look further into the situation. That perhaps something really was wrong that could have been corrected, but then 20 – 40 years ago, I don’t believe there were people out there that could have helped them. Medical and psychological advances in equine medicine have come so far, and nothing is out of bounds anymore. The old saying of “they’re just horses” doesn’t hold water anymore. Owners want answers and are willing to pay for it, and vets are more open to all this weird stuff. People all over the world are investigating all the strange issues that horses and horse people are facing.

I wish I knew then what I know now. I could have helped so many of the horses I loved. I gave them good retirements, but I could have given them many more years of wonderful rides. But from here we go forward.