Breathing

So this may not interest a lot of people, but I was reading an article in the november issue of Equus that just came out about breathing, for the rider. This article grabbed my attention because I have been working hard on my seat recently and strenghtening my abdominals and lenghtening my seat.

The article started talking about how most of our breathing is done by the diaphragm, and if we are hunched over, or whatever, then we can't properly use those muscles. The author was saying how a rider can literally "breathe" herself into a tall and better position by using your diaphgram.

A horse can feel when we are tense or relaxed just by how we are breathing. This is also how horses alert others to danger. If they are tense or snort, etc., there is danger, but if they relax their head, and lengthen their neck downwards and sigh, they are saying that danger is past.

They're were 7 key breathing things which the article talked about...

1. "Breath down" to deepen your seat
When your breathe downwards it helps lower your center of gravity and makes you feel safe and secure.

2. Breath for relaxationa and calming

3. Breathe for rhythm

4. Take a "power breath"
This helps to deepen your seat, engage your core muscles, and puts power into your seat, legs and attitude. It can help protect your lower back, also useful when lifting heavy objects.
They say to first say "hiss" as you exhale, and eventually you'll be able to do it without that noise. You should feel your spine lengthen, your seat deepen, your shoulders drop, and your legs drop down around your horse.

5. Breathe over jumps and poles. (something I forget to do : ) )

6. Breathe to engage your core muscles and protect your back.

7. Breathe your horse to a halt.


This article was extremely interesting and motivating. This can also be applied to every day things. The more relaxed your breathing is the more relaxed you'll be, and people around you will be, and the more worried and quick your breathing gets, the more other people's will be too.

Nothing new.

So nothing much new that I have found in my reading that would be worth noting...I'm waiting for next month's magazines to come in the mail : ) haha.

Let's see...what else is new..I went to the mountains this past weekend with my boyfriend and then his parents came up too..that was fun. Saturday it rained..but I got to skin and gut out a doe that my boyfriend's dad killed with muzzleloader..that was fun..I haven't gotten a dear before so he taught me how..I'm hoping this year I'll get one. I always hunt on gamelands so it's hard when you don't have your own land..so this year I actually get to hunt on my boyfriend's family farm in the mountains..and I havent hunted for two years now so I'm super excited!!

Then we went out to eat with his parents at a new bar and restaurant saturday night..that was fun...it was an old rustic inn and bar that was restored..very pretty. Oh yeah..might I mention my boyfriend bought a new gun..I think he has almost 20 now..way tooo many..it was a, oh i forget, lol, it was a 50 cal muzzleloader..that can be converted...it was pretty cool...

Then sunday we hung out and then went to a festvile in town, but it got rained out so then we left..we looked at the tractors some, since my boyfriend's into pulling. Then I headed back to school and he headed back home to drop my dog off at his house and then there went another weekend.

Oh..show this weekend..super excited since I didn't do well at my last one. It's an Alumni show, that the Alumni team is putting on...

weekends..thats what i live for.

Shortages of Large Animal Veterinarians

So I was wondering what to write about this week until I stumbled upon an article (In the October 2009 issue of Equus) right up my ally. I going to be applying to vet school in the next couple of years, and this was really interesting.

A quote at the top of article said, "The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that only 15 percent of U.S. veterinarians in private practice specialize in large animals."

That is SAD! That means that there needs to be a major increase before we don't have any more vets! On the other hand, on the food animal side, the USDA has recognized this as an issue. I guess it is a complete problem in the whole LARGE ANIMAL SIDE.

This one article talks about Cornell University, a school in Ithaca, New York. This school is encouraging students to pursue a career in large-animal veterinary practice. Currently they accept about 75 to 85 people each year, but by the year 2016 they are thinking of raising this acceptance number by 35%. Half of those new slots will be for students interested in large animals.

Judy Appleton, PhD, the college's associate dean for academic affairs, said about New York (and this is also true about the United States) that "in 2008, of the 62 counties in the state, 32 had just one large-animal vet caring for everyone in the area, and five tounties had zero vets, forcing residents to seek care elsewhere."

These kind of articles always encourage me, and make me even more motivated to becoming a vet because I know large animal vets are needed, and someone has to care for these animals ...

Night Time

So in a recent article from Equus, I learned some very interesting things about Equine Night Vision. Did you know that horses can see better than humans at night? Well I guess that's not suprising, especially since most animals can see better than us. Some of the terms might not make sense to you, but it was an interesting article.

The article talked about how new physiological studies show that horses are equipped for functional scoptic (dim light) vision. The equine retina, where the rods and cones are kept, whats responsible for seeing colors basically, to sum it up, has MORE RODS AND CONES, and the horse has a reflective structure called the TAPETUM LUCIDUM, which increases light-gathering properties...and I'm almost positive that we don't have that structure. Though evidence suggests that they can see better in the dark than we can, BUT they have a harder time distinguishing objects apart in the dark.

So....The Equine Research Foundation, in Aptos, California, designed a study to test the ability of horses to discriminate between onjects at various light levels. Then in a windowless building....horses were trained with two images...a black circle on a while background, and a black triangle on a white blackhoard. They trained some horses to go to the circle, and some to the triangle.

THEN>> once the horses were choosing the right one every time, they slowly started diminishing the light. THEN...only when it was almost pitch black could horses not distinguish between the shapes..BUT they could walk and maneuever fine..and knew where the walls, etc. were.

Very interesting article I thought...I wish we could see that good at night : ) I'll leave the navigating to my horse when I have to ride at night. haha.

Just didn't feel like it...

Haha..so do you ever just don't feel like doing something? haha...I guess that's a stupid question. I just didn't feel like writing about something with the horse industry this week...I thought I'd write a little bit about myself since I never did.

My name is Jess...and I live in Strasburg, PA, but currently I'm going to Delaware Valley College...cute campus..it SUCKS being a transfer student though...I hate it. I am almost 21, and I transfered here from a school in Nebraska. I got my vet tech degree, and recently got my scores back, and I am now LICENSED!! That made my day! I'm trying to get a job...I'm waiting back to hear from one vet clinic around here, but I can't seem to find a job..frustrating!

I am currently in the Dairy Science major, and trying to get a Bachelor's degree, and take my required classes I need to get into vet school, but I might change my major..dunno yet. I love animals..they are my life. I have a Quarter Horse mare, named Misty, and a black lab/red heeler named Myth..my two favoritest animals! I also have kinda of adopted my boyfriend's dog, Jamie, she's a German Shorthair Pointer..she thinks I'm her mother. My boyfriend took her to nationals last year in Colorado, where he lived when I was out at school in Nebraska..then he followed me back here. We've been together three years now..he's also my best friend..along with my animals!

Um..I'm on the Equestrian Team at school here..it's a lot different than the one I was on out west...but I guess sometimes people need to get used to new people..ANOTHER REASON WHY I HATE BEING A TRANSFER.. : )

Well that's about it...Just a constant struggle trying to do the best I can in all my classes so I can get into vet school, and balancing school, home, friends, boyfriend, and animals.

Bed time.

Equnomics

Equnomics. Haha. When I saw that term it made me laugh. It is so true, there is such thing as equonmics. I was reading an article in Horse Illustrated that talks about how you can still have your horse, even with the economic climate that we are in. It is so true that horses are hay burners, as my boyfriend calls them, but they are more like money burners. I pour money into my horse each month, and what do i get in return? Well it's not that bad, I'm just saying that they cost money, BUT that will never turn me away from them. Once you get hooked on horses, they are there to stay. Just like the other day, I open up my horse's stall door, and her left hind leg is huge, from her hock down, and then i take her out, and she has a huge hole in her chest, and a pocket of edema. I was like what did you do? She just told me she wanted me to pour some more money into her. LOL. So the vet came out yesterday and gave me antibiotics and all that jazz...who knows what she got into..maybe she wanted a break from being ridden, heck, she has the life with me being at school right now.

ANYWAYS--back to article. They gave lots of suggestions about what to do. One option was to half lease your horse, I always thought about that but I think my little sister is going to use my horse next year as her 4 H horse. However, it would help with the whole money issue. Though in this day, a lot of people don't want to lease horses either because it all costs money, and even buy horses. I was trying to sell a mare that my cousin gave me after she weaned her, and I couldn't sell her, so I had to give her away, granted she was crazy, lol, but I couldn't even sell her, as a project horse, right now people just don't want to put money into horses.

Another thing the article talked about was selling what you don't need. Yeah..thats soo true..I have trunks and trunks of horse things..like completely stupid stuff too..I can't even walk into a tack store without buying something, even if it is only a hoof pick. lol. It's an addiction...it's soo true..without my horse, I'd be a crack addict on withdrawal..well maybe not that bad. Though I seriously should sell stuff. I have an old western saddle I don't even use...and I have my english saddle at a tack store close to home because I'm trying to sell it so I can buy a new one, but I doubt that will happen. People just don't want to put out the money, like at all. Someone called about my horse I was trying to sell the other day, and they wanted me to trailer it to THEM, AT NOT ADDITIONAL COST, i was like whoa buddy, that aint happening.

Another tip was to swtich from a full care boarding place to self care...personally it all ends up the same..I was out at a school in nebraska for 2 years and i took my horse with me, and kept her in a runin shed and field, but I had to buy all my own hay, and by the time you add it all up, it's the same, well unless you can afford to bay 600 or 700 dollars a month and keep your horse at a nice place, because being a college student, I sure can't. Right now she's at a family run farm, and i help with the horses whenever I can, and i house sat for a lot of the summer this summer, and I havent had to pay board in months, which is soooo nice.

Then lastly...they said to sell your horse, if you can't afford it. Yeah, my horse ain't goin no where, nuh eh..haha..She's staying with me...I can't ever sell her, somehow she is always to stay with me, even when i buy more..lol..even though my boyfriend says no more : )

Overrall I thought that was an interesting article, and like all things you gotta decide what is imporant in your life, and what you can and cannot life without.

Horses are what I can't live without.

Tenting..a new issue...

So tonight when I was doing my nightly reading in one of many million horse magazines i stumbled upon a different way to detect dehydration in horses. Being a licensed vet tech, I found this very interesting..

SO usually...to check to see if a horse is dehyrated you tent the skin on the horse's neck to see how quickly it returns to normal. Another way is to look at the dryness of the gums. HOWEVER-- a study was done in 2008 in the Equine Veterinary Journal to see which practical tests of dehydration were the best.

They took blood tests from 50 horses while working in warm to hot temperatures, and this provided the truest measure of their hydration. They also found that skin tenting did not correlate with how dehydrated they were, but it did show that which side and what part of the neck it was done on, as well as coat moisture and the horse's age, affected this.

They concluded that looks at the gums was not a reliable test because gum dryness could be increased while handling the mouth or decreased after drinking, making it unreliable. The horses that were dehydrated (out of the horses they took blood from) drank SIGNIFICANTLY more water and had longer and more frequent drinking bouts, than those horses who were dehydrated.

SOOO...in conclusion, the volume and frequency of water consumption was the best indication of hydration stays, meaing the best test of dehydration also turned out to be its cure.

I think that this is interesting because while we try to find complex answers, the very answer is as simple as drinking water, a neccessity.

Just a thought.