My partner’s thoroughbred has abscesses in both hind hooves due to the wet weather we have had this winter. He lives out 24/7 because he doesn’t like being away from his mates. He was having to stay in until I discovered Cavallo Simple hoof boots. Now he can charge round the field as if he was a 4 year old and not the 21 year old that he is. These boots are the best purchase we’ve made in a long time. I would recommend these to anyone.
Terry King, United Kingdom
This year Chinese New Year starts on Jan 23, this starts the first of 15 days of celebration and the start of the Year of the Dragon. Last year, the Year of the Rabbit, was characterized by calm and tranquility. The Year of the Dragon will be marked by prosperity, excitement, unpredictability, exhilaration and intensity. People respond to the spirit of the Dragon with energy, vitality and unbridled enthusiasm, often throwing all caution to the wind. In keeping with the spirit of the Dragon in 2012, we at Cavallo definitely have some exciting things in store for this year! We want to especially thank Trevor and Anita, our Cavallo team in Asia, for all of their hard work and we wish everyone happiness, health, wealth and prosperity in 2012!
I wanted to give my filly a break from wearing shoes during the winter months. My farrier suggested that I try equine hoof boots. I researched equine hoof boots via the internet and browsed through my equine magazines and was drawn to the Cavallo Sport Boot. The sport boots arrived today, I reviewed the enclosed information and could not wait to try them on my filly. She didn’t fuss at all and walked off like she has been wearing them all along. I plan to measure my mares feet and purchase her the same boots. The Cavallo Sport Boot is a quality product and would recommend them to anyone who is looking for an alternative to shoes, especially during the winter months in Pennsylvania.
Melodie Clark, Edinboro, PA, USA
Some of you may remember the previous posts we published about this horse. If you missed them, you can catch up on the progress by clicking here and the second part is here. Below is the happy ending – a healthy barefoot horse.
Lilla Gumman is now leading the pack when her owner takes her out on a trail ride. Margareta says she is better now than before she had her catastrophic founder in September 2010. Her rotation in her hind feet was 30 degrees with coffin bone penetration. Lilla rides in Cavallo Simple hoof boots on all 4 feet. She LOVES them! We have a a park (previous dump) with 2 huge hills. Lilla cantered all the way to the top ahead of all the other riders. Margareta was overjoyed to have her Lilla Gumman back better and more sound than before. Her simple boots stay on, are completely comfortable and she is totally athletic and gaits beautifully in them. To have her move ahead of all the other, younger horses says a lot about Lilla and her simple boots. They work!
I had given the soft terrain trim to Lilla 4 months ago and she is so much sounder with the new trim. The best Christmas present I could have was to see my Lilla so happy and with healthy hooves once again, riding the trails with her lifetime companion Margareta.
Marianne Allen
Advanced Natural Hoofcare
Instructor of the South Florida Trim for Soft Terrain Horses
The Florida School of Natural Hoofcare South West Ranches
The latest blog from our friend Joe Camp.
When we were first starting with horses less than five years ago we dove deeply into the training books and DVDs of several of the top clinicians in the United States. We owned virtually everything ever written or videoed by Monty Roberts, Clinton Anderson, and the Parellis and we were bouncing back and forth from one to the other testing what worked best with our horses. But I was secretly longing for a compressed, congealed, shuffled together guide to the basics. Not only what works best, but why. And what is most important right from the beginning. I wanted to bypass the multi-levels and two-year regimens of one small step after another and encircle the heart and soul of what we really needed to know about the horse and what he needed to know about us before racing off to the trail.
I think as much as anything those were the two nuggets eating away at me: what we needed to know about the horse and what he needed to know about us.
I wanted to stop spending hours upon hours hunting and pecking to find this answer and that answer which logic had dictated could be important in relationship and leadership building. To find the quickest, safest, soundest route to self-sufficiency and to trusting myself to figure things out. That guide to the basics I mentioned. Now, at last, we have one. Written for all of us who truly love our horses. A book of the good stuff crammed with everything we have learned about relationship and leadership and why it makes such a difference up front. Right from the get go. Why it all works. Why five years later our herd of six are happy healthy horses love and respect their human leaders. And do awesome things for them. For us. And there’s an entire chapter on fear. I believe this book can change your relationship with your horse, and teach you to trust yourself to trust yourself. Stories, discoveries, and information you will love can now always be with you. At home, in the barn, the pasture, or the arena.
Read more on The Soul of a Horse website
Joe Camp is the author of the national best seller The Soul of a Horse – Life Lessons from the Herd, The Soul of a Horse Blogged – The Journey Continues and his new series of eBook Nuggets from the Soul of a Horse. He is also the creator of the canine superstar Benji and the writer-director of all five Benji movies.
Cavallo Total Comfort System Saddle Pads are designed to promote even distribution of weight to the weight-bearing longissimus dorsi muscles along either side of the horse’s backbone; to keep weight off the horse’s spine; and to allow room for the horse’s scapula to move properly within the narrow confines of the saddle.
Our Tri-Density Solution, combined with fine finishing details including genuine leather butt joints, nylon bindings and aeration perforations, provides the Ultimate in Saddle Pads, benefiting both horse and rider!
“The Cavallo Total Comfort System Saddle Pads help your horse increase his
movement around the shoulder. The gullet system encourages horses to lift their spine and use themselves properly while taking pressure off the withers. This unique memory foam sandwich helps your saddle fit better. In addition to the lightweight thinness of the Cavallo pad I love the reversible feature as I prefer to ride with the 100% New Zealand wool to my horse. Cavallo pads are the best pads in the world today.”
Monty Roberts, the “Man Who Listens to Horses”
Click here to learn more about Cavallo Total Comfort System Saddle Pads
On the road with Cavallo hoof boots at the American Heart Association ride in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Over $200,000 raised! For more information visit – www.ahabeachride.org/
I am writing in regards to a purchase of your Cavallo Sport hoof boots. I recently participated in the Annual Bison Roundup held on Antelope Island in Syracuse, Utah, but would not had a successful excursion without the aid of the Sport Boot.
The Bison Roundup is an annual event where hundreds of riders volunteer to assist the State Park in herding 400-700 head of North American Bison across 10 miles of rocky rugged terrain. The bison roam free on the island but are rounded up each year for vaccinations, health checks, and to keep the herd at a manageable population. It requires a fast well trained horse. I would consider it to be the most adrenalin-pumping, breathtaking adventure that I’ve ever done.
The roundup includes going up steep cliff sides, riding through sage brush and running at high speeds to chase and be chased by large bison. For the past two years I have attended the roundup with my brothers. It has become an annual tradition for us. Both years we have tried to persuade my father to come out with and join us, since he had commented to us originally about how much he would enjoy participating in such a lively event. Everything worked out this year and my dad was finally able to go with us to the roundup.
All plans were going smoothly until a week before the scheduled roundup, when his horse threw both front shoes. Since the horse was recently shod, his hooves were too short for new shoes to be placed. We tried a different brand of barefoot boot on a trail ride but found it difficult in many ways. The boots would not stay on for very long, so we constantly had to stop and put them back on. The boots were also very hard to put on and take off. We desperately looked for a boot that a horse could run in, withstand rough terrain, and were also affordable. After reading several reviews, we decided to purchase a pair of the Cavallo Sport Boots.
The boots arrived just in time. We put them on the horse early in the morning and rode with them all day. The horse seemed to handle the new shoes with ease; traversing gullies, streams, and boulder fields. My father said the best part of our trip was running alongside the bison to assure that they did not stampede. The boots held up nicely and we never had to get off and adjust them. I had concerns that my father would be distracted on the ride by always having to adjust the boots, but this was not the case. I was extremely grateful that we had found such a well-made, quality product and wanted to thank you personally by writing this email. Without the Cavallo Sport Boot, we could not have given my father the experience of a lifetime.
I have attached a picture of my two brothers, my dad and me. I am the one wearing the red shirt and cowboy hat. My Dad is the one riding the buckskin.
Sincerely,
Clayton Sagers
Rather than trying to help the world of horse racing from the outside, Greg and I (Carole, Cavallo President) agreed to the opportunity of part ownership of a fabulous young horse called Travis. He is by King of Prussia and the dame is Park Parade.
Travis was busy having a swim when we got to Flemington in Melbourne for our visit. Although he is sleek and muscular there really isn’t much of him. He is still just a baby but put together very well. Here’s me the alternative natural Barefoot Lady, with a shod horse in a very conventional industry. Life is so strange sometimes!
We brought our Travis some Cavallo hoof boots and encouraged the trainer to pull the metal shoes off and use them as often as possible. Of course, it is still illegal to race without metal plates – even on the fabulous green turf at Flemington!! And of course, “we can’t let him be barefoot during the season, because there are a few rocks around”. Hmmm wonder what they would think if they heard how we fill our paddocks with rocks intentionally to facilitate our barefoot programs! This is an industry that requires some attention. At Cavallo one of our mottos is “Changing the World – one horse at a time”. When other trainers see Travis strutting around in his Cavallos – it may give them pause to ponder. What if?
The latest contribution from our friend Joe Camp.
Horses eat grass.
They are genetically programmed to eat grass. 18-20 hours a day. Their bodies must have it. Their hind gut must have it. But from the moment we landed in middle Tennessee, the warnings began to pour in from the locals.
Your horses cannot be out 24/7 on the rich sugary grasses of middle Tennessee.
You’ve just moved into Founder Valley!
It freaked us out. Could grasses be that different?
Why? What the heck was going on in middle Tennessee?? It was all prying at the edges of logic.
We were determined to have our horses live like God and Mother Nature intended. But what we were being told was scary, and didn’t make sense.
Images from Ginger Kathrens’ wonderful PBS documentary series about the wild stallion Cloud and his herd in the Pryor Mountains of Montana came to mind (I’ve watched Episode 3 maybe 25 times. It is singularly the best film I’ve ever seen about wild horses).
The images that were assaulting me were of the beautiful rich green meadow at the top of the mountain where the herds spend every waking hour from mid-Spring through mid-fall. So why aren’t those horses foundering, I kept asking myself. How is that meadow different from the pastures in middle Tennessee?
As it turns out it’s very different from the pastures in middle Tennessee. Astoundingly so.
Why?
Because of us!
Humans!
The entire last half of The Soul of a Horse Blogged – The Journey Continues and our new Horses Were Born To Be on Grass tells the whole story … but here’s the Sparks Notes version 
.
What we discovered is that most of these gorgeous white-fenced pastures around us contain a single species of genetically modified cool season grass, planted like a thick carpet and fertilized like crazy. Nary a weed, or bush, or bramble, or berry. And if there’s a tree around, it’s always fenced.
So? I bet it’s beautiful.
To the human maybe. Not to the horses.
How come?
It turns out that choices are the single most important piece of the puzzle. When a horse has all the choices he or she might want or need their genetic makeup inherently knows how to balance itself. Like the wild horses do. And we now know that every horse on the planet, both wild and domestic, are genetically precisely the same.
But most of the pastures here in “Founder Valley” offer no choices.
None.
The horses’ only option is one species of cool season grass (like fescue, orchard, etc) which has way more sugar than warm season grasses (like Bermuda, Dallis grass, etc) because cool season grasses generate fructan. Warm season grasses do not. A warm season grass will manufacture starch but when the gland storing the starch is full the process stops. Fructan in cool season grasses is manufactured indefinitely as long as there is sunshine.
Also pasture owners usually opt for a grass that has been genetically modified to grow earlier in the Spring and later in the fall to reduce the amount of hay fed during the winter. And according to researcher Katy Watts genetically modified grasses are always higher in sugar content than the same grass not genetically modified.
When the grass is tightly planted like a lawn the horses have to move substantially less to eat, and horses are genetically designed to move 8-20 miles a day. They need this movement for their body to function properly, both inside and out. In the wild horse meadows the grasses are patchy and scattered.
So far then the Tennessee horses are usually ingesting way more sugar with less movement than a wild horse on that meadow atop the Pryor Mountains in Montana who has many choices to balance his intake.
Then add the chemical fertilizers in Tennessee which of course don’t exist in the wild. When grass is stressed and needing water it sucks up potassium which acts as a magnet for attracting water. Potassium is the number one ingredient in most chemical fertilizers so during a period of stress on the grass a horse can wind up with up to 1000 times more potassium in his body than he needs. Not good.
And because there are no weeds, or brambles, or berries, or trees, or bushes in these Tennessee pastures, the horse has no choice but to eat what’s there, or go hungry.
Is it any wonder it’s called Founder Valley?
But we didn’t know any of this when we purchased our new place. Thankfully there is a God who takes care of us even when we don’t know we need taking care of.
As we peeled back the layers of research we discovered our new pasture contained at least seven different kinds of native grasses that are split fairly evenly between high-sugar cool season grasses and low-sugar warm-season grasses now that we’ve added a bit of Bermuda to the mix. There are plenty of weeds, brambles, bushes, berries, and trees. And there has been no chemical fertilizer on it for at least 9 years. And no chemical pesticides or herbicides (whatever the label says it’s still poison that, over time, will cause problems. Would you ingest it?).
With all these choices the horse’s genetics can function.
When ours have had enough cool season sugary grass they know to switch to Bermuda or Dallis grass. It’s built in. When they need a liver cleanout they eat thistle… Vitamin D, a few blackberries.
If a horse has all the choices he needs or wants he will not eat something that’s bad for him. If he has nothing but a genetically modified, high sugar, cool season grass … he’s going to eat it. And if it’s planted like a carpet, he’s going to move way less while doing so. More sugar per step. A double whammy.
The kind of pasture a horse needs is ugly. Patchy. Some grass here and some grass there. Not a thick carpet. And that ugly pasture needs lots and lots of choices. By the grace of God that’s exactly what we have and exactly how we left it …except for planting a few bags of additional warm season Bermuda grass.
And the big takeaway from all this? Pretty much the same as the rest of our amazing journey: Knowing that when something doesn’t seem logical it probably isn’t. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not right. We need to always question everything. Be our own experts. Gather information and make decisions based upon our knowledge and wisdom that relates to us, our situation, and our horses.
That’s the mindset we started with back in California when we discovered that a horse’s hoof was supposed to flex to create blood circulation in the hoof and there was no flexing with a metal shoe nailed on.
We brought that mindset with us to middle Tennessee.
Our herd of six were virtually maintaining their own feet in their dusty rocky “paddock paradise” in California. Dani Lloyd trimmed every 8-9 weeks, usually doing little more than light maintenance. They were moving 8-9 miles a day on the kind of terrain they were genetically born to live on. The trimming schedule changed in middle Tennessee.
Mark Taylor is now trimming every six weeks and the hoof walls are always a bit long by trim day. We find ways to ensure a lot of movement but the terrain just doesn’t provide the wear and tear that they are genetically designed to get. It takes 5,000 to 10,000 years to even begin to change the base genetics of any species so Mother Nature has no way of knowing our guys are not on Great Basin-like terrain. She is still growing that hoof as if they were. So we have to help them along with the trim, with movement, and with quite a bit of pea gravel in their well-traveled areas like the barn breezeway, the round pen, and around the pond where they drink. And even three to four weeks after a trim, our 24 hooves look for the world like they looked when forged on the southern California high-desert type of terrain.
We were handed yet another lesson this past Spring because like so many humans who are hung up with human concepts we brought the herd through the winter at their normal weight, upping rice bran portions to be sure they didn’t get too “skinny and look unhealthy”. The problem with that contorted logic is that horses in the wild will naturally thin down as winter wears on because the forage is more sparse. And they evolved to do so because bursting into Spring lean and mean so to speak sets them up to better handle those “rich Spring grasses” without gaining too much weight.
We didn’t see this issue the first Spring because the horses had only been here about six months and were apparently still adjusting to the move. But this, their second year, when the Spring grasses began to emerge – cool season higher sugar grasses always emerge before the warm season grasses containing less sugar – the horses all blimped up quite a bit. We missed it in the beginning because we are with them every day so I’m really thankful that Mark Taylor, our hoof specialist, was coming every six weeks. He spotted the extra weight immediately.
Whoa! Why are the horses so fat?
Ooops!
We slowly but methodically cut way back on the rice bran (which is the only weight maintenance supplement they receive).
This fall we let them go into winter with a good weight but at some point we’ll start cutting back on the rice bran – watching and judging as we go – so they’ll hit the Spring grass season nice and lean and be able to handle the higher sugars with less effort. Just like in the wild.
So here we are, marking the two-year anniversary of our guys and gals being out 24/7 on the “rich grasses of middle Tennessee.” Founder Valley as they say. Our herd is a happy, healthy bunch and Kathleen and I are mighty proud parents. And I’m finally a happy camper because Kathleen is now here for good teaching eleventh grade literature at a top college prep school only five minutes from our house while her law license calls sadly from the file cabinet. Which will win? Stay tuned . All I know for sure is that it was a long two years without her.
When I gave Cash the choice of choice and he chose to trust me he left me with no alternative. No longer could it be what I wanted, but rather what he needed. What fifty-two million years of genetics demanded for his long, healthy, and happy life.
So here we are with six happy, healthy horses, all very well adjusted and loving their natural life as we continue to receive our life lessons from each and every one. We are replenished daily, hourly, by scenes like the ones above and below. On a recent evening Kathleen and I sat on the porch with a glass of wine watching the herd, and talking. “I know in my heart that the philosophy is correct,” she said. “That our horses are living the life they should be living, and because of that they should be able to take care of themselves.” She paused for a moment, then added, “But it surely feels good to see two years come to an end and be able to witness the hard cold proof of it all.” I smiled, teared up a bit, and said simply,
“Thank you God.”
Joe Camp is the author of the national best seller The Soul of a Horse – Life Lessons from the Herd, The Soul of a Horse Blogged – The Journey Continues and his new series of eBook Nuggets from the Soul of a Horse. He is also the creator of the canine superstar Benji and the writer-director of all five Benji movies. For more visit www.thesoulofahorse.com
