Get A Veterinarian Out Before You Start Training A Horse
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Why do you need a veterinarian? Well the first reason is they have the drugs, and you need to have your horse checked for wolf teeth and have them extracted if any are found, believe me drugs help, also make sure vaccinations are current, and have the vet evaluate the horses overall health and condition.
Wolf teeth may be located just below the upper molars, right where the bit goes and they are sensitive to bit pressure, they sometime are not visible to the eye and reside just below the surface of the gum. Sort of like a teething baby, the horse can get real cranky from the pain involved, so get the vet to extract any wolf teeth. This will avoid needless frustration and pain for you and the horse. You don’t want to get a week or two into the training session and discover the wolf teeth are causing pain, as you will have to stop the training, do the extractions and give the horse some recuperation time. When all is said and done you will have lost a month of training time.
Have the horses vaccinations brought up to date so you can go down the road and be around other horses, also the tetanus shot is needed for you and your horse, the vet will take care of the horse, but usually want you to see your own doctor. Ask the vet what shots are required in your area or any area you may be planning on traveling to in the near future. Have the worming done too if you don’t do that on your own.
vet clinic
Ask the vet for suggestions on nutrition and anything else that comes to mind, you might as well get all the mileage you can out of the farm call. I know you can haul your horse down to the vet clinic or hospital and maybe save the $50 or so on the farm call, but I don’t like to do that because there are sick animals in and out of that vet clinic and my horse does not need to be exposed to those animals or the diseases they may carry.
Now that we have the horses mouth and general health checked, we can move on to the horse’s foundation, the hooves, in the next upcoming post.
The memory of being unified with that little mare still drifts my direction like the fog we rode through early in the morning, there was no me, there was no horse, just us. The perfect rides and fun remain one of the highlights of my horse journey. Little was I to know that it would take over 50 years to recreate that same unity with other horses. The adventure would span decades of trial and error, successes and failures, all combing to show the stuff that will actually work for every horse.
I’m Dale Anderson, frustrated wannabe cowboy who quit my job in electronics research and development, to become a horseshoer in 1988. I soon discovered that my farrier career would be short lived if I didn’t pick up some effective horse handing skills, fast! Thus the tightrope walk began, of getting my farrier work done, controlling the horse, and sometimes the horse owner, while keeping both happy and content. I am going to share with you some of the methods that worked best on all the horses and a few that you might want to avoid for your own well being and longevity. Even if you already know the horse handling methods that work on all horses, those methods have to work for you when you get older, most of us do that , and a few of us might even have put on a few pounds since high school. Then you have to apply the methods in a specific order, to achieve the best results for all your hard work, not to mention the contentment level of your horse.
Tomorrow I’ll take you along as I show how to set your horse up for success with the right horse health checks. Click the “Subscribe” button on the right to receive updates so you will never miss a single nugget of my horse handling system.
