Willow Acres Boarding Stables

This photo was last years because I was too busy with animals and they were in and OUT in 3 1/2 hours yesterday! Unreal! 886 bales raked, baled, and stacked in the loft. The Bangel family and John Young are pros.😁

This one's a little meaty. I'm often asked, "How do you really know if the information that we're seeing all the time about products is really good?" It's a great question, and there's no easy answer. However, you can take some steps - as long as you're willing to take the time - that will give you at least some idea if a product or service that you're being pounded over the head with is really useful for your horse. I hope this helps.

https://www.doctorramey.com/if-youre-wondering-about-information-about-horse-info-s-i-f-t-it-first/

We have a small mountain of pallets. Most are in excellent shape. Please forward to anyone who could come pick up or pm me if interested 😁

Things are turning as green as the beer will be tomorrow 🍀☘️

Lazy mules🤣

Wasn’t gonna brag but….eff it. I know this may surprise some but I’m not normally one to do fake nails. Was bored, had some I found and glued them on. I just put this ginormous bale net on and STILL have them all attached.😁.

It was time

And the hands down, mud monster winner of the day is Spy. No contest 😂😂😂

A controversial topic, sure to unleash all sorts of opinions, is the difference between reward based training and pressure and release based training.

And whether it is possible, perhaps desirable, to use some sort of combination of both approaches.

So it is 1952 and I am 11, sitting on Saturday afternoon at the Garden Theater in Greenfield, Massachusetts, watching a Western. The outlaws are being chased by the posse. “Hold up, “yells the sheriff. Every cowboy leans back and takes a reef on the reins. Every horse’s head shoots up, mouths wide open from the pressure. And no one gave it much thought, not 60 years ago, because that was simply how it was done.

Fast forward to 2023. I posted a photo of one of the world’s most accomplished and most quietly classical riders asking her horse to stretch, and out came the attackers. “There is a wrinkle in the horse’s side from her leg pressure.” “ The horse is behind the vertical.” Yada, yada, yada, a litany of complaints from the peanut gallery.

So I would ask this simple question---“My horse is galloping along out in the open, and I want him to slow down. Do I throw him a peppermint? So that is one ridiculous scenario, But tearing his head off with some bit designed to stop a charging bull rhino would be equally bad horsemanship.

Isn’t the truth balanced somewhere between using sheer force and using reward? When my kids were little, I took them to King Brother’s Circus in Hanover, NH, and there was a guy there who was the handler of the elephants. Someone asked him about how he trained, and he said, “It depends on the animal. I use pressure and release with big cats, bears, most animals, but with dogs and seals, when they do it right I flip them a biscuit or a fish.”

And not only are there different schools of belief about training, there are huge degrees of pressure, from the old movie cowboy method to the soft and gentle repetition of walk, halt, walk, halt teaching a young horse to yield to mild pressure until the horse learns to associate what these mild pressures are requesting.

But later, if that young horse, now older, is out fox hunting in a group, and its blood is up, using, say, a Tom Thumb Pelham might be the difference between getting tanked off with and having control.

So what I think is pretty simple, and I may be convinced otherwise if I see a better way---Try as much as possible to create a conditioned response using gentle repetition and staying below the horse’s anxiety threshold in basic schooling, but when the horse gets strong with excitement and starts to take over, do what it takes to be safe.

The real riders, the ones who are more than theoretical experts sitting safely somewhere NOT on a galloping horse, will know that there is theory and there is reality. And they will be as soft as possible most of the time they train, but they will also not become passive victims when the horse starts to get too aggressive.

So far it’s Stacy *41*Indiana winters caring for horses. In winters 0. ❄️✌🏻Shouts out for Ashley, Mariah, and Maria as well😘

Let your horses be horses.

Let them roll in the dirt and get muddy.

Let them bask in the warm sunlight on sunny days, sunning their coat as they nap in the dirt with friends.

Let them play with other horses, they may get the occasional nick or scratch but their mental health can remain unscathed.

Let them stretch their legs and romp across ground without being under the control of a rider, let them control their pace and buck and play.

Horses don’t care about what brand of blanket they wear, how expensive their saddle is or how neat and tidy their coat is.

They don’t care about appearances, they don’t care about monetary values, they don’t care about status…

This is a large part of why we love them so much, they don’t judge like humans do. They are so much more simple in that way.

Let your horses be horses because there is nothing more breathtaking than a happy and fulfilled horse.

Let your horses be horses and they will thank you forever and you will be able to get to know them in ways you did not know possible.

Pictured is Juniper the Mustang being a happy little swamp donkey.

34 years of decent country, living ended for us last night. Someone or someone’s came onto our property and stole out of our barn our Kabota. They either drove it or rolled it out the locked barn doors. These folks are so incredibly brazen. Keep your eye out for a silver anniversary edition Kabota with a dump bed wasn’t fancy, but it was a vehicle that we really used a lot here on our farm.Police report has been filed and we will go through our security footage to see what we can see if anything. Just a good reminder to keep your stuff locked up!!!That’s the world we live in. Please share!!!

Read! Then read again…and again…and again…

The Wellness Trap - David Ramey, DVM “As healthy as a horse.” You’re heard this, of course. From all accounts, the term originated in the 19th century. Then (as now), horses were known for their vitality and endurance, as well as their strength. They were symbols of good health. Someone that was, “As healthy as a horse,” was ...

Giving a horse medical treatment when they aren’t cooperating, loading a horse reluctant to do so, performing the same task over and over AND PUTTING ON ONE OF THESE @$&!! THINGS…will test your metal😂 ( but I 💯 love them).

Pray for Emory, organized by Sarah Magner Please pray for Emory’s recovery. Our beautiful yearling filly means the world to us and all who have com… Sarah Magner needs your support for Pray for Emory

Trust your horse to go forward

Probably one of the biggest sticking points for many: horses crunched up from a rider who is afraid to let go- and when they are let go they are snatched back up. Fear! It’s insidious. There is no judgment here of the human for being afraid

But

How can a horse ever trust a person who cannot learn to let go of them?

The reality is, a horse in forward motion is far safer than one being restrained. A horse restrained perpetually is a horse set up for implosion. Now THAT is scary

And a horse in BALANCED forward motion is the safest place to be on the planet

Do the work to create the balance
And then trust it, and let the horse move

This is gonna be GOOD😍😁

Yep!!!!👍😁

Is a Therapy Clinically Relevant? - David Ramey, DVM In light of all of the “options” that you have for treating your horse, thought it might be fun and, hopefully, thought provoking, to bring up a term that’s thrown around in medicine, especially by statisticians, but rarely, so it seems, in day to day practice. Statisticians, in case you don.....