Pain is the number one consideration that I take into
account. When I'm training my horse or when I'm
rehabilitation, the horse, recognizing the pain and then of
course managing the pain several of our riders who come to us in
our program, it can be right underneath their noses they can
it can be so glaringly obvious for someone outside. But when
they're in the situation with their horse, they can totally
miss seeing and the messages that their horses are giving
them. My name is Chris Adderson, and I'm the founder of For The
Horse Harmony Program. Here at For The Horse, we've been
rehabilitating horses for over 30 years. And at times, when we
were at our peak, we had about 25 horses in here for
rehabilitation from anything around abuse, neglect, laminitis
founder things like that. And so it's not a novelty to me to have
to see these kinds of things. But when my horses suffered this
winter, some different hay was brought in because we had less
hay than normal. And this hay was brought in and it was fed to
my horses. When I saw them starting to, to suffer and be in
pain, I had to really take a step back, and wanted to share
with you how to become a better observer of your horse, whether
you're training or whether you're rehabbing so that you can
not miss out on important information that your horse is
telling you, the number one way that you can help yourself is to
observe better get to be a better observer. There's also
feel and there's intention and those kinds of things in there
too. But I want you to focus today on our quality of
observation. And the best place to start is to look at the pain
fo Graham by Dyson. To learn what the signs of pain are eyes
semi closed, staring off into the distance or not an
interesting look to their face, shifting the weight back and
forth. Head tilting or head tossing tail clamp these are the
signs of pay other things to our condition of body. What does
your horse's body looked like? Do they have holding patterns
somewhere within the body that you can see? Is there good
muscle development? Or are there some muscles that are over
developed under development? What is the quality of their
mane and their hair? Right? These are indications of pain as
well. Second thing you can do is to learn how to observe if your
horse is having difficulty with motion or movement. And this can
be a little more challenging to do. But things like rushing if
your horse is rushing every time you ride your horse or an
irregular gait or even stumbling tripping here and there. And it
doesn't even have to be a lot of stumbling. It can just be from
time to time, that would be a time for you to sit up and think
what's going on there. What pain might be associated with that.
Or if there's maybe sudden changes in the gait can also
indicate pain. The third thing is observing how your horse
responds in their environment. And by that I mean it could be
you How does your horse respond to you? How does your horse
respond to you putting all the halter on? Or how does your
horse respond to another form of tack that you're putting on a
saddle? Maybe a bridle picking up the feet? These are things
that you want to really learn to observe in detail. One of my
horses that I'm rehabbing right now from Limonite is very
uncharacteristic for her to nip she started to nip at me or to
even bite at the halter when I was putting it on because of the
pain she had in her feet. Things like rearing, bucking spooking,
that's how are they responding to their environment outside of
you? Are they more reactionary than normal? And this is where
you really get to know your horse in detail, and what are
their normal responses
compared to what is unusually reactive? It's my horse more
stoic is my gelding. I had a very still gelding, who would
not show pain at all. But the mare that I'm writing now she's
very sensitive, very expressive, and she shows pain quite
willingly. So it can be difficult when they're stoic,
and equally as difficult when they show pain. So it can be
very easy to miss these pain signals. I just want to impress
upon you not to be hard on yourself what we can do, and the
best way to not miss out on this valuable information than our
horses. because every day is to gain knowledge around what the
pain signals are, what the appropriate functional movement
looks like for what your horse is doing. And to develop your
eye in these ways that I talked about. Refer to Dyson's pain
after ground, figure out motion. And observe how your force
response is in their environment. So if you'd like a
list of free resources that I put together that will help you
to identify motion movement, pain responses, these kinds of
things, then put a note for me below and I'll be sure to get
that to you. And exciting news is I have a new laminitis course
that I'm just bringing out fairly shortly if you'd want to
be put on the mailing list to find out about that course then
also put it out for me below. I hope this has helped you and
your horse to not miss out on any important information that
your horse is giving you daily. I'll see you next time.