Williams Lake Trail Riders Association

Friesian horses appear to have a breed-associated predisposition to gastric impaction, a relatively uncommon but serious cause of colic in which ingesta accumulates in the stomach because gastric emptying is impaired. Progressive stomach distension can develop and, in severe cases, may result in gastric rupture.

Evidence suggests that Friesians are over-represented among hospital cases and may have a less favourable prognosis than other breeds. This susceptibility may be linked to underlying differences in gastrointestinal motility or connective-tissue function, although the precise mechanism has not yet been established.

A retrospective review of 125 equine gastric-impaction cases presented to Utrecht University found that Friesians accounted for almost one third of affected horses.

The study also examined cola as a veterinary treatment adjunct.

Administered via a nasogastric tube, cola’s low pH and carbonation may help soften and disperse compacted gastric contents, supporting their breakdown and passage. Its use has been partly informed by similar treatment approaches for some human gastric bezoars.

Overall, 57.6 percent of horses in the study survived to hospital discharge. Horses that received cola had a higher observed survival rate than those that did not, at 82.8 percent compared with 35.8 percent.

However, survival among cola-treated Friesians was lower than in treated non-Friesian horses, at 66.7 percent and 90 percent respectively. These findings support concern that Friesians may be both more susceptible to gastric impaction and more difficult to treat successfully.

Importantly, this was a retrospective study, so treatment protocols, dose, frequency, and severity of cases were not standardised. The findings therefore show an association between cola treatment and survival, but do not prove that cola caused the improved outcome.

Reference: Witt, P., Hagedoorn, S., Kranenburg, L. C., & van den Boom, R. (2021). The use of cola for the treatment of gastric impactions in equids. Pferdeheilkunde–Equine Medicine, 37(6). https://doi.org/10.21836/PEM20210604

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When preparing to ship your horse, don’t forget to protect his digestive health. Click the link in the comment section to learn how.

How Many Horses Would Stay Sound for Longer if We Simply Gave Them Another Year to Mature? 🔥🤔

I saw this exact question on Facebook recently and every response I saw was essentially:

*YES.*🙌

And I understand why everyone responded that way.

It feels so obviously right that questioning it almost sounds like you’re advocating putting two-year-olds over 1.40 m fences before breakfast.😕

But I looked at it and thought:

Would they? 😎

Some probably would.

Some might not.

Because soundness is much more complicated than waiting for another birthday.🤓

The question quietly assumes that *older means better prepared*, and that doing less while waiting for the body to finish growing must therefore be better for the horse.

But there are a couple of rather large questions missing.

*What is the horse doing while we wait?*😎

And perhaps more importantly:

*What do we actually mean by “starting” a horse?*😎

Because starting isn’t one thing.

A horse started at two or three might be backed quietly, ridden for short periods, exposed to different environments and then given time off. Another horse of exactly the same age might be put into repetitive, physically demanding work six days a week.

Those horses have both technically been “started”.🤷‍♀️

They are not having remotely the same physical experience.

Likewise, there’s an enormous difference between a young horse living in a large, varied environment, travelling kilometres each day, negotiating hills and different surfaces, playing, accelerating, stopping and learning to organise its body, and a horse standing in a small flat paddock wandering between the hay and water. 🫣

Both horses are getting older.

They are not necessarily developing the same body.😎

Bones, muscles, tendons, joints, balance and coordination all respond to what the horse actually does.

So perhaps the important issue isn’t simply *the age at which the horse is started*.

It’s how that horse has been prepared, what starting actually involves, what happens afterwards, and whether the demands placed on its body are appropriate for that individual horse at that stage of development.🤓

That’s why I think we need to be careful with the idea that waiting and doing nothing is protecting the horse.

Because doing nothing is still doing something.

The horse’s body adapts to the life it is living.

A body that isn’t physically challenged doesn’t spend several years quietly building itself into an athlete in anticipation of our future plans.

Then one day we put a saddle on it, add the weight of a human and ask it to travel on circles, carry itself differently, balance, bend, transition and repeat movements its body may never have been prepared to perform.

But it’s five now.

So apparently we’re good.🙄

This doesn’t mean *start horses younger*.

It doesn’t mean *work young horses harder*.

And it certainly doesn’t mean that excessive or repetitive loading of developing horses can’t cause damage.

It means the whole question is more complicated than:

*young = vulnerable*

*older = soundness protected*

Soundness is influenced by what happens throughout the horse’s development. Movement, workload, recovery, feet, nutrition, surfaces, injuries and how the horse moves all matter. So does how progressively we prepare the horse for whatever job we eventually expect it to do.

So when every answer to this question is an enthusiastic *YES*, I don’t see an answer that necessarily reflects an understanding of soundness.

I see how seductive a simple answer can be.

Waiting may absolutely be appropriate for an individual horse.

But waiting *isn’t a conditioning programme*.

And a birthday isn’t a protective strategy.🔥

The more you know about something, the harder it becomes to answer complicated questions with a simple YES.

Calendar years tell us how old a horse is.

They don’t tell us what that horse has been doing, how it has developed, how it was prepared, what “starting” involved, or what happened afterwards.

Perhaps we put too much emphasis on *when horses are started* and not enough on *what we actually do with them*.

A horse started at three isn’t automatically being damaged.

A horse left until five isn’t automatically being protected.

The interesting bit is everything that happened in between.

Protecting horses from soundness problems isn’t about finding a magic birthday when their bodies suddenly become safe to use. It’s about understanding development and making sensible decisions about movement, preparation, loading, recovery and the individual horse.

Sometimes that means waiting.

Sometimes it means carefully doing more.

And sometimes it means realising that “leave them until they’re older” sounds wonderfully responsible while telling us almost nothing about how to develop a sound horse.❤

Knowing more makes simple questions messier.

That’s not uncertainty. That’s understanding the problem.

Collectable Advice 278/365.
Please SHARE to raise awareness that this question is not so simple as it appears...

Want to canter your horse? Get off it.🔥

My annual Project Reboot event is coming up, and one question on the registration survey asks what people would like to achieve by the end of the 12 weeks.

One answer keeps appearing:

*“I want to be cantering my horse.”*🐎

Excellent goal.🫶🙌

Although my advice may seem slightly counterproductive:

*Get off the horse.*🧐

Most people try to solve canter problems while cantering. I certainly did.

Years ago I had a horse who rushed terribly. So naturally I tried bits, saddles, gadgets, holding, pulling and various other traditional methods of attempting to keep 500kg of horse assembled underneath me.😬

Nothing changed, although my biceps became magnificent.💪

What I didn't understand was that canter is very good at exposing what a horse finds difficult.

Unlike walk and trot, canter is asymmetrical. The limbs have different jobs and experience different forces, so natural one-sidedness, lack of fitness, strength, balance, soundness or coordination can suddenly become rather obvious.

It works like this....

Walk: *Everything seems fine.*😃

Trot: *Still looking respectable.*🙂

Canter: *AH. THERE IT IS.*😱

If canter is physically hard, horses can become tense. Tension changes movement. They rush, resist, fall onto the forehand or struggle to organise their bodies.

Then we become tense because sitting on a horse whose front end appears to be rapidly departing towards the centre of the earth is not especially relaxing.🫣

Now we have two mammals travelling at speed, neither particularly enjoying themselves.😫

The breakthrough for me came when I learned to stop trying to fix everything from the saddle.

I learned how to develop the horse's balance, coordination, responsiveness, strength and understanding from the ground, then progressively flow that work into riding.

I rebuilt that rushing horse from the ground up.

*His canter changed within WEEKS.*✅

This was after YEARS of trying to solve it from the saddle.

That experience completely changed how I understood groundwork, training and developing horses.

Before then, I had *done groundwork*. I just didn't really know what it was supposed to accomplish (to be honest I didn't really know what I was doing).🙄

And there's a rather important difference between *doing groundwork* and *knowing what you're developing with it.*

There is another bonus.

If something isn't physically right, this process often gives you clues.

Personally, I'd rather discover a horse is consistently struggling with something while my feet are safely attached to Planet Earth than discover it through the traditional equestrian diagnostic procedure of:

*GETTING BUCKED OFF (see image below).*💥

So if your goal is:

*“I want to be cantering my horse.”*

Brilliant.

But we might not begin with canter.

We might work out what is making canter difficult and systematically build the things your horse needs to make it easier.😎

And if you're thinking:

*“But I've tried groundwork and it didn't work…”*🤔

So had I.

The difference was learning *what to do, what I was looking for and how to transfer it into the saddle.*🤓

Turns out that bit matters enormously.😎

Collectable Advice 277/365. Please SHARE and help get more people thinking about their cantering problems differently ❤️

Also for those curious...Project Reboot details are in comments :)

I have been a horse husband for 22 years and have learned a few survival tips and tricks over the years in navigating the psychology/psychosis of your equestrian, an anonymous contributor writes. There is a helpline for people considering a relationship with a horsey person, and it can be found at 1-800-DOL-LARS.

The horse comes first.

I have witnessed my wife in an evening gown and high heels muck out a horse stall. Too many date nights and engagements have been rescheduled due to mysterious horse ailments that only the equestrian can see. “Something seems off with Pookie” means we are waiting for the vet. A horse will throw a shoe at the most inopportune moments. I suspect our horses know when we are going somewhere and have mastered the “sympathy limp.” Your horse will receive chiropractic treatments, massage therapy, new $250 shoes every six weeks, a new haircut when it is hot out, and a regular sheath cleaning. DO NOT COMPLAIN about any of these things, especially the sheath cleaning, or their costs, as you will lose this argument. Just nod sagely and go drink a beer.

“Can you help me for a second?”

This is a trap. It is never a second. Horse people have zero concept of time. There are cross ties everywhere and enough bailing twine to circle the earth in every barn. Holding a lead rope with a horse attached is an invitation to be mauled, stepped on, or nibbled at. The horse knows a noob when it sees one and will instantly haze you. Equestrians have superhuman strength they can utilize, but it can only be called upon while in a barn. They don’t need your help. You are there to offer empathy for any and all barn and horse issues of the day. Grab a beer, sit down, and listen while agreeing with everything said.

📎 Continue reading this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2026/08/19/horse-husband-guidebook/
📸 © Lauren Mauldin

I get asked all the time; how do I teach patience? When can I get my horse to be more patient?? How can I do it NOW?

Patience is a common problem across the country, and I’d venture to say probably the world. I get asked about this quite often by people who are frustrated with their horses fidgeting and anxious movement -

Here are three very important things that must be learned in order to develop patience:

1- not anticipating: it’s important for the mind to not constantly jump into the next exercise, but to be able to fully participate in what we’re doing right now.

2- following simple directions/perfecting the basics: this ties into the first step. In order to develop patience, it helps to learn to be able to break things down into smaller steps, pay close attention to each one, and work on the basic building blocks that comprise the bigger picture.

One must learn to actually listen to, and follow, these simple directions.

3- emotional resilience: getting frustrated and shutting down, getting overly excited, getting ahead of the game, or even getting downright ornery are common problems in the arena.

Emotional resilience is an essential skill for developing patience.

Sometimes, with an impatient human, more groundwork is needed, or firmer boundaries. But with a simple, consistent training system, a human can be (sometimes slowly and painfully) brought to better behavior. It can be hard, but I’ve had success with these three steps creating a human who can appreciate their horse’s willingness and learn to effectively lead a horse. Then their horses become calm and patient as well.