Keeping Warm Feet
Horses are, like humans and all other mammals, warm blooded (including the so-called cold-blood breeds). This means that the body’s temperature is regulated internally and not by external influences (the sun). A direct result of this is the minimal variation in temperature noted over the whole body. Some areas are slightly warmer because of the […]
Site News
Sabots Libres is expanding! The website is now accompanied by a twitter account @sabotslibres, a Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/Sabot.Libres.NHC, Google+ (although that is more difficult to find!) and entries under the name sabotslibres on Delicious, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Not only that but the site is going multi-lingual. Initially Dutch will be added, followed hopefully by […]
A Head of the Herd
Often we are tempted to keep our horses separate from others because they will bite and kick each other. And it is certainly infinitely preferable that the introduction of a new member to a herd should be done gradually and not that they are all just thrown together. But a problem often seen at small […]
Locomotion
The arguments for shoeing horses have manifold foundations. Obviously many of the arguments from the farriers world are financial and economic oriented. Farriers are afraid of losing their livelihood and consider that they are the only people qualified or with sufficient knowledge to work on horses feet. Sadly, Most farriers still ply their trade using […]
A Heated Discussion
I had a rather heated discussion yesterday with one of my horse-riding students (as opposed to a student of horse-riding). She was very much of the opinion that a horse needed to be shod to stop the hoofs wearing down too quickly. I didn’t actually ask what she did with her horse that would make […]
Transhumance
It’s the last week before Christmas and once again I am spending the week in the Pyrenees in the company of seventy-plus horses and a smattering of people. We are taking the horses from their summer grounds, some 1800 metres up in the Pyrenees to their winter grounds some 1400 metres lower in the Aude. […]
Winter is here (on paper!)
So the winter has begun; well, according to the meteorological calendar, at least. Our weathermen mark the change of seasons on the first day of March, June, September and December – it makes it easier on the statistics than the infinitely variable 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd or 23rd of the month 😀 Our horses (were […]
Keeping Warm
I got home yesterday afternoon to see two horses in the field next to the house wearing blankets! It was 15˚C… Why on earth anyone should put a blanket on a horse when it is that warm is beyond me. Even Full-blood Arab horses are quite capable of withstanding temperatures well below freezing (it gets […]
“The Experts…”
Last year I had the fabulous experience of riding a transhumance in the south of France with Pierre Enoff. Were it not for the fact that I am going back this year, it could almost be described as the experience of a lifetime – taking a herd of 70+ horses some 150km across some pretty […]
“Bad Hoofs”
Oh my ears and whiskers! A recent meeting of horse riding instructors was given the following information about one of the riding school’s horses “the farrier has said that he has bad hooves”. And additionally, mention was made about how good the farrier actually is… Of course, Sabots Libres wouldn’t be Sabots Libres without questioning […]