Hakken Eerst…?
Beslagen paarden hebben altijd de neiging om eerst op de toon van de hoef te landen. Volgens een hoefsmid met wie ik laatst heb gesproken, is de correcte manier juist helemaal platvoets te landen – de hele hoef in een keer! Terwijl de eerste situatie daadwerkelijk het geval is, moeten we helaas de tweede naar […]
Hippica vs. Natuur
Wederom ben ik Pierre Enoff dankbaar voor een filmpje dat men doet denken. Dit filmpje is terug te vinden op YouTube maar is niet afspeelbaar in sommige landen omdat YouTube, evenals iTunes en andere in Amerika gevestigde bedrijven (en ook enkele die in Europa gevestigd zijn) niet realiseert dat Europese wetgeving verplicht aanbieders van producten […]
Warme Voeten Behouden
Paarden zijn, evenals de mens en alle andere zoogdieren, warmbloedig (inclusief de zogenaamde koudbloeden). Dit betekent dat de lichaamstemperatuur intern gereguleerd wordt en niet extern (de zon). Het direct resultaat hiervan is een geringe variatie in temperatuur gemeten over het hele lichaam. Sommige delen zijn iets warmer doordat een groot aantal aderen net onder de […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 hooves wearing down too quickly. I didn’t actually ask what she did with her horse that would make […]
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 […]