Wow, what a year so far!

It has been a very busy and absolutely amazing year so far. I have been remiss in keeping our blog up-to-date and for that I apologize and promise to try to do better!

Let's see if I can catch you up!

• Winter, Spring and Summer classes went off without a hitch slowly gaining more clients as we go. As always, we saw first steps, heard first words and shared tears of joy with the help of our four-legged friends!

While classes were going on, this was also happening!

• Ms. Jan agreed to join our Board of Directors and has become a huge advocate making a real difference. (Thank you, Ms Jan, we love you!)
• In March we officially finished raising the 2nd half of our down-payment and became property owners!!!
• As posted earlier, Empress went back to her owner, but with help from some neighbors and our Vet, we got 2 new Haflingers - Tex & Doc. 
  
• In April, a movie was shot out here.  Ashley from the newspaper did a great write up about it for the local paper. Talk about exciting! More about that coming in the next post.
• In May we hosted an EAGALA Ethics clinic with counselors from all over our service area.
• We lost Kyle (he found a better paying job) and Tiffany came on board to take his place. She has some really big shoes to fill!
• We had to shut down classes for a week because of a really bad storm. Didn't do any real property damage, but all 9 horses got hit by hail and they needed time to heal.
• Our fiscal year ended in July with a very successful SHOT Show and Competition.
• Then came August with: a) Hay being cut, baled and put up for the winter (673 bales, wow!), b) the first movie premiere (OMG it is awesome!), and Southwest Wrestling Entertainment partnering with us to raise funds. All the while working on summer projects like: constant horse training and getting the new boys ready for classes, keeping up with the mowing and upgrading the driveway. Please remember that with the exception of help from an occasional community service personnel and a couple of volunteers, we do it all ourselves. Volunteers? Anyone over 14 years old? Please?
• Pam and I took a 4 day vacation. First one in 6 years and it was fabulous. Thank you Jessica and Becky for the trip to Lake Hamilton!
• August ended with the movie premiering here in Sulphur Springs. Thank you to Shannon Oaks Church for hosting it and all the folks that came out to see it!

There, I think we're pretty much caught up on a high level. I'll post some more pics in the picture tab within the next few days.

Whew!!!

M

Bye Empress

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, Empress is fine. She is happy and healthy, but she is leaving us.

When Shadow Ranch was founded, we knew we were taking a huge chance. We were moving to a rural town where we knew very few people and starting a new organization in an industry that very few people knew about much less believed in. We really didn't know if we would make it or not. Because of that, we decided that our founding herd would be contracted from their owners. That way if we didn't make it as an organization, the horses would have a place to return to. That was 4 years ago and her owner has decided not to renew her contract and take her home.

Empress was one of our founding herd. She was irreplaceable when we first started up. I don't know what we would have done without her. With the help of this beautiful creature, kids and adults have made miraculous progress. She has even been given credit for saving the life of one. She has been herd boss and a great one at that...not too pushy, but as protective over them as I am. If it wasn't for her, I would never have known that our friend the cougar swings through and hangs out for awhile every Spring.

Even though I know in my head that she will be cared for, it is with a heavy heart (and a few tears) that my staff, volunteers, students and I say farewell. 

Tiffany, thank you for allowing us the pleasure of working with this wonderful mare.

Empress, you shall be missed.

M

Research!!! Lookie here!

Researchers Find Working With Horses Increases Emotional Intelligence in Humans

Source: University of Kentucky

“When nurses and doctors benefit from collaborating with horses then ultimately their patients also benefit.”

Researchers in the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture recently completed one of the first studies to explore how working with horses can develop emotional intelligence in humans. UK Center for Leadership Development researchers, Patricia Dyk and Lissa Pohl, collaborated with UK HealthCare nurse researchers, Carol Noriega, Janine Lindgreen and Robyn Cheung on the two-year study, titled “The Effectiveness of Equine Guided Leadership Education to Develop Emotional Intelligence in Expert Nurses.”

“With Lexington being known as the Horse Capital of the World, it is only fitting that the University of Kentucky is conducting pioneering research in the emerging field of equine assisted learning,” said Patricia Dyk, director of the Center for Leadership Development.

The project included a control group of 10 nurses from the Neuroscience Surgery Service Line and an intervention group consisting of 11 nurses from the Trauma and Acute Care Surgical Service Line at UK Chandler Hospital. At the start of the study and again six months later, both groups took the online assessment appraising emotional intelligence. Nurses in the intervention group participated in a one-day workshop that involved experiential learning with horses.

“Each exercise in the workshop was designed to develop the four emotional intelligence competency areas of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management,” said Lissa Pohl, research project manager and workshop facilitator.

Nurses from the intervention group filled out qualitative surveys immediately after their experience with the horses and again three months after the workshop.

The before and after survey results showed there was an increase in the scores of the intervention group in all four competency areas when compared to the control group. The researchers admitted, though, that the small number of participants in the study makes it difficult to conclude that working with the horses was the cause of the intervention group’s increase.

Marie-Claude Stockl was the co-facilitator for the workshop with the nurses. She owns the Horse Institute, and as such, facilitates equine-assisted learning workshops for corporate groups in central New York state.

“We are thrilled to get this research completed, because it builds the credibility of all organizations offering this type of learning experience,” she said.

According to Pohl, the initial results are encouraging and they lay the groundwork for subsequent studies of larger and more diverse populations of nurses.

“If horses can increase our ability to understand ourselves and others better, then the healthcare industry is a perfect place for studies like these,” she said. “When nurses and doctors benefit from collaborating with horses then ultimately their patients also benefit.”

Horse Health - Wintertime... Brrr

So. It's not even Thanksgiving and already here in East Texas we've had a little ice, a few hard freezes as well as the earliest freeze in 15 years. Plus the old-timers and the Farmer's Almanac are saying the winter this year is going to be a doozy.

In East Texas, we do not have the FEET of snow that they have further north. (We live below the snow belt for a reason!) However when it gets cold, it gets cold and wet and miserable for humans and animals alike! 

What kind of things do we do to help insure that our horses stay healthy in the cold? Remember there are a lot of right ways to do things. These are just some of the things that work for us:

1) We change their feed up a little.  Except for the rye we planted in the fall, the grass has all gone dormant and is brown and dry. So it's time to start putting out hay. We also start adding alfalfa pellets to their feed. Alfalfa is a hot feed so it starts warming them up from the inside out. We still watch their weight, especially Cowboy's, but generally horses use more calories staying warm in the winter, so that offsets the extra caloric intake from the alfalfa.

2)When they are out in the pastures, we make sure that there is enough hay for them to munch on all night. That helps keep them warm too. Just make sure that whatever hay you use is clean, fresh and mold free.  They usually won't eat moldy, dirty hay unless they get desperate, but if they do it can make them sick...real sick.

3) Feet. It is even more important to keep their feet as clean and dry as possible. Imagine having to walk on dirty ice and having that build up in the crevices of your feet...not good. Plus we have to watch out for thrush. Thrush is a predominately bacterial infection of the frog of a horse's hoof. If not caught in a timely manner, it can become not only horribly stinky. but incredibly painful as well. It tends to show up when their feet stay wet for prolonged periods of time...like Winter and Spring. It sounds kinda yucky, but cleaning those hooves and paying attention to the way they smell is really important this time of year.

4) Water, water, water. Just because it's not a gazillion degrees outside, doesn't mean we don't have to pay attention to how much water they are drinking. Warm it up if you have to...We do!
Oh and when fishing that ice out of their water troughs, I really like using one of those pooper scooper things you can get for cat boxes. Can get the smaller chunks that break off and still keep your hands dry.

5) Shelter. We make sure they have something to break the wind and keep ice off their backs. When they are out in the pastures and the temp is below freezing or close to it, 2 of our horses get blanketed, because their coats are not thick enough yet this year: Flame because of skin allergies and Scooter because she's not quite there yet.

6) Did I mention water?

Most of the horses' coats have come in as thick as I have ever seen them. Maybe the old-timers and the Farmers' Almanac are right.  Brrrrr.

M

Horse Health 1 - Colic

One of my favorite sayings is:  There are a lot of right ways to do things.

This seems to be especially true when it comes to caring for horses. There seems to be as many opinions for how to care for horses as there are "horse people". What we do with our horses and how we care for them may seem crazy and not work for our neighbors. What our neighbors do to care for their horses may not work for us. However, bottom line? If both herds are happy, healthy and willing to do their jobs, then we are both right! Even if what we are doing is totally different.

Sometimes the bottom line for us is money. A little bit spent up front can save a lot down the road. One dramatic vet bill could be disastrous and even mean having to make a life or death decision for one of these incredible creatures. A decision as Executive Director and an owner, I dread.

For instance, colic is the number 1 killer of horses, surgery costs around $10,000 and has a 50/50 chance of survival. So we do extra seemingly "crazy" things to try to make sure our horses do not colic.

1. Since our soil is predominately sand, we have to think about sand colic. For our messy eaters, we have mats underneath and around their feed troughs so that when they try to find all the food they lost while looking around with a mouth full, they don't eat sand as well as feed.

2. To keep their digestive systems free of parasites, we worm all of them every 2 months year round with alternating wormers. That part is not unusual. What may be different is that we worm them at the end of the day on Saturday and then give them Probios on Sunday morning. The thinking behind this is that in order for the wormer to work, it must strip their systems of parasites and bacteria...good and bad...which can cause irritation. The Probios puts good bacteria back into their gut and soothes it. Plus since we are closed on Sundays and Mondays, they don't have to work again until Tuesday. To make sure that the process is working and the worms have not become immune, we have fecal tests done at least once a year as well.

3. Bearing in mind that for a horse's digestive tract to work properly, it must stay lubricated, i.e...water. We know which horses drink a lot, which horses drink a little less, and constantly take note if one is not drinking their normal amount. Again, that part is not unusual. The difference? All our water buckets are bright yellow. Rule of thumb here is that if the water is not clear and clean all the way to the bottom, it gets dumped and cleaned out...even if it just got cleaned yesterday. I don't want to drink dirty water, do you? Also we know that periodically, the water around here will become more alkaline than usual and a couple of the horses don't like the taste and will not drink. Our solution? Peppermint. Those little red and white candies you can get individually wrapped at the dollar store? Yes, those. Take one of those, unwrap it, drop it into the water bucket and swirl it around a little. Then Poof! The water tastes fine. In the wintertime, we will even add a little warm water to the buckets to make sure they are drinking enough.

4. Colic can also be caused by stress from seemingly little things like fresh spring grass popping, or a thunderstorm or a personnel change within the herd. There is a 72 hour window when those type of stressers occur that a horse can colic. So when that happens, everybody's feed gets watered down. Not like soup, more like pudding. That way we know that it goes down smoothly with enough lubricant.

These are all little things, different things, that cost a little money up front. But they make a huge difference in the health and welfare of our horses as well as our budget.

M