the Sage By Nature blog

My musings and writings on holistic horse care, health care, and on becoming sage…continued.

Archive for the 'general commentary' Category

Need Another Reminder About Horses & Barbed Wire?

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Short and graphic post, but I feel compelled to strongly suggest that in case any of your horses have access to barbed wire, PLEASE get it out of their way! This young gelding was in a fray with other geldings this week and got his leg stuck in barbed wire; then, of course, he panicked [...]

Lucky Clovers, A London Detective, And A Curious Offender: When Your Horse’s Behavior Is A Clue, Not A Sentence

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Figuring Out What Ails Your Horse Is Sometimes Akin To Searching For Four Leaf Clovers When it comes to figuring out different ailments that have afflicted Sage over the years, I have had to use a fair amount of “holmesian deduction”. For lack of a leprechaun to guide me, I cross the stormy sea to [...]

Rope Halter Follow-up: They May Knot Be Natural, But They DO Have Their Fans

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Yesterday I received a very long and thoughtful email response to my recent rope halter face-off article, up at Horse City; it was from someone who was obviously very much a believer in natural horsemanship and rope halters. I think he was sincerely trying to get me to see the error of my ways and [...]

My Evolution Of Horse Knowledge: Top Ten Teachers

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Knowledge is power. It has also seemed more of an evolutionary thing than an educational one. For example, knowledge sometimes seems to be a moving target when it comes to my horse – having just seemingly figured things out when the rug is pulled out from under me. And I must learn something new again [...]

Maybe We Need Wrigleys Gum For Horses

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Results of a new study published this month in Veterinary Clinics of North America: Equine Practice show that horses need to chew. Didn’t we already know that? At least with data coming out like this on a regular basis, perhaps eventually we will start to see a positive change in how horses are stabled, fed, [...]

Eight Belles Toll For Thee, part III and conclusion

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

A lot of animal injustice is done in ignorance, but today with all of the information available so readily in books and on the internet there is no excuse for ignorance. I started out ignorant, getting back into horses in my adult life but with the concepts and ideas that had been formed in my [...]

Eight Belles Toll For Thee, part II

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Of course, there are other kinds of sporting events with horses that have their fair share of crippled horses and abuses, and hopefully there will be an outcry in support of Eight Belles that will trickle over into those areas (ok, I am hoping for a gush but a trickle is better than nothing). And [...]

Eight Belles Toll For Thee, part I

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

So I wrote this article today…something to do with horse racing and animal injustices…and I am going to post a little of it here each day until I am done. Maybe it was Eight Belles speaking to me to write it for her, but whatever it was I felt compelled, so here goes: “No man [...]