Are horses living longer? It seems so - at least - when it comes to broodmares. Assessing our breeding records for the past couple of years, we have seen an increase in the number of older mares being bred.

Generally speaking, older mares range between 18 and 26 years of age. This eight year period could mean an output of several more foals in the productive career of a mare.

Opinions volley back and forth on this issue of breeding older mares. On one hand, some folks believe that later foals are not as vigorous as earlier foals and are therefore less valuable. On the other hand, if a mare has already produced outstanding individuals, the value of her offspring may be at a record high. In fact, the offspring from many older mares may be so valuable that the mare is in an embryo transfer program.

The Problem:

My four year old mare has had professional training and is a joy to ride. She will go anywhere, stop on a dime and even turn on her hindquarter. But she is difficult to back up.
When I pull on the reins, she may take a step back but as I continue to ask for more steps back she stiffens and raises her head with her chin pushed forward. Then she refuses to back any further.
I don't want to get into a battle with this horse especially since this is the only problem that I'm having. Am I doing something wrong? Backwards in Kansas

The care and feeding provided during the first two years of a future horse athlete’s life will greatly influence its ultimate success. Today’s potential performance horses are being asked at earlier and earlier ages to enter training. They need to have the physical strength and development to handle the stress of this early training.

One way to guard against nutritional conformational problems is to be sure that foals have proper nutrition from the very beginning. This means that there may be situations where creep feeding is the best solution to providing quality nutritional support.

It doesn’t matter whether you have 1 foal or 10. Creep feeding can be the answer to a wealth of problems centering on how to provide the foal with an extra nutritional source other than mare’s milk.

Free Longeing (aka Liberty Training) is a system of ground work where a horse is controlled by the body positions of the trainer. Jim developed this technique as a teaching tool in 1970 while he was at the University of Maryland. It begins by turning the horse loose in the round pen and the trainer takes control of the horse by the position of his body in relationship to the horse.

Word quickly spread about this unique system of longeing horses and magazines like EQUUS and Practical Horseman arrived on campus document this innovative training system.

Soon Jim and I were crisscrossing the United States giving clinics on The Language of the Horse, The Art of Free Longeing and Tackless Training.

Dancing in Space was published in a California horse magazine after we did a demonstration during the Bank of America's Horse Expo in Fresno, CA. At that point, we decided to develop a series of articles explaining Free Longeing. Horse and Rider originally published this series. We hope it will help you to further understand the horse. Free Longeing: Creating Movement, The Turn, Come To Me, Stop, Back and Rollbacks, From the Ground to the Back.

A video Clip showing the basic elements of Free Longeing  is available.

The Problem:

I am writing about a situation which I have never seen before in my life as a horse owner and trainer. An owner brought me a well-bred young stallion to break and train. This colt is somewhat mature for his age and particularly nervous. He gets upset every time a horse is led by his stall and becomes really upset when another stallion is around. Yet, this colt has never been bred!

Now for the problem: When this horse gets upset - he mutilates himself. He reaches around and bites at his side - actually ripping his own hide. His self- inflicted wounds keep us from riding him and we are continuously doctoring the damage.

Have you ever heard of or experienced this kind of behavior? Is there some kind of explanation? And is it possible to hope for a cure for this horse? Stressed Out in Georgia