The Horse's Advocate Podcast

Cornell Veterinary School is well established as one of the best veterinary schools in the world, renowned for specialties like wildlife, infectious diseases, and equine practice. A quick search of data shows that Cornell's vet school was ranked #1 from 2000 (no data before this) until 2015. Currently, it is ranked #2 in America (behind the University of California, Davis) and #3 in the world (behind the Royal Veterinary College, University of London, and UC Davis).
Being accepted into their program was not only an honor, but also a miracle: one of only 80 people accepted in 1980. I tried not to sleep through my classes. When I graduated, I set up my equine practice 15 miles from the school, which allowed me to use it as my referral hospital.
One afternoon in 1991, I sent in a colic I considered surgical. The resident veterinarian performed a rectal exam and confirmed the presence of a displaced bowel. But, instead of agreeing with the surgical treatment, he said, "I think this is one of those new colics I just read about!" My look of surprise went unnoticed as he continued with the description of a nephrosplenic ligament entrapment, a new form of colic recently reported in a veterinary journal. And while the first report of this colic was in 1902 in Hungary, it was not until 1991 that a JAVMA (Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association) article reported it, making it widely known among veterinarians. Now, I often hear clients mention that their horse recently suffered from a nephrosplenic ligament entrapment colic.
The pattern of current ailments of horses not mentioned in my 1984 veterinary textbooks invites the question of why. This podcast covers these "new" diseases and stimulates us to ask what has changed in the care of horses to cause them.

Most advice from horse professionals focuses on solving problems using standard approaches, rather than looking for the root cause. For example, if you look at a chart of all causes of death in horses, dental issues barely register compared to colic, laminitis, or metabolic diseases. Many horse owners truly love their horses, even if they struggle to explain why. They want the best for their animals, but often depend on experts for advice and care, without considering how they might prevent problems before needing expert help.
Horse owners often look for someone to fix their horses when something goes wrong, but horses are not like cars that can just be repaired in a shop. Still, both veterinary and non-veterinary care often treat horses as if they are objects with problems to solve, without considering the horse's perspective. It's true that many skilled people can help fix these issues, but it's worth asking if every repair is really needed, or if there might be simpler solutions.
Sometimes, people approach fixing horses in ways that make themselves seem more important, which can make things more complicated than necessary. Many horse owners, even though they care deeply, follow expert advice without always considering what's best for the horse. In my podcast, I talk about a new way to treat a passage between a horse's mouth and sinus, where food can move from the mouth into the sinus and come out the nostril. To us, this discharge smells bad and needs daily care, but from the horse's point of view, it doesn't seem to be a problem—at least, scientific reports don't mention it. How common is this issue? Do horses really need to be fixed if nothing is done?

Horses have tiny engines within almost every cell of their bodies, and each of these runs on fuel that comes from the food they eat. These engines are called mitochondria.
This podcast describes these engines and what happens to our horses when they stop working efficiently. One thing is for certain: adding more fuel doesn't help them run better. The only way to improve the health of horses is to improve the way their mitochondria work. But is producing power the only thing mitochondria do?
Research into mitochondria shows that these powerhouses of the cell were once bacteria with their own DNA, and they communicate with each other and insert snippets of their DNA into the human DNA. They also need time to clean up and repair themselves. They can operate on two different fuels, but exhaust themselves when running on only one, becoming stuck and unable to switch to the other. This leads to poor health, breakdowns, and premature death.
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Community.TheHorsesAdvocate.com is a place to learn about horses, barns, and farms. Its information is free, and a membership option lets horse owners attend live meetings to ask questions and deepen their understanding of what they have learned on the site. Membership helps support this message and spread it to everyone worldwide who works with horses.
The Equine Practice, Inc. website discusses how and why I perform equine dentistry without immobilization or the automatic use of drugs. I only accept new clients in Florida. Click here to make an appointment.
The Horsemanship Dentistry School is a place for those interested in learning how to perform equine dentistry without drugs on 97% of horses.
Thank you for sharing and "Helping Horses Thrive In A Human World."

Having fear can cripple most people from enjoying life. Horse people suffer more than most from fear of horses because what they enjoy most in life are horses. This becomes a paradox that worsens their entire life.
However, there are tangents to the fear horse owners have, such as the fear that they are not caring enough for their horses, and, therefore, the horse will suffer from the owner missing a critical aspect of care. This drives owners to do more (and spend more money) than is necessary. Worry is a fear of inadequacy. Charlatans profit from this fear.
Most people believe that the thing they fear is the cause, but the truth is, fear comes from within the individual. Fear is also an emotion; energy in motion. When a horse brings energy to a human, the natural response is for the human to raise their energy to match the horse's, creating more energy and escalating the horse to a higher level. The secret is to learn to control your energy and bring it down, which, in most cases, automatically lowers the horses' energy.
An essential hack for reducing emotional energy is to lower inflammation in both humans and horses. Another hack is to compartmentalize the sources of your thoughts and feelings in the brain. I discuss these on this week's podcast.
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Community.TheHorsesAdvocate.com is a place to learn about horses, barns, and farms. Its information is free, and a membership option lets horse owners attend live meetings to ask questions and deepen their understanding of what they have learned on the site. Membership helps support this message and spread it to everyone worldwide who works with horses.
The Equine Practice, Inc. website discusses how and why I perform equine dentistry without immobilization or the automatic use of drugs. I only accept new clients in Florida. Click here to make an appointment.
The Horsemanship Dentistry School is a place for those interested in learning how to perform equine dentistry without drugs on 97% of horses.
Thank you for sharing and "Helping Horses Thrive In A Human World."

The temporomandibular (TM) joints in horses are evolutionary masterpieces that have evolved over 55 million years. But suddenly, the experts are saying that the joints are failing because the mouth has become "unbalanced." I disagree. 
The experts say that unridable horses have pain in the TM joints that connect the jaw to the skull. Their conclusion is that the teeth are "unbalanced," with an uneven bite seen with the incisors and an imperfect angle of the cheek teeth's chewing surface. Their conclusions cannot be resolved using First Principles Thinking. I've worked with horses for over 50 years, and for over 40 of those, I've floated teeth on over 80,000 horses, but I cannot draw the same conclusions these experts can about the association between the shape of the incisors and the TM joints. 
I am referencing an article printed in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (March, 2024) by James L. Carmalt, VetMB, PhD, DABVP, DAVDC, DACVSMR, DACVS from the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, Western College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada. The title is: "Equine poor performance: the logical, progressive, diagnostic approach to determining the role of the temporomandibular joint." There are numerous quotes from this paper I could use to substantiate my position on any dysfunction of the horse's TM joints; however, the author's words are worth reading in their entirety.
It must be noted that humans, according to my dentist, chew about 2000 times a day, or 735,000 chews in a year. However, horses chew between 10,000 and 40,000 times a day, with the median being 25,000. This number becomes 750,000 chews in 30 days, which is more than humans chew in a year. Horses chew about 9 million times in a year. So, to assume that all horses are developing TM joint problems because their teeth are not "balanced" seems preposterous.
If you are interested and have time, please read Dr. Carmalt's paper, which is available as an attached PDF at Community.TheHorsesAdvocate.com or online.
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Community.TheHorsesAdvocate.com is a place to learn about horses, barns, and farms. Its information is free, and a membership option lets horse owners attend live meetings to ask questions and deepen their understanding of what they have learned on the site. Membership helps support this message and spread it to everyone worldwide who works with horses.
The Equine Practice, Inc. website discusses how and why I perform equine dentistry without immobilization or the automatic use of drugs. I only accept new clients in Florida. Click here to make an appointment.
The Horsemanship Dentistry School is a place for those interested in learning how to perform equine dentistry without drugs on 97% of horses.
Thank you for sharing and "Helping Horses Thrive In A Human World."