The Horse's Advocate Podcast

New horse owners join the community every day, from children to adults with little or no experience. Many expect horse ownership to be as simple as using everyday conveniences like microwaves or making phone calls.
Yet, horses are fundamentally different. Unlike technology, which responds reliably to our commands, horses have evolved to interpret and respond to their environment using all their senses. This makes horse ownership far more complex than people often assume. To address this complexity, many new owners seek additional education or guidance to better understand their horses. But if the teaching material comes from other inexperienced people, the instructions the new owners find are either too complex, with a "to-do list" too long to remember, or are based on specialized equipment they have to purchase.
The solution lies in learning how we are perceived by the horse and how we can change ourselves to help the horse understand us. To do this, horse owners need to find a mentor, observe how the horse responds to them, and then work on changing themselves so the horse perceives them positively. Stand in front of a mirror to find the solution in yourself, rather than looking at the horse to change.

Horses graze on grass and plants, not trees, because their digestive tracts—shared by equids, tapirs, and rhinoceroses—cannot digest wood. Unlike ruminants (cattle, deer, goats), they avoid lignin. When starving, however, horses may eat almost anything, which is why some plants and trees become toxic.
The goal of this podcast is not to make you plant and tree experts, but to help you appreciate two key principles of horse care: always provide adequate protein and forage, and proactively remove any potentially harmful vegetation before curious horses can reach it. Your horse's health depends on your attention to these crucial details.
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#horses #veterinary #horseteeth #horsecare #equinedentistry
Join us at The Horses Advocate Community page: https://community.thehorsesadvocate.com/yt
Dentistry: https://theequinepractice.com/
Horsemanship Dentistry School: https://www.horsemanshipdentistryschool.com/c/information/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHorsesAdvocate
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/horsesadvocate/
Geoff Tucker is a veterinarian and horseman who has worked with horses since 1973. He earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University in 1984. Over the years, Geoff went from mucking stalls as a farmhand to starting his own equine practice. This journey helped him learn how to blend medical care with good horsemanship.
Geoff believes in doing what is best for the horse and also in working with the horse. While at Cornell, he started the Cornell Student Horseman's Association, which organized talks with local experts, a knowledge competition called the Intercollegiate Horse Bowl, and Foal Watch at the Equine Research Park to help with live foal deliveries. Wanting to educate horse owners even more, Geoff also launched the first "I Love New York Horse Symposium," which drew 500 people from across the northeast.
Geoff also spent time working at the Equine Isolation Lab with respected colleagues, including Dr. Coggins, whose name is on the well-known test. He worked both part-time and full-time at Cornell's Equine Research Park.
On graduation day in 1984, while his classmates celebrated, Geoff drove his fully stocked vet truck to his first call—a sick foal. This marked the beginning of The Finger Lakes Equine Practice, which still operates today. Geoff sold the practice in 1996, worked for a short time at another clinic near Albany, NY, and then started The Equine Practice, focusing on equine dentistry. He continues this work from his base in South Florida.
Geoff worked on his first horse's teeth in 1983, when his mentor showed him how to place his hand inside a horse's mouth without medication and rasp off the offending sharp points. He was hooked from the start and made dentistry a key part of his practice. Since then, he has examined the mouths of over 84,000 horses across the United States - yes, he's been counting.

Science relies on asking questions, testing them, obtaining answers, and questioning those answers again. Scientists never settle; their curiosity drives them to consider all possibilities, regardless of prior beliefs. There is never a final answer—only answers that are close. This approach depends on continuous inquiry and skepticism.
Horse owners are not scientists, and they are not trained to perform "research." Instead, they, and in fact the scientists themselves, are people who have evolved to work towards "social acceptance" as a means to survive harsh conditions that existed for millions of years. Believing other people who appeared to know things you didn't know is a natural phenomenon - people don't want to "rock the boat." The result is the formation of a social identity that gives us stability within a group. Examples include people in horse sports such as reining, dressage, eventing, or racing. Other examples are in differing opinions about treatments or care.
This podcast discusses how scientific studies have rules to prevent bias, steering researchers towards a more accurate answer to their question (hypothesis). Unfortunately, untrained people are unable to see when scientific rules are broken, making the results of studies, especially nutritional studies about horses, unreliable when reported by the press. Worse is when those magazines are funded by advertisements that support the outcomes they promote. Hopefully, through this podcast, horse owners will become aware and keep asking questions until the foundational truths about our horses' health are discovered.
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#horses #veterinary #horseteeth #horsecare #equinedentistry
Join us at The Horses Advocate Community page: https://community.thehorsesadvocate.com/yt
Dentistry: https://theequinepractice.com/
Horsemanship Dentistry School: https://www.horsemanshipdentistryschool.com/c/information/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHorsesAdvocate
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/horsesadvocate/
Geoff Tucker is a veterinarian and horseman who has worked with horses since 1973. He earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University in 1984. Over the years, Geoff went from mucking stalls as a farmhand to starting his own equine practice. This journey helped him learn how to blend medical care with good horsemanship.
Geoff believes in doing what is best for the horse and also in working with the horse. While at Cornell, he started the Cornell Student Horseman's Association, which organized talks with local experts, a knowledge competition called the Intercollegiate Horse Bowl, and Foal Watch at the Equine Research Park to help with live foal deliveries. Wanting to educate horse owners even more, Geoff also launched the first "I Love New York Horse Symposium," which drew 500 people from across the northeast.
Geoff also spent time working at the Equine Isolation Lab with respected colleagues, including Dr. Coggins, whose name is on the well-known test. He worked both part-time and full-time at Cornell's Equine Research Park.
On graduation day in 1984, while his classmates celebrated, Geoff drove his fully stocked vet truck to his first call—a sick foal. This marked the beginning of The Finger Lakes Equine Practice, which still operates today. Geoff sold the practice in 1996, worked for a short time at another clinic near Albany, NY, and then started The Equine Practice, focusing on equine dentistry. He continues this work from his base in South Florida.
Geoff worked on his first horse's teeth in 1983, when his mentor showed him how to place his hand inside a horse's mouth without medication and rasp off the offending sharp points. He was hooked from the start and made dentistry a key part of his practice. Since then, he has examined the mouths of over 84,000 horses across the United States - yes, he's been counting.

NOTE: There is a section about 1 minute long where it sounds different because I inserted a video of me driving my hands-free car. To see it, please watch this on YouTube.
 
We all know that horses are not robots. Robots are mechanisms that do not think; they simply execute programmed instructions. They are designed to perform tasks that humans are unable or unwilling to do themselves. Examples include robots working in hazardous areas such as deep water or toxic environments, or managing heavy lifting in factories.
 
Horses have often been used like robots, performing tasks humans cannot or will not do. This creates a dilemma: a horse is both a sentient being and a tool for work. When we train horses, we want them to perform complex tasks, but we also seek a true connection with them. Yet, few people excel at this connection. Why is that?
 
To work effectively with horses, humans must be programmed like robots—but traditional training methods rely on copying others' experiences instead of fostering individual understanding. Just as AI language models (such as Google, OpenAI, and Grok) repeat others' knowledge rather than create their own, this approach fails with horses and genuine connections. In this podcast, I explain a new paradigm: prioritize learning directly from your own experiences. As my wife says: become quiet, listen, and be in the moment.

The first time I heard the words "Sugar Fungus" used with horses, I thought it might be a new, and possibly harmful, reportable disease. I braced myself for the thought that another new disease was invading the world of horses, and that there may not be a cure. However, to my surprise, I learned that sugar fungus is the translation of a common yeast called Saccharomyces: Sacro meaning sugar, and myces meaning yeast (from the Greek). This yeast is generally beneficial, supporting digestive processes in both animals and humans.
This yeast appears in baker's yeast, brewer's yeast, and sourdough starter. The most common species is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, widely recognized for its role in fermentation. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is commonly added as an ingredient in commercial horse feeds. In this podcast, I discuss what it is, the common forms found in horse feeds, and the proposed benefits of adding it.
I then discuss what many call "unintended consequences," or the possible downstream effects of many foods and food additives. I describe the Polyol Pathway (aka the Sorbitol Pathway) and how yeasts are known triggers, along with high-glycemic foods, such as grains. The overall effect of adding yeasts to grains may be an increase in fructose production, leading to aggressive behavior, increased body fat, and decreased mitochondrial efficiency. As always, none of this has been shown to occur in horses because studies have been performed only in humans and lab animals; however, most studies using Saccharomyces cerevisiae added to a grain feed to help horses with stress indicate that feeding an all-forage diet before stressful events may be just as effective.