About me: I currently have 1 Arab and 1 Icelandic. I have done basically everything with my horses. Western and Reining are my favorites but I have been riding Hunter the longest, 20 years!
I'm not sure what I expected, but seeing people with those toy horses that are just a horse head on a stick so you can "ride" it doing actual horse show routines, including jumps of a height that actual horses would probably think twice about, was NOT it.
I have been seeing a couple of these Strada saddles floating around used tack shops lately, and they are so bazaar looking. They are a Swedish company, and only come in one seat size, which apparently measures somewhere around 17 inches. The tree is suppose to be super flexible, but I wonder if the super flat panels would require a special pad like a treeless saddle does.
It reminds me of a saddleseat saddle in a lot of ways, except it has knee blocks and no cutback from the looks of it? I wonder why it isn't cut back, and if that pinches the shoulders when the horse moves.
Could it be for a show hack class? In the Arabians we have a class for saddleseat horses and they have to do extended, collected, and normal of all three gaits in a rail class.
I’ve seen some of the saddles people use and it looks very similar. Basically a cutback with knee rolls.
So I’m hoping to have everything set up to have ponies at home in the next few years, and every time I mention this to friends to ask about things I might be forgetting or need to consider, they ask me if I plan to board, or assume that I will (saying, “then you can take on 1-2 boarders.”). I have zero intentions of taking on boarders, but I’m curious if this is super normal? Does everyone with a backyard set up have boarders as well? Is there such a huge demand that people want to board in a super basic backyard barn?
No I have my limit of how many horses I can mentally handle at home and that’s 3. The responsibility and insurance is too much for me to bring in someone else’s horses. Most people I know that have small farms do not offer boarding. You don’t make any money off of boarding. 
The other thing about measles is that it resets your body’s memory of other diseases. So all those times you’ve gotten sick? Your body’s memory cells no longer remember those illnesses, so even if you get the same type of illness again your body will react like it’s the first time you’ve been sick.
antivaxxers also, in part, helped sabotaged the human lyme disease vaccine for lyme disease caused by borrelia burgdorferi infection (until 2016 the only known species of lyme disease causing bacteria in the USA). In 1998, the first lyme disease vaccine for the strain of the bacteria prevalent in the USA licensed. It passed clinical trials and was shown to be safe and effective; it was between 76 and 92% effective at preventing lyme disease with 3 injections. Antivaxxers proceeded to abuse the adverse affect reporting system, often complaining of arthritis, and this caused media and general hysteria about the vaccine. if you remember the flu vaccine hysteria around the swine flu epidemic, it was kind of like that. despite double-blind trials conducted both before and after licensing, that was unable to support their claims and instead displaying that the vaccine was safe and effective, the damage was done, and the vaccine was shelved in the USA. you can get a lyme disease vaccine in Europe, but Europe has a different strain of the bacteria that causes lyme disease.
Lyme disease can become very serious, it can infect the nervous system and cause neurological problems especially in young children who are often bitten on the head or the neck, undiagnosed it can cause chronic health issues that mimic other diseases. Without safe prophylactic measures beyond trying to minimize contact w ticks, this has driven people who have had lyme disease, have chronic effects from mass-disseminated lyme disease infection, or people who believe they have chronic lyme disease to go to quack doctors and undergo unsafe, unapproved medical treatment in an attempt to stop suffering.
This would not be happening on the scale that it is if antivaxxers didn’t straight up execute a supervillain plot to sabotage the lyme disease vaccine. the vaccine was licensed in december 1998, which was the year andrew wakefield published his fraudulent research on the MMR vaccine
H.Bomberguy’s video on the anti-vaccine movement is absolutely worth watching in its entirety. Because it lays out just how fucking twisted and wrong the entire thing is, and how this entire movement that is KILLING CHILDREN is based on a lie for money.
Does Canada have the  vaccine? Also A successful human vaccine can pave the way for successful animal vaccines. And since my horse is battling Lyme right now it would be very beneficial if we had a vaccine for it. Especially since horses in my area get Lyme all the time. So F the anti-vaxxers. 
@bushranging-destrier Yes, this is their saddle. Notice that it’s posed backwards on their $800 saddle pad. 🤣 Also, I’m not really sure what they managed to do with the stirrup leathers.
I think I remember reading it was actually built on a Crosby saddle tree, so could be functional if you’re willing to pony up the $9000 for it.
excuse me. Excuse me. FIRST OFF is that even real leather?? SECOND are you trying to replicate a quirt??? THIRD I CAN MAKE A RAINBOW PARACORD ONE FOR $20 and you want $1250!???
Also I thought the saddle was like a bag or something... it's not. It's a 9k saddle you buy to just sit in the house and look pretty
... i... i need to stop looking for things I don't want to know about
there’s been a lot of talk about this in british equestrian circles but i haven’t seen much outside of that- don’t feed horses without permission from the owners
horses can’t throw up, meaning if they eat something they shouldn’t it can cause them to colic which is often fatal. even food that seems like “horse food”, some horses have dietary requirements and there’s a choking risk. even if the horse looks skinny- if you have a welfare concern you should contact the relevant authorities, not try to feed horses yourself
Not even just horses, if an animal isn't yours don't feed it. I've seen a kids horse die because people went through giving the horses treats at the county fair
Sydney has PSSM, so I very carefully select what kind of treats she can have, and only use them for our “carrot stretches.” Two years ago she had to be on 14 days of stall rest and it came out that no fewer that four different boarders were feeding her treats because she “looked sad.” Stall rest was already stressful. I was driving to the barn twice a day to hand walk her and praying she didn’t tie up during her confinement. We ended up having to put up a sign saying don’t feed her. The same has happened to other horses that have been in for stall rest. We shouldn’t have to put up a sign to a barn full of grown ass women to not feed a horse that isn’t yours!
I’ve also had issues at shows where I’ve had to put up a sign because the person in the next stall has admitted that they fed my horse treats when they were giving their horse treats because my horse was begging. Tough! I’d rather have her “disappointed” than dead!
Sometimes substances for medicinal usage can’t be fabricated in a chemical way. Therefore, pharmaceutical companies are in need of animals o
This is creating quite a stir. I chatted with my mentor in Iceland about this, & have learned that in good breeders there has been a movement to get this practice made illegal for quite sometime. The frustration - and the warning to outsiders - is that cheap foals sold online are often the byproduct of this unsavory industry, so keep an eye out for that & don’t be fooled. Generally low quality mares are used & as a result of this practice the market gets flooded with low quality horses, so it’s not good for the horse industry, either.
Keep in mind, Iceland has a horse meat industry, with welfare laws and slaughter practices that are generally about as ethical as you could ever hope to see - the kind you’d like to see in other countries, tbh. Horses well-cared for and essentially free-range until they’re slaughtered, for example. The meat industry means that there are both means and incentive to cull horses that don’t make the cut, due to temperament, conformation, etc - as riding animals, which (no matter how we feel about horse meat as a concept) has contributed positively to the overall quality of the horses in Iceland because it means that those lower quality horses don’t reproduce. The “blood mares” are riding horse failures, generally, which due to poor character or conformation or injury, what have you, can’t be ridden. But instead of being culled - they’re being bred. Low quality foals are a byproduct and are therefore flooding the market, although I imagine many are slaughtered as foal meat is considered more delicious. Breeding foals for slaughter is also not a new concept in Iceland 🤷♀️. Regardless, what’s happening with these blood mares is not what anyone who cares about the quality of the breed wants to see, so rest assured that your favorite breeding farms aren’t participating in this.
As awful as this is, the concept of harvesting blood from pregnant mares and abused the mares and foals itself didn’t shock me, as an American. In the USA, we have this and worse treatment happening to livestock all the time - factory farms, Premarin mares, feedlots shipping starved and injured horses massive distances to slaughter, etc - I think the bigger shock here is that it’s happening in ICELAND where welfare laws are so thorough, highly specific, and generally well-enforced. Heck, what goes on in so many RIDING stables in the US wouldnt be legal in Iceland, they’re shocked over there when they hear about common saddle seat practices or rougher cowboy-type practices so….. This really shouldn’t be able to be happening there 😬 and yet…. 😞
I also learned that the “medical” purposes this is used for aren’t even for humans, but have instead something to do with hormones for inseminating livestock like pigs for meat use which makes it feel somehow even worse? Ugh.
So, eyes open, don’t buy cheap foals on the internet even if they are cute and purebred, and hopefully what’s surfaced here will help good Icelandic horse breeders in their fight to end this awful industry.
So I’m reblogging myself to add that I’ve learned a bit more and it does sound like there is relatively little foal-to-slaughter pipeline. It’s more like a puppy mill. The farms are using young stallions with fancy colors like splash and cream genes, producing a surplus of fun colored foals (from low-quality mares) and then selling them very inexpensively. They’re able to sell them cheap because the blood business is the primary earning factor. The biggest issue here is that these farms aren’t disclosing their involvement in the blood business to buyers, and are posing as serious breeders of riding horses.
I’m not going to put anyone on blast because I can’t know for absolutely certain, but I’ve been sent some gorgeous Instagram accounts that I’ve now been told are doing this.
It goes without saying that well-bred and well-raised horses are expensive. And many good, successful breeders of sport horses won’t even sell foals because they want to control the horse’s training and early success before selling, to get the best value. So again, be aware and don’t buy foals this way.
For me, the issue isn’t so much that the blood is being harvested… we have many worse practices here in the USA. The issue is 1., that it’s not always being done ethically / with the horses kept in good condition (and blood can be drawn ethically - I’m sure every horse owner has had their horse’s blood drawn for medical purposes at some point and didn’t feel they were abusing the horse), and 2., that it’s not being disclosed so buyers don’t have the opportunity to choose whether or not to support this.
I’ll be interested to see what steps Iceland takes to manage this going forward. People SURE are pissed off. My guess is better regulation on the mares and better identification for which foals are byproducts of this industry will be forthcoming, in response to all this backlash and also as a result of the work that was already being done within the horse industry against this practice.
The board of FT has spoken out. I also learned that there has been a push to have the foals which are a result of the blood business somehow marked / identified in Worldfengur, which I think would be really smart so that buyers can be fully aware when they are supporting this business, but apparently there were too many rules / concerns to get that pushed through yet. Perhaps this will help.
Statement from our friends at Efri-Rauðalæk in Iceland, who own the farm where our foals have been born and grown up. So glad to know and learn from such wonderful, ethical horsepeople.
The horse world has lost its damn mind. 40k for a draft cross gelding being marketed as a trail mount. It’s not even trained to jump or in upper level dressage. Just a run of the mill trail mount. 🤯
I can’t… the price of horses has gone up but that is the most ridiculous price I’ve ever see for a trail horse gelding. That horse better be a gift from god.