Also, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, it seems.

She can tell by your walk if she wants to associate with you on any given day, your walk, talk, smell, etc. 

On the other hand, being a mule, it may have nothing to do with you. 

In my experience they like to see you each and every day, and if you miss too many days, they really have better things to do next time you decide to show up, like graze.

When you learn to see as the mule sees, let me know.

Cheers and best wishes with Molly. Can you spot her in the photo here?

Sid Gustafson DVM
Equine Behavior Educator

First, let’s review how the horses can become enamored with pawing. 

How to teach forage-deprived horses to paw for hay:  The guardian arrives to feed forage-deprived horses, who have long ago run out of appropriate forage to chew and digest. The hungry horses instinctively paw in anticipation of being fed. Pawing is an “I-am-hungry” behavior, as well as a behavior that arises from extended periods of deprived locomotion. When horses are not allowed to move most all of the time, they develop methods to move which suffice their need to move, but which are unwelcome, such as pawing and weaving. 

The guardian rewards the pawing by feeding the hungry pawing horses, thus teaching the horses a specific behavior to achieve a specific result. They have been taught to paw to be fed. In fact, the horses have trained the human to feed them on cue. The horses paw, the human feeds them. Repeatedly rewarding the pawing entrenches the pawing behavior in the horse. The solution: The horses should never have run out of appropriate forage and become unreasonably hungry in the first place. Feeding times should not be preceded by long periods of having run out of feed. Foraging should not be deprived for more that a few hours at a time, as is the situation in natural settings. Horses are not inclined to schedules. During their evolution, schedules resulted in predation. 

The solution is to avoid unwelcome pawing in the stable is to seldom, if ever, allow the horses to run out of appropriate forage, which is to say not to let the horses become unreasonably hungry, ever. A horse’s stomach is meant to always have a small amount of forage. Horses are trickle feeders. Deprivations of appropriate 24/7 forging create a variety of unwelcome behaviors, cribbing and gastric ulceration foremost among them. 

Unwelcome pawing while being tacked, or tied up. Most of these horses are locomotion-deprived stable horses. Horses in natural settings move up to 80% of the time. This movement is essential to their digestion and metabolism. When horses are not allowed to freely move all the time their body calls for movement and they develop ways to move within their restricted circumstances. They paw, they weave, they stall walk, and some stall-run. Stabled horses require miles of daily walking. If they do not get it, some pay unwelcomely, as their legs need to move. Always make sure your stabled horse is allowed to walk, run, and play for a while after coming out of the stall before you tie him up to tack or ride, please. If he does not get his long awaited exercise at liberty, he will take the exercise in the form of pawing while being restrained (or sometimes will get the fill of his needed locomotion by bucking while being ridden). When horses come out of stall after long periods of deprived locomotion, the first thing they need is abundant movement. Walk your stalled horse abundantly before anything else is attempted after a long period of being stalled if it is a willing, pleasant partnership you seek with your horses. This strategy often eliminates unwelcome pawing. When horses are pawing excessively, the message is often that they have not been getting enough daily movement.

Unwelcome pawing before or while being ridden: Riding has to be a good and comfortable deal for the horse. If riding is not a good deal for the horse, or riding or saddling becomes confusing or uncomfortable, horses will paw in anticipation of future discomfort before being ridden. The solution is to make riding (and stabling) a good and fulfilling endeavor for the horse.

In this case of your horse insisting to graze the grass he is walked upon, it is clear that you have failed to fulfill your horse’s ancient constant behavioral and physical need to abundantly if not all day long graze grass before you attempt to lead him around. Horses require 24/7 access to suitable forage. If they are restricted in this regard, they will graze when and how they can, as grazing is essential to living or horses. Grazing is their most treasured and essential physical need. If your horse is stabled, he should never be without a bite of appropriate forage, please. Your horse is attempting to convey this long-evolved constant need to forage behavioral trait to you, if only you will listen, please. Horses utilize a gesture language to communicate, and your horse’s grazing gesture conveys to me that he is not getting enough. This is not about training, this is about providing your horse with the simple proper constant forage nutrition he requires before attempting to handle or train him. Horses in natural settings graze 80-90% of the time, you know, and your horse expects no less than his wild relatives. If your horse is unable to forage any less than those wild mustangs, his brethren, expect this behavior to continue when he is led over nice green grazing grass. Your horse should never be without a bite of suitable forage, so it sounds as if he is forage-deprived before you attempt to lead him over the grass he loves. He cannot help himself but graze until you fill his daily need to forage near-constantly. If the grass is green, and he has been offered mostly hay, I tell you he knows what is good for his digestive health. Let him graze the green grass, please. Once you sate your horse’s daily need to walk and graze abundantly, you can expect him to happily and willingly lead at your beck and call, of course. I recommend an hour or two of daily hand grazing before attempting to lead him over surfaces that are barren of forage and grass. Set yourself up to succeed with him in this fashion, please.

In this case of your horse insisting to graze the grass upon which he is walked: It is clear that you have failed to fulfill your horse’s ancient constant behavioral and physical need to abundantly if not all day long graze grass before you attempt to lead him around. Horses require 24/7 access to suitable forage. If they are restricted in this regard, they will graze when and how they can, as grazing is essential to living for horses. Grazing is their most treasured and essential physical need. If your horse is stabled, he should never be without a bite of appropriate forage, please. Your horse is attempting to convey this long-evolved constant need to forage behavioral trait to you, if only you will listen, please. Horses utilize a gesture language to communicate, and your horse’s grazing gesture conveys to me that he is not getting enough. This is not about training, this is about providing your horse with the simple proper constant forage nutrition he requires before attempting to handle or train him. Horses in natural settings graze 80-90% of the time, you know, and your horse expects no less than his wild relatives. If your horse is unable to forage any less than those wild mustangs, his brethren, expect this behavior to continue when he is led over nice green grazing grass. Your horse should never be without a bite of suitable forage, so it sounds as if he is forage-deprived before you attempt to lead him over the grass he loves. He cannot help himself but graze until you fill his daily need to forage near-constantly. If the grass is green, and he has been offered mostly hay, I tell you he knows what is good for his digestive health. Let him graze the green grass, please. Once you sate your horse’s daily need to walk and graze abundantly, you can expect him to happily and willingly lead at your beck and call, of course. I recommend an hour or two of daily hand grazing before attempting to lead him over surfaces that are barren of forage and grass. Set yourself up to succeed with him in this fashion, please.

Appreciation of the evolved nature and behavior of horses provides the foundation for the ethical veterinary care of equine athletes. The establishment of a veterinary patient client relationship (VCPR) is instrumental in providing ethical care for the competition horse. Ethical veterinary practice supports the horse’s long-term health, therapy, and welfare interests while avoiding pharmaceutical intervention in the days before competition.

Horses evolved as social grazers of the plains, moving and grazing in a mutually connected and communicative fashion on a near-constant basis. Contemporary equine health and prosperity remains dependent on providing an acceptable degree of this continual movement, foraging, and socialization that sustain equine health. When horses are confined to fulfill convenience and performance interests, the horse’s natural preferences need be re-created to a suitable degree to avoid exceeding the adaptability of the stabled horse. When adaptability is exceeded, welfare is diminished and the need for medical intervention to remedy behavioral, health, and soundness deficiencies becomes complex. Contemporary husbandry and conditioning practices regularly exceed the competition horse’s adaptability, resulting in the need for extensive veterinary intervention to sustain health and competitiveness. Ethics need to be improved to protect the future health and welfare of competition horses. Pre-competition medication strategies should not supplant or replace the appropriate fulfillment of the horse’s long-evolved survival requirements.

The more medical care and pharmaceutical intervention required to sustain a population of horses, the lower the population’s welfare. Ethical veterinary care supports the horse’s best welfare interests, as well as the safety of horse and rider. Veterinary caregivers are required to provide equine athletes with appropriate medical and surgical therapy for a wide variety of infirmities. To properly support the health and welfare of equine athletes, the practitioner must deviate from pharmaceutical pre-competition intervention to providing for their patients’ inherent and individual long-term conditioning and husbandry essentials. While necessary therapies are being instituted by the practitioner, socialization, constant foraging, and abundant daily locomotion need to be initiated. Providing the long-evolved requirements to promote and sustain optimal soundness, behavioral health, performance, is essential to promote healing in competition horses. Once most injuries are stabilized, stall rest is not the correct ameliorative approach to resolve lameness. 

Healthy horses are best-served to perform naturally in an unmedicated state. Due to a lack of cultural appreciation of the nature of the horse, medication is heavily regulated in jurisdictions worldwide to protect the horse. It has been demonstrated—in Hong Kong and Great Britain, for example—that fewer pre-race medications allow for safer horseracing. All competitive equine pursuits require medication policies due to the potential of unscrupulous medication practices to gain competitive advantage. Polo, endurance, cutting, reining, rodeo, and all unmentioned performance horse pursuits are required to follow the same ethical approach. Medication should not influence performance. The equine practitioner best serves the horse and client by focusing on post-performance evaluations and therapeutic approaches. Appropriate treatments and protocols to sustain horse health can be implemented on an enduring basis when conditions are identified during post-competition examinations. The performance horse veterinarian needs to change their work schedule from pre- performance to post-performance. There, the doctor can do right by the horse.

A behavioral emphasis on fulfilling the medical, physical, nutritional, metabolic, and behavioral needs of the horse to prepare for future competitions provides a solid platform for the ethical veterinary care of the competition horse. Horses so served prevail at the competitions. The pre-competition veterinary role is to guide the client to prepare a strong horse who is sound and able to compete safely, willingly, and efficiently in a natural fashion. Pre-competition pharmaceutical scrims have little place in the ethical practice of competition horse medicine. Pre-competition practices that replace or supplant appropriate health care are not in accord with the AVMA Principles of Veterinary Ethics. The AVMA Principles of Veterinary Ethics state that it is unethical for veterinarians to medicate or treat horses without a VCPR. The use of itinerant veterinarians to inject Lasix into nearly all horses racing in America hours before they race is an example of the unethical practice of veterinary medicine. The result is horses breaking down three to four times more often in America than in overseas jurisdictions where horses are prevented from being medicated before racing. The medical and pharmaceutical practices that support equine competitive pursuits enhance the health and soundness of the horse on a long-term basis. Pre-competition medical influence should not enhance performance nor be intended to enhance performance. When performance is enhanced, the adaptability of the competition horse is exceeded and catastrophic results ensue. Pre-competition practices should not mask lameness of any sort.

All sensation, behaviour, cognition, and proprioception should remain uninfluenced by medication during competitions. Treatments should not effect normal physiologic function or behavior of the horse. Senses should not be dulled, masked or stimulated. Performance horses should not perform under the influence of medications that are capable of initiating an action or effect upon the nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, urinary, reproductive, musculoskeletal, blood, immune (save approved vaccines), or endocrine systems. Endocrine secretions or their synthetic substitutes, masking agents, oxygen carriers, or chemicals that directly or indirectly affect or manipulate blood physiology or gene expression are not appropriate for use in competing equine athletes. Horses are vulnerable to performance manipulation via pharmaceutical influence. The only fair competition is a competition for non-medicated horses.

Sound horses properly prepared have little need for pre-competition medication. Unsound or behaviorally dysfunctional horses require rehabilitation that restores soundness before training and competition are resumed. All horses need to be professionally prepared physically and behaviorally to endure the task asked of them. Musculoskeletal development requires lifelong, constant attention, most notably in the stable. Horses are born to move most all the time, and move they must to maintain health and soundness, especially in preparation for competitive pursuits. 

Horses who require medication to compete become unfit to compete safely. Rather than therapeutic intent, pre-competition medication practices have become performance enhancing at the expense and safety of horse and rider. When the adaptability of the horse is exceeded, horses become unsound and require veterinary attention, treatment, and care. Assessment of stabling conditions and athletic preparation practices are essential components of ethical equine care. When horses are injured or impaired by competitive pursuits, healing must be allowed to progress before competition and training are resumed. Client education is essential to create a husbandry situation conducive to equine healing. Restoration strategies that re-create the horse's social grazing and locomotion preferences facilitate and potentiate horse healing. Appropriate healing of many equine maladies is encouraged when the veterinarian provides appropriate medical care and carefully facilitates a scenario to provide the horse with appropriate physical rehabilitation and behavioral fulfillment. 

Interdependence exists between horse health and locomotion. Deprivations of abundant daily locomotion are the most common underlying cause of infirmity and fragility in competition horses. Metabolic, pulmonary, circulatory, digestive, musculoskeletal, and behavioral health are all dependent upon abundant daily locomotion. Stabled horses require miles of daily walking to maintain health and vigor. Horses evolved to be near-constant walkers and grazers. With domestication and selective breeding for performance, horse health remains dependent on locomotion. Horses deprived of socialization, constant foraging, and abundant daily locomotion are at risk to develop stereotypies. The more stereotypies present in a population of equine athletes, the lower their level of care and welfare.

Solutions and alternative approaches to pre-race medication. 

Establish a viable VCPR. Appreciate the nature of the horse. Understand how to fulfill the nature of the horse from a medical and soundness perspective. Appreciate behavioral need.

Examine and consult. Question medication protocols that are not supported by a VCPR. Question stabling and care protocols that do not support equine welfare or sustain long-term soundness and vigor. Observe and assess the environment and hour-to-hour daily care of the horse. Promote abundant enrichment activities that get the horse out of the stall for significant periods of locomotory fulfillment each day, morning and afternoon. Explore the history and temperament of the individual horse. Offer wholesome solutions to sustained soundness and behavior. Appreciate that all horse behavior, both welcome and unwelcome, is primarily a result of human management (or mismanagement) of the horse. Know the client. Know the stabling, conditioning, training, nutrition, travel, and preparation of the horses by your client. Establish yourself to offer professional consultations in these essential areas. Utilize physical and exercise therapies in preference to pharmaceutical solutions when appropriate. Teach your clients that horses do not need medication to compete. When horses are stabled, manual therapy needs to be applied for hours at a time to replace the essential movement horses require for vigor. Time spent outside the stall walking and hand-grazing enhances health, welfare, fitness to compete, and soundness. 

Specific solutions:

Diminished performance; lameness must be resolved and soundness restored, medical conditions identified and alleviated with developmental approaches that lead to medication-free competition.

The nervous horse; appropriate fulfillment, socialization, training, and husbandry.

The metabolically disabled horse; nutrition, foraging, locomotion, and husbandry. Keeping metabolism on an even keel 24/7/365. 

The bleeder; daily conditioning which promotes, develops, and sustains pulmonary health, abundant ventilation, clean air and bedding, daily exercise routines to develop pulmonary resilience, extensive time spent in open air while moving. For horses, to move is to breathe, and to breathe is to move. Breathing exercises are locomotion exercises. Every stride is a breath, every breath a stride. 

Electrolytes. Hydration. Salt. 

Performance preparation. Pre-race exercise and behavioral fulfillment.

Building endurance. Blood cell management.

Ethical care of the horse is dependent on ethical veterinary practitioners. Education of future veterinarians in the area of equine behavior promotes the development of ethical veterinarians. 

Horses require abundant daily locomotion. Miles of daily walking support all aspects of equine health and soundness. Veterinarians require abundant animal behavior education and multidisciplinary experience to establish themselves as ethical practitioners. Representing the health and welfare of the competition horse takes precedence in the ethical equine practice.

Chyoke A, Olsen S & Grant S 2006 Horses and Humans, The Evolution of Human-Equine Relationships,  BAR International Series 1560, Archeopress, England, ISBN 1 84171 990 0

McGreevy P 2004 Equine Behavior: A Guide for Veterinarians and Equine Scientists Philadelphia: Elsevier Limited. ISBN 0 7020 2634 4

Budiansky, S. (1997). The nature of horses: Exploring equine evolution, intelligence, and behavior. New York: The Free Press.

McLean A, McGreevy P, Ethical equitation: Capping the price horses pay for human glory Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research Volume 5, Issue 4, July–August 2010.

Goff L, Manual Therapy for the Horse—A Contemporary Perspective, Journal of Equine Veterinary Science, Vol 29, No 11 (2009) 

Gustafson S, Equine Behavior; The Nature of the Horse, Sleipnir Publishing, 2014.

Horses require abundant friends, forage, and locomotion to develop and maintain behavioural and physical health. Horse health is dependent on body and jaw movement. Digestion, respiration, metabolism, and musculoskeletal and hoof health are all dependent on abundant daily exercise, walking, and socializing.

The causes of cribbing, weaving, and other stereotypies are clear. Deprivations of friends, forage, and locomotion are the causes of stereotypies. Abundant daily friends, forage, and locomotion is the prevention and treatment of stereotypies. Horses are born to socialize, communicate, move, and chew on a near constant basis. The nature of the horse is to move and graze with others day and night. For behavioural health, these preferences need to be re-created in the stable.

Stabled horses require 24/7 forage, and miles and miles of daily walking, as well as abundant socialization to re-create a natural existence. When these needs are not provided in adequate measure unwelcome behaviors develop.

We know the health if our horses by observing their eliminations.

 By now everyone knows a horse should never be without a bite of forage unless it is troubled horses we are looking for. We know that cribbers and windsuckers were without a bite of forage one time too often. Horses need to chew and move most all the time. If we take chewing and moving away from horses, they find unwelcome ways to chew and move, don't they? What with all that cribbing, weaving, pawing, etc that you have all been reporting that we see in mismanaged stables we need to better manage stabled horses to support their behavioural health and physical welfare.

 Of course, we all know now that locomotion is essential for proper digestion, as well as for proper respiration and metabolism. Everything horse is dependent on their near-constant movement. If we keep horses from moving, they find other ways to move, es verdad? And their veterinarians stay busy, yes.

The color of poop and pee, the smell, volume, consistency, all critical, all things every horse guardian should know about their horse. To know a horse's bowel and bladder habits is to know your horse's health status. Colic does not appear without notice. Nor do gastric ulcers. In equine behavior we learn to read horses, and that means constant and daily observations of their eliminations, please. Pay attention, por favor.

Locomotion is essential to digestive elimination. As you all know, when a horse moves, they most often eliminate. Colic is most often caused by deprivations of movement and forage. So there you have it. The leading cause of death in stabled horses is colic, and colic is caused by nutritional mismanagement. We know the cause of colic, and it is in inappropriate stabling and feeding practices. Horses need to move about miles each day, my friends, so get out there and move those horses standing about, please. 

We know where our horses have been. In natural settings, horses had miles and miles of prairie and they took care not to soil their range. When horses are confined, they have no choice but to eliminate where we have put them. With limited space, their pastures become soured by manure and urine, rendering the grass unfit to graze. Pasture management is a huge factor in maintaining appopriate grass to graze. As well, stalls need to be cleaned several times a day to re-create natural. Locomotion is essential to digestion, respiration, metablism, and hoof health. Everything about the horse is dependent on abundant locomotion and near-constant chewing.

The accumulation of manure can be massive when space is limited, not to mention unhealthy. Digestion is a constant process oft impaired by stabling, as colic surgeons attest. Often the quality of stables can be determined by the efficiency and tidiness of manure management. Manure harbors bloodworms, nemesis of the stabled horse. Manure sours the grass. Manure deteriorates hoof health. Get that manure out of the stable please, unless you like veterinary bills.

Colic is seldom, if ever, noted in natural settings, where horses take great care to avoid grazing where they have eliminated. One thing I have noticed, is that farms where I am called to deal with colic sure have a lot of horsepoop around. Piled-up manure usually means the horses aren't moving much. The accumulation of manure correlates directly with the accumulation of veterinary bills. The more manure allowed to accumulate, the more horse unthriftiness. 

24/7 forage, friends, and locomotion are what keep horses healthy.

Of course as we all know by now 24/7 forage provides consistency. With 24/7 forage there is no digestive change, my friends, and often no colic, as feral horses attest.  All systems in the horse are interdependent and interrelated. When the digestive system fails due to horsefolk changing  diet inappropriately, the other systems follow suit quickly. With horses, death comes fast, a compassionate survival characteristic. 

Speaking of interrupting vital digestive flow, always let your horse eliminate when he or she wants to eliminate, please, especially when riding. Horsefolk should seldom if ever interrupt the flow of the digestive tract, as the digestive tract of a horse is something that operates non-stop. To move a horse is to stimulate the bowel. Riding stimulates the bowel and woe be you to interfere. If you do not want your horse to eliminate in the ring, then properly train and feed and prepare your horse to avoid that indiscretion. Remember, horses use elimination to communicate to people, as well. Horses reflect what they think of you and your horsemanship by pooping, you know.

A constant monitoring of the feces production and urination is required to monitor and assure the health of our stabled steeds. Horsefolk know road apples inside and out. Road apples reflect health and illness for those able to see, smell, and count.

Digestive disturbances are best addressed early, and this requires keen observation of what our horses are eating, when and in what quantities and quality, and the outcome. You all should know how many times each day your stabled horse eliminates. It behooves you to recognize any change in your horse's elimination pattern immediately. Very important, as well, is your constant monitoring of your horse's borborygmi and respiration, especially with horses taken out of their routine to attend competitions. Remember salt. Do not forget water. Horse need their vibrissae to properly handle changes in feed and water, so please do not deprive them of those critical sensory structures, por favor. I hear repeated reports that a horse will not eat or drink for three days after their vibrissae are clipped. Colic surgeons have flourished. Have you seen the cars their kids drive?

Although we have little use for our eliminations, the survivalist horse utilizes manure to communicate with other horses. Horses use their acts of elimination as well as the scents of their manure and urine to enhance their survival in ways in which we can only sit back and wonder.

DrSid

To pair bond and establish familiarity, one must brush their horse, often and regular. Massage is essential to maintain health in stabled horses, full body massage, por favor. Massage is diagnostic and therapeutic. Rub your stabled horses, please, rub them everywhere, do not forget to rub the coronary bands. Rub them before tacking up, rub to make sure they are sound. Rub, rub, rub, as rubbing creates winners. Forget the bute, and rub. 

 Brushing and grooming stimulate digestive and circulatory functions, as well as create social pair bonding between horse and horsefolker. Brushing enhances nutrition, circulation, and many physiological functions. If you are confused about rubbing, watch horses rub one another and watch horses rub themselves.

Stalled horses need a good hour or two of brushing a day to feel enriched. I have seen people train horses to ride by simply brushing them everywhere everyday. That is it, brushing, which apparently can involve and incorporate pressure and release and reward, creating the establishment of boundaries and yields. Mutual benificence. 

When in doubt with the training, brush, is what I learned from that little girl, and what I hope you to all learn from this unit.

When a horse becomes troubled, stop the training and brush and rub, please.

Troubled horses do not learn, while brushed horses learn well, oh yes. To brush your horse is to train your horse. Forget about showing your horse who is boss, show your horse who cares about them.

Brush your stabled horses, often, please. Rub and brush. Lunge them, too. The word lunge comes from lung, it seems, and to lunge is to enhance and maintain pulmonary health. The key to prevent bleeding (EIPH) in racehorses is abundant locomotion. Some believe drugs keep horses from bleeding, but the preferred method is abundant locomotion. Bleeding during a race prevented by abundant locomotion between races.

Notice how often horses self-groom their lower legs. Rub the legs all up and down before tacking up. Flex all the joints, please. Get the digital pulse, por favor.

Remember to rub your horse's fetlocks, pasterns, and coronets with your bare hands before and after riding each day for winning results. To know your horse, rub your horse.

Horses are physical beings. They need friendly touching, often. And clean: I dare proclaim horses are the cleanest creatures on the planet in open country.

Stabled horses, well, they get quite dirty when forced to live in a stall or stable. Open range horses seldom need bathed, but stabled horses may, so dirty and soiled a regularly unmaintained stall or small paddock is compared to the open range, where horses stay quite clean, but will sometimes show up very muddy or dirt-caked in insect season.

At racetracks, many horses are bathed daily, others less so. Many horses learn to enjoy the process, which involves extensive grooming and brushing and close physical contact. Other horses are quite aggravated by water, and many despise water squirted near their ears, eyes, and nose. 

Sometimes water is applied to cool horses off. The place to cool hot horses off, and the place they most accept water on the head, seems to be directly on their forehead, above the eyes, below the ears, straight on, right over the brain. This forehead area is where the most heat is dissipated in the least amount of surface area.

Horses in competitive training who get hot often come to appreciate head cooling, which is physiologically effective in lowering body temperature.

Watch the nozzle-squirting devices, and use a soft stream when habituating and desensitizing your horses to water. Hose the hot horse's body and up into the groin, as well. Get your horses habituated to water carefully over time, especially at first. 

Make your horse's first experience with water a good experience.

In some cultures, horses are not bathed with water so much as with brushing.

Rubbing a horse brings one into an awareness of the horse's soundness, health, and demeanor.

Rubbing simulates movement. If you cannot provide locomotion, you best get in there and rub. 

Stall-rested horses need rubbed and passively flexed for at least two hours a day to maintain health.

Friends, forage, locomotion, and rubbing.

Get in touch with your horses with your hands.

Cheers,

DrSid