Crescent Moon Equine Bodywork

06/05/2025

When switching feeds, protein and fat percentages are the least important things on the tag!

Here’s what I look at—in order of importance:

Ingredient List
Guaranteed Analysis
Feeding Directions

Let’s break it down:

1. Ingredient List
Are the ingredients clearly listed (e.g., beet pulp, alfalfa meal), or are they grouped under vague terms like “processed grain by-products”?
Collective terms = ingredient changes based on commodity prices.

2. Guaranteed Analysis
Only nutrients listed under the guaranteed analysis on the product tag (not just the website) are regulated and must be present at those levels—they’re testable and enforceable by law.

The more items guaranteed, the more nutritional quality the company is backing.
Marketing may promote “digestive support,” but unless ingredients like probiotics are in the guaranteed analysis, there’s no guarantee they’re viable post-manufacture (this is called tag dressing).
Note: Don’t compare nutrient levels without first comparing feeding rates—context matters!

3. Feeding Directions
These tell you how much to feed to meet the vitamin and mineral needs.

Example:
If a feed recommends 6 lbs/day for a 1000 lb horse and you’re feeding only 3 lbs, you’re delivering half the nutrition. Choosing a feed with a lower recommended feeding rate can be more cost-effective and appropriate.

A feed with a 3 lb/day rate vs. 6 lb/day dramatically affects both nutrition and cost. Lower feeding rates should have higher nutrient concentrations to make up the difference.

Organic Minerals
Organic forms (e.g., zinc methionine complex) are far more bioavailable than inorganic ones (e.g., zinc oxide).

Are organics listed before inorganics? If not, it may just be tag dressing. This is a deep topic, but placement matters!

03/26/2025

Wednesdays are my favorite because I love reading these small bits advice! Try this movement with your horse and see what they say 🐴

09/29/2024

This! 🤗

Why do biomechanics matter?

No one uttered this term to me, in all my years of riding and lesson-taking, until I was well into my 20's. I heard lots of other words: contact, responsiveness, connection, rhythm, impulsion, suppleness. All of them felt like these ethereal concepts that had multiple meanings depending on who you talked to. They also had varying degrees of importance or ranking in terms of what you need first before the horse can offer the next thing, depending on who you talked to. I still see this all the time, and hear about how frustrating it is from other horsepeople trying to do the best they can.

Biomechanics are the physical relationships and structural laws that govern how living things move. Biomechanics are the HOW in all of those aforementioned ethereal terms. They are vital in understanding how to correctly develop a horse for riding. This is the first reason why biomechanics matter.

The second reason is because horses weren't designed to be ridden. I cannot overstate how important this is to understand if you want to ride horses and ride them well: horses were NEVER designed to be sat on. The horse is born with a specific set of biomechanical tools available to him, and they serve him very well...when they are needed.

The thing is, those tools were designed for maximum efficiency if the horse's life is in danger: used for brief moments, blips in between long stretches of calm. Those exact tools can cause injury, unsoundness, and degeneration if used every day, day in and day out, for years.
. . . . . . . .

I want you to look at these two photos.

The top horse is using what nature gave him (and what work with humans helped him turn into long-standing patterns in movement). The bottom horse has been given new tools and taught how to use them to move in ways that preserve soundness, not encourage degeneration.

The top horse is moving in a way that directly ties into the same sympathetic nervous system responses that kick in when a horse is in danger. The bottom horse is demonstrating all of the power potential the nervous system makes available when the horse is in danger, but accessing it through relaxation and completely different biomechanics.

The top horse is using the ground to support his weight in movement, putting a lot of pressure on his joints. The bottom horse is doing a lot of that supporting himself by virtue of his posture, putting significantly less strain on his joints.

You may have already figured out this is the same horse. These photos were taken approximately two years apart.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: the way to develop the bottom horse isn't to simply take the top horse and add contact, impulsion, responsiveness, ride circle after circle, do pole and hill work, etc. Whatever you apply to the ridden horse will only reinforce what is already in him.

You must teach him, literally from the ground up, a new way of moving, a different biomechanical perspective. Some horses will come by this easier than others, but not a one is born knowing how to put all of these things together on their own when the human asks it. Not a one.

We have to show them how.

PC: Mandy Helwege. Thank you for permitting me to share your lovely boy.

09/07/2024

Yes! 🦷If the person doing your horse's dental work isn't working on the incisors too, they aren't doing it right. Incisors are soooo important to the horse's overall body balance🦷

It takes a village to keep your horse's body in tip top shape but it's worth it 💕🤗

08/26/2024

This looks super interesting! Excited to see what they have to say 😊

Train Your Eye - Is Your Horse's Topline Healthy?

I think it is safe to say the condition of the horse's topline relative to their performance has never been as scrutinised in the media as it has been this year - with many people questioning how horses are able to perform so well despite their lack of muscle.

Your horse's topline is an indicator of their overall health. In my day-to-day practice I use it as a roadmap to hypothesise where there mught be deficits in their training and how they might move as a result. My wish is that I can show everyone what I see so they can use this as a means to help them with their horse's training and management.

In this live Train Your Eye webinar, expect to learn:
- How to feel for muscle wastage even in horses that are overweight
- How to see compression points throughout the horse's topline
- How to determine if your horse should be ridden or not.

02.09.2024 19:00 BST

Recording available after the event if you can't attend live ❤️

08/26/2024

08/18/2024

Thoughts Around Groundwork Training 🐴

I talk a lot about groundwork, but the term means different things to different people. The groundwork I do now looks a lot less exciting than the groundwork I used to do. Most groundwork in horsemanship circles heavily leans toward moving the feet, disengaging the quarters, backing the horse up, changing direction and demanding swift compliance with these things. There are lots of themes around “respect” and “connection”, but what are we actually doing to the horse and their body and how might they be perceiving it?

When I am training with horses now, my main aim is to have the horse feeling relaxed in the work because only then will I be able to truly influence his movement and posture in a helpful way, then I want to do things that are going to help develop his body, not put strain on it. A horse that is braced and tense around you is not going to be able to do this, even if outwardly they look calm.

Most horses with behavioural issues will have discomfort or pain in their body, even if it is just from the bracing they do in their every day life. I have lost count of the training videos I’ve watched where I can see the horse is visibly lame behind or showing very compromised posture. So already we have a horse who is going to find movement difficult, yet we train these horses by asking them to move their bodies in taxing ways and usually at speed, as a slow response is seen as a sign of disrespect.

Disengaging the quarters is something I used to do repetitively in training, I thought it was helping the horse physically, it definitely wasn’t and is actually hard on their bodies. As is excessive backing up, especially if the horse is hollowed out while doing it because he’s having a rope smacked up into his face.

Much of this training is actually creating hyper-vigilance in the horse, they become so focussed on watching you because they’re desperately trying not to do the thing that gets you waving that flag again. That doesn’t sound very relaxing. It actually sounds quite scary. A lot of this training tries to catch the horse out, stopping or changing the ask quickly so you can get an opportunity to correct the horse sharply and make him even more hyper-vigilant to you. Instead of preparing the horse for the ask slowly and quietly and making it so easy for them to succeed.

When you do this sort of groundwork training, pretty quickly you’ll get a horse that is standing, lowering his head, licking and chewing etc, and we can think its great, we have a relaxed horse. But is it relaxation? Or is it relief? Or is it just a horse beginning to shut down? I can’t answer that, but I do see a lot of horses who have been trained in this way who just aren’t on the other end of the phone when I try to open an actual conversation with them. They’ll go through the motions and they’ll do all of the things, but they’re not really in the room with you, they’ve learned people don’t listen, they just demand, and the only way to get it to stop is to comply.

When I train now I do just as much as I need to to get the tiniest try, and then I stop asking, and we build from there. I’m not trying to send the horse into a frantic search for the right answer, I’m showing him how to get there the quietest way I can. When you train like this the horse starts to trust that he isn’t going to be asked to do anything he needs to get tense about, and then we get actual relaxation in work. There is no leaping, or flying backwards, or yanking, or rearing away. You can get a horse to look extremely relaxed and be moving with much more flow just by walking and stopping in hand with absolutely no dramas, we don’t need to be spinning in circles and moving the feet all over the place. We just need to be patient, change our expectations and meet the horse where they’re at.

I will be doing a free live on this topic with Yasmin Stuart Equine Physio on Monday at 7pm, sign up here: https://facebook.com/events/s/groundwork-the-effects-on-biom/870366431091774/?

We will be discussing the common groundwork exercises we come across, explaining the biomechanics behind them, their potential emotional effects and offering some insight into our own ways of working to give you some ideas to try. 🐴

www.lshorsemanship.co.uk

08/18/2024

Want to build a better bond with your horse and make them feel better? Practice the bladder meridian, a power but simple technique that helps the horse and your understanding of them.

Video to come and check out The Masterson Method, Integrated Equine Performance Bodywork for an amazing explanation!

08/06/2024

I've recently been taking a deep dive into confirmation vs. posture. Lots to digest but here's a great overview of the differences between the two!

Back to reading 🤓

08/02/2024

The importance of walking backwards but adding a little ✨science✨

Walking backwards - rein back - step back

This has always been an exercise I recommend and a recent article has used 3D motion capture to explore back and pelvis motion during the movement - Jobst, Zsoldos and Licka, 2024

'A significantly larger maximum and a greater ROM was reached between the withers, thoracic region and sacrum (labelled D-angWmT16S2) in Backwards Walking compared to Forwards walking, indicating a lifting of the back, an effect necessary to facilitate strengthening of the horse’s core and therefore often desired in equine physiotherapy and in equestrian sports (Clayton, 2016; Shakeshaft & Tabor, 2020)'

A few steps backwards - Unmount SD Cardnted - as part of groundwork and before mounting are a really good idea to mobilise your horse's back.

Link to article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090023324001412?via%3Dihub

08/01/2024

Absolutely love this! Such a great perspective and explanation. I will surely be working on this in my own riding and practicing the feel for release.

07/28/2024