Sustainable Equine Solutions

Can you believe there are people out there that hate their jobs? I’m sure not one of them!! Loved making this special Lusi boy this morning.
How did we do?
SES clips are all SHOW READY guaranteed. Pro FEI/AA/5* GP groom available for hire. Whether you’re about to ship too, need to look sleek for championships or indoor season, help a floofy metabolic friend, or get ready to hunt, please send me your ponies that need a haircut 😍 so I can continue loving my job ❤️

Full letter to the New York Post editor:
Please, send in your own!!

“Have you ever driven a horse drawn carriage?
Have you ever even been to a carriage stables?
Brushed or taken care of these majestic creatures?

Statistics say if you’re sitting in your office high rise on your computer or smartphone reading this, you likely haven’t done any of those things, much less recently if you even happened to have interacted with them.

My name is Stéphanie Marie out of Worcester, MA, and in my picture is Cole, an ex Amish horse Percheron whose current job saved him from a slaughterhouse. I wonder if your politicians truly care if being starved to death, fighting for any food and water you can find, among disease, in overcrowded conditions getting trampled on and injured or sick with 0 veterinary care on your truck journey to Canada or Mexico to be slaughtered is really “better for animal welfare” than having a cozy job pulling a carriage and enchanting city dwellers? With a meal card, guaranteed housing, and retirement plan? Or maybe rotting unloved and unemployed, bored to death in a rescue that is overfull and under-resourced for years on end is a better alternative? If you can find one that will take your horse…

Cole could answer you if you spoke horse to understand him.
But even an AI program can answer my question objectively.
So why can’t you? Why can’t Mamdani and Menin?

Not more than ONE fatal incident has ever been recorded in NYC history in the centuries-old carriage industry. Meanwhile e-bike collisions have totaled over 133 since 2019 ALONE!! (Us) Trainers, drivers, and handlers work TIRELESSLY to guarantee the safety of these beautiful beasts and this is the track record we have to show in your city. So the argument that carriages are posing a public transportation hazard is not only ludicrous, but flat out FALSE. I wonder how many dollars are going into the pockets of Mamdani and Menin to pull off lies like these… we are slated for WW3 but THIS is their fight to pick?

It is only when animals BRED for WORK such as these are DENIED the opportunity to do so that welfare is the main issue. Oh, ironic isn’t it? Because it is a disservice to the horse, to deny his birthright, his instincts… and put his wellbeing at risk- at ending up in a place where stabling, healthcare, and food is not guaranteed because neither is his job. Outlawing carriage horses does precisely this, in case you didn’t catch it the first time.

Briefly I would like to share a story with you. Before I learned to drive horses, I exclusively rode them. My best friend had another Percheron named Bubby. 1200lbs of pure mayhem. But it wasn’t his fault- he was miserable. And turns out animals, like us humans, do some pretty crazy stuff when they are mentally insane and utterly miserable. But why, you ask? He had a cozy life. Food, friends, vet care, a cushy trail riding pleasure gig with my friend who loved him to death- but he tried to kill me and her (among others) several times.

The barn workers, vets, and farriers were almost all terrified of him and so he could only scarcely be handled by a handful of humans. It was dangerous for most professionals to administer care. Until he revolted one New England winter day and kicked my friend’s eyes in. Dinner plates of hooves to the face- I drove her to the ER and we left him running terrorizing the others around the property- the mule took care of him. My friend nearly lost her eyes- had a 50/50 chance of seeing out of them again… her family and I forced her to move him because she refused to euthanize- but it was clear he needed to go. So she sent him to a draft horse sanctuary in Maine that takes these power working breeds and puts them to work like their genetics intended- logging. And he remains there to this day as one of their most docile, kindest horses, THRIVING, and expertly tended to. The version of him my friend held in her head: delusion, not reality, at the time she had him. She saw the version the future world would see- when he was doing what he was designed for… and it was the structure of hard work doing exactly what he was made for that restored his outlook on life. Gave him a purpose. And made him SAFE- to himself and humanity. A horse that would otherwise have been euthanized. Talk about WELFARE.

When I became a commercial carriage driver I had soooooo much to learn. I started learning a decade ago as a freshman at UMass Amherst when Blue Star Equiculture herolded by Pam Rickenbach and her late husband taught a Horse Husbandry course. It was here that my biases and ignorance came to die and be sacrificed on the altar. Our politicians and any believers that carriage driving should be outlawed need to first step into the horseshoes of these creatures before they try and make bogus decisions for them, that work AGAINST them, and claim hero status. They should be the next ones to take this course and lay their own prejudices, $$$ interests, and unfounded ignorance about this industry on the alter to die as well.

Because how many times do we have to witness animals going certifiably insane, becoming dangerous to themselves, their kind, and all of humanity because a HUMAN decides not to let them do as their genetics created them? We have seen this in dogs - working breeds like the heeler, the collies, the pointers; the power breeds, the guardian breeds, who year after year appear in numerous bite and aggression case files because they are holed up in inappropriate dwellings with NO job. And that was precisely their purpose in life- to have a job. Instead, humans try to make couch potatoes out of a steer herder and wonder why their dog bites their ankles…. How long until we realize that we are doing the very same thing to ourselves as a species??? We were not bred to eat poisoned food. We were not created to be addicted to artificial light and screens, couped up in tiny buildings closed off from the outdoors, radiated out of our literal minds for a lifetime. And wonder why we feel nuts? Wonder why everyone seems to have a mental health diagnosis. Wonder why everyone is dying of cancer… it’s truly anything but wonder. We are being slowly and methodically forced to live against what our genetic code dictates and that is exactly what these politicians want not just for us, but for our animals, and we are COMPLIANT as a society.

You want to know what’s next?
It’s not “offering 68 medallions of carriage drivers skills training” to “seek alternative industries” - it’s extinction. It’s not the “end of carriages” oh no, my friend, it’s more serious than that.

It’s extinction first of breeds. Then of species. They pit dog against dog for survival. The less numbers there are, the easier the mass is to control, manipulate, and surveil. And it’s not equines they’re after, after all. It’s a metaphor. A foreshadowing. But take it quite literally please, lest I be named a conspiracy theorist. You will see that this ban only creates chaos. Perhaps, that is exactly par for their course.

After all, they don’t really care about Cole do they?
They don’t care if he eats enough, if he has a place to sleep, if he has access to veterinary care, or a retirement plan. The people behind this ban don’t care about him or any of his kind. They just care about counting the stacks under their tables, isn’t that how politics works? Welfare. A convenient, empty, pathetic excuse for grand theft robbery and a license to kill an entire species, an entire industry… with no benefit to either of the latter.

Tell the truth.

HUGE surprise in the mail today!
We were selected to test out a pair of shoes for Easy Care! It is no secret that my last tube of HoofLox by the company failed with flying colors… so I will reset my boy with these with our normal n**e EquiLox. My heart horse does fantastic barefoot- yesterday schooled XC with ease and success on the perfect grass footing- but he tiptoes on bluestone and gravel. He is much more comfy with some protection while in work and as we ramp up our fall season with big hopes, we can now pull out the big guns and start shoeing again since many venues we go are not perfectly soft grass! Stay tuned!

Gearing up for RRP next week! Braiding, bodywork, and beyond

EXTENDED 🍂🍂🍂!!!
The owner has decided to give us one more week to find the rest of the 1000$ needed to help this pregnant mare to a soft landing. 1 for $10 or 5 for $40 that’s a FREE extra ticket !!!

I always try and tell people! You can’t just throw supplements at topline. That’s not how muscle making work. That’s not how order of operations works. It’s not a topline supplement. It’s not work with bungees and contraptions. Listen!

Poor topline is very rarely a protein problem, and this is one of the most expensive misunderstandings in the horse world.

Topline is what a body builds when it has surplus. It is not essential for survival. Before a horse spends resources on muscle over the back, that body will fund every survival system that outranks it. Immune function. Blood sugar regulation. Organ maintenance. Inflammation control.

When you see a topline disappear, you are usually not looking at a horse who is short on protein. You are looking at a horse whose body has quietly defunded things that are not vital because something more urgent is consuming their resources.

The real question is rarely how do I build topline? It is what is this body spending the protein, aminos acids, and minerals on instead, and why?

Tag someone who has been chasing a topline for a year or more. This one might land differently.