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Due to the Covid19 Emergency we are not attending any horse shows through November 2020. Some shows are canceled until next year and some are postponed until later in the year. We will post changes as we know them here.

We really enjoy getting out on the road and meeting with customers that have been with us for a long time and those customers that are brand new too!  We love talking with you and hearing your stories about the new inventive ways you’ve found to use Bye Bye Odor and seeing how we can help you get fewer and fewer flies at your place each year. We have been overwhelmed with the great response to our new spray Bye Bye Insects, if you have not had a chance to try it come by and see how great it smells and feels on your skin.

These are great events and we hope you’ll make it to some. Please stop by and say hello!  We have a gift for our customers we see.

ZAA- From September 7^th to 11^th we will be attending the Zoological Association of America’s annual conference in New Orleans. We enjoy helping zoos keeping their animals fly free and happy. From Rhinoceroses to Zebras to Monkeys we can keeps the flies away. This year it will be in Montgomery, AL.

Cowboy Dressage World Top Hand Finals- From October 6^th to the 11^th we be attending the Cowboy Dressage World Top Hand Finals at Rancho Murrieta equestrian center. We are proud to be sponsoring this organization and the discipline. Come join us for a fun event. If you have not heard of Cowboy Dressage World please check the cool things they are doing. https://cowboydressageworld.com/

Equine Affaire – From November 12^th to 15^th we will be at the Eastern State Exposition Center, West Springfield Massachusetts. This is the largest equine event in the country with dozens of presenters. Come by our booth to get your FREE 2021 Cowboy Art and Cartoon Calendars that will be fresh of the press. While at the booth check out the new best smelling fly spray for people and animals, Bye Bye Insects spray. Come try it and see why it is quickly becoming the must have fly spray. More information at www.equineaffaire.com

AAEP – From December 5^th to 9^th we will be at the American Association of Equine Practitioners 64^th Convention, in Las Vegas. This is the show that many equine Veterinarians attend each year for seminars and education. As Lyle Lovett said a few years ago when he performed here… “This is the week that horse owners say a little prayer for their animals. Please don’t get sick during AAEP”. More information at http://www.aaep.org/

It's officially fall! Time to start getting ready for winter! In this episode, Jenni Grimmett DVM explains her practice's winter healthy horse check list to get your horse ready to go into the colder months. Watch Fall Veterinary Horse Check List With Equine Veterinarian Dr. Jenni Grimmett.

Dr. Jenni Grimmett is an incredibly approachable veterinarian, a wonderful teacher, and talented Cowboy Dressage horse woman.  You can watch her series at On The Road with Jenni Grimmett with new episodes every week!

I wrote this on the last day of the Cowboy Dressage World Finals Show, at the Rancho Murieta Equestrian Center, an immense facility out in the middle of nowhere (sprawling, rolling grasslands). I love this event for several reasons.

It is a competitive discipline, which if performed correctly, cannot damage the equine, mentally or physically.

Thanks to its Founding Father, a horseman Eitan Beth-Halachmy, its essence is “Soft Feel”.  To quote Eitan, its “Mission and Vision” is “Soft Feel”, the guiding principle of Cowboy Dressage.  “It is wordless, intimate communication within the partnership of horse and rider.  Soft Feel is not only sending messages, but having the sensitivity and awareness to feel the message the horse sends back.”

The variety of breeds I have seen is amazing: Stock horses, Gypsy Vanner, Rocky Mountain, Tennessee Walker, Arabian, Warmbloods, Mules, Fjords, Morgans, Mustangs, etc.

The people.  I have met hundreds here, and, without exception, they are kind, generous, considerate, friendly, gentle, open-minded horse lovers.  That’s why this discipline appeals to them.  It’s kind, humane, and gentle to the horse, yet very sophisticated and intricate horsemanship.

Having attended countless horse and mule shows in my lifetime, very rarely as a competitor, but as a spectator, a show vet, a practitioner there to attend to a patient, as a judge, as a journalist and even as an announcer, I can see this show is unique.  It is unique because of the emphasis on empathetic communication with the horse, and the complete absence of that small minority of people who contaminate most horse shows; the showoffs, the complainers, the egomaniacs, the extremists.

A feature of special interest at this show was a full day of lectures by a variety of experts on different subjects.  It drew a very satisfied audience, obviously eager for more knowledge about horses and horsemanship.

One of the founding partners of Cowboy Dressage, Garn Walker of Dewey, Oklahoma said, “Education is first.”  Without exception, everybody involved in this discipline believes that.

They are hungry for knowledge.

Some species, including Homo Sapiens (That is US!) can, if the individual is healthy, tolerate sudden changes in diet without problems.  But, other species, especially the herbivores (grazing animals) can suffer if the diet is changed abruptly.

The horse is a good example.  Because horses depend to a great extent, upon the billions of microörganisms within their digestive tract to process what they eat, any sudden change in the diet may preclude those microörganisms’ ability to break down the consumed food.

It is these microscopic residents of the equine digestive tract, which enable the horse to do something that we humans cannot do.  That is, to break down grass and other plants into chemicals, which horses, can thrive on, and even become obese from over-eating.

Having seen thousands of colic cases, many of them fatal, foundered horses, and other serious problems caused by too sudden dietary changes during my practice career, I have become obsessive, and, I confess, rather paranoid about making dietary changes in my own horses.

Now, the good part of that is that never have I had one of my own equines suffer illness as a result of a too swift change in diet.

The bad part is that other people, including my ranch employees, think that I am some sort of nut.

For example, I not only take a full week or two of gradual substitution when changing diets, such as hay to pasture, or from dry forage to green, but I even insist that a new batch of the same kind of hay be introduced very gradually.  So, today, just before I wrote this, my horses have been primarily on alfalfa hay.  But, I opened a bale from a different delivery (from the same dealer) and I fed them ¼ flake of the new bale and ¾ flake from the old bale.

Excessive?  Yes, I admit it.  Unnecessary?  Well, having had many horses and mules for the past 60 years, and never had one colic or founder is good reason for me to be so cautious.

Besides, horses are very aware of changes in the source of water, or the stage of growth that the hay derived from, or any other change in what they consume, so it is worth it to me to see them feeling secure and content.

That’s the reason I make any feed change gradually.  For example:

If they have been primarily on hay all winter and I am ready to introduce them to the green Spring pastures, I allow them only 5 minutes the first day, and increase it by 5 more minutes during the following days until they have been in pasture a full hour.  Yes, that takes time and patience, but it also means healthy horses.  If they go into a different pasture with different kinds of forage (I live in a canyon, moist at the bottom and dry above), I repeat the gradual process.

And, again, even if I buy a new load of the same kind of hay from the same feed store, I make the change gradually.

Am I obsessive?  Yes!  I have seen too many horses damaged by too abrupt feed changes.  Thousands of sick horses, as I said earlier, and many died, or were permanently damaged as is the case in laminitis.  It’s not worth the risk.

Think about wild horses.  Say it is at the end of the dry season.  Then at last, it rains.  Soon new green grass emerges from the ground.  The horses nibble it, but hunger causes them to fill up on the old abundant grass.  As the new grass grows, they gradually switch on to it.

That’s why, in feeding equines, I try to emulate nature.  I have seen enough colics in my long career to ever see one of my own equines experience it.