Archive for June, 2010

Thank you Equus magazine for featuring our Moisture Maniac Mane & Tail Infusion in their July issue! Moisture Maniac is made with all natural & organic human grade ingredients such as Silk, Organic Hemp, Sunflower and Coconut Oil.  It moisturizes, detangles & nourishes mane and tail hairs and smells naturally heavenly like Sweet Orange – scent  that people and horses love, but bugs do not.

Check it out :

Ride Green,

Team EcoLicious Equestrian
Your Horse. Your Earth. Your Choice.

Check out our full line of EcoLicious equine care & grooming products at www.ecoliciousequestrian.com

I love hacking my sport horses.  It’s a great way to condition a horse after an injury or give him a mental break from his job. My horse Durango is a green horse with not much trail experience. I don’t have anyone to hack with, so we hack solo. Our last outing left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.  The speed limit is 31 mph / 50 km/h on our country road. There was a huge noisy bike thundering down at least 50 mph / 80 km/h  towards us. I expected him to slow down – nope. We were riding on a narrow gravel road and my horse had never seen such a huge beast of a bike before. This guy did not move an inch. My horse tried to keep his cool, but ended up freaking out and jumping into a deep muddy ditch almost falling down with me. Thinking this was an unusual incident, we shrugged it off and kept on keeping on. Next a line of cars is coming towards us, again well over the speed limit on a narrow gravel road. I tried to slow them down by waving my hand and moving into the centre of the road, but that didn’t work – they almost clipped us and even revved their engines when they were passing us – arrghhh…

I am an experienced rider, but I often feel  uncomfortable hacking out. I don’t want me or my horse to get hurt by an ignorant driver. There is a growing crisis of loss of land for equine related activities and with ATVs on virtually every  trail, it’s harder and harder to find places where we can enjoy riding our horses safely. Is there a lack of awareness among motorists about this issue? Do you remember learning anything about how to safely pass horses on the road in your driving school? I have driver’s licenses from three different continents, yet I do not recall being taught any lesson on horse/rider safety.  It’s important that drivers understand that by not respecting such a large animal on the road they can end up badly injured too. A horse through a driver’s windshield is not pretty for both driver and rider. Horses are flight animals and it only takes an instant for something to go wrong. Some drivers actually speed up, beep or yell out the window. It’s an injury waiting to happen.

Here are some headlines from the last couple of months:

Woman, horse hit by car; driver flees

Crash that killed a horse and injured a rider lands man in jail

Rider injured and horse killed in Surrey road crash

Horse and rider injured in hit and run

What is your experience? Do you feel vulnerable riding on the roads? Did you have a bad encounter with oblivious motorists? Let us know…

Stay tuned for our next post about this issue. Let’s see if together we can drum up some awareness and keep both horses and humans safe on the roads.

Ride Green,

Team EcoLicious Equestrian
Your Horse. Your Earth. Your Choice.

Check out our full line of EcoLicious equine care & grooming products at www.ecoliciousequestrian.com

We’re excited to report that our horses eagerly respond to clicker training and learn faster and more willingly that when we use the classical negative reinforcement training method. To  find  out more about clicker training in general read up our 1st INTRO blog post.

The first lesson consists purely of teaching your horse to touch the Target and relate the sound of clicker to a positive response – treat or reward if you wish.  We’ve improvised and in the spirit of reduce-reuse-recycle we re-purposed one of our lids from a container with our 100% Natural Leave Me Be bug spray as you can see below.

It’s easy to start. You just need a clicker (we’re  using our agility dog’s clicker) and a target – you can get them at Shawna’s On Target website or you can improvise just like us. A clicker can be  purchased at a pet store. Then you just need a pouch for treats – make sure you go with treats that your horse adores. After all you want him sufficiently motivated.

Durango managed to squeeze in one nice roll before his lesson started. My dog (also trained with a clicker) got little confused. She didn’t understand that this time I was clicking for my horse and wanted to be in on the action.

It wasn’t difficult for my horse to figure out what was required from him. Touch the target – click – and here’s a treat. I could even toss it like a frisbee and off he went to touch it. Oooh boy he was a willing student.   We played touch for a while and he got the right response faster and faster getting more and more excited that he got it right. It was so much fun watching him being so into it.

Stay tuned for more of our On Target adventures. We will start applying the clicker principles to the ground work first and follow with mounted training.

Check out Shawna’s ON Target website for more tips and go play with your horse. He’ll appreciate that and you’ll have an eager to please student.You can also ask Shawna clicker training questions directly at her FB page “Ask Shawna”.

Anyone out there playing click with his horse? Share your experience with us.

Ride Green,

Team EcoLicious Equestrian
Your Horse. Your Earth. Your Choice.

Check out our full line of EcoLicious equine care & grooming products at www.ecoliciousequestrian.com

We confess. The idea of training our horses using positive reinforcement instead of the classical training using the negative reinforcement (pressure followed by the removal of pressure) is intriguing to us. Positive reinforcement means that instead of pressure you’ll reward you horse with something he perceives as a value.  Most often the reward is food. It can also be a good scratch (to make it a reward you need to know what your horse’s favorite itchy spot is).

The best example of a training method using positive reinforcement  is a Clicker Training. It’s widely used in dog training (especially agility), in marine parks or a circuses. Lately it has been becoming more popular amongst horse owners and equestrians  thanks to Shawna Karrasch – a Founder of On Target Training.

Shawna spent nearly ten years working to perfect her training skills not with horses, but in the pools at Sea World of California with killer whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals. In 1992, she was invited to attend her first Grand Prix show jumping event in Del Mar, California. As an animal trainer, Shawna was curious to learn more about how horses were trained, and was fascinated by the possibility of applying Sea World’s tried and true system to horses.

So what is On Target Training?

It is a proven equine training technique. Used by professionals and Olympic-caliber riders as well as amateur riders, this reward reinforcement training system dramatically accelerates the training process for any breed or discipline by unlocking a horse’s natural desire to perform. This results in an incredible bond between human and horse – a partnership based on success.

What do you need to start?

It’s simple:

• a small hand-held clicker which reinforces desired behavior
• a hand-held “target” for direction and focus
• a waist-mounted container of treats for reward reinforcement
• guidance;  check out her fantastic Video Blog & follow her on Facebook or get her book or a DVD
  

Stay tuned! EcoLicious Equestrian is going On Target and we’ll be sharing our adventures in our future posts.

Do you have any experience with clicker training? Would you like to give it a shot? Let us know.

Ride Green,

Team EcoLicious Equestrian
Your Horse. Your Earth. Your Choice.

Check out our full line of EcoLicious equine care & grooming products at www.ecoliciousequestrian.com

We confess. We’re obsessed with before & after pics. Be it in a beauty salon or in an episode of the Biggest Loser, we’re crazy about them. In the spirit of our obsession, we’d like to share with you today a story of Lisa – a Hanoverian Warmblood mare going EcoLicious.

Lisa enjoyed her spa day tremendously. She showed us where she was itchy and where she needed to be scratched. She kept sniffing our hands (yes, our products are scented with Sweet Orange Essential Oil that horses are head over heels with, but which bugs don’t dig.)  She even strutted her stuff like there’s no tomorrow when Steph – her rider – took her for a little jumping session after the bath. You know the saying: when you look good, you feel good.

So How It Went Down (EcoLiciously of course, but let’s look at it step by step)

Step 1. Before we use shampoo, we always apply DeStress – the 100% Natural Intensive Mane & Tail Treatment. Why? You don’t want to start shampooing dry, knotted tail hair. Application BEFORE also ensures that no burrs or shavings are left, which are difficult to remove once the tail is wet even if you use rinse out conditioner.

Step 2. We start with the tail – after all there’s nothing like a full flowing shiny tail. We scrub the tail base thoroughly to help a horse ease the itch. Make sure to use only quality natural shampoos that won’t irritate your horse, otherwise he’ll end up with an even more itchy tail than when you started. For a soothing yet thorough cleansing try our Squeaky Green & Clean.

Step 3. We wash out the shampoo, apply Silky – a rinse out conditioner and then we let it work its magic while we proceed with scrubbing the rest of the horse.

Step 4. Scrub & scrub. Get yourself one of the loofah mitts. They’re the best thing to bathe your horse with. Guaranteed

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Step 5. We hose the horse off & apply a rinse out conditioner. Our Silky is made to condition both coat, mane & tail. We leave it in for a bit while we gently pick / comb through the tail and rinse off.

Step 6. Final hose off. Get yourself a squeegee – it’s the best test to figure out if there’s any dirt or suds left in your horse’s coat. Once clear – we’re done. At least for a bit.

Step 7. Now the mane treatment. To shorten the mane we love to use a thinning knife. We cannot be trusted with straight blade scissors.  We didn’t try to pull the “mane-pulling” move on this girl. Just like her Daddy ( Icarus) she will have none of that. Then we finish off with a spritz of Moisture Maniac.

Step 8. Then the tail. We apply a little dollop of DeStress, comb through & bang it at the bottom to make it look full. When you do that always make sure that you have someone to put a hand under the horse’s dock and lift it to the height  the horse naturally carries it’s tail.

Step 9. We’re done! Nope. Not just yet. A little spritz of our Glossy – Gloss Enhancing Coat Tonic – it’s got Mica in it. It is a shimmery reflective mineral that also acts as a natural sunscreen. And a little bit of Hoof Therapy to make the hooves shiny & healthy.

And voila! Who would think  Lisa is such a HOT STUFF?

Step 10. We almost forgot the most important step. The “spoil-me-silly” time. Treats!!!
Lisa’s fav: black licorice.

Ride Green,

Team EcoLicious Equestrian
Your Horse. Your Earth. Your Choice.

Check out our full line of EcoLicious equine care & grooming products at www.ecoliciousequestrian.com