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I’m Tim Ware and have been around horses much of my life…..owning and riding, competing, working from their backs, and working on their feet. I think horses are neat animals and have spent a lot of time trying to understand them. Over the years I’ve seen lots of horses in lots of situations, and I’ve seen lots of owners dealing with horses. I’ve paid attention to what I saw, thought about, considered it, and pondered about it.
I trained as a traditional farrier both in the United States and Europe. I remember something that happened while I was at horseshoeing school. We were learning to shoe Tennessee Walkers and spent a few days at a large Tennessee Walker show barn. I had never been up close to a Tennessee Walker before and was very interested in seeing one of them in action. I kept on asking the barn manager if he would saddle one up and ride it so that I could see it move. Finally, on the last day, he agreed. I stood at the side of the riding ring as he put the horse through its paces. The first thing I noticed was a strained expression on the horse's face ... then how the horse lathered up after only a couple of laps, even though it wasn't a particularly hot day. But the thing that impressed me the most was when I viewed the horse going away from me--viewed the back feet. It was immediately obvious from the way the horse was moving that it was in absolute agony. As it came back around toward me again, its breathing was heavy and labored, and it had a look of pure misery on its face. Later that night I thought about that horse a lot...and I also thought about all the other horses in that barn with those big "packages" on their feet...and I thought about the young horses I had seen with their tails broken and strapped in harnesses.
There were other experiences at horseshoeing school. One involved a trip to a halter horse barn. There we saw horses who had spent the greater part of their lives tied to the wall of the stall with a 2-foot chain. Another involved a trip to a Quarter Horse show barn, where we saw horses who had been trained to perform unnatural gaits with unnatural body carriage through the use of agonizing harnesses ... and where we saw feet maintained in a grossly abnormal condition in order to minimize hoof action. I saw injections given in the base of the tail in order to paralyze the tail. I realize there's controversy about how some show horses are treated, and I really don't want to single out show horses -- there are plenty of other examples outside the show world.
One thing I noticed at horseshoeing school was that my fellow classmates never showed any real interest in the horses themselves. At the Tennessee Walker barn, I was the only one who went out to the riding ring to watch the horse in action. At none of the barns did any student ever show interest in the horses as horses. The shoes and techniques of shoeing might interest them, or what they could do with a horse (like calf roping or trail riding) might interest them...but not the horse itself. The horses represented a way to earn a living, or a tool necessary to participate in some activity that interested them. And in some ways, the horses were actually viewed as adversaries, or as necessary evils.
I remember an incident that happened before I went to horseshoeing school, while I was riding with a farrier. We got called out to a man's house who supposedly had an uncontrollable horse. My farrier friend intended on using a stud chain to subdue the horse. When we got there, he cautioned me to stay away until he told me it was safe, then I was supposed to hold the lead rope with one hand, while he would have the end of the stud chain in his back pocket in case he needed to jerk it while working on the horse (he knew me well enough to know I wouldn't jerk it). My heart went out to that horse. It really wasn't mean, but it was obvious that it didn't want to stand still. I guess the quickest and easiest way to work on its feet was to give it the stud chain treatment, which basically meant maybe 10 jerks, until the gums were bleeding, and until it was scared to death to move. Then after my friend was working on the feet, if the horse so much as twitched a muscle, it got another couple of sharp jerks. I felt so sorry for that horse, and as I stood there holding the lead rope, I tried to talk to it softly and stroke its neck. It was scared to death. When we left, my friend told me that I had embarrased him by standing there talking to the horse and petting it.
Another incident involved a foundered mare. She was extremely sore, and a vet had recommended some sort of shoe to be nailed on. The thing was, she was so sore she didn't want to stand on one foot and absolutely couldn't tolerate the blows from the nailing hammer. She happened to be at the barn of a trainer (with the reputation of using natural horsemanship methods), so the farrier enlisted the help of the trainer to make her stand. The trainer rigged up some sort of rope restraint and chuckled, "She won't come through this!" When the farrier tried to nail on a shoe, the mare DID come through the rope restraint and knocked the trainer against the side of the barn. And then the fight was on. Hobbles were put on the rear and one front leg tied to the hobbles, but the mare came out of that, too. She stood kicking and kicking until she finally broke the hobbles, which were not made of leather, but chain. Then it was decided that the only thing to do was rope her and throw her down. After chasing her around for 15 minutes with a rope, the trainer finally succeeded in roping her and throwing her down, but he couldn't get her tied up. Then he decided that two people should sit on her neck, which would hold her down. But she got up anyway, throwing the two people on her neck backwards on the ground. At this point the farrier said that the mare was crazy and wasn't worth any more effort and could die of the founder for all he cared.
Another incident happened when I went to look at a horse I had an interest in buying. The man who was selling him said he hadn't been ridden in over a year, so he wanted his daughter, who was supposedly an excellent rider, to ride him before I did. They saddled the horse up, the woman got on, but the horse didn't want to leave the area in front of the barn. The man decided that the kicking and whipping his daughter was giving the horse from the saddle wasn't enough, so he picked up a large tree limb that happened to be lying nearby and started beating the horse in the chest. The horse reacted by rearing up (I guess they thought it should just stand there and take the beating) and falling over backwards on the rider, which resulted in a trip to the emergency room for the man's daughter.
I could go on and on with these incidents, but I'll use just one more, one which happened after I began a hoof care practice. One Thursday evening I got a call from a woman who said that her horse had foundered and was in a lot of pain. She wanted to know if I could come out and do something so that she could go with her friends on a trail ride on Saturday. That sort of speaks for itself.
All my life as I was involved with horses, I had seen horses treated in ways that weren't too nice, but it was only after I got into the hoof care end of it that I fully realized how awful many horses are treated and what terrible lives they have. And it's not just the ones who are beaten or forced to perform painful gaits -- it's the 800 pound horses who carry 200 pound riders on all-day trail rides, it's the horses who live in stalls and small paddocks, it's the horses who are children's toys, it's the horses whose riders seek to gain more control by using severe bits and curb chains, it's the horses who lounge around for two or three months and then all of a sudden are expected to perform like athletes. It's not that their owners are mean, evil people -- it's just that, in the horse world, our responsibility to the horse as a living being is often overlooked. All too often horses are viewed as a combination of an adversary to be conquered and an object to be used -- they are seen in terms of their usefulness to give us something we want. Most often what we want is either a certain kind of image (maybe a cowboy image or a leisure class image) or to participate in some kind of activity, and the horse itself is just a tool or piece of equipment which enables that. We tend to forget that horses are living, breathing, feeling beings -- they're alive. When we deal with a horse, we're not dealing with a vehicle, a dirt bike, or an instrument ... we're dealing with a fellow living being. Yes, I know they're not humans, but still, they're alive.
As my hoof care practice went on, I felt more and more sorry for horses for the way so many of them are treated and used, and I felt the need to do something to help improve horses' lives. And so Equine Wellness Solutions was born -- not for me, and not for horse owners, but for horses. It's to benefit horses, to help improve their lives. I want to help people see and understand their horses as living beings, as friends and companions, and to help them keep and use their horses in ways that harmonize with the horse as a living being. I want to help people understand horses as horses, as they are, instead of how we want them to be or imagine them to be.
My material does lie somewhat outside the mainstream, because it's from the horse's perspective, not from the perspective of making the horse useful. The mainstream material is usually from an immediate perspective: "My horse has a health problem, or a hoof problem...how do I get rid of it?" -- and that's true whether you look at the traditional mainstream of iron shoes and "breaking" horses or some of the conventional alternatives like barefoot trimming, herbal remedies, and natural horsemanship training. But my approach is to look more at long-term effects and consequences and instead of getting rid of something, try to prevent it from occurring. The mainstream material, whether from horse care, hoof care (including barefoot hoof care), or horse training, is geared toward making the horse useful, toward providing the horse owner with something. My material is geared toward providing the horse with something -- wellness and compassionate use and treatment.
Tim Ware holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He has a variety of interests which have led him to travel extensively, both in the United States and abroad.
