Some Where Over the Rainbow

All right, all right I will say it, "Sharon Sluss' horses are prettier than mine." Sharon runs Rainbow's End Farm,about an hour from me down in Suffolk, Virginia, where she has a great selection of Spanish Mustangs. Her horses are more colorful than mine. The beautiful splash of colors shown in her horses were lost among the wild horses of Corolla as they became more and more genetically isolated.

There is much more to Rainbows End Farm than colorful mustangs. Sharon's facility was designed for conventional horse management and she has converted it into a home of enlightened horse care. She represents what can happen when someone who cares about horses has the nerve to break the mold and give the horses the kind of care that they deserve.

It is not possible to turn every facility into something modeled on Brown's great book, "Paddock Paradise". However, it is always possible to look for ways to allow horse's to live as naturally as possible and Sharon has hit a home run in that regard with her mustangs.

I am just going to make a quick list of the things that she has done in regard to her horse care that are great examples for every horse owner.

1. She has learned Pete Ramey style hoof care so that her horses maintain healthy feet and
those that come to her with a problem can be fully rehabilitated. She introduced me to the
Ramey's work and without her advice, Trade Wind would remained crippled to this day.

2. She does her own research on nutrition and has learned, and taught, a lot about the problems
of soy based feeds.

3. She understands the danger of obesity in horses and works to prevent the problem, instead of
bragging about how fat her horses are.

4. She gives her mustangs room for movement, which is necessary for everything from digestive
health, to prevention of lameness, to the psychological health and happiness of the horse.

5. Her horses are not consigned to a life of stables, shoes and sugary feeds. She recognizes
that horses evolved to eat forage, not candy.

6. She works to create an environment for her horses that is not only safe and healthy, but
affordable. She feeds quality round bales and uses safe, and attractive electric fencing as
shown in the picture above.

Enlightened horse owners have the right to expect this kind of farsightedness from their board providers. Unfortunately, in many areas it is impossible to find places to keep one's horse that place the legitimate value of health and happiness over silly, human concepts of warmth and comfort.

But, it will not always be so.