For many horses summer is not the lazy season where they have time to replenish energy, and put on some weight. Quite the opposite is often true: During these warmer months competition horses work even harder than during the rest of the year. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that many horses get thinner and thinner during summer.

That’s what a rider wrote us the other day: “My horse always loses weight in summer. As soon as the show season starts, he gets more stressed, and that’s his way of showing it”.

With this problem these two are not alone. The hardships of traveling, exhausting training units, and last but not least the buzz at the busy show-days, all of which can easily make a mess of carefully established feeding habits. It’s quite the same with people: When thing get really busy, we are also likely to lose our appetite.

Only when a horse doesn’t feed well, this can also have more serious causes. Horses suffering from gastric ulceration, for instance, often eat poorly. No matter if they are suffering from a stomach disease or not: stress is almost always the cause.

“The best anti-stress treatment is called routine.“

As horse-owners and competition riders, we have to take extra care that our horses feel relaxed and at ease. For if they feel stressed, chances are way higher for them to develop gastric ulcers at some point. And once the ulcers are there, our horses feel stress.

So, how can you escape this vicious trap?

The following methods are often used by professional riders to help prevent gastric ulceration:

• High doses of roughage
• Frequent feeding intervals (also during journeys)
• Long and frequent grazing times
• Consistent training routine
• Feed supplements to absorb excess stomach acid

Why does it make sense to keep stomach acid levels in check?

When there is always too much acid in the horse’s stomach he is likely to develop ulcerations. This happens even more often, when horses who often visit competitions are fed lots of grains and don’t have enough time for grazing. The reason for this is that the acid that is constantly produced in the horse’s stomach cannot be absorbed properly.

Therefore, many competition riders have started to feed our natural feed supplement, Equine 74 Gastric. It neutralizes excess stomach acid to help prevent ulceration. Olympic champion Bruce Goodin has tried it with much success, because he prefers timely prevention to inevitable treatment.

Read his interview to learn what he tells us about his approach to prevention, and what he does to make competitions as enjoyable as possible for his mounts.

Being a four-time Olympian, New Zealand’s Bruce Goodin has been in the top of the sport for many years. Back in 1992, Goodin competed at his first Olympic Games in Barcelona and today he is still competing in Grand Prix competitions all over the world. With all those years on top-level comes great experience, and with his knowledge Goodin trusts in Equine 74 Gastric.

I basically use Equine 74 Gastric all the time. Currently I have around seven horses on it, but we obviously mostly use it as a preventive treatment,” Bruce Goodin explains.

When Goodin got to know Equine 74 Gastric, he soon believed in the product as one of his horses really benefited from it:

I have one horse with a very sensitive stomach and he was more or less constantly suffering from diarrhea. After using Equine 74 Gastric for only a few days, the diarrhea stopped.”

Bruce Goodin got to know Equine 74 Gastric through his Swedish friend Henrik Lanner. The latter introduced Bruce to Equine 74 Gastric CEO Christian Dietz at a show in Denmark – where Bruce lives nowadays.

At that time we were primarily using GastroGard when we were travelling to shows. GastroGard might not have been the only product on the market, but it was the most well-known product. I did not really know if it did as good of a job as it should be doing, so I was open for an alternative. Since my friend Henrik really believed in Equine 74 Gastric and recommended it, I went on his advice. Also the conversation with Christian made me willing to try the product.

One of the good things, according to Bruce Goodin, is the fact Equine 74 Gastric is not a medicine. “That really appealed to me. GastroGard is a medication and while it is helping the gut, it is stopping the horse from getting all the benefits from their food. Equine 74 Gastric is still allowing the food to do its job,” Goodin tells.

With the horse that was suffering from diarrhea, Equine 74 Gastric immediately helped. But obviously with the other horses it took a couple of weeks before I could notice the difference. After a month I could really see that they started to put on more muscle, gain more weight and their coats started to look better.

Although Bruce Goodin mainly uses Equine 74 Gastric as a preventive product, he also experienced that Equine 74 Gastric really can cure a problem.

We had known that one of my best horses had stomach problems for a while and because of that she was on GastroGard. We had done an endoscope with her and we noticed she had lesions in her stomach. After using Equine 74 Gastric for two months, she looked as if she was doing better and to make sure we made another endoscope. On that one, we could see the lesions were gone. That was a nice surprise, to see such a result.

Bruce Goodin truly believes his horses are less stressed since he is using Equine 74 Gastric on them.

When horses have pain in their stomach, they are getting in more stress. Hot horses get hotter and more stressed out, et cetera. For sure, when they feel better, they are not so stressed anymore. I absolutely believe that, and I can feel a difference now that I am using Equine 74 Gastric!