Senior Horses Aging Gracefully

The idea of scheduling a massage for your horse may seem luxurious. Yet those who have experienced it will agree that massage can be a valuable tool in managing an animals health and wellbeing along with other therapies such as chiropractic or acupressure. Senior horses present an opportunity to combine different approaches to health because each horse will have a very specific set of needs depending on their age and stage of life.
Most of my career has been spent providing therapies for athletic horses race horses and show jumpers in the prime of their competitive life. When I relocated my animal massage school to a farm outside of Seattle Washington the focus became providing a retirement home to many of those horses as they entered their golden years. There was a steep learning curve as we adjusted to designer diets for metabolic cases and creative turnout and exercise solutions for chronic founder cases. It took hay testing and experimenting with slow feeders and soaked rations to dial in just the right feeding programs for our old gummers horses over 30 with failing dentition.

Older horses often age gracefully and may do well with little more than a pasture mate and routine veterinary care and hoof trimming. But as your horse moves into its 20s and hopefully 30s it is wise to be on the lookout for areas where additional support will be needed. 
In my experience the three most challenging aspects of managing the senior horse are nutrition pain management and immune support. While there are many approaches to each I will focus on the first two for this article with an emphasis on the therapeutic management of pain.
Managing the diet of the older horse requires knowledge of their individual metabolic ability and their dentition. This is a topic that warrants close attention and detailed research. Keeping diets for older horses simple is key. Nearly all of our horses are on some wet ration either soaked hay or hay pellets supplemented with salt. Not only is this more palatable it ensures proper levels of hydration and goes a long way to preventing choke. Less is usually more for these older gals and gents with little to no grain products a wellrounded vitamin and mineral supplement and plenty of access to salt and water. Many older horses suffer from insulin resistance or Cushings disease both of which necessitate the removal of any