Keeping the Older Horse Young: A Natural Approach to Revitalizing Horses 10 and over

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and useful, but very incomplete information
Review: Keeping the Older Horse Young is a great book for concerned owners of older horses. I have an 11 year old gelding that I didn't ever really think of as an "older horse", but he has had recent injuries that have led me to seek information from just about any source in order to help him. I'm really glad I took a chance on this book. I particularly enjoyed the wonderful chapters on arthritis and alternative/complementary medicine. They cover the gamut of supplement and alternative therapy options and provide valuable ideas for treating horses suffering from the pain of arthritis. After reading them, I now have a handful of new ideas to try for my gelding's non-arthritis-related injury as well. The book also includes many other topics of interest to older horse owners including chapters on preventable causes of aging, diet, exercise, routine health care, and health problems particular to the older horse. The book is clearly-written and very thorough. I found a lot of information that was useful immediately, and more that I will be able to refer to as my horse gets even older. For anyone who wants to help their equine partner live a long and useful life, this book is invaluable.

Rating:
Summary: Invaluable Guide for the Older Horse Owner
Review: Keeping the Older Horse Young is a great book for concerned owners of older horses. I have an 11 year old gelding that I didn't ever really think of as an "older horse", but he has had recent injuries that have led me to seek information from just about any source in order to help him. I'm really glad I took a chance on this book. I particularly enjoyed the wonderful chapters on arthritis and alternative/complementary medicine. They cover the gamut of supplement and alternative therapy options and provide valuable ideas for treating horses suffering from the pain of arthritis. After reading them, I now have a handful of new ideas to try for my gelding's non-arthritis-related injury as well. The book also includes many other topics of interest to older horse owners including chapters on preventable causes of aging, diet, exercise, routine health care, and health problems particular to the older horse. The book is clearly-written and very thorough. I found a lot of information that was useful immediately, and more that I will be able to refer to as my horse gets even older. For anyone who wants to help their equine partner live a long and useful life, this book is invaluable.

Rating:
Summary: 10 years is old?
Review: Ok, first off, 10-15 is not old. IF it was old, then why would the proffesional hunter- jumpers be using horses in that age range? I have an 11 year old ex racehorse, who still thinks he's 4. My horse is still going strong and is learning a lot. If he is so old and decrepi, then why would he still be so rambunctious, even if I ride him for an hour and a half 6 out of the 7 days a week? So to all of you who have a horse this age, don't buy this book because your horse isn't old!(Unless it has injuries that make it seem old)

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and useful, but very incomplete information
Review: This book has some useful information in it, about diet, vitamins and supplements for your older horse, and gives a nice (though not in-depth) overview of some of the health concerns for older horses. However, it is shockingly incomplete in some areas. For example, I bought the book in part because it has a whole chapter on arthritis, a problem for my own older horse. But in this entire chapter, not once were any of the current injection treatments (either the intramuscular or intravenous ones such as Adequan or Legend, or the hyaluronic acid & steriod joint injections) even mentioned, let alone described and discussed. Treatments such as oral joint supplements, regular exercise, treating arthritis with ice, etc., were presented; this is useful information as far as it goes, but of limited value to a horse such as mine who is already exercised regularly and already on oral joint supplements, and still suffering from arthritis. The author clearly prefers natural and alternative treatments over traditional ones throughout the book; this would be fine if both the 'natural' and 'traditional' treatments were still covered and discussed. But to not even mention the most common current veterinary treatments for arthritis is an inexplicable and glaring omission, and it made me wonder just how incomplete and selective all the other chapters are in the information they cover. Also, while this book is over 300 pages which sounds like a lot of information, there are huge margins on each page and big spacing between the lines, and it is heavily padded with redundant or unnecessary text. (For example, do we really need a one-and-a-half page lecture on what happens if we don't take good care of our automobile as it gets older, to understand that good preventive care of a horse helps it age well? Often the author uses a whole page to say what could be said in one sentence. One gets the impression this was a deliberate strategy used to reach the target number of pages. After all, you can charge more $$ for a fat book than a skinny one.) So it really doesn't have as much information as the number of pages suggests.