This episode of the Horse HealthCast takes a deep dive into magnesium: what it is, how it works in the horse’s body, when supplementation may be beneficial, and how to choose the right form and amount. Plus, meet our behind-the-scenes videographer in our Meet the Pak segment and stay tuned for our giveaway!

• Giveaway Blog
• Giveaway Form
• Host: Ashlee Lecompte Lazic
• Host: Jenna Boscardin
• Guest: Nels McLaughlin, Sr. Art Director of Photo & Video

Links:

• Smart & Simple® Magnesium
• SmartCalm® Pellets
• SmartCalm® Ultra Pellets
• SmartTranquility® Pellets
• SmartTranquility® Ultimate Pellets
• SmartMetabo-Lean® Pellets
• SmartBrain & Nerve™ Pellets
• Leg Up® Mare Pellets
• Leg Up® Stomach Pellets
• Leg Up® Calm Pellets
• SmartLytes® Pellets
• SmartGut® Ultra Pellets
• SmartGI® Pellets

Foreign.

You are listening to the Horse Radio.

Network, part of the Equine Network family.

This is the Horse healthcast by Smart Equine. I'm Ashley Lacompt Lazic, director of R D for Smarty Quine.

And I'm Jenna Boss, garden manager of digital marketing for Smart Equine. And on today's episode, we are finally doing it. We are finally giving Ashley the floor to talk about her one true love, her reason, her muse.

And we're gonna learn if she really is getting a kickback from Big Magnesium.

I literally, I literally cannot wait for this. I've been preparing my notes for what seems like eternity, and it's finally here and I can't tell. I'm so excited.

I need to also tell you that in addition to waxing poetic about magnesium, we're also going to chat with Nels McLaughlin, one of my faves, our very own behind the scenes videographer in our Meet the Pack segment. So stick around for the end and of course, for our giveaway, Smart Solutions.

Trusted Voices, your source for equine health and wellness. This is Horse healthcast by Smart Equine.

The discussions in this podcast are intended for educational and informational purposes and are not intended as veterinary advice.

You should always consult with a licensed veterinarian or qualified equine health professional before making changes to your horse's diet or care plan. Hosts and guests cannot guarantee the reliability, accuracy, or completeness of the information shared.

And as such, these discussions are not a substitute for veterinarian or professional guidance, and any actions you take are at your own risk. Products discussed on this podcast are not endorsed by Smart Equine and are not intended to treat, diagnose, or cure any medical issue.

Okay, So I know we make jokes about this both on and off the pod, about you getting a kickback from Big Magnesium. And if you're not, and maybe you should, I don't know this is real or not, but you definitely should. I'm gonna.

I don't even know, like, if there is a big magnesium. It just feels apropos, like, yeah, if.

They are, they exist. And if they're listening, just hit me up, guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don't forget your girl.

And we talk about it being, like, kind of the unsung hero of equine nutrition in a lot of ways. And I don't think you're just getting paid to say that. So I kind of wanted to start off with, like, the. The overall big idea.

Like, what is magnesium for people who are like, guys, what?

So, firstly, I like Swear, guys, like there, I really don't think there is a big magnesium. I'm not getting paid to say this. I, like, just truly believe this. And whether I'm working for Smart Equ or not, like, magnesium is really important.

So, like, from a 30,000 foot high view, let's just take a peek at what is magnesium. So, firstly, it's a mineral, right? It's not some fancy compound that we're harvesting in the Himalayan mountains or something.

It is all around us, right? It is ubiquitous. It is found everywhere in your soil and your water and your forage. It's a naturally occurring mineral.

From a diet perspective, it's a micronutrient, right?

So you have your macronutrients, like fat, carbohydrates, protein, and then you have your micronutrients, which are on a very small scale and they're required for normal functioning and physiological function. Right.

So, Magnus, assume that if I go out to my backyard and I grab a handful of dirt and I lick it.

I wouldn't do that.

Is that going to give me the same kind of magnesium that we're finding in the supplements and stuff that we're going to talk about?

I mean, to some degree, right? It's concentrated. You're also just going to get like a lot of other stuff in the soil.

Yeah, it's going to be terrible.

I'm not recommending it tastes great, but yeah, there is magnesium in that soil.

Right?

Okay, So a couple things that are important to know about magnesium.

It is the second most prevalent intracellular cation, which is just a positively charged ion in the body, and it is the fourth most abundant systemic cation in the body. So, like, you can see why it is so important, right? At the cellular level, it is the second most prevalent ion that we have.

So it is correlated to 800 biochemical and enzymatic reactions in the body. So I know in the past episodes I've gushed about how, like, what can't magnes do?

But, like, in a way, it really is tied to almost everything that happens in the body. So, like, where is it found? Our body stores magnesium mainly in our bones.

40 to 50% of magnesium is stored there and then in the intracellular compartments of our muscles, our soft tissues. And only 1 to 2% of total body magnesium is actually found circulating in the serum and red blood cells.

So it really is stored primarily in those other tissues. So that's just like kind of a quick cap on, like, what is it? Where do we find it? What does it do? Why is it important.

So this is something that on a very fundamental physiological basis is required for life. It is, it is a requirement. So some, some of the big.

And I'll just like name off a couple big buckets where I think this is most prevalent to horse health. Energy metabolism, muscle function and nervous system support.

Those are going to be like the three big areas I say almost, you know, ubiquitous to almost everything that happens in the body. And that's going to come down energy metabolism. So okay, tell me that you have seen like the funny memes that are.

I don't know how to do my taxes or balance a checkbook, but at least I know that.

The powerhouse of the cell, right? So bio from a million years ago, baby.

There you go. So at risk of causing PTSD and launching our listeners back to seventh grade biology.

I'm not going to get into the citric acid cycle or the Krebs cycle or I'm not going to go that deep. I'm going to try to. Yes. Yeah. I'm going to try to keep it as like user friendly in lay terms as possible.

But mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, right. They produce energy by converting the food we eat into ATP, which is a demosine triphosphate. And that, that is our energy.

Okay, well in order for that energy, again lay terms here to quote, activate. In order for us to have that usable energy, magnesium joins with ATP to create this magnesium ATP complex. And that becomes.

So when we're talking about metabolism and energy metabolism, I mean we're talk like a cellular level, like way, way, way deep down to simply creating usable forms of ATP that we can then use as energy. So, so important there. Muscle relaxation.

This is I think what most, what we see most when we're talking about dietary supplementation and how we're, how it's marketed to the end users. A lot of it is going to be related to muscle function. Right. Why does that happen?

So magnesium is like a hero in intracellular, in the regulation of intracellular calcium. And that just sounds like a bunch of wor.

Sure does.

So, but why is that important?

I can't remember what episode we talked about it on, but I did give like a little tidbit about these ion voltage gated channels in the muscle and how calcium is flowing in and out of these channels that helps the muscle to contract and relax. And magnesium is like the, the, the troll at the bridge.

And magnesium is helping to, so what it's doing, it's helping to regulate the calcium in and out, but it's competing for these binding sites. And by competing for it, it binds and says, nope, we have to relax the muscle now, push the calcium back in.

So I'm trying to, like, make this, like, a, you know, friendly version of what's.

Actually, this is working for me. I have a visual. I'm seeing the troll.

So the cal.

It's helping to regulate and inhibit those calcium ion channels by competing for those binding sites, which is responsible for smooth muscle contraction and release. But it's also playing a very important role in nerve impulses and neurotransmitter release. So then we get to our nervous system.

I know we talked a little bit in our. One of our last episodes about gaba. So gaba, as we chatted about, is a neurotransmitter.

A neurotransmitter is like a little chemical post office messenger, right? Where, like, it takes all of these messages to the neurons and talks to, you know, various parts of the brain and different neuronal channels.

So it actually can help to downregulate cortisol, quote stress hormone, and promote serotonergic signals, you know, quote happy mood boosters, and keep those in homeostasis.

And so just as. As the. The local layperson. Right.

Yes. Yeah. Serotonin. Right. So the.

That's what I was gonna ask. That sounds like those two words are related. So, like, that's another word like. Like cortisol, that we're all familiar with.

Yep, Yep. Absolutely. So hugely important in nervous system support, as well as it's promoting gaba, helping those neurotransmitters reach homeostasis.

I use the word homeostasis a lot. That means, like, natural balance, the way that the body was designed to be. Not too. It's a Goldilocks. Not too much, not too little.

Right in the middle where we want it. Just right. Exactly.

Love that. Okay.

Yeah. So that's like, magnesium is the ultimate, you know, homeostatic compound that. That we're. That we're chasing here.

So a couple other things, not as front and center, but still worth mentioning. As, you know, magnesium is also an important electrolyte that helps to balance with other minerals, like sodium calcium.

I don't think I knew that. Like, I've been with you on all these things up into this one. I don't think I had any idea that it was part of the electrolytes.

Yeah, we don't talk about it as much, but it certainly is. And then a really cool one that you can read about, too, that, you know, because I think.

And I'M pulling this number out and I don't have firm, so don't come for me. But I think it's something like 30ish percent of horses in the United States have some type of metabolic dysfunction, whether it's ppid.

So insulin sensitivity is something that we talk about a lot. And intracellular magnesium is inversely related to insulin resistance.

So the higher the level of intracellular magnesium, the lower the insulin resistance.

There's a lot of good literature supporting this too, because the insulin receptors are impaired, which reduces the cell's ability to utilize glucose effectively, you know, enter insulin resistance. So proper levels of magnesium can also support healthy insulin metabolism and glucose metabolism. Yeah.

That's incredible.

So the time, all the times that you've been like, magnesium does it all like this, like short list air quotes like this really is just how many things that this is involved in. And for anybody who's out there being like, okay, great, you gave me all this information but like, what the heck do I do with this?

We're going to talk about like where you can find this in different supplements and different support options and things like that. So if you're like, my horse could use nervous system, I have a horse with insulin resistance.

Like, we're not diagnosing your horse, but we are going to try to give you some options closer to the end of this that include magnesium and other helpful ingredients.

So don't worry, we are going to get there, but we really just want to hone in on the understanding of what it is and how it's utilized and things like that first. So I think, unless. Was there more you wanted to add?

No, I think those are like the big, I mean, I know that in other, we've talked about sleep quality and I think that's all pretty much related to the things we've already talked about, the GABA regulation, the, the energy and glucose metabolism. So there's, I think they all pretty much boil down to this. But I mean, 800 various, you know, biochemical reactions, a lot that it's involved in.

So we're giving like again the 30,000 foot view here today. And you know, if somebody out there is interested in taking a cell biology class with Ashley, you know, I, you know, again, at risk.

I don't want to dive back into seventh grade biology. It is so, so deep and complicated.

But on the whole, yes, I think that those are like the biggest, the big areas where it's most prevalent to horse nutrition.

Yeah.

And also just calling it out too for anybody who's like, yeah, this might be a podcast about horse nutrition, but why does this all sound so familiar?

If you yourself have had sleep dysregulation or things like, similar to what we've talked about, you might have seen this in your own supplements and nutrients and conversations with your doctor or nutritionist or holistic support team, like, whatever it may be. So some of you might have already heard this, some of this might be brand new information, but this is not. We are not a human health podcast.

And God help me, we never will, because we'd have to look at my diet, and I'm not ready for that.

But there's a lot of really cool overlap in a lot of ways, too, that you, you just might have heard if you've also had some similar struggles in your own life. And I think that's really cool that what helps our horses can sometimes also help us and vice versa in certain ways.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Okay, so you mentioned that. Well, I mentioned that I could go out and grab a pile of dirt and eat it and it would get me some memories, which is not the goal.

I don't recommend that.

Like, please, if you do, though, could you just, like. And for the sake of science, I'm just interested in how this is going to unfold. Jenna eats dirt or the pod on our next episode.

No, absolutely not. But is that how horses also get it, by going out and eating grasses or like, ingesting?

Like, I know that I had a horse who would paw just to get the, the dirt and he would lick it, and we were like, he was lacking selenium. Like, do horses get it that way? Or what are. What ways do horses get magnesium? Naturally.

Yeah. So magnesium is found naturally occurring in grass. Right. It can.

I don't even have to lick dirt. I can just eat a handful.

You don't even, I mean, it's, it's in the grass because the grass grows in the dirt.

Right?

So pasture. Pasture grasses are going to have varying levels of magnesium, again, because of the dirt. Right. Depending on the soil that it's grown in.

Hay, same story. Depending on the soil that it's grown in.

But also with hay, you have processing, the cutting, the flipping, the baling, sometimes against your, your best efforts. It rains after you cut and you have to flip it a few times.

So just the, you know, there are more extenuating circumstances that baled hay goes through than just grass that's going out of the ground. And then, of course, like, grain and fortified feeds can be created the same way as, like a supplement to enhance the Magnesium content.

But factors that influence that are, you know, regional differences. Your soil is going to be different geographically based on where you're at. Your.

Your diet type, if your horse is primarily grazing on really nice, lush green grass versus a racehorse that's standing in a st and may not have the same access to that forage. So your. Your diet type. And then of course, it all boils down to your soil. So high acidity soils are more likely to be lower in magnesium.

Soils that are high in calcium or potassium are more likely to be low in magnesium. So it really does stem. Stem in your. In your soil content for the. The grass that's growing in the soil and then the hay that's growing in the soil.

I might be going out into left field here and we can, we can rein me back in as needed. But do you know, is there a way to test soil to grow?

Yeah, yeah, of course. So maybe four years. It was during COVID So let's say four years ago. We have a hay field on like the south side of our. Of our property.

And there's a horse show every year that's across the street. Due to Covid standards, they wanted to spread out the stabling.

So we offered a corner of our hayfield to put like, you know, the temporary stalls, social distance and go every other stall. And some of our borders freaked out.

And they were like, we're really concerned that the horses manure and the shavings and everything being on the hayfield is going to impact the hay growth or the nutrient profile of it. Yeah, we actually tested the soil before and after and then the. So the surrounding soil to make sure and. Yeah, so absolutely.

And by the way, it really, it was more nutrient dense. Just so we're all on the same page where the horses were standing.

Super cool.

But anyways, yes, you absolutely can test your soil. Absolutely. So you've all. You've all heard of, like a hay analysis where you, you use a. Right. So.

But yes, the fundamental piece of this is the soil that the hay is grown in. So yes, you can absolutely test your soil. And then there are. There are methods for changing your soil.

So you can, I mean, whatever your results are high, high acid, high basic. What you. You can modulate that. And I'm not going to pretend to be a turf scientist here. I once tried to change. Yeah, exactly. Like hydrangeas.

Same story. Right. The blue.

Yeah.

They're based on the acidity. So you can change your soil. But that's a whole. That's a whole nother podcast but yes.

You can for testing yourself or anybody who's like, man, how do I test my horse's pasture? Like, like, did you just like look up a local service that does it? Like how did you get started with that?

That's exactly what I did. Oh, perfect. Yeah, that's exactly.

Just go to the Google box and type in local soil testing and go from there.

Yep, yep, absolutely. So you can do that. You can also test the forage that's coming out of the soil as well.

And that's again, there's a limitations to the forage testing because you're, you have different bales coming through the barn and different cutting and such. But yes, it can give you a snapshot.

Yeah, it gives you a baseline of expectation.

At least you bad.

Very cool.

So, okay, so we've talked, we've gotten like the 30,000 foot overview of what magnesium is and like where it's, you know, really useful in the horse's body. We've talked about where they get it from, but we haven't talked about is probably like the big question for a lot of people.

Like divorce is actually needed if they can get it from so many locations.

Yeah, that's a great question. So I, I think firstly let's just talk about how would a horse become deficient?

I just told you that there is magnesium all around me, it's everywhere. So how could I possibly come deficient in it?

So firstly, you know, a hors all hay diet or low quality forage with limited access to pasture, they just may not be consuming those sources on a regular basis.

Horses that are overweight and are being limited in their forage, or horses that are founder risk and wear, go on limestone or you know, we're grazing muzzles and just don't have as much free choice access. So that in and of itself or if your forage just ultimately is low in magnesium because of your soil. Right, that's one scenario.

But there's another scenario where, and again, I'm not going to launch into the whole cycle of how this happens. But large workload demand increases the stress that a horse is exhibiting. Right. And stress upregulates magnesium utilization.

Upregulation of magnesium utilization means depletion of stores in the bone. Remember we Talked about that 40 to 50% that's living in bone and that other systemic magnesium. So you're using those stores, I. E. A need for more.

So anecdotally I've noticed this when I'm in like hardcore and my trainer Meredith said she notices it too when like, we're in the middle of competition season. We typically have to take our magnesium up a little bit.

Okay.

Just to accommodate the increased workload. And we talk about stress. We don't just mean mental stress.

It can be physical stress, physiological stress, anatomical stress, more expected out of the horse, higher workload.

So, yeah, and like, I know stress has such a negative connotation word, but, like, it's really just meant as exertion in a lot of ways. Like, if you're working out six days a week, like, that is stress. But it's not that you are in fight or flight every second of the day.

Just to also call that out, that you're like, but my horse doesn't look panic stricken. Good, you're doing great.

But asking them to work X amount of days a week, jumps X amount of fences, perform X amount of movements, like, that's just a type of generic umbrella term, stress.

Yes, Exertion. And like chronic stress. Just having a. I mean, chronic stress is like, we. We experience that in the workforce. Right.

So just having exertion is a perfect word.

Having higher levels of exertion at varying times in the season, depending on what a horse is doing, means more magnesium utilization and quicker depletion of stores, which could be a area for supplementation.

Yes.

Like, what are you looking for, though? Oh, Ashley, you know, my horse does, like you just said, he's not exhibiting signs of. Of stress. So what am I looking for?

So the first thing that I'd say is like, a horse that is having a really hard time relaxing, their muscles tense. When we talked last about, like the calming, like, tight lips, those are like, in. In response to, like, direct stimuli.

But if you're just talking about a horse that is naturally kind of twitchy, a little excited all the time, has a hard time relaxing, easily startled, overreactive, just seems on edge. That's a really. That's a. That's a great telltale. Difficulty focusing, just tight in general.

Then you have other things that are, like, very easy to spot, like trigeminal neuralgia or like head flicking, head shaking.

You know what you just said? Trigeminal neuralgia. That is head shaking.

Yes. Yeah, that's. Yes, Head shaking syndrome. So things like that. There has been a correlation to magnet.

I think there's ongoing research about what the true underlying cause is, but that is that that can be mediated with high doses of magnesium or has been shown to be positively impacted by high doses of magnesium. So in general, if you can just tell that their mind and their body are kind of working overtime. That's a very good telltale sign.

Yeah. And for. For anybody out here who's also like, well, how the heck do I know? Like, my horse may or may not sometimes exhibit these signs.

My horse may or may not be under a good amount of work and stuff, like, but they get a good pasture, good turnout, whatever. If you're not sure the way, Ashley may or may not be sponsored by Big.

I am not sponsored by Feed xl, but I've brought it up before, and I'll bring it up again, because as a horse person, I've used it and thought it was really, really cool. So Feed xl, it's an online service where you type in literally everything about your horse.

Their, their age, their breed, their zodiac sign, what they're getting for their meals. So grain, hay, how much time they're spending outside where you're located, how much work they're in per day.

And it's going to spit out some really helpful information on what all the levels are that they're getting and what this algorithm thinks could be beneficial. This is not replacing a vet. This is not replacing a nutritionist.

But this helped me as a horse owner to be like, hey, here's a printout of all the stuff that I remember about my horse, including his supplements. Like, it has smart equine supplements in there, which is pretty darn cool. And here's what it told me. Like, do you think that I'm on the right track?

Do you think I need to change anything? And my vet was able to work with me a little bit more. I felt closely and I felt more educated in those conversations to be like, yes, he needs this.

No, you're doing fine on that. So for anybody out there who's like, this all sounds great. How the heck do I know for sure?

Like, Phoenixcel is not going to give you like, a blood draw diagnosis, but it's going to maybe steer you in the right direction to get you started at least. And I'm going to step off that soapbox now. But hopefully that helped maybe one person.

No. Yeah, I love that. And like I mentioned too earlier, is that intracellular magnesium. Right.

So that's the only 1 to 2% of the magnesium in the body is flowing through serum. And so it is important to know too, that it may not, you know, understanding what's going in is a very valuable tool.

Yeah. And I know I. When I was on customer care a thousand years ago, we would get a lot of questions on, like, what's safe? And, like, how. How Safe is safe.

Safe. How much is safe? So, like, is. Is there any concern with the safety of magnesium?

Yeah. So I will always reference the NRCs, like, nutrient requirements for horses.

And for anybody who doesn't know what is the NRC.

So that kind of is like our bible or how to feed horses and what their nutrient requirements are. And they'll break it down by, you know, life stage of the horse and size of the horse and, you know, the workload of the horse.

So that is how we are always. We use that tool to formulate everything when it comes to, like, essential micronutrients.

To like, just over a thousand pounds. Ish. So I'd say average horse size. Right. We're talking 7,500 milligrams or 7.

Oh, okay.

And that's for a horse at maintenance, just a regular horse that's hanging out, a horse in heavy work. They recommend 15,000 milligrams or 15 grams.

Okay, so a significant uptick there.

Yeah, yep. So that's what I'm saying.

Like, if you have a horse in, like, Andy, in February, March, where we're mostly in the indoor arena, we're maybe doing, you know, laps of trot work to try to keep our cardio fitness moving. But then may rolls around and now we're suddenly schooling cross country and going out for gallop sets and trot sets, that.

That demand goes up pretty quickly, that ATP goes up pretty quickly. Magnesium needs to meet it. So the magnesium requirement goes up quite a bit there. And then upper safe limits is super high.

It would be hard to reach them. So.

Really?

Oh, wow.

So again, assuming your horse is eating two to two and a half, two and a quarter percent of their body weight, which is what's recommended. We're talking like 80 grams for 500. So. A lot. A lot.

Yeah. Nobody's probably feeding their horse like an 80 gram block of magnesium.

So, like, to put that into perspective, like the two supplements with the highest magnesium concentration that we Sell at Smart Equine are Smart calm Ultra at 10,000 and 10,000 mgs or 10 grams, and heart Tranquility ultimate at 10,000 mgs or ten grams, just.

Which is again, just nowhere near the 80 to 90 grams.

You'd have to accidentally feed Tranquility ultimate nine times to read.

So I feel like you would notice. I feel like you would notice before you did that.

Yeah, you would notice. So there are certainly going to be times where. And I will always say you should consult your vet before. Before you always diet, right?

Always, always, always. But because the kidneys play such an important role in the reuptake and utilization and metabolism of magnesium CM horses with kidney issues.

You should certainly talk to your vets. You should talk to your vet when you're combining not just calming supplements, but any supplements.

You know, Jenna had talked about Feed XL being able to map out the magnesium from every source. I think it is important to understand that there is magnesium in every source.

It is in your horse's hay, it is likely in your horse's feed, it is likely in the grass that they're eating, and then it's also going to be in the supplement that you're feeding. So it's important to understand their whole daily intake of magnesium from every source that they are consuming.

So, again, important to consult with your vet on that topic, because I do not know what your horse is subject to every day. Everyone. Every horse is so different.

And then, of course, you know, if you're experiencing some of the things that we had mentioned earlier, irritability, excessive muscle tone, if these signs of deficiency and imbalances are persisting, it's also really important to connect with your veterinarian because there could be something more nefarious going on. So while I do believe that magnesium can help with those things, it is not a drug. It is not intended to cure, diagnose any of that.

So it's still very important to work with a medical professional if you're experiencing some of these things.

Yeah, I know we do the disclaimer, I think, at the beginning.

Yes, we do. Yeah. But I think what's most important here, because I talk about magnesium like it's a silver bullet.

And while it, you know, again, it is ubiquitous, it's a part of our systemic function, like it is in us, around us, and it's important for life. So it's not a drug. Right. So that. That is very important. And while we're at it, I. I just want to make this as loud and proud as I possibly can.

What magnesium is. It's a micronutrient, right? Required for life and physiological function.

What?

Magnesium isn't a sedative. So, like, it is. It is not a drug. It is not a sedative. It is not going to change who your horse is.

It is going to help restore your horse's levels to natural levels, which then allow them to be the horse that they are supposed to be. Right? So I just wanted. While we're taught.

While we're on the topic of disclaimers, I just want to, you know, I don't want to impart anyone with this concept of unrealistic expectations that this is going to change my moody mayor or my gelding like Andy, that doesn't go out with friends. Like, there are just some things that are innately part of their personalities, and magnesium is not going to change that.

So anyways, and just to add on one quick note, and then we got to move on to the next piece, is like, we don't.

We don't do the disclaimers in this to, like, scare anybody, but it's one of those, like, at the end of the day, you are a scientist, and I am also here, but we are not veterinarians. Right? We. We've worked with some truly incredible veterinarians, both as smart equine employees and as horse people.

And, like, the respect that we have for them is just. Just so unparalleled that we will continue to reiterate, like, find a great vet, work with them, and.

And you're gonna see some really, really great things happen based on that. Like, we're here to help get you started with the conversation, but, like, that's really where we're coming from.

So not to get, like, too serious and scary on you, but that's kind of our perspective on it.

I love that. I think that that's a really fair statement. And my vets hate me because they are on my speed dial and I am constantly in their pocket. Actually, my.

My former vet moved to Kentucky, and, like, I still call him, and he's like, damn it, lacompte. Again, like, this girl gotta stop calling me. But I mean, stay in.

I think that the relationship between a horse owner and the horse doctors is, like, so unique and special that we can and should consult them for these types of things, so.

Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Okay, but we'll. We'll get off the veterinarian switchbox. Although we do love you all and appreciate you so much.

Okay, so we've talked about a whole bunch of things with Magnesium.

But I know that when, when we're looking at supplement labels and feed labels and things like that, like, it doesn't just say magnesium, it says magnesium with like another semi to largely complicated word. Like, can you kind of break down some of the most common ones you see and what the differences actually are?

Absolutely. So you're correct. There's a ton of different forms of magnesium. The most common one that we see in the horse world is probably magnesium oxide.

It's going to be fairly easy to find, cost effective, and very high bioavailability. And same with magnesium sulfate, magnesium carbonate, high bioavailability. But they all have their pros and cons, right?

Magnesium carbonate, a cool one. While it is magnesium and it's attributed to all these cool things that we've talked about today, it's also a carbonate.

So that's one that you might even see in your gut product, like Smart Gut Ultra or Smart Perform Ultra, because those carbonates are acting as ph modulators in the gut. So it's pretty neat that they have some cross functionality there, too.

Magnesium citrates lower bioavailability, a little bit more expensive, and it can be used in special cases. I know I had mentioned earlier trigeminal neuralgia, head shaking. So, yep, magnesium citrate would be one that has been studied in.

In that scenario, then you have like magnesium sulfate, which is Epsom salt. Not ideal because it can have a laxative effect and can cause diarrhea. Yeah. So something to be. And. And then we have the chelated magnesium.

So chelate just means that the magnesium ion is bound to an amino acid and marketed to have enhanced absorption. So not always necessary, but a cool story there and something to, you know, educate yourself on.

Can you say that last one with the ch helated? So I've never heard it said out loud before and I always thought it was like chelated.

So thank you for saying it out loud before I ever had to in my life. And for anybody else who is like, I've never heard the word chelated before.

It's the one with the C H E L A T E D. And we'll probably have that in notes somewhere too. But. But in case anybody else reads very literally, you have seen it before.

What were you saying? Chelated.

Yeah, because it's the ch. I just assumed it was.

Okay, we can roll with that.

I would rather sound educated. So I'm going to take it from the scientist and go.

All right, we'll go with chelated. But chelated. As long as you're okay, listen, I, I think I used the word cation earlier. I can like actually remember back to whatever it was.

Seventh, eighth grade. I was pronouncing it because was it. It's C A T, I, O, N and it looks like caution without.

Yeah, so I was pronouncing it cash in and like I had to like stand up. I know because it is like that, but it's cation.

So listen, you know, tiny baby scientist Ashley was, you know, once things in front of my, my eighth grade science class. Anyway, so we all have a walk.

Before we can run.

There you go. There you go. Yeah, so those are the most common forms there.

You know, I'm sure that there are a ton of different forms that you're going to find on a label somewhere somehow. But the Google machine is very good for understanding how they're all different and what they can offer and what are their drawbacks.

And I think it is also important to note that bioavailability of these various forms is not super heavily studied in an equine model. There's a lot of extrapolations from humans, but most of the absorption does happen in the small intestine.

So, you know, there also can be scenarios where like example, leaky gut syndrome can cause malabsorption of various things.

Sure, yeah.

So when we're saying bioavailability and easy absorption, that is like in a homeostatic environment. But there's always.

This is why it's important to talk to your vet, because there's always going to be various circumstances based on an individual horse's health status that will, that can change very uptake or upregulate, downregulate that given absorption in that specific horse.

So, yeah, that makes sense to me. All right.

And I know, I know previously I promised everybody that we weren't just going to talk about all the great science fancy stuff about it, but we were also going to give some examples of where you can find magnesium. And we've named a couple already.

So I think we've named Smart Tranquility, Smart Calm, and I think you even mentioned Smart Gut for the gastric support. But we can also touch on a couple other ones for anybody who's looking for something specific.

And I'll start off with the easiest one, which is just smart and simple Magnesium. So if anyone's looking for. I just want to add one simple thing. We've got it Smart and Simple right there for you.

Yes, we sure do. Both of my horses are on that. It's the standalone, easiest I know. Truly shocking. Yeah. So Smart and simple Magnesium.

Everything you need, nothing you don't. Simple. Simple as can be. And then, yeah, we had talked about Calm Ultra Magnesium and then Tranquility ultimate magnesium at about 10,000.

So those are going to be the two highest levels of magnesium. Smart and simple is at 5,000. So you could also do a double scoop of that and get to the same 10,000.

And then the other areas that we had talked about, too, insulin resistance and glucose metabolism. So of course you're going to find it in metaboline. We had talked about it as a regulator for those nerve impulses and the neurotransmitter release.

So of course you're going to find it in Smart Brain and Nerve Under Sung.

That one's pretty cool. We don't talk about it.

Nerve is like, one of the real. I think it's so unique and.

You.

Don'T really realize you need it until you need it. And then you're like, glad it's there. Right. And then, yeah, we have our Smart Lights. I mentioned that it is a electrolyte.

So you're going to find it in your Smart Lights and then your gastric products, like your Smart Gut Ultra.

Yes. And we do also have. I know. I think a lot of people are really familiar with, like, the Smart supplement.

So, like, Smart Calm, Smart, Tranquility, Smart and simple also, obviously, definitely one of ours, the branding. But we do also have another line that maybe you aren't as familiar with calling, called Leg Up.

So that one's a little bit more, I want to say, pared down, like, in a good way, where you're getting some kind of, like, the. Between the Smart supplement and the Smart and Simple, where you're not getting a million ingredients, but you're also getting more than one.

So for anybody who's like, where. Where's a middle ground? It's leg up. And we have Calm stomach and mare support in that line as well that also has magnesium. Okay.

And something also to note with supplements, and I think we've kind of touched on it before, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna pull from my. My past as a customer care representative.

And when we would talk to horse owners who were going to try something for the first time, we would always let them know, like, hey, supplements are. Are different. Right. Like, these aren't drugs, these aren't medications. You're not going to see the same kind of, like, results in that way.

So we would recommend, like, you know, seven to 14 days is when you might start Seeing signs that your horse is benefiting from what you're giving them, whether it's a gut supplement, a calming supplement, whatever it may be, and then for a longer term observational period, giving them up to two months is a really great way to really see if you're starting to see what you think you're supposed to see.

So a horse that's taking that deep breath when they're able to relax and install, a horse that's maybe striding out a little bit better if you're giving them a joint supplement.

So the seven to 14 days to kind of start it off and then up to two months to really give yourself the full amount of time to see if you like what you're seeing and if for any reason you're not satisfied with that.

I know that at least at Smart Equine, we have a program where if you're not liking it, give customer care a call and say, hey, I don't know if this is working for what I think it's supposed to be doing.

And we'll work with you whether it's trying something new, offering an account credit or a refund, like, just so that way, if you're hearing all this and you're hearing all the supplement options that we have, like, don't be afraid, you can totally try it.

Nothing's ever 100% guaranteed or, or risk free or whatever it is, but we're here to help and we want to make sure that your horse is actually benefiting from what you're giving them and you're not just feeling like you're adding health sprinkles to the top of their meal for funsies.

Yeah, that's a really great point.

Jenna and I know we have talked about it on past podcasts where taking your multivitamin once a day or once a week rather, is not going to solve all your problems. Right. I wish that it was that way because I am notoriously bad about taking it.

But.

But specifically in horses that may have true deficiencies, it's going to take a little while to build up very true magnesium reserves again. So being very consistent with it is the best way to see the results that you're looking for.

So long term compliance to your feed program is going to give you the best results, of course.

Yeah, yeah. Two months of feeding is great, but it's only going to work if it's two months of consistent feeding. Exactly. So definitely a great call out there.

And so we've talked a lot about how magnesium can help and can support, but Is there, are there times where you're just like this, this isn't what you want to try or like maybe look at something else first?

Yeah. I mean if you're, if your horse is, let's say an example is my horse is like flicking their head every time I ask them to do X, Y and Z.

In training, I'm not going to immediately run to trigeminal neuralgia or head shaking issues. I'm going to forget first be like, oh, I wonder if they have a wolf tooth smashing into the side of their right.

So magnesium is not a drug and it's not going to fix pain or discomfort. So if you have ill fitting tack or. The first place I start is teeth, I always go to teeth.

If they're shaking their head or they're displaying some type of discomfort with their head, I go to teeth. What's going on in their mouth, I make sure that the dentist comes out that they've been floated all good.

If it persists, I take a look at their saddle. Like what's going on under their saddle is all of their tack fitting. Remember we talked in our mental health episode.

Only way of communicating to us is by acting out. So they're just telling us like something isn't right. And it's our job to check every box and make sure we're going down the ladder.

So before you just dump a whole bunch of magnesium in their bucket and hope for the best, it is important to make sure that you're ruling out other reasons which primarily is going to be discomfort or pain. There can also be instances where this is just part of their confirmation.

You have a horse that's over at the knees or you know, short necked or whatever the case may be and they just have a different way of going or their confirmation is not helping them. You know, that's something that magnesium is obviously not going to change.

And of course, like their general disposition, like horses are just the way we are.

You know, they all have their own personalities and likes and dislikes and you know, ensuring that their micronutrient levels are adequate is going to help them be the horse that they are destined to be. That sounds so cheesy. But like, you know, we're attempting to make, make them them.

Yeah.

And we're not trying to alter that in any way. So we're trying to remove, you know, the nervousness or muscle tension.

We're trying to alleviate some of that to make them, you know, the horse that they were made to be. So it's not going to it's not going to change their personality. Like my ponies, I sold them, but thank you. Very excited. I did feed them magnesium.

I gave that a go. I said, you know what, they're great ponies. They are, just not for a one year old. And no amount of magnesium is going to make that happen.

So there's a lot of ponies that aren't for a one year old. I think that's a very fair eval.

Yes.

But like in a scenario with Andy and Tilly, we went through, we changed our bits, we got new saddles, we had them reflocked, we had the chiropractor out, we have the magna wave on. We did all the things and the nose persists, magnesium goes up.

So it is important to consider, like, I know we always say, like, nose to tail, like this is the whole horse. Exactly, the whole horse. So, yeah, there, there's gonna.

And another thing to consider too is that if their tension, like if you're standing outside and a buck jumps out like magnesium. No, it's probably because a deer just jumped out in front of your horse.

Have a fight or flight animal underneath you, doing its best at all times.

Exactly.

So consider that there are going to be times where it is pain in response to pain, there's going to be times where it is legitimate response to fear, and then instances where, like, you have to train. It's requiring training. This is just a maneuver that your horse has learned and they have not been trained out of it.

So, you know, those are all going to be areas.

Magnesium is not going to fix the scary end of the indoor arena, sadly.

Could you imagine if it did? Could you just imagine if magnesium fixed the scary end of the indoor? If it fixed scary deer jumping out the plastic bag hanging from. Wow.

I mean, big magnesium is already doing well, but if it could do all those things.

Yeah, if they're listening, that's what you're missing, guys.

Yeah. So there's just a handful of things that, like, certainly, you know, you have to consider this as a compliment. What does the word supplement mean?

Right. You're supplementing a program. So when every other box has already been checked, you know, this is an area that you can try next.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, I could ask you a million more questions.

That covers like a good amount of information to get people started and get a little bit more in depth on what this is, what this does, how it can help the kind of horses that won't help and all of that good stuff. So the kind of key takeaways that I wanted to call out and remember here is that things I've learned and reinforced today.

Magnesium is not going to sedate a horse. It's not going to change who they are.

Correct.

Epsom salt, while a form of magnesium, is not what you're putting in your horse's food.

Yeah. It can cause diarrhea.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So definitely not that one.

Don't eat it yourself either. It'll be a bad day for you either.

These are great nose.

And then just because your horse is exhibiting signs that they might benefit from magnesium, it doesn't doesn't mean that that's going to be the, the be all, cure all.

It might help, like hopefully it helps but make sure that you're looking at all the other aspects of your horse's health and wellness illness as well around that.

Absolutely. It's not a silver bullet.

Perfect. Okay.

So also as our always reminder is like if you have questions on this, if you're not sure if you think you've learned something but you want to learn more like your veterinarian, I cannot hype them up enough. They're there for you to work with you for your horse. So reach out to them and chat. We do have some other additional information on our libraries.

We have a free horse health library that I probably don't talk about enough where it's just articles written by vet, edited by vets that has some great information there. And then just, you know, consider it. If you're not sure and you're interested in it, ask your vet, give it a try, see, see what happens.

Give it two months and give us a call.

And if you are interested in taking a deep dive going down the rabbit hole, as I like to call it on magnesium, go to your Google machine and type in PubMed. It will take you to all of the scientific papers ever published. You're looking for good, credible, peer reviewed literature.

There is, there is so much out there on the studies of magnesium and the implications that it's that it has on all of these different systems that we talked about today. So, you know, these topics are heavily rooted in decades and decades and decades of good science and it's out there free for you to consume.

So Definitely head to PubMed if you're interested and take a deeper look.

Now let's meet the pack.

All right everybody, thank you for sticking with us and welcome, welcome to the Meet the Pack segment. We have a slightly different guest with us in the sense that they're not the horse person that we're used to.

Talking to, but we're going to get into that. First of all, I'm going to let him introduce himself. Nels, tell us who you are, how long you've been here and what do you do here.

I'm Nels McLaughlin. I have been at Smart Equine, formerly Smartpak. I started one a long time ago when it was smartpak.

I started 13 and a half years ago, which is a little terrifying, a little crazy. A little terrifying. Yeah. So my title is senior art director of photo and video.

But that's just sort of a fancy way of saying that I get to shoot and edit the video that we do here and I'm in charge of the photography.

A lot to do with our photo shoots, the photography that ends up on the website, the post production of all the photography and just sort of how it gets distributed amongst the teams and all that sort of thing at SmartEcoin. But yeah, it's my career is in video production and that's the part that I love the most.

But as you know, Jenna, having worked with me for a long time, everybody here wears a lot of different hats. So I've done a lot of different things.

Yeah, we certainly learn a lot of skills as we just keep on taking on new things, teaching people the same things and then starting the process anew. So yeah, very excited to have you on because like you said, you and I have worked together for a long time.

Time over 10 years now, which is also wild in its own way. But you touched a little bit on, on like the photo and the production and stuff.

I know that would take us a full episode in and of itself, but like overhead view, oh boy.

I mean how we have 10 minutes, 15 minutes for this. It might be a while. No. So basically what I do, what my role is for these photo shoots is I help source the locations.

I help source any of the contractors that we have. We have a wonderful photographer that we work with. So I help manage the relationship with her.

But then in terms of getting there and organizing everything, there are some other people who you might know, like yourself, who help organize. Yeah, that's not true.

You are smaller than me, but you are definitely not a small part so you guys, there are a few people who help develop the shot list, and then they have to populate it with the products and the things like that that are on it. And I have to take the shot list, and I have to figure out, all right, all these things that are here, how do I find them, where do I get these from?

And if I already have them in my sort of expansive creative inventory that I've collected over the years of these photo shoots, how do I get them? Once I have procured all of these, how do I get them to the photo shoot? And a lot of times it is putting them on a pallet and shipping them out.

A lot of times when we do local shoots, it's packing them all on rolling racks and putting them in the back of our trailer that we then, that I then have to drive and, well, sort of back up, attempt to back up.

Nobody else is volunteering to do it, so we rely on you.

Well, the first time we took the trailer to a shoot, I showed up and I had never, like, I had gotten lessons on how to back it up and how, and, and I'm sure all the people listening know, like, you know, the first time you do this, it's not super easy, especially if you're not used to backing up a trailer or parking it somewhere.

The first few times we had to take it places, I had to stop and I had to ask the, the barn owners and be like, listen, I don't, I'm really nervous about backing this up. Would you like to do this? And, and the first woman just sort of looked at me with, like, this look of, like, complete and utter disgust.

And it's like, yeah, fine, I'll do it.

And did she just whip it in in, like, two minutes flat?

Yeah, and it just. And, and I like. And I just sat there and I was just like, listen, I, I, I am fully aware of that.

I cannot do this, and I would rather you do it than me take out a tree or about a barn or a fence. Like, this is the best case scenario for all of us, let's be honest.

And I think, I think that too.

I kind of skipped over this at the beginning, but one of my favorite parts about being able to bring you with you a lot of the times is that you're not a horse person, and you are one of the few that can claim that title at this company. So the fact that you've been here for over 13 years as not a horse person, like, more power to you, because we are not a, well, people.

No. The first thing I learned coming to Smartpak is that horse people are.

And I say this with all the affection that I can possibly muster for you and all the other people I've worked with. People are weird, people are strange.

Like, there's just so much like the introduction that I got to the horse world was I showed up one day and my old boss Sarah, who people will probably recognize as the horse in the if Horses Were People videos.

Iconic.

Yeah. She handed me, she and Emily, somebody we also used to work with, handed me a bridle that was not put together.

And they just said, here, here you go, put it together.

Intro test.

Emily was putting them together for like, like some. For like a low level show that we were sponsoring. And she had to put them together as they, as they were giveaways. And she's like, here, do this.

And Sarah was standing there listening to everything, watching. And you know, you know me at this point, I was very snarky, very sarcastic and I was like, there's, there are extra pieces here.

There's definitely no way that this goes here.

She was putting it together, but you also were probably still doing it and trying and making it happen.

So there used to be a blog with all of the running commentary that Sarah recorded. I don't know that it exists anymore, but it was one of my favorite things.

It's a sad one to lose to the archives. I bet it was gold.

It really was. It was one of my favorite things that I would send to like family or friends and say, like, this is the place that I work and this is what happens.

Like, this place is pretty awesome. But yeah, I am not a horse person. Like I said, I've been here for 13 and a half years. What I usually tell.

So when I call places to see if we can come and do a photo shoot or if they'd be interested, I usually tell them up.

Up front is like, I'm not a horse person, but I've been around for a while, so I know just enough to think that I know what I'm talking about, that I oftentimes will make an idiot out of myself when I say something.

You know, enough to get yourself in trouble.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

But I mean, I've seen you on set. You are comfortable with petting a nose and, and being present and like you're not jumpy or weird or anything.

Like, you've definitely learned a lot in your time here about how to be around them and how to. With.

Interact.

Interact in a very normal, natural way.

I don't know if normal is the right. Is the way I would say that I interact with horses.

Normal about horses, but you know your best.

And I would also like to correct you and say you don't pet noses. You boop noses.

Oh, so true.

I feel like that's a hoop snoots. I feel like that's a horse term and that's one that I picked up very early on.

It's a good one to have in the arsenal.

Yes.

And something that you mentioned that I wanted to talk about, so I'm so glad you mentioned it is like your. Your core role and like a lot of your background is in video. Video.

And something that I think is very cool is that for anybody who's been with us for a while, you might remember the very iconic. As I said, if horses were people. Videos and stuff. Riders say videos. And those.

If you've watched them, Nels, you get the shout out because, like, those are all your. Your production quality and your children that you put out into the world for. For viewing and hoping for the best. Right.

Those were so much fun to work on. I will say I wish I had come up with. Up solely with the idea, but again, that probably was Sarah or there was somebody. There were.

There were other people involved in those. But my favorite. My favorite thing about those is that I don't remember. I don't remember the specific episode, but it happened a bunch of times.

But, like, if you watch very carefully as whatever is unfolding on screen, you can sort of see, like, the screen shake a little bit. Like the camera bounces and I'm. And that's me laughing. There is one in particular where Sarah the horse. Not to be confused with Sarah the human.

Yes. Yes.

Which made that all the better. That it was Sarah and Sarah.

Yep.

There was one where I don't remember the exact scene, but it was. This won't mean anything to anybody but you and I. But it was upstairs in the kitchen, in the customer care kitchen, and something happened and.

And Sarah the horse started to lose her contact in her eyes. And it just. I was like, what is happening? I was like, why does your eye look like that? And you can see.

You can see the camera start to shake a little bit because I'm laughing.

Oh, my God.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's one scene that I lose it at every single time, and it might just be from knowing them as people, but where Sarah the human has. I think it's like MMS or Skittles in her hand.

I knew that you were gonna say.

And she holds it out and you can just see, you can see the trepidation on her face as she's like, Sarah the horse, please, please be normal about this.

And no, Sarah the horse just straight like full face into her hand and just like, not just lightly, like politely takes like full scarfs them off of her hand and just the, the discomfort is so palpable and hilarious. And I, I love that you still get to hold all those memories and like kind of be the lore bearer for some.

Much of that, that one in particular, and I knew you were going to mention it because that's the one that always stands out to me is because that was, that was after I was here for a year or two. But like we hadn't done a whole lot of those yet.

I think that might have been like episode one or two and it just as that happened because I didn't know Sarah, Sarah the horse would just look at me, be like, just, just hit record. Point it this way and hit record. Like I didn't, I didn't always know what was happening. And she's like, just hit record.

And she, and she and Sarah would talk and yeah, she just like full on scarf mode on Those M&M's and I just had no idea what was coming. It was hilarious.

It was beautiful. Yeah, I love it.

So pretty much anything on YouTube that we've put out, that's something that you have either shot yourself or shot and edited and done all that work on, right?

Yep, yep. For the most part. There are some that we've done with some partners, but. But even so, those ones we've had, I've had input on.

You've had input on a lot of them too. But yeah, for the most part all the stuff on our YouTube channel has, has come through me in one way.

Or another, which is pretty cool. And as we said, all the photo shoot stuff is.

I mean there's a lot of people that go into it, but it truly would not run without all the work that you put into it. So like really big, big parts that are behind the scenes. And I think you prefer that, right?

Like, I think we've tried to get you in front of the camera and you're always like, please, absolutely not. Never.

I don't, I don't necessarily hate being in front of the camera, but it's just like people in photos, like, they hate photos of themselves. They hate, they look, they hate the way they look in photos. I don't know. I. I don't know.

You say that, but every time There's a photo shoot and they're like, hey, we need someone, I'm there.

Well, that's true. Everybody hates photos of themselves except for Jenna and me. Yeah. But no, I just, it's.

I always feel like, I don't know, I was always more of a behind the camera guy. Even though when I went to college, like, I had initially gone and wanted to be. I wanted to be at that time. And I'm aging myself here.

I'm dating myself. I wanted to be like, sports center anchor. So, like, you can't get much more. You can't get much more in front.

Of the camera than you're pretty on camera.

Yeah. But, yeah, that was like the first couple classes. This is like, no, this isn't really for me. I want to do this behind the scenes stuff.

And yet you're always such a good sport. I mean, you're on the podcast now. And I should have said this in the beginning, but for anybody who's like, in the. Is this guy's voice familiar?

It should be. He is all like the bumper voices in between our segments on this podcast.

So if you're sitting here, like, having deja vu, you're fine, you're good, you're going to be checked out.

Yeah. My kids are going to be so excited. I'm not telling them that I'm on this.

I'm just going to, like, I'm just going to play it in the car when we're driving around, and they're going to be like, wait, is that you? Yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's me.

That's precious. And you have four girls, right?

Yep. And it's the best thing ever. Yep, four girls.

And so now, after having worked with horse girls for over a decade, if one of them wanted to take on this lifestyle for themselves, how would you feel about that, knowing all that?

You know, I would. I mean, I say this jokingly. I would run the other way and just be like. And feign and feign. Be like, sorry, I have headphones in. I can't hear you.

I don't know what you just said. No, like, I've. I have had people be like, why, why haven't you bought your daughters a horse yet? This is like, listen, listen, you people are crazy.

But that being said, if they came to me and they said, yes, can we take lessons? I'd be like, yeah, sure, we can do this.

At least now I would know the stuff that I would need to buy and the stuff that I could just sort of borrow from the Barn or wouldn't have to go full force on everything. I have some stuff here, and we have an employee discount that I could get decentralized.

And you have an arsenal of people who are probably. Don't worry. I have 15 things that I'm not using because I collect too many of them. You can have some.

Well, I know a lot of people who, like you said, hoard certain things, and they're like, oh, my God, I have to get rid of some of these. How about you take 47 of these saddle pads that I have? We. I don't need all of these.

No, no. Well, I. I hope that the girls never get bitten by the bug because we know exactly what happens to those of us. And, like, I'm fine.

No one needs to check on me. But also, I just. Everybody out there. I see you. I feel you. Yeah, we know you.

But then the one other thing I wanted to ask too, just in the realm of not being a horse person, but kind of an honorary horse person, what's the weirdest thing you've learned so far? What's the one thing that you're like. I learned that, and I'm just still not confident that that's a correct or real or right fact.

Oh, boy. Again, how much time do we have? There is so much. But I think the thing that I am always sort of shocked by is that, like, a.

They eat for like 20 hours a day, or they. They're supposed to eat, like, right, but they can't throw up.

Truly, like, the greatest joke played.

Like, there are these. They're supposed to eat all day and just, like, keep food in their stomach, you know, to keep the. To keep the acid at bay.

See, this is what I'm talking about so much. This is what I'm talking about. I sat through all those Ask the Vet episodes. I should. I practically. I'm a vet by now. I'm just.

I'm just throwing that out there in.

Case anybody honorary, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. But no, like, they. They eat all day and they keep. Like, they keep feeding themselves.

They eat the grain and they eat grass and they eat hay and all this stuff, and it just is like, they can't throw up. And it's like the.

The way that their digestive tract is designed, like, where it goes from, like, a big part and then it, like, telescopes down to, like, a much smaller part and that. Like that and that.

That's.

That's how colic happens sometimes. I believe that would be an impaction colic. Am I right? Do I Have this. Look at me. Yeah, right. So I told you, I'm a vet.

You're on the next episode. You're going to be our. Ask the honorary vet.

I told you, I'm a vet. Yeah.

So.

But no, it just. I don't know. Horses are weird. Horses are weird in so many ways. But that's the one that I keep coming back to is like, how is this possible?

And that they're designed this way and that they. They live as long as they do and they haven't gone extinct yet at this point.

I mean, for what it's worth, in college and in moments where you have to do the like. Like, name favorite food and like, an interesting fact, mine was always horses can't throw up. So I think you're.

I think you're spot on with that being the weird thing that you remember.

Most when I have to come up with an icebreaker for, like, weird, fat, weird fun fact that I know. There we go. That's it.

You've got.

I'm gonna still just hope that you and I are. Just hope that you and I aren't together in these, like, icebreaker things because.

Oh, I have, like, three weird animal backup facts. Don't worry.

Oh, all right. Well, can I hear the them so.

I don't give you one other one? Because I have to keep the other two on reserve in case you do steal all of them, but kangaroos can't back up.

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's weird. That's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one.

Nobody Google that. I was told it when I was in Australia and I've believed it ever since. Nobody fact checked that.

I was just about to say I'm going to Google that, but okay, I won't. I won't Google it. I believe you.

Thank you. You know, that's a beautiful note to end on. I don't know that we've ever had such a heartwarming, truly genuine moment like that.

We're going to call it. We're going to call it, and I. And I'm going to hold this moment near and dear to my heart forever. But genuinely, thank you. Nails.

This was such a delight to have you. I really appreciate you taking the time when I know you're getting ready for that photo shoot, so best of luck. Enjoy Texas.

I can't wait to see all the spring stuff and hopefully we get to have you on again.

It will be fun in Texas. Hopefully it's warmer than it is currently here in Massachusetts, but yes, thank you for having me. On. It was always fun.

I always enjoy talking to you, but this was a good time.

Awesome. All right, thank you everybody also for sticking around with us and hold on just a second and we will get to our giveaway to wrap things up.

Here we are again for our giveaway last week for episode seven, we gave away a cozy little travel blanket and a Smart Equine gift card. And I'm excited to say that Claire from Colorado was our winner. Congrats, Claire.

If you have not already seen an email from me in your inbox, you should shortly.

Now for episode eight, which is this one, we've got a Smart Equine Travel Coffee, Tea or Water, your beverage of choice mug plus a 25 smart equine gift card.

As a reminder, you can enter to win by clicking or tapping on the link in the podcast description, which should take you directly to our giveaway form.

Or you can go to www.smartequine.com podcast giveaway this giveaway closes one week after this episode airs, which means you have until December 7th to fill out the form, share your feedback and get entered for your chance to win. You can find links to today's guest and products in the show notes on your podcast player or on the website at www.smartpake.com blog.

Just a reminder, we are here twice a month on the 15th and the 30th, but in between you can find us on Instagram and Facebook as SmartEquine, or you can shop online@smartequine.com until next time, stay smart, stay science driven, and.

Give your horse a cookie from us.