John Dowdy: Hello and welcome to another Equinety podcast. This week we're going to swing up into Mooreville, Mississippi, and we've got a 13 year old Savannah Shumpert on the podcast this week and I am excited to have you on, Savannah. Welcome to the Equinety podcast.
Savannah Shumpert: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here and tell about how Equinety has helped my two horses.
John Dowdy: Oh, that's great. Well now you've been riding for, well, since you could walk, I hear. Is that accurate?
Savannah Shumpert: Yes sir. I've just been riding ever since I was old enough to even have a concept of what a horse was. I remember when I was really little, my dad actually bought me and my sister a saddle and we were actually too little to know when it was. We were like, is it a Barbie? And he's like, no, it's a saddle?
John Dowdy: A Barbie. That's pretty good. So, okay, so you started riding at an early age and then you obviously loved what you're doing, so you started to competing right away. How old were you when you started competing?
Savannah Shumpert: I would say when I started seriously riding a big horse at shows, I was about eight or nine.
John Dowdy: Okay. And then we're talking to barrel racing here?
Savannah Shumpert: Yes sir.
John Dowdy: All right. Okay. And what's also most impressive at age 13 here, you have a qualified for a few very large events. Tell us about the things you've qualified for.
Savannah Shumpert: Yes sir. Well last year I qualified for the Junior NFR. This year at the all American News Race back in June, I qualified for the Junior American and in April, I qualified for the one day shootout at the [inaudible 00:01:46] World Finals. That'll be taking place next year. And in the finals, I qualified in the fast 50. That's this year.
John Dowdy: That is quite impressive.
Savannah Shumpert: Thank you.
John Dowdy: Yeah. So, okay, so let's jump right in. And coming from a performance, a horse, which we're going to talk about two different horses. One of them is a 21 year old gelding that had foundered and tell us or give us a little bit of background on this horse, what was going on, what you were kind of doing prior to using the Equinety. And then we'll get into what advances the Equinety's made.
Savannah Shumpert: Yes sir. Okay. So we got [inaudible 00:02:28] or I'm just going to call him Base. We got him around, I would say December of 2017 and we were just, He was doing fine and so on around May, my Mom and Dad took him down to get just some yearly injections. So everything was going fine and then his feet started swelling. We gave him some pain medicine and he just, it began a snowball effect and he began to founder. So his joints swelled up. And then we took him to Outlaw Equine in Texas and he spent the whole summer there. So after we got him back, we didn't really know how to get his feet back to where he could walk. So my dad started him on Equinety and it has been amazing how it has repaired his feet because he's 21 and we didn't think he was going survive a second case of founder. So just for him to be sound is amazing.
John Dowdy: Right. So He's been on Equinety now for how long?
Savannah Shumpert: I believe it's been on Equinety for about a year.
John Dowdy: Okay. And so what have you noticed then in the year since he's been on the Equinety?
Savannah Shumpert: I've noticed that his coat, before we put my other horse on it, he was the best looking thing in the barn, which was amazing because he'd been turned down a year. His coat was shiny and slick and his feet looked incredible. Just the front of his feet looked so good and you would pick them up and they look so much better than they did when we got him. He started out with these special shoes to help him get over his foundering and eventually we got to take those off and his feet just look so much better.
John Dowdy: Yeah. And you had mentioned that you are having to give yearly injections. Have you had to do that since using the Equinety?
Savannah Shumpert: Well, we haven't been hauling him since we put him on Equinety, so that's part of the reason we haven't given him any injections. Because he hasn't been running anywhere, but we have not felt the need to give him any injections.
John Dowdy: Okay, great.
Savannah Shumpert: We're just starting to get him back into shape.
John Dowdy: Sure. So he's been a bit of a work in progress, haven't been able to ride him yet, but the progress that he has made has been leaps and bounds which you would attribute to Equinety.
Savannah Shumpert: Yes sir.
John Dowdy: Yeah, that's great. Now I'll take just a little bit of a timeout here just for those that are tuning in for the first time and maybe wondering what this Equinety stuff is or you've been following us on Facebook and trying to figure out how can this product do all of this stuff? Well, the Equinety, it's 100% pure amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein. There's no fillers. There are no sugars, no starches, there's no loading dose. A serving size is 5.2 grams, which is just shy of a tablespoon, just use as a top dressing. And the amino acids are specifically formulated to stimulate the pituitary gland, which is the master gland in the body. And that releases the necessary hormones which help heal at a cellular level. So this is why the product helps in so many ways. And in this particular instance, Savannah, that you are talking about with your 21 year old, we had a foundered issue, injections, stronger hooves, a coat, a softer coat in main.
Now, although he's not back to the point where you can ride, just the progress that he's made and the reason I was asking specifically about the injections, because we hear this all the time. Horses that typically have routine injections when they're using the Equinety, they seem to not have to have them as often and sometimes not at all. It just depends on the severity of what's going on. And in this case, because you haven't been hauling, he hasn't been under the pressure and the stress and everything. So hopefully as you progress along here, things will continue to, move along where you don't have to give the injections at all. But that's pretty awesome. So now that's a horse as he comes back, you had mentioned to me, your little sister would probably be taking him over riding because you have another horse.
Savannah Shumpert: Yes sir.
John Dowdy: This is your main horse. Yeah. So this horse is the one that's qualified you for all the things that you talked about earlier. Talk about this mare for a bit.
Savannah Shumpert: Okay. This is my favorite example of how Equinety helped. So this is Broadway Laney. She's a 14 year old mare. She took the [inaudible 00:07:06] in the one day where we take her, but about six months in having her, she began to develop anxiety when it was time to go in the gate, backing up and she didn't want to go in, which was opposite of what previously, she'd been wanting to go in too quick. So we knew something was wrong. So we took her to the vet and it turned out that she had only four millimeters in one of her soles. Now for scale, horses should have at least 10 millimeters in every sole. Her worse sole only had four. So we put her on Equinety and in about five months of having her on it, her sole's had 16 millimeters.
And before we put her on Equinety, her shoulders had been coming out of alignment, which was part of the reason that she didn't want to go in the gate because her shoulders hurt. So five months later when she had 16 millimeters of sole, her shoulders had stayed in. They didn't need to be adjusted anymore because her soles were so much better and they weren't throwing her shoulders out of alignment. So her gait has gotten so much better. It's just incredible to me that she had four millimeters and she had four times the sole in five months. That's incredible.
John Dowdy: Right. That is incredible. And you know what, it's probably one of the more often or most often questions that we get, people are calling in because they're having problems with the hooves. Without healthy feet, you don't have much of a horse that can do anything. And so this is one of the things that most often people ask about is can Equinety help with the hoof and make for a stronger hoof growth. And if this is something that has been battled for awhile and now the proof is in the pudding on this one, I would say.
Savannah Shumpert: Yes sir. I would say that Equinety its best qualities is hoof growth because both of my horses, their hooves has gotten so much better. Another thing it does really well is it makes their coats especially shiny. When I haul my mare to the show, I always like her to look healthy and ready to run. So it's always great when her coat looks amazing.
John Dowdy: Sure, absolutely. Now you had talked also that her shoulder was out all the time. Tell us how often, when you take her to the vet, how often she would have to be adjusted and what was going on specifically there prior to the Equinety.
Savannah Shumpert: Well, any time we saw with Dr. Gregory Ford, that's who we like to let her get adjusted. So anytime we saw him, we would let him check her shoulders and her back and make sure everything was in alignment. And before we put her on Equinety, anytime we saw him, her shoulder would be out and it would be just because we've been running her or because she'd been hauled in the trailer and just anything could throw her shoulder out and you know that got to hurt. So after we put her on Equinety, I don't think she's had her shoulders adjusted since. I can count at least four times I've taken her to Dr. Ford and been like, "Do you know, do you need to adjust your shoulder?" And he said "No, her shoulder's still in place, everything's good." And I would definitely say that because her soles have gotten so much better.
John Dowdy: Right. Right. Now, one of the other things that you'd noticed is her stride, because she's not a big horse, but tell us about what was going on with her stride.
Savannah Shumpert: Yes sir. That's really why I like [inaudible 00:10:34] because she's small enough that I can get on by myself. And even though she's a little horse, she has a ginormous stride. She just takes these giant steps. And when we got her, she was taking those big strides. And then the more I ran her and the more I ran her, the smaller her stride got when she was trotting around. Especially I took her to a show one time and it was pretty hard back in that warm up pen and she just didn't want to trot at all. And that's when I knew something was wrong because three months ago I had taken her to that exact same warm up pen and she'd been stretching out fine. So we knew something was wrong and after we put her on Equinety, she's gotten her big stride back. I told you you should have seen her long trotting this past weekend. It was amazing. She just stretched her legs out so far. I said, "You're so little. How do you stretch your legs out that far?" But you can definitely tell she feels better.
John Dowdy: Right. And probably along that's coming with that is the fast recovery, more stamina, the focus, which are all the things that you need in a performance horse overall health wise in general as well. Well that's awesome.
So Savannah, one other question that I'd like to ask you. There's a lot of supplements on the market, a lot of things to choose from and especially the people that have been around the block more than a few times have tried lots of things and they're somewhat skeptical when it comes to a product like this that seems to be a too good to be true, we'll say. So what advice would you have to tell them other than what you've already talked about, but what would you have to tell them that somebody that might be sitting on the fence to might get them to, to give it a try?
Savannah Shumpert: Yes sir. Well, both of my parents are veterinarians and they've been running barrel horses for about 20 years, and obviously, they've used lots of products to try to get the horses back and healthy. And I've just really, we had our horses on another supplement before we put them on Equinety and the difference was just amazing. You can really tell how much shinier their coats were than everything else in the barn. So for anyone who's skeptical about it, I would definitely say at least try it. If it's not your thing for your horse, then that's fine. But I would definitely try it because I have had amazing results with my two horses.
John Dowdy: That's awesome. Well, Savannah, I really want to thank you for taking the time to share your Equinety stories. You've got an impressive resume here at age 13 and-
Savannah Shumpert: Thank you.
John Dowdy: We'll look forward to following you and with this exciting career that you have going. So Savannah Shumpert from Mooreville, Mississippi. Thank you so much.
Savannah Shumpert: Thank you so much for having me. Bye.
John Dowdy: You Bet. Bye. Bye.