Linda Briles - Severe Laminitis for 6 years
now Cantering - giving lessons and pain free!
John Dowdy:
All right. Hello, welcome to another Equinety podcast. I am really excited. We've got Linda Briles on from Garden City, Kansas. Well, let's get right into it. Linda, welcome to the Equinety podcast.
Linda Briles:
Thank you so much. I'm so happy that you called, because I do want to share my experience with your product, Equinety, for a horse that really needed some help.
John Dowdy:
And I'm excited to have you on. Well, let's get to give a little bit of your background. You've been a riding instructor for 50 years. You're a pre-vet student. What are some of the other things that you've been involved with in the horse world?
Linda Briles:
Well, I showed when I was in high school All Western. When my daughter got into English, we did a lot of eventing, and got very involved with the United States Pony Club where I was the Vice RS of the Rocky Mountain Region and I was also on their instruction council in Kentucky for two years. We got into cutting, did a lot of cutting and I had 19 students and boarded when he horses. This was in Fort Collins, Colorado. Where I had gone to Colorado State University in pre-vet and I fold out a lot of mares for people. And so I have a lot of experience with horses and then have been following my daughter around the state of Kansas because of the grandchildren. And so I've ended up down here in Garden City with my horses.
John Dowdy:
Nice. And you're giving lessons now still?
Linda Briles:
Yeah.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. That's fantastic. Well that is quite a background. So you know your horses?
Linda Briles:
I do.
John Dowdy:
That goes without saying. So let's get into the meat of this particular podcast and one of the reasons I'm excited to have you on is because you have seven horses currently, but one of them is a 19 year old and you've been battling with severe laminitis for the past six years. Tell us a little bit about that and what are some of the things that you've been doing to try to help this situation?
Linda Briles:
Yeah. I probably didn't recognize what was going on at first, although six years or even seven years ago, he was urinating a lot and he would not want to lift one foot up and we just thought maybe he was out of shape, but he started lying down. He couldn't walk. He was gritting his teeth and we had the veterinarian, I was living in Topeka at that time, come out and said that he had laminitis. We tried changing his diet. It didn't seem to matter what we did. He would be up and down a lot and to the point where we couldn't use him as a, I used him as a schooling horse. He was a cutting horse in his younger years. And got down here to Garden City and most of the time he would be lying down. He would have lapses where he wouldn't be so bad. Maybe for a month or so.
My farrier that I had during the first five years, pretty well gave up on him and told me that I should probably put him down and I didn't feel that I could. And I saw this advertisement on Facebook for Equinety and I thought I'm going to give it a try. And I had tried tumeric because I've seen a lot of results with my horses when they've started to colic or have some problems. The tumeric has really worked really well, but it's an antiinflammatory painkiller. And so it didn't really solve the problem until I started using the Equinety, which I noticed. This horse was lying down, gritting his teeth. I had to make him get up to walk out, to go out into a crowd during the day. Within three days, I noticed it when morning I walked in, he was standing up.
That was a good sign and less urine. Within a week he was walking out to his corral, still very carefully. And then there was an interim where I didn't have a farrier, but I found a really good one. Showed him the book of how I wanted his hooves redone and the angles. And so the first time that he did his hooves, we put them with pads and did the correct angle, took the toe off and it was hard for him to hold his feet up very long. The next time he came out, six weeks later, now this is when he's been on the Equinety, he could not believe the difference. And now the horse is cantering in the pasture. He keeps company with a horse that's almost 40 that just lost his eyesight. And I've actually put him on it, I'm hoping for some crazy miracle. But this horse doesn't urinate like he used to. I never seen him lie down. He's not in pain. And I just started giving him his first lesson last week.
John Dowdy:
Holy smokes.
Linda Briles:
I'm thrilled.
John Dowdy:
Wow. That is an amazing story. Absolutely amazing.
Linda Briles:
Yeah. And it's not a placebo. A horse doesn't know it's a placebo because it really ... And now I have seven horses. I've put them all on it. I mean some there's no symptoms, but I'm just thinking, I don't think it could hurt him.
John Dowdy:
Now with you being in the horse industry for as long as you have, I'm sure you have seen a lot of things on the market. I'm sure you've tried a lot of different things through the years. And when you ran into the Equinety and of course you were at a point where you didn't know what else to do and of course your farrier at the time was at his wits end and you just telling you well you should just put the horse down because he doesn't have any answers.
Linda Briles:
Exactly.
John Dowdy:
So with all the things that you've seen, and I'm sure there's some great things out there that work absolutely fantastic, but when you compare your history with horses and the different things that you've tried, and then you see the results with the Equinety. What was your immediate reaction to what you were seeing?
Linda Briles:
I just thank God that I found this on, I mean I think it was meant to be for me to see this on Facebook when I was being told that I should put this horse down and it's just amazing. It's just wonderful. It is just wonderful.
John Dowdy:
Yeah, I tell you we are definitely blessed as a company. We had no idea it was going to take off like this in the horse industry and I encourage anybody that is dealing with a situation and maybe you've tried everything under the sun, just give this product to try because you never know the odds of it working are, I will say on the high side. As a matter of fact, over a six month period we've had a least that I know of from phone calls, emails, messages coming through on Facebook, 50 plus people that we're dealing with a mystery lameness. And of course in your scenario we're dealing with severe laminitis. But in these scenarios it was just a mystery lameness. Nobody had any idea what was going on.
And as a matter of fact, I'll tell you a quick story for those listening in. About a month ago, there was a lady that called in, it was a Monday or Tuesday and she says, "Listen, I've been dealing with this mystery lameness for a long time. I've got the vet coming out on Friday to put this horse down because we don't know what else to do. We've tried everything else. And I came across your product and just wanted to know if you thought it would help." And I said, "Well, we don't know until we try. Would you be okay with putting that appointment off?" And she goes, "Yeah, sure, I'll put that off."
So she calls me about a month later, which was just a week and a half ago, and she goes, "Hey, I just wanted to give you an update." She goes, "The grave was dug. It's all roped off. Now my horse is not 100% but she's doing so much better that I would never dream of putting this horse down." And these are the types of stories that we hear all the time. When you told me this story about yours and dealing with specifically with the laminitis, it's like, oh my gosh, now we'll go with all the things that he's been through. And now given the first riding lesson just last week, that's wild.
Linda Briles:
It is. I mean, I just can't believe it. It's just, it's a miracle to me. It really is. Yep. He'll be on it the rest of his life.
John Dowdy:
That's great.
Linda Briles:
Yeah. It's wonderful. Thank you so much.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. Well, I can't take all the credit. That for sure. I wasn't the brains behind putting it all together, but for anybody that's listening into this podcast for the first time, that still might be on the fence a little bit. That might think, okay, well this is too good to be true. What advice or what would you have to tell them that might bring them over to just give it a try?
Linda Briles:
Well, I just think you have to have a gut instinct of whether, I mean, I don't know why when I read about it, I just thought this has got to be it. And you know within three days. I mean I did with this, I mean this horse, I have pictures of him lying down where he's just absolutely gritting his teeth, he's in so much pain. I mean it was horrible and off and on over these last six years. There's nothing. It's gone. So I mean I can send pictures if somebody wants to see pictures. I've got pictures of him.
John Dowdy:
Yeah.
Linda Briles:
And so I don't know how else to I, it's just a fabulous product. You should try it. Why not?
John Dowdy:
Yeah. Well actually if you'll email those pictures over then what we'll do is below the podcast on the team Equinety.com website, where this podcast will be posted. It will also be transcribed, but we'll put some pictures, a video, if you have any video. We'll put that below there so we can take a look. I would suggest pictures are best, because one of the previous podcasts, our guests did not have a way to take pictures. So she actually described her horse to me. So I told her I was going to draw an image and let's just say I should not take up the world of art. So yeah, it was kind of humorous. But anyways, yeah. So send those over. We'll post those for everybody can take a look. And Linda, thank you so much. Linda Briles from Garden City, Kansas. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your Equinety story.
Linda Briles:
It's worth it. If it's going to help somebody else's horse, I hope. I hope they'll try it.
John Dowdy: Awesome. Well thank you so much.
Linda Briles: Okay.
John Dowdy: All right. Bye bye.
