John Dowdy:
Hello and welcome to another Equinety podcast. We are swinging up in the great state of South Carolina. We've got Elizabeth Welch on the coldest week. Elizabeth, welcome to the Equinety podcast.
Elizabeth Welch:
Hi. Thanks for having me.
John Dowdy:
Well, it's always a pleasure. We're always excited and welcome, welcome. So let's talk a little bit about your background. You're in the hunters and the jumper world. How long have you been doing that?
Elizabeth Welch:
Oh gosh, pretty much since I was a kid. I started out doing the Hunters and I've dabbled in some other disciplines, but I always come back to the hunter jumpers. And then I got into the jumpers when I was probably in my late twenties, early thirties, somewhere in there. And I've been kind of doing both ever since.
John Dowdy:
Well, fantastic. And one of the reasons I reached out to you specifically is you had sent, or actually had posted, I think originally, kind of a testimonial. You'd commented on one of our Facebook ads about a mare that was foundered and you had noted that you could see a definite improvement in the feet or hooves and significant increase in soul depth. So I had reached out to you and you had sent some radiographs and things, and I asked for your permission to post those as an ad, which have been running for quite some time.
John Dowdy:
And although you were a bit apprehensive about doing the podcast, I sweet talked you into it, I think. So here we are.
Elizabeth Welch:
Here we are.
John Dowdy:
But one of the interesting things, I always find this a humorous myself, because you always have people that they comment on these things and here we're talking radiographs. And there's a lot of people like, "Oh my gosh, thank you so much for sharing." Because they're dealing with similar issues. We're talking about a foundered horse, and as we were chatting prior to recording, you also let me know this horse, it actually had IR and laminitis, picky eater, everything kind of hit at once.
John Dowdy:
But in regards to the actual x-rays that we are showing, of course you have naysayers, which I think are in any niche out there, that are saying there is no way that these are the same x-rays. And of course, you've been doing your best jumping in there, "Hey, these are mine and I've got a whole catalog..." And yada, yada, yada. But let's go back to the beginning of what this horse... I mean, it was perfectly fine. Then one day, it started showing signs of an abscess, but tell us what was going on and what happened from the beginning and about what the timeframe was on this?
Elizabeth Welch:
So it was roughly the end of September of last year, 2019, and the horse just sort of became acutely lame, but it was really concentrated in her right front and it really just presented like a horse that seemed like it was going to blow an abscess. The horse became acutely lame and it was lame in one foot. She never presented like a laminitis horse at the time. She never looked rocked back, never was trying to get all the weight off the front feet. So for a couple of days, we said, oh well, looks like she's going to have an abscess. And we kind of treated her like she was going to have a foot abscess.
Elizabeth Welch:
Obviously, it didn't seem like it was getting better. So I had already consulted with the vet and I said, "Well, let's have the vet obviously come out and take a look at this." And if it is an abscess, see if we can figure out where it is and try to get that treatment happening. And if it's not, what the problem is. So obviously my vet came out and did some diagnostics on the horse and that is unfortunately when we took radiographs and then found out that she does have rotation. She had rotation in both front feet, worse in the right than the left.
Elizabeth Welch:
And then of course it was like, yikes. So then we had to come up with a completely different plan because it wasn't an abscess, so.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. So finding out that it was founder, but then you also found out she was IR, had the laminitis and all these things just kind of all hit at once.
Elizabeth Welch:
Right. Well, we didn't know she had IR at the time. And we were trying to figure out why maybe this horse might've developed laminitis. So one of the things that we did is we pulled some blood work on her and that is obviously how we found out that she actually had IR. So our best educated assumption is that the horse had developed IR and then because we didn't have a horse on a feed regimen and care program that's suitable for an IR horse, that it probably just caused the laminitis to happen.
Elizabeth Welch:
So obviously once we knew that she had IR, we immediately made changes to her diet and her lifestyle and all of the things that you would do for a horse that has IR. And then of course on top of that, then we're now trying to treat the horse who has laminitis, so.
John Dowdy:
A myriad of fun things to try to work out all at once.
Elizabeth Welch:
Unfortunately, yes.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. So in the course of all of this happening, and of course you're doing research online and then you found one of the... Or I guess it found you, one of the mini ads that we have strolling across people's timeline. What initially caught your eye with that?
Elizabeth Welch:
Well, I think I had seen some ads for your product on my Facebook feed before. There's always different ads, especially since I'm a horse person. So lots of horse related things come across and one had caught my eye. I don't remember specifically which one, but there was an ad that was someone talking about a foundered horse and the product they felt had helped improve the quality of the foot and help the horse grow some better foot. So then obviously I took a look a little closer. I looked at your Facebook page, looked at your website, did a little research and looked at the ingredients.
Elizabeth Welch:
And one of the things that was appealing to me was, there was no sugar, no fillers. It's something that's safe to feed an IR horse because that was obviously important. And then I said, well, let me take a chance. I'll buy some of the product and try it out. I mean, obviously we already had the mare on a plan that we were following with my vet, with my farrier and all those things. And I said, well, maybe just add this. And I obviously asked my vet about it and they said, "Hey, it sounds like there shouldn't be a reason you shouldn't feed this, so why not?"
Elizabeth Welch:
And so I said, well, worst case scenario is it doesn't do anything. Or if it helps, then that's awesome. So I figured I'd just go ahead and buy some and give it a try.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. Now, your mare is also a very picky eater. So what'd you find-
Elizabeth Welch:
Oh yes. Yeah, she's one of those that if you put something in the food that she doesn't like, she will not eat it. She won't eventually eat it, she will not eat it at all. She would rather starve and that's it. If you want to give her things that she doesn't like to eat, you've got to paste and syringe it in the mouth. I had to do that for a long time with a lot of the meds we were doing with the vet because you'd put it in the food and she said, nope, not happening. [crosstalk 00:07:28].
John Dowdy:
Yeah. And what'd you find with the Equinety product?
Elizabeth Welch:
No issue at all. I mean, I put it in the food as soon as I got the product and tried it out, put it in there and no issue. I mean, not even a sniff and a hesitation. I mean, she just ate it, so I said, "Great."
John Dowdy:
Yeah.
Elizabeth Welch:
Even better.
John Dowdy:
Absolutely. Yeah, we found that a lot. A lot of the picky eaters tend to lick it right up. Every now and then, you do have a... Or we found a really stubborn one, and so the solution to that we found, of course some people would syringe it, maybe a little applesauce or coconut oil or any kind of an oil or something to kind of mask it. But it's typically not a longterm thing that you have to do that either. It's typically just to get them going. But we rarely have any horses that refuse to eat it because the amino acids are kind of salty by nature anyways. So-
Elizabeth Welch:
I feed-
John Dowdy:
Go ahead.
Elizabeth Welch:
So I feed her beet pulp as well. So I mean that helps to kind of mix it in. And I mean, I'm doing a no sugar, no molasses beet pulp obviously, for the IR horse. And actually all the horses get no sugar, no molasses beat pulp. But that clearly gives another way to kind of mix it in so it sticks and it can't be sifted out.
John Dowdy:
Right. Yep. So up to this point, you starting the Equinety and then how long was it before you started seeing some results with that?
Elizabeth Welch:
So I don't remember an exact date, but we had trouble getting her right front, in particular, stabilized with the rotation. We got the left front stabilize pretty quickly and the right front, just despite all of the things we were doing, that one, the rotation kind of kept getting worse and worse and worse. And she also has always been very flatfooted and thin soled. So she didn't really have a lot of playroom and the sole anyway. And by probably mid October, it was pretty scary. I mean, the tip of the coffin bone was really close to the bottom of the foot and very scary.
Elizabeth Welch:
So that's when I started on the Equinety, it was right around that time when it was super scary radiographs. And at that time, since she was still very new with the rotation and we were probably taking radiographs, having the vet come out a couple of times a week. So we were taking radiographs pretty regularly of the feet a couple of times a week there for a while. I would say for sure, within 30 days, we noticed the difference. Maybe even a little sooner, I'd have to go back and look through all the radiographs that I had for an exact timeline.
Elizabeth Welch:
But I'd say for sure within the 30 days, there was a noticeable difference in the sole depth, not necessarily with the rotation per se, but a noticeable increase in the sole depth, which is obviously good because then the fear of having the bone come out of the bottom of the foot went away. And for sure within 60 days, I mean, there was a massive amount of sole depth. I mean, it was pretty amazing. I don't know that without the radiographs, if it hadn't been my horse and I was having the vet out there and we were taking radiographs all the time, and I was watching it, it was pretty unbelievable.
Elizabeth Welch:
So I think I would've had a hard time believing it myself if it wasn't my own personal horse that it was happening to and I had all of those pictures kind of as proof and as a timeline. And the interesting thing is adding the Equinety was the only thing that we had done different at the time. I mean, we hadn't made any other changes to the already prescribed vet program that we were on. So even my vet and farrier were like, wow, it's pretty interesting.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. Right. Well I think it's important to let people know as well that are tuning in, maybe for the first time, maybe they've kind of been seeing the product around and not sure exactly what it is. I'll spend just a brief moment and just kind of give you a cliff note's version of those tuning in. So the Equinety product is 100% pure amino acids. So there's no fillers, no sugars, no starches, and there's no loading dose. Serving size is 5.2 grams, which is not quite a tablespoon. But what's really unique about this product outside of things, the amino acids are specifically formulated to stimulate the pituitary gland, which is the master gland in the body.
John Dowdy:
And whether it's a tiny mini horse or a draft horse, they all get the same dose because the pituitary is roughly the same size in mammals, is about the size of a pea, and the pituitary gland, once stimulated, releases the necessary hormones which help the body heal at a cellular level. So you could have 50 or 100 horses and giving all the Equinety. And because we're giving the body what it needs to release its own hormones, it's that horse's body that's sending the hormones to the problem areas. So in this particular case, we're talking about a very thin soled foundered horse.
John Dowdy:
And in 30 days, and definitely by 60 days, you had noticed a significant sole depth increase, which is vitally important for foundered horse. What other things? Of course you were dealing with laminitis. What other benefits have you seen since using the product now outside of the increased sole depth?
Elizabeth Welch:
Well, interestingly enough, I was impressed with the products for this horse and obviously doing my research and looking, the product has many benefits in addition to helping the feet. You obviously read the label and it talks about how it's good for joints, it's good for soft tissue, good for bones, good for relaxation and focus and recovery for horses, your performance sources. And I said, well, I'm going to try it out on another horse. So I started giving it to my personal show horse kind of as an experiment just to see. And since then, I've actually got a lot of horses in my barn on it because I really liked the product and kind of believed in it.
Elizabeth Welch:
So the couple of things I would say for all the horses across the board, let's see, we've got seven horses on it now in my barn. And I would definitely say across the board, all the horses have been noticeably more relaxed and more focused. I definitely would agree with the writing on the label. That's across the board, all the horses seem that way. I would definitely say all the horses, I think their coats look really nice. One of my customers has a pony who's still got a decent coat, not a bad coat by any means, but the pony was on the product for about 30 days and we recently gave it a body clip, it was time to go to a show.
Elizabeth Welch:
And I mean, the pony looks amazing. She's super shiny, super dappily. I mean, her coat's super. I mean, it's the best it's ever looked. I would say all the horses' feet looks really good. I mean, just overall the horses look really good.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. And I would say that's very typical for those using the product or all the things that you're describing. And ultimately, it's helping to balance the horse from the inside out. So there's all these nice benefits that come along. People in the show horse industry, they definitely like the softer, shinier coats. A lot of horses will dapple out, fill out, top line, things like that. And of course, they all give us feedback of how the hooves are healthier, stronger, faster growing. And I think it's also important to note, this Equinety product is not a miracle supplement.
John Dowdy:
It's not the end all, be all. One of the examples I give, as you described with this mare, you're dealing with to some pretty significant issues going on with the founder thin sole, the laminitis, and of course the IR. But you've got a great medical team with your vet, your farrier. You're doing all the things that you know to do. And one of the examples I give is you could have the greatest farrier on the planet standing in front of your horse, but if there's nothing to work with and you've got a super thin sole, what is the farrier supposed to do here?
John Dowdy:
I mean, he doesn't really have much to work with. And so one of the great things with this Equinety Horse XL product is it helps grow a healthier, stronger hoof. And so ultimately, what it's doing, it's giving your farrier more to work with in a shorter amount of time. So I think one of the best examples I've come up with is no matter what you're dealing with, challenges with your horse and even a lot of mystery lameness things, it seems to us with all the feedback that we get, is this Equinety Horse XL product, it really ends up being that missing little puzzle piece that you're looking for when everybody else can't seem to figure out what's going on.
John Dowdy:
Or you're scratching your head, or maybe you've tried everything under the sun and nothing else seems to be working. Just jump on board and do what you did. It's like, hey, if it doesn't work, you're not out a lot of money. But the odds of this not working are nil to none because they are amino acids, they have to work. So-
Elizabeth Welch:
I agree.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. Yeah. But well, that-
Elizabeth Welch:
It's logical and makes sense. So, yeah.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. No, that's awesome. Well, if there's anybody tuning in that might be on the fence, other than everything that you've already described, is there anything that you could tell them to maybe give it a try?
Elizabeth Welch:
I mean, pretty much that's just it. I mean, it's not going to hurt to give it a try. I mean, what I did, being a precautious person that I am and like to do my homework and research, you can buy little samples of your product. So I bought the samples because I said, well, let's make sure the horse will actually eat it. Let's make sure that I like it before I commit to buying a bigger tub. But even if you buy a bigger tub, when you do the math and break it down, it's not that much per month, because I've certainly read some comments where people say it's really expensive and I'm like, well, the tub is basically $100 and some change.
Elizabeth Welch:
It's a hundred servings, you give one serving a day over a three month supply. So it's like $35 a month. And I mean, go look at any other joint supplements, skin and coat supplements, any sort of metabolic supplement, any supplement on the market, you're going to pay at least that, if not more. And especially for a supplement like this that's a combination supplement that helps lots of things, versus you've got to buy your joint supplement and your [inaudible 00:18:41] supplement, and your [inaudible 00:18:43] supplement. I mean, it really isn't that expensive. I mean, you've got to buy the tub up front, but when you do the bath, it's not a big deal really.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. I mean, it really comes out to a dollar a day. I mean, there's a hundred plus servings in there, so it's very, very economical. We try to price it so anybody could afford it. Now, the last thing before I let you go on here. As I mentioned in the front part of this podcast, with the ads that we're running and we have the before and after of those radiographs, how many radiographs would you say that you've taken since the beginning on this mare?
Elizabeth Welch:
I'd have to double check. I've probably got at least 30 now, if not a few more, somewhere in there.
John Dowdy:
Yep. Well, and I had noted that quite a few naysayers and there's people that have been around for years and years and years, farriers and old timers will say that they look at this, and I don't blame them, it's too good to be true because there's nothing on the market like this product. I mean, we're blessed in that fact. So what would you say to them that might be questioning just the radiographs of before and after and anything you would like to put to bed or put to rest on those things?
Elizabeth Welch:
Well, I mean, as you correctly pointed out, there's always going to be people that are interested. There's always going to be people that are doubters and non-believers. And I think as I mentioned before, I might not have believed it myself if I didn't have my own radiographs on my own horse that I looked at with my own eyes and had watched the progression because it is pretty unbelievable, the difference it made in my particular horse, and clearly I can't attest that it would do that for everybody's horse, but my horse, it's made a noticeable difference.
Elizabeth Welch:
I mean, I don't know what else to say other than you'd just have to try it to see if you liked it and if you believed in it. And I've got tons and tons of radiographs to back it up and I work very closely with my vet and my farrier, and they've witnessed it with their own eyes, so.
John Dowdy:
Yeah, not much else to say on that, I think.
Elizabeth Welch:
That's all there is to it.
John Dowdy:
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, if you're dealing with a situation where you need some help with your horses' hooves, thicken soles, faster, stronger, healthier, growing hooves or just overall body condition, soft tissue repair. I mean, all these things, you can find out more information on our website, which is teamequanimity.com. And Elizabeth Welch from South Carolina, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story here on the Equinety podcast.
Elizabeth Welch:
You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me
John Dowdy:
All right. Thank you. Bye bye.
Elizabeth Welch:
Bye bye.