John Dowdy:
Hello and welcome to this week's Equinety podcast. We're swinging up into New York this week. We've got Jessica Martin on the call. Jessica, welcome to the Equinety podcast.
Jessica Martin:
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to share my story and let people know how great this product really is.
John Dowdy:
Well we appreciate you taking the time and of course, we're always excited to have guests on. So this week, we're going into the barrel racing world and we're going to talk about Mickey, which was your dream horse. It ended up being that way, but let's back it up and how old were you? How did you acquire Mickey, and what were your dreams and goals as a young girl?
Jessica Martin:
Well, I was 11 years old and I was really just looking for a horse. My parents had a rodeo company and I was really deciding I really wanted to get into the sport myself. And we ended up getting this horse Mickey from, not necessarily a kill pen, but that's where he was going to end up, and he was pretty cheap. We didn't expect him to be at all a barrel horse. And one day, I set up the barrels, we're just going to play around in a halter and he took off like he already knew the pattern. And he did. He knew it 100%.
John Dowdy:
That's funny.
Jessica Martin:
Yeah.
John Dowdy:
So you're hanging on for dear life here.
Jessica Martin:
I was 11 years old. I was in a halter. I had no expectations whatsoever. My cinch wasn't tight and off we went.
John Dowdy:
Oh good.
Jessica Martin:
Not at all expecting that whatsoever. But he turned into the absolute perfect horse. Others questioned my parents and were like, "This isn't necessarily the safest horse for an 11-year-old to run barrels on," and he honestly wasn't because he was a little more powerful than an 11-year-old needed.
John Dowdy:
Yeah.
Jessica Martin:
But we handled it and he was my absolute dream horse.
John Dowdy:
Wow. So what kind of times was he running? What caliber of horse did he end up turning into?
Jessica Martin:
Well when I first got him, we were in the youth and I was 11 years old and we were running 1D times. We were winning the buckles and we were doing really, really good. And my first year in the open division, 18 and older, we placed at the first four rodeos, and the fifth rodeo is when he got hurt. I mean he was a 1D horse and he won me many buckles in the NBHA division and super shows, and he really got me everywhere I planned to be way earlier than I planned to be at.
John Dowdy:
All right. Wow. So yeah, from having the dream of being able or just wanting to run barrels and acquiring a horse and all of a sudden you've got a horse who knew exactly what he was doing.
Jessica Martin:
Absolutely.
John Dowdy:
Yeah, okay, so now you're trucking right along thinking, "Hey, I'm living my dream," and then we have an injury. What exactly happened?
Jessica Martin:
Well, we were running to the first barrel and he just kind of took a wrong step. And to me it just kind of felt like he might've slipped and we turned the first barrel and he completed the run like nothing ever happened. And the second that he stepped out of the arena, he was dead lane.
Jessica Martin:
He tore his lateral stifle completely off and took a piece of bone with it when it came off.
John Dowdy:
Oh.
Jessica Martin:
Yes, it was a career ending injury and after a couple vet visits, it was a life-ending injury as well. I had a local vet come first, and local vet kind of anticipated that it was a broken pelvis after doing an internal exam and suggested that I get some x-rays done and do some other tests to be positive. But he said, I mean if that stall rest in a certain position for at least a year before he can even move and putting horse down is normal with this type of injury.
Jessica Martin:
So before I moved on with that, I got a second opinion, and I went to Ryan Beck about two hours away from where I lived, and they ruled out the broken pelvis and that's when they found the lateral stifle injury. And they said, I mean, "He can be outside but he's going to be on his toe for the next few months or longer and he won't really be past your sound, but he'll be walking. You can put them down. That's what most people would do."
Jessica Martin:
And so I brought him home and really thought about it and I made the appointment to put him down because he wasn't necessarily... I felt badly leaving him in that type of condition.
John Dowdy:
Yeah, I'm sure that would have to be pretty, well with anyone, I mean heartbreaking looking out there and see him just not being able to be a horse.
Jessica Martin:
Right, just wobbling around. And I had other horses at the time, rope horses, and he was always the dominant horse. He always took over everybody. And at that point in time he wasn't able to do that anymore. And I could see it. It was really messing with his head.
Jessica Martin:
So I actually had the appointment and my mom was the one to find Equinety. She was just kind of researching things online and it popped up and she bought a case of it and said, "Let's give it a shot." I mean at this point nothing can hurt. And I started giving it to him. Gosh, it was not even two weeks when he was walking a lot better. And it was three weeks when he was walking even better. And four weeks he was walking flat-footed and little after that he was pasture sound and I ride him still. I don't barrel race him anymore.
Jessica Martin:
And if he was younger, the vets explained that things would have healed even better and it wouldn't have been a career-ending injury, but they were completely flabbergasted that he was being ridden again. I was using him for the openings at the family business, at the rodeo.
John Dowdy:
Right.
Jessica Martin:
Walk, trot, canter. He turned into kind of like a show horse, but he's being rode again, trail horse, and he's 20 now and it's very surprising that he's still with us.
John Dowdy:
Wow. Okay. So from only being able to walk on three legs, you've scheduled him to put him down because you're not seeing very much progress there. So your mom finds the Equinety product, and then obviously you... Did you just push the schedule out to have him put down or did you cancel it when you started seeing? What was going through your mind there? What was happening?
Jessica Martin:
I had so much hope that in this product after him being on it a week, I canceled it completely and I said, "I'm praying I don't have to remake this appointment again." And Equinety made that possible and I honestly could not believe it. I had to share my story with the Equinety team. So I went online and typed it all in and here I am.
John Dowdy:
Yeah, no, that's, that's incredible.
Jessica Martin:
I can't believe that I can still look out in pasture and see him out there. He was my first horse I ever had. He was my first real barrel horse, I'd been on rope horses before and putter-pattered around the barrels for fun, but he was my first real barrel horse even though we didn't anticipate that at all.
John Dowdy:
Yeah.
Jessica Martin:
But he was a one-in-a-lifetime horse, and to see him out in the pasture still is truly amazing.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. Well I'm going to throw a couple of things out there for those tuning in for the first time, Equinety Horse XL is not a miracle supplement. Although after hearing this story, I say this a lot, you might scratch your head a bit. And this is not uncommon to hear a story.
John Dowdy:
As a matter of fact, stories like this is what inspired me to actually start this podcast because after it was about a five or six month timeframe and there was a least, I mean a minimum of 50-plus phone calls, emails, you know, different people calling in, saying, "Hey, I want to thank you so much for this great product. Here's what it did for my horse." And so many of them were very similar to this, you know, some of them not as extreme. Some of them, they were scheduled to be put down and, and I'm just, Oh, my gosh." My jaw just on the table.
John Dowdy:
It hit me one day. I'm like, "You know what? It's a real shame that I'm the only one hearing this story." And there's no way that I could tell the story the same way because you know, when it's not my horse, I didn't go through the emotional journey that you have and so many others have. And so I thought, "Well maybe I'll start this podcast as a way to capture these stories and get them out," and really so other people can hear from the horse owner and they're not hearing from us. So that's kind of how the podcast was developed.
John Dowdy:
You know another thing, and it kind of taken on a life of its own, and I'll ask you this question because periodically we get comments in our Facebook advertising, "Hey, are there any double, triple, quadruple and hextuple peer-reviewed studies and all this kind of stuff done on this product?" The short answer is no. I mean there's studies that go back decades with amino acids and how they're beneficial. I mean they're amino acids, they don't have any other option but to work. It just so happens that the specific combination that we have is specific to stimulating the pituitary gland, which releases the necessary hormones to help the body heal at a cellular level. So asking you the question. I mean, do you care that there's a study or not really?
Jessica Martin:
Absolutely not. I am just happy that... I mean, I didn't see how it could hurt. I did my research on the amino acids and I don't see why someone would necessarily need to have those studies, but I can understand if you want them. But to me they don't mean anything because they helped me out in ways I can't even imagine.
John Dowdy:
Yep. And you know, I can appreciate from a medical veterinary, vet tech, those are typically the ones that are asking for it. And that's the world they live in, and I can appreciate that. But you know, at the end of the day, when you hear these stories just over and over and over and over, you know, they're amino acids and we're blessed. We have a product that works very well.
John Dowdy:
As I said before, and I'll say it again, this is not a miracle product. We highly recommend that you have your professional team, your veterinarians, your farriers, you're giving your horse the proper nutrition, everything else. It just seems to us, because we hear so many stories all the time that this combination of amino acids, they just seem to be like the missing puzzle, that puzzle piece that really just takes your horse to the next level, or really gets it into the recovery stage faster. I mean, in all the injured cases that we've heard, they always tend to heal ahead of schedule. In this case it was holy smokes, you had him scheduled to be put down and now he's riding in rodeos, you know? So that's pretty awesome.
Jessica Martin:
Yes, yes it is. And now I have every single one of my horses on it. All my performance horses are on it. All of my older horses are on it. Just because using it as a precautionary system, I mean, for a dollar a day, how can you go wrong? There's so many supplements out there, but this is the one that I found that's really worked, and I will always have my horses on it from now forth.
John Dowdy:
Yeah, and we hear that a lot. Overall with all of your horses, now you're talking performance horses that may not really have any issues going on and you're using it kind of as a preventative, but what have you noticed across the board with all of your horses being on product?
Jessica Martin:
Oh gosh. The product on the top, it tells you everything that it can possibly do. I have seen each one of those things happen, all of my horses from hoof growth. I had a thoroughbred who couldn't grow hoof walls, and I put them on it and my farrier was like, "What did you do?" And I've had one for ulcers and one for hair growth really, and weight gain. And just one horse that was older and always stiff when he came out of his stall is now coming out of his stall bucking and kicking feeling amazing.
Jessica Martin:
I mean they're all on it for different reasons and they're all taking in what they need, which is truly amazing. And I've been traveling, I'm in Florida. I've gotten my horses down here with me, and I went to Oklahoma first and they made the trip from New York to Oklahoma, and all over Oklahoma, and now Oklahoma to Florida. That's quite a toll on horses. A lot of horses lose weight, a lot of horses get stiff and every single one of them feel great. They look great. They didn't lose any weight, they didn't come off the trailer stiff, and they were on the trailer for 10 hours at a time. I mean, they were perfect and I really think it has a lot to do with this product.
John Dowdy:
Yeah, I would agree with that. And not for the sake of agreeing, it's just we hear it all the time. And you know, we've got a lot of people that are on the pro circuit that use this product. That's one of the things that they say that they haul better, recovery stamina. Typically where it used to take sometimes two, three days to recover from all the hauling and showing, now it's like one day and these horses are ready to go again.
Jessica Martin:
Right.
John Dowdy:
Yeah, we're blessed. It's a pretty darn amazing. Well let me throw this in there, because you just ran through multiple horses with all kinds of different things. So going back to what the product is actually doing in this case, what are we talking six, seven, eight horses maybe?
Jessica Martin:
I buy and sell.
John Dowdy:
Oh, okay. There you go. Yeah, so it's multiple.
Jessica Martin:
I have all of three right now, but I've had four to, I would say, six at least on it so far, and all of them have done different things.
John Dowdy:
Right? Yeah, so one of the examples that I give is you could have 12 horses, you could have 100 horses. In this case we're talking about say six, but giving them all one scoop of Equinety, because it's allowing that horse's body to release its own hormones. It's that horse's body that sending the hormones to the problem area. So in essence, it's customizing to each horses' issues.
John Dowdy:
And that's why it works in so many different areas. You know, your thoroughbred with the hoof growth, and thicker, faster growing, healthier hoof walls and everything else, and then ulcers and hair growth and recovery and not so stiff, so it's kind of customizing to each one. It's a pretty darn awesome.
John Dowdy:
Well, if there's anybody tuning into this podcast, maybe for the first time, and they might be a little bit on the fence, is there anything that you could maybe say to them other than what you've already said that might get them to go ahead and try the product?
Jessica Martin:
Well, what I found is if your horse has ever had Lyme disease or is in a place where they might receive Lyme disease, I had a horse who had Lyme disease and it changed his world 100%. What they don't tell you is that the antibiotics strip horses have their amino acids, and a lot of them kind of get into more of a state where it's harder to recover and harder to do this because they don't have those amino acids.
Jessica Martin:
And once I put this horse with Lyme disease on Equinety, it turned him around completely and made him feel like he was 10 years younger than he was. He was only 12, but it made him act and feel like he was too. But honestly, I never would have thought that horse would perform the way he's performing now because of Lyme disease, and because they caught it so late in his life.
Jessica Martin:
But in addition to that, I have become a producer and I sell the Equinety to people. And I have had multiple stories, not just by me, but from friends of mine who have 10 to 15 horses on it, Burt and Diana, and so many other people have told me amazing stories about what it's done, and I've never heard the same story twice.
John Dowdy:
Okay, so you just blew my mind here because you didn't mention that you had a horse with Lymes disease.
Jessica Martin:
I forget about it because I've gone through so many, but the horse with Lyme disease, I mean he became so stiff and I understand his pain. I have Lyme disease myself. So there's just times where you wake up and you're like, "Oh boy." And it's just stiff-acting and it strips you of your amino acids. And after some research I really looked into that, and it was like every single amino acid that is on the Equinety product list, I mean, it's all being stripped away from the antibiotics.
Jessica Martin:
I mean, it might not even be Lyme disease. It might be something else that your horse was given antibiotics for, but these antibiotics strip them of their amino acids, and plan to recover them really. But in the end it kind of hurts them a little bit.
John Dowdy:
Right.
Jessica Martin:
And they never know when it might strike. I mean, your amino acids are there for so many different reasons, and to have them gone is kind of scary if you think about it. The way that the Equinety replenished it, it made the horse a different horse.
John Dowdy:
Wow. So how long, since we were talking and talking about this, we do have questions about horses with Lymes and how it helps, and we have had some feedback on that, but since you brought it up, let's go a little bit more into detail on that and how it's affected yours. So how long was he dealing with Lymes prior to using the Equinety product?
Jessica Martin:
Oh gosh. It was a year, year and a half. I mean, he had it for quite a while and I didn't really know that the amino acids were stripped from him at that point in time. And then once I started giving it to him, I kind of was like, "Huh."
John Dowdy:
What were you noticing when you started giving it to him?
Jessica Martin:
He wasn't as stiff, he would come out of his stall feeling like a spring chicken. He was 12 acting like he was two. And I was looking at the list on the Equinety and it didn't tell me that it was supposed to make them feel 10 years younger. But I mean, I was kind of amazed at what he turned into.
Jessica Martin:
So I really looked into it because I had other horses on the product at that time and they didn't change like he did. And so I kind of looked into Lyme disease because that's the only thing that set him apart from the other horses. And in my research, the antibiotics that they give horses is what strips them of their amino acids, and I feel once they were replenished, he was kind of like, "Oh wow, I feel amazing."
John Dowdy:
Yeah.
Jessica Martin:
And I mean, he was a barrel horse. He was always a little crazy and he completely added 100% to that and he was really crazy, but in a good way of course.
John Dowdy:
Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Now I think it's also important to note too, for anybody that might be concerned that their horse is going to be hot or crazy or anything like that using this product, there's nothing in this product that makes your horse hot or over-the-top or anything. It's kind of what you described as they feel better, so they might have a little bit more spunk because just, they feel better, but they're not hot, it's just...
Jessica Martin:
Oh no, I actually had a horse that was extremely hot, like I couldn't get him to go in the arena. He was warming up a big ball of sweat because he'd get so excited, and actually the Equinety product calmed him down. I mean he was still... he was a thoroughbred. He still acted like a thoroughbred, but he was not nearly the same caliber he was, like he was uncontrollable before, and once I got him on Equinety he kind of relaxed. He didn't relax, but he was energized because he felt good.
John Dowdy:
And still focused.
Jessica Martin:
Absolutely. Still focused. Like he wanted to do his job, he was ready to work, but he just was more of a energized, ready to work, like he wanted to do his job. But he was more focused because he wasn't throwing tantrums anymore, which was awesome.
John Dowdy:
That is. And you know, that's something that we hear all the time as well is typically a horse that's hot will tend to bring them down, and one that's kind of lazy kind of brings them back up. So really it's balancing the horse from the inside out, and helping them to feel... bring out their own personality, while being overall well-balanced from the inside out is really kind of what it's doing.
Jessica Martin:
Right. And it changed horses in multiple ways for me in all of my performance horses, from rope horses to trail horses to barrel horses mainly. I mean, it completely changed the caliber of horse that I was on.
John Dowdy:
Yeah.
Jessica Martin:
I have a mare now that is a mare, and we all know how they can be.
John Dowdy:
Oh yeah.
Jessica Martin:
But she's relaxed, calmed, wants to her job and, but she's more focused. She knows her job. She always has, but before I got her she kind of would daze off like, "Oh a bird." And now it's more like, "Oh, the barrel."
John Dowdy:
Yeah.
Jessica Martin:
It's really refreshing.
John Dowdy:
Yeah.
Jessica Martin:
It feels like I'm on a horse who 100% knows what it's doing instead of 99.9, you know?
John Dowdy:
That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. Well, I tell you what, Jessica, I really appreciate you taking the time to share. Of course, we were really just going to be talking about your one horse here and it went all kinds of things, which I know you have a lot of experience with this product, and you referred out to a lot of your clients as well. But it's always great to hear from another voice and what you're experiencing on the ground, and what this was able to do for Mickey or your main barrel horse is pretty miraculous in and of itself.
John Dowdy:
And then I think this will also benefit those that are might be dealing with Lymes diseases. This product is definitely something to look into with all kinds of situations, and I think you've done a great job giving a lot of different examples here, so really appreciate it. Jessica Martin out of New York, thank you so much for taking the time to share all these stories here on the Equinety podcast.
Jessica Martin:
Of course, and thank you for having me. I love to share products and ideas with other people because I know the horse world can be difficult and tough, and finding something that really works is a blessing.
John Dowdy:
I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
Jessica Martin:
Of course. Bye.