The rubber figure

8 noseband

THE rubber figure 8 noseband is made from one solid, continuous piece of rubber, which means it won’t tear and break. It is often used as a solution to buckle rubs from other nosebands. Denis Cullen’s Presenting Julio wears this type of noseband and when asked what he thought about this piece of tack Cullen said: “I really like the noseband and use it on a lot of horses.

“It does the same job as a cross noseband – it keeps the mouth closed and doesn’t allow the horse to get the tongue over the bit – but it is less severe.

“It doesn’t have buckles around the jaw so you can’t over-tighten it. I’m very happy with it, I’ve been using these nosebands for about two years and I have never had to replace them due to wear.

“They are easy to put on the horse, you simply loosen the buckle at the horses cheek, lower the noseband to cross and loop it over the horse’s nose and then adjust the buckle at the side again so that the noseband sits comfortably on the horse.

New Zoetis HorseDialog App

ZOETIS has launched a new horse healthcare and management app. HorseDialog allows you to keep your horse’s records, care and exercise schedules and also helps you and your vet to work together to monitor your horse’s health routine.

HorseDialog can be linked to your own vet practice, accessed with a unique Vet ID code and is available for download on iOS and Android mobile devices from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. By following the brief tutorials on each screen you can quickly and securely input all the essential data for every horse in your care, including passport number and insurance policy details.

This important information is directly accessible to your vet via a secure web dashboard. Selected data within your horse’s Care Schedule can be sent by email to others involved with the care of your horse, such as your yard manager.

HorseDialog’s highly organised care schedule allows you to input key details about your horse’s personal routine. You can add the things you do daily or weekly for your horse – such as feeding, exercise, turnout and medication. You can schedule events that happen every few days, months or annually in your horse’s lifetime such as regular medication, vaccinations, farriery, worming and weight measurement.

Specific contacts for each horse can be stored, such as the name and number of their farrier, rider or yard manager and push notifications can be set up to make sure you don’t miss any appointments or daily tasks.

Horse owner Grace Godwin trialled the app with Endell Equine Hospital during the summer. She said: “In my view HorseDialog is an accessible app for horse owners because it puts the information I need in one easy place. Initially I was apprehensive that it would be time consuming to input all the details but the design is so intuitive that it takes seconds to add updates.

“Being able to share information on feeding, medication, routine and exercise with my vet at Endell Equine Hospital was very reassuring. It was also a big time saver to be able to share all this information when going away on holiday, rather than having to sit down and write a long note about Freckles and Vesta’s management routine.”

Speak to your vet to find out more.