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Is Your Horse's Skin Care Better Than Yours?

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Horse Laughs

Is Your Horse's Skin Care Better Than Yours?

Quick Quiz: Between you and your horse, who has the more expensive shampoo? Who has more regular manicures? Whose hair is conditioned more often? If you could answer "my horse" to any of the above questions, you need to meet Donna Mastrianni.

Donna is a Licensed Esthetician, spa consultant and creator of Donne & Cavalli skin care products for equestrians. She took some time recently to give some advice about simple skin care for riders, and give advice on using essential oils on ourselves and our horses.

Q: What's a good skin regimen for teens and moms?

A: For teen skin, nightly cleansing with a non drying creamy cleanser and a cotton washcloth, no soap (meaning solid opaque bar soap), followed at night with an age appropriate moisturizer. I would suggest something with vitamins in it because that is best to fight free radicals from being outside.

As for horse show moms, any age needs the same advice. What changes is the products used for the appropriate skin type. No one should use the opaque bar soap anymore, it's way too drying. Again, creamy cleanser at night--for noms a cream with vitamin C and/or Peptides for firming, hydrating, balancing color. Exfoliate a couple of times a week and follow with skin appropriate masks. Masks are great and we do not use them that much in the US. There are masks for exfoliating, hydrating, purifyuing, cleaning, plmping, tightening ...we should have several in our collection to use weekly depending on your skin's need.

Q: Horse people tend to lavish attention on their horses but skimp on themselves. If you had to concentrate on only the simplest regimen, what would come first, second, and (if there's time) third?

A: Great question and in today's economy we should only use what is important: 1. Cleanser 2. SPF 3. Treatment cream

Q: Do you have any tips for being outside in this hot weather?

A: Bring a plastic baggy with a cool wet washcloth in your cooler to the barn or show. When you get over heated or sweaty this is the cleanest thing to wash your face with. Try also carrying a large bottle of distilled water to pour on to the washcloth instead of water from the sinks or hoses at the shows or barns. Also most important drink as much water as you feel the need to while you are out in the elements' this keeps the body strong and fluid as well as the skin hydrated.

Q: Donne and Cavalli, your skin care line, has the most wonderful scents due to the essential oils you use. Can you talk a little about the use of these?

A: Essential oils have been used for centuries. Each plant, flower, root, herb, bark, tree, leaf has its own properties that act certain ways on the body and mind if used appropriately. Medicine was founded on herbs and plants and the essential oils extracted from those plants can be used as holistic remedies to this day. However, just because the bottle says aromatherapy or essential oil does not necessarily mean it is. Fragrance vs. essential oils can be tricky. Aromatherapy only works if the scent actually is distilled from the botanical and not synthetically manufactured to smell similar to the botanical. Read your labels, make sure the Latin name of the plant is used and that, if it's an essential oil, it is in a dark colored glass bottle. If it is a cream it can be in a plastic bottle but the dilution is much less efective thatn the actual essential oil itself.

Q: How might we use essential oils for our horses?

A: As for the use of essenital oils for the horse, I carry several in my tack box. Lemongrass, Geranium, Lavender (augustofolia),Peppermint,Eucalyptus, Tea Tree, Carrot Seed and Neem Oil are the basic ones. Each has a particular use. Most of them I blend together in distilled water for keeping away the gnats and pests but it also helps with various other things I am trying to attend to. Lavender is the most used because of its myriad of healing properties as well as the balancing and calming effect it has on both horse and rider. My new blend of Organic Body Lotion contains Spikenard from Nepal, Lavender from South Africa and Sage from Spain. This is a deeply calming blend and it is healing to the skin and penetrates without a trace of stickiness on the skin.

Q: People are often looking for products for their hot, nervous or fearful horses. What do you recommend?

A: Lavendula Augustifolia is my choice in a dried organic flower bud for the horse to smell and nibble on; use a 1/2 teaspoon. I also put 10 drops in a bucket of water and wipe down the horse with this solution all over the body, ears and face. This usually helps dogs, cats and horses as well as people! Research your companies before purchasing essential oils to make sure they are not diluted or filled with pesticides. Here are several good companies I personally order from: Elizabeth Van Buren Essential oils; White Lotus Aromatics; and Sun Rose online suppliers.

Thanks, Donna, for this "essential" information!


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Horse Laughs: Money Well Squandered

This month’s column is a public service announcement. In checking my Google archives the other day, I saw that someone found my website offering advice for horse show parents by Googling: “Is a show horse a good financial investment?”.

I pause here to let you savor, as I did, the full irony of that question.

I told my husband about it, and after we had both stopped laughing, I decided it is a topic that needs addressing here.

To the good soul who innocently asked this question I would say, keeping a very straight face, there are three rules of show horses as investments. The first rule is that a show horse ranks as a financial investment somewhere below taking a huge pile of cash, digging a fire pit, and burning all your money in it. The main difference between the show horse and the fire pit of money is that, after the initial burn, you are not then required to keep feeding the flames with all your available dough.

Whereas, after burning a substantial sum of money on the show horse, you have to keep pumping money into said "investment". You have to fund the feeding, training, grooming, vetting and "campaigning" of your investment. Much as if you invested in, say, ExxonMobil and found that your stock purchase required you, personally, to feed all the employees and buy all the new oil rigs. Not to mention paying for all the advertising and cleaning the bathrooms.

Then there's another basic tenet of investments: they're expected to appreciate in value, and at some point their owners plan to reap the profit of that appreciation.

Let's assume that, for the sake of argument, your show horse does increase in value. Leave aside for a moment, as we do in our household, the calculation of how much money you've spent getting old Railhead to the point where his sale price would exceed his purchase price; let’s just assume that you have a horse that people want to buy for more than you paid for him.

This much I can guarantee you: when that happens you will not want to sell him. As soon as people are clamoring to give you loads of money for Railhead, you would rather cut off your arm than allow him to be purchased. This is the second rule of show horses as investments.

It would be as if you bought that aforementioned Oil Stock, and then you spent all your time grooming the Stock, and playing with it, and feeding it carrots, and when the market has finally spiked, and it's time for you to sell your Oil Stock and get some profit, you can't! You've become attached to your Stock. It’s part of the family. Why, you even have pictures of you and your Stock all over the house.

So trust me, you won't be ready to sell your horse when he's reached his top value. You will not want to sell him until his value has decreased to the point where you can't give him away. And at that destitute point, you would give your right arm if someone would just take him off your hands. Meanwhile, he’s still eating.

That's when you'll learn the third rule of show horses as investments: In order to sell Railhead at all, you have to spend a Mount Everest of money re-training him.

Never mind that you spent your kids' inheritance getting Railhead trained in the first place. Somehow all that training and competing has messed him up. Okay … maybe “someone” (his rider) has let him learn some mildly annoying habits (gate sour, ring sour, judge sour, biting, kicking). Now he needs equine reform school. Get out your checkbook.

Personally, I don't know any amateur horse owner who keeps track of their total expenditures on horses. It’s too horrifying. But even when we run a rough total, we tend to leave out a lot of associated costs – like matching leopard print leg wraps and slinky, or all-natural organic horse treats. These add up, don’t you know. But they’re absolutely necessary. Just ask me.

No, I’d have to say to my hopeful querier, if you're looking for a good financial investment, just drive right on past that breeding farm with the emerald fields and gleaming fences. Ignore those handsome horses with the glowing coats and soft eyes serenely grazing, or playing catch-me-if-you-can in the summer twilight. If you can do that, you shouldn’t be a horse owner anyway.

If you can’t – welcome to the club.

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