“One Size Doesn’t Fit All”: The lifespan of sport horses begins with smart, individualized care

For Jennie Brannigan, a five-star eventing rider, horses are not tools of the trade; they are her longtime partners.

Since 2010, she has competed in 12 CCI5 events, been a member of five Nation’s Cup teams, and, with FE Lifestyle, won the Best First Timer award at the 2023 Defender Burghley Horse Trials.

In her training program at Brannigan Equestrian in West Grove, Pennsylvania, Brannigan emphasizes treating each of her special horses as an individual and carefully paying attention to their different needs.

In our Q&A with Brannigan, this top rider shares her strategies for meeting her horses’ specific needs and explains how she keeps them happy, healthy, and performing at their peak throughout their long careers.

PH: How do you encourage picky horses to eat?

JB: I think the key is really knowing your horses inside and out and understanding what works best for each one.

Some horses do better with smaller but more frequent meals throughout the day, especially those that may need a lot of calories but get bored with food.

Some horses may also not like eating in the stable, but they will eat comfortably in the pasture.

My five-star Thoroughbred Twilightslastgleam (“Comic”) was very particular about looking outside while he ate and seeing his herd mates.

He was extremely herd-bound, and if he couldn’t see his friends, he wouldn’t eat.

Isabel Turner, our wonderful groom, suggested putting his feed tub in front of his stall, and that worked really well.

A lot of times these situational details matter, and you really have to take the time to understand where each horse eats best.

For my picky horses that also need several types of support at once, I’ve found it helpful to use combined supplements so we don’t have to give them a lot of separate products.

One of our favorite products is SmartPak’s SmartCombo Ultra, because it combines five different products in one formula to support joints, tendons and ligaments, skin and coat, hooves, and the digestive system.

We horse people usually like to always be doing something, and that makes us feel like we’ve done better, but with horses, often less is more; and combined supplements help simplify our horses’ nutritional needs.

For horses that are picky about drinking different water or that don’t drink well in the summer, we use a great product called Gallagher’s Water.

It is an electrolyte powder with a hay flavor that you add to the horses’ water to encourage them to drink.

A few years ago at Burghley, my five-star horse FE Lifestyle (“Foxy”) had muscle cramping, and Steph Simpson, Boyd Martin’s groom, pulled out a pack of Gallagher’s Water for him, and he drank immediately; ever since then Isabel always keeps it on hand.

PH: How do you manage horses that are prone to digestive stress?

JB: What we ask of our horses at the upper levels of eventing is not easy; they spend a large amount of their time on the road and in stalls, and their grazing time is limited.

In fact, we try to keep everything as natural for them as possible, but when you are traveling and competing, that can be difficult.

I strongly believe that I should give my horses as much turnout time in the pasture as possible, because their bodies are built for constant movement.

The more naturally they can live, outdoors and on grass, the better.

At competitions, I also always take my horses out of the stable to graze by hand.

However, Foxy is prone to tying up, so we really have to limit her access to grass.

Even so, I want to make sure she has time outdoors, which is why we use a grazing muzzle, especially when the grass is high in sugar.

Because Foxy does not get all the vitamin E she needs from grass, we use SmartPak’s Smart & Simple Vitamin E Liquid.

Top five-star horse Brannigan, FE Lifestyle, is prone to tying up, so he limits his grass intake and supplements his diet with liquid vitamin E.

Here, Brannigan and “Foxy” are seen during their cross-country round in the CCI5-L at the 2026 Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event.

©Amy K.

Dragoo The stomach of horses is designed to receive a small amount of forage continuously, so when my horses are not on grass, we make sure they always have free access to high-quality hay.

When I lived in California, we had a lot of problems with colic because we did not have access to the same kind of grass we have in Pennsylvania, and the horses were more exposed to sand.

There we also used a product to remove sand and usually a vitamin E and selenium supplement as well, if they were deficient in either of those.

SmartCombo Ultra, which most of our horses use, contains prebiotics, probiotics, and enzymes for hindgut health, compounds to support stomach health and natural tissue repair, and psyllium to help remove sand accumulation in the digestive tract.

So, in terms of supporting the stomach and digestive tract, it covers a lot of different areas.

PH: Can you give any advice on how you manage your more anxious or hotter horses?

JB: I strongly believe that I should give my horses as much turnout time as possible, because their bodies are built for constant movement.

And when they are in the stable, we make sure they can see the other horses.

For horses that tend to be overly anxious or reactive, we use SmartPak’s SmartCalm Ultra.

Many herbal calming supplements contain ingredients that are banned by many competition organizations, but this product is not herbal and instead contains naturally calming compounds such as magnesium, vitamin B1, and tryptophan.

We have also found that feeding alfalfa helps.

Many riders worry that alfalfa will make horses hot.

But for some of our top-level horses that need more calories, Isabel and I found that feeding alfalfa instead of a larger amount of grain is very helpful.

PH: Eventing is, of course, very demanding on horses’ joints.

Can you explain any preventive measures you take to help your horses’ joint health?

JB: In our sport, it is very important to keep horses’ joints as healthy as possible, because jumping and galloping at speed put strain on the joints.

Part of that care comes down to nutritional support.

SmartCombo Ultra for my horses contains tried-and-true, effective joint-health ingredients including glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, hyaluronic acid, MSM, and vitamin C.

When you think about supplements for your horse, I recommend really reading the nutrition labels so you know exactly what is in the product.

If you compare the ingredients that SmartPak uses with some other companies, you can see that by adding substances with research support, they have really thought of everything.

So here, the saying “as the pot, so the broth” applies.

Many times, it is easy to think: “Oh, this supplement is really popular right now, so it must be amazing!

” Read the labels and do your own research.

Jennie Brannigan considers this extremely important for protecting her horses’ joints, because the eventing discipline inherently puts more strain on them.

In this image, she and Twilightslastgleam are going around the five-star 2024 Maryland 5 Star at Fair Hill course.

©Amy K.

Dragoo For horses that need it, we also use Polyglycan injections.

But to strengthen my horses’ long-term joint health, I strongly believe in keeping them moving.

In addition to turnout in the pasture, we also use a hot walker for low-impact exercise.

It is also very important to me to give my horses enough time to warm up at the walk.

It is easy to get used to just getting on and moving off, but early in my career my trainers taught me that horses should always walk for 15 minutes before trotting.

This is a good way to give your horse a chance to loosen up, especially if it has been stalled for a while.

If you spent most of your time in bed and then were asked to do a hard workout, you would probably want to warm up first too.

PH: The saying “no hoof, no horse” is an undeniable truth in eventing.

How do you support your horses’ hoof health?

JB: In recent years I have learned much more about hoof care.

Foxy was actually the first American horse ever to win the “Best Shod” title at Burghley.

Having a good farrier is at the top of my horse-care list.

It is not so much about the type of shoe; it is more about finding a farrier who specializes in maintaining balance through corrective trimming.

For Brannigan, having an experienced farrier is at the top of her horse-care list.

Comic had absolutely disastrous, completely unsuitable feet for a Thoroughbred, so it is really amazing how much you can achieve with the right program and care.

But good shoeing work goes hand in hand with nutrition.

The SmartPak combination supplement for my horses includes biotin, amino acids, copper, and zinc to make sure they get the key nutrients needed for hoof health.

PH: What other aspects of your training program help your horses’ longevity?

JB: I believe in giving my horses enough time off between competitions.

These days in U.

The amount of competition is truly astonishing; except for December, you can compete in eventing every month.

Foxy is 16 years old and, as they say, has never had any injuries apart from a cut in the trailer.

Every time you compete in eventing, especially at the higher levels, tiny tears are created in the horses’ tendons.

If a few days later you put the horse back to work for a gallop or a jumping lesson, you greatly increase the risk of injury; that is why I have learned that these microtears need time to heal, and only then should you go back to competition.

My horses are not machines.

They are my partners and have been working with me for years.

So I do not send them out to every competition on the calendar.

I target the important competitions and give my horses a good winter rest so they can recover completely.

Then I gradually bring them back up to peak condition.

The British are a good example of why these rests are so important.

Their weather makes it impossible to compete year-round, but look how well they do.

I also use a heart-rate monitoring program and collaborate with New Bolton Center at the University of Pennsylvania on a study; so over the past five or six years I have gathered a large body of data on what Foxy’s heart rate is like and how high his gallop has been.

This information gives us a very good basis for his fitness and for what condition he needs to be in to enter a major event like Kentucky.

Brannigan considers all his horses to be his partners and, to increase their longevity, carefully chooses how many competitions they take part in and always gives them rest and enough time to recover between competitions.

The better you know your horse, the longer it will last, and the less you need to work it in preparation.

It is a complete cycle: if you give them a chance to recover and make them compete in only a few selected events each year, they build a better fitness base and can do their job better and for longer.

To me, that means simply being a good horse person.

I have had most of my horses since they were 4 years old.

Comic, like many of my horses, is a Thoroughbred and, because of his racing background, had many physical limitations; so I am very grateful that at 16 he has now retired from competition and is happy and healthy in the pasture.

That is my goal as a horse lover; not just to win several events.

For more information: To learn more about the SmartPak supplements that Brannigan gives his horses, and to read about all SmartPak products, click here.

More information about sport horse nutrition can be found here.

Source: Practical Horseman – Health

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