The Farmily
Horse enrichment with no added sugar, no salt, no copper, no electrolytes — safe for every animal on your farm.
It started with a simple goal: species-appropriate care and enrichment for the horses at a new farm. Real forage. Real movement. Real autonomy — including letting them choose their own flavors. What I didn’t plan on was the barn dog helping himself to the water buckets. Or the cat. Or the mule. Turns out when you build something with no added sugar, no salt, no copper, and no electrolytes, the whole farm can have it. So now they do.
“No added sugar. No salt. No copper. No electrolytes. Which means every animal on your farm can have this.”
Most equine products are off-limits for dogs, cats, goats, and cattle because of added copper or salt. I don’t add either. That wasn’t an accident — it was a decision rooted in species-appropriate care. The result is a hydration and enrichment system that works for the whole farm, not just the horses. The barn dog figured that out before I even thought to mention it.
The Horses
The original testers. The reason any of this exists.
The Devil’s Garden HMA is a forestry herd — no formal government protection, no freeze brand, just a microchip and a much shorter distance to the slaughter pipeline. Draft horses have been introduced into the herd over the years, so some of them grow large. In the middle of COVID, there was a pilot program in Missoula, Montana putting 90 days of training on 12 Devil’s Garden horses. The gentleman running it had started a similar inmate program in Sacramento.
There was a picture of a scrawny three-year-old sooty buckskin gelding. I drove seven and a half hours just to look.
When I got there, he didn’t panic in the herd. He moved away, considered the threat level, and slowed down. He was thinking. Standing at the rail in a full suit of Carhartts in February in Montana, I looked at Joe Meisner and said: I already named him on the drive over. Where do I send the money?
During COVID, once a month for four or five months, I drove from Seattle to Missoula for weekends learning from Joe and getting to know my horse. Then I rented a trailer, brought him to Woodinville, got promoted, and drove six days straight from Seattle to Tampa with two dogs and a fresh-from-the-wild mustang in the truck. He’s my dude. My silly monkey. He’s my boy.
He carries rakes. He picks up sticks and offers them to the other horses like he wants them to play. He licks other horses’ faces. He has a lot to say, and a horse’s mouth is how they communicate, so he says all of it. He grew from a scrawny three-year-old into a horse that women at every barn he’s ever been at have developed a crush on. He thinks that’s appropriate.
He had a soft, persistent cough for a long time. I’d always been told horses just cough — warming up, clearing their lungs. But horses have enormous respiratory capacity and even a small cough is worth paying attention to. When I made the connection to inflammation and histamine response and put him on Benchmark — the cough stopped.
Benchmark Protocol Respiratory
Reacher came into the picture because Wick needed a friend and nobody wanted to turn their horse out with a four-year-old mustang. So the solution was simple: get Wick a horse. What arrived was a 16.1 hand barrel racing quarter horse — been there, done that, kids rode trails on him — who was waiting at the gate when I went to see him and had active ulcers his owner was upfront about.
He was an anxious people-pleaser. Inverted, worried, trying so hard to anticipate what you wanted that the trying itself made him tense. He reminded me of my first horse, Windy — the kind of horse so desperate to get it right that she couldn’t settle long enough to try. He needed a soft landing. He got one.
Working with what I’d learned from Warwick Schiller about allowing a horse to say no, I gave Reacher that option. The first time he quietly showed concern and I stepped back and told him I saw it — the look on his face was pure surprise. You saw that? And then he said no to everything for about six months. No. Nope. Not that. Absolutely not. Thank you very much, no.
That’s actually fairly common. As Leslie Desmond says: “Yes has no value when no is not an option.” Reacher had been saying yes for so long that when the no became available, he used it. Extensively. And then, slowly, the yeses came back. Tentative at first — because the fear is that if you say yes, the no gets taken away. That turned out to be a teaching moment that had nothing to do with horses.
He had a septic tendon injury two years ago that nearly killed him. Two vets have called him a miracle. He’s retired now — officially a pasture puff — and he is the grumpiest, most opinionated, most comfortable-in-his-own-skin horse on the property. Best big brother to Tae. Finally actual friends with Wick. Very clear about what he wants and what he doesn’t.
Clinically: he used to break out in random hives and lose the hair on his chest, along his girth line, and under his jaw. Last year he wore a full fly sheet and hood. This year — a mask and fly spray. That’s Benchmark.
Benchmark Protocol Allergy & Hives
Lorilei was rounded up from a Utah herd management area at two years old. She went to auction multiple times. Nobody bought her. A woman eventually took her on, put months of training into her as an endurance prospect, and when she never fully settled, sold her — with promises she’d be safe.
She wasn’t. Nobody knows exactly what happened in the gap. What I know is she arrived starving, untouchable, and ready to fight anyone who came close. A bite-and-kick situation. A refeeding program situation. A years-long earning-of-trust situation.
Then came the Midge allergy. Culicoides hypersensitivity — thickened skin, hair loss, bloody self-inflicted wounds from the itching. Her face. Her chest. Her mane, tail, legs, belly. Everywhere. The vet prescribed dexamethasone. It helped. But dex is a steroid, and long-term use in horses risks laminitis — a condition that, if it can’t be reversed, ends lives. I couldn’t get her off it.
The vet said if I couldn’t get her to a lower dose, she’d have to be sent north. A cooler environment. Away from the bugs. Away from the herd. Away from the only place she’d ever felt safe. This happens more than people talk about — a horse owner who loves their animal being told the kindest thing is to let them go somewhere else. For Lorilei, who’d already been passed from hand to hand, who didn’t trust people, who had finally found her herd and her person — that was not an option.
So I went and found the studies myself. That’s where Improve Equine started. Every product traces back to this mare.
She’s home now. People who knew her before and know her now comment on it — the quiet confidence, the comfort in her own body, the way she sleeps daily in the sun. Tae is her surrogate baby. She is deferential to no one and peaceful with everyone. She’s home.
Protocol Origin Benchmark Max
Mo Cupan Tae is Gaelic for my cup of tea. He arrived as a weanling based on two pictures and a couple of emails from a veterinarian in Missouri who breeds Irish Sport Horses. The Irish Sport Horse has been a lifelong dream — the kind of horse you carry around in a breed book as a kid and never quite let go of. When she had a weanling available, I sent the money.
He arrived terrified. Small halter, trailer by himself, full panic when I went in to get him. But he never offered to trample. He never offered to kick. His fundamental personality — curious, kind, enormous — was already there. I took the halter off in the stall because it was too small and it was the right thing to do. When a boarder suggested just catching him and putting a new one on, I said no. He just got here. His entire world had shifted. I was not going to be the first thing that scared him.
That has been the litmus test with Tae ever since. When something concerns him, I stop and pause. He has grown into the most confident, curious, joyful giant on the property. He’s not yet two and he’s already taller than my 16.2 hand draft mule. His vet comments on his weight, his condition, how genuinely healthy he looks growing up outside in a herd with real movement and real socialization.
Lorilei is his surrogate mother. He plays rough with everyone else and is completely deferential to a pony mare who is approximately one-third his size. At the water buffet he snorkels, splashes, tries every flavor, and approaches the whole experience with the energy of someone who has never once been disappointed by anything. He hasn’t. He grew up here.
Water Buffet Species Appropriate CareThe Mule
Proof the Farmily isn’t just horses.
Ruthie had been in a veteran therapy program and was returned. Arthritis. Side bone. Difficult to shoe because standing on three legs was painful. Difficult to handle because she’d learned that handling meant pain, and mules — unlike horses, who will warn you repeatedly — simply set the boundary. No warnings. Just no. They were considering putting her down.
A student mentioned her. In the middle of being laid off from a corporate job and trying to start a new business, on the drive over, there was a very quiet voice that said: this is the work. I listened.
She walked straight over and put her full head on my chest and stood there. The woman who had her said she doesn’t do that unless she really likes somebody. I went and hooked up the trailer.
The anger I felt from her when I first tried to handle her was cold and clear — the kind of rage that comes from an animal who has been asked to endure pain too many times and has decided it’s simply not happening again. I honored that. I figured out what was urgent and what could wait. And while she was sleeping — because when she finally felt safe she slept, deeply and often, making up for what had clearly been a very long time of not feeling safe — I started trimming her feet. She’d lie down, I’d work, she was fine. It took four to six months for her to believe I wasn’t going to hurt her.
What I eventually figured out is that Ruthie wants to be part of the conversation. If you explain what you want, she does it. I rarely put a halter on her. Most of the time I just point. She also figured out the water buffet before anyone else did. She’ll stand at the buckets for twenty to thirty minutes — smelling, considering, tasting, holding the flavor in her mouth — and then she yawns. Over and over. A full parasympathetic release. Rest and digest. She’s not just drinking. She’s unwinding.
She’s on Equiox daily and a custom turmeric and meadowsweet blend — meadowsweet being nature’s bute. She’s a pasture puff by choice. And someday, when the right draft mule who needs a soft landing comes along, she’ll have a friend of her own kind. I’m staying open to it.
Water Buffet Joint SupportThe Dogs
Their horses. Their farm. Their water buckets, apparently.
Somebody found him and brought him to a vet. He was younger than four months old and nobody knows what happened. Rebuilt hip, leg, and knee. Near-complete degloving. Multiple surgeries before he was even a year old.
The rescue wouldn’t call back. When I finally got someone on the phone, she said Trooper’s very special and they’re not just letting him go anywhere. I stopped her and said: would you like me to tell you what his life would look like? She said yes. The next day they put him in the truck.
He has a pimp limp on his left side. So do I — left hip bursitis from Muay Thai in my thirties. Same side. The vets said he wouldn’t be a daily walk dog, that exercise needed to be carefully managed. He now runs 11 acres whenever he feels like it. When he overdoes it and comes up a little stiff, Benchmark Max has him walking normally by the next day.
He is a farm dog doing a farm dog’s job. He has strong opinions about his property, his animals, and his person. Don’t reach for the black dog — if he wants to be your friend, he’ll come to you. And if he does come to you, you will experience the love walk: ears down, whole body loose and wiggling, moving toward you like there is nowhere on earth he’d rather be. He is the little spoon. He is the good morning tail thump. He is 97 pounds of reconstructed joints and absolute mushiness toward exactly the people he has chosen.
He was the first one to discover the horse water buckets. He waits until the horses are done and then conducts his own tasting — checks every flavor, picks the one he wants that day. He is the origin story of the canine line. His joints are the clinical argument. The dogs licking the bowls clean on a scaled-down Benchmark Max formula is the proof of concept.
Benchmark Max Joint Recovery Canine Line Origin
The Rhodesian Ridgeback has always been the dream — same way the Irish Sport Horse has always been the dream. A friend from South Africa suggested the name when I got her. Nandi. Sweet one in Zulu. She lived up to it within thirty seconds of meeting me — climbed straight into my lap and that was it.
She’d been getting beaten up by the rest of her litter. The breeder called about a second puppy, was probably going to have to separate her. I said bring her out anyway. She came out and found her person. Done.
Growing up on 11 acres with horses has done something remarkable to her physically. She is muscle and sinew and when she’s on the far side of the pasture and I whistle and she starts running toward me — it is one of the most purely joyful things I have ever seen. Speed and agility and complete happiness, all at once.
These are her horses. She runs with them, checks on them in the stalls, tries to sleep in the same places they sleep. The horses may have a slightly different interpretation of events. She doesn’t care. She also has a standing arrangement with Frank — they nap together regularly, completely entwined, and both of them act like this is completely normal.
She loves her one-pocket treats. She loves her frozen enrichment treats — monkey business with extra kefir is her summer non-negotiable. She knows exactly what she wants and has no patience for approximations.
Enrichment One-Pocket TreatsThe Cat
Quality Control · Uninvited · Confirmed Formula is Cat-Safe Through Repeated Unauthorized Sampling
I wanted barn cats. I specifically wanted an orange boy. The ladies at the feed store knew. When a handwritten note went up — kittens for sale, $25 — they called me. It was a litter of feral kittens living under someone’s house. Frank spit and hissed at me for weeks. He fell in love with the dogs before he ever warmed up to me.
When I moved to the farm I made sure he spent enough time in the house first — knew where it was, was big enough not to be taken by predators. I installed a cat door on the feed room. I put him in the feed room. He kept running back to the house. He has never successfully stayed in the barn. He is a failed barn cat.
He is not, however, a failed predator. He is simply a predator who has decided that apex hunting and soft blankets are not mutually exclusive. He goes out, he does what he does, and then at 2am I wake up to absolute chaos — frogs, lizards, and on three separate occasions, a flying squirrel. He brings them inside. For reasons.
He comes with me to the barn when I do barn things. He comes back inside when he’s done. He likes to be carried. He will scream until I carry him. He is on the most expensive prescription urinary food available and requires a filtered water fountain. He steals horse treats directly off the prep table and has done so with complete confidence since day one.
He is not my cat. He is the dogs’ cat. He and Nandi nap together regularly, fully entwined. He has confirmed, through years of unauthorized product sampling, that the formula is cat-safe. I’ve made peace with it. Frank has always done exactly what Frank wanted to do. That is apparently also his quality control methodology.
Unauthorized Tester Cat Safe FormulaReady to set up the Water Buffet?
No added sugar. No salt. No copper. No electrolytes. One system, every animal on your farm covered — horses, mules, dogs, and whatever Frank decides to confirm next.
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