What happens when some of the equestrian industry’s most experienced voices come together with one shared goal: helping yard owners build stronger, more sustainable businesses?
In this special episode of Stable Science, Helen Stock is joined by YardWise co-founders Amanda Watson and Cheryl Johns to lift the lid on YardWise 2026—the unique event designed specifically for livery yards, riding schools, equestrian centres, and yard managers.
Following the incredible success of last year’s event, YardWise returns bigger than ever, expanding to two days packed with expert guidance, practical solutions, welfare-focused insights, business support, and invaluable networking opportunities.
But this isn’t another conference where you’re simply talked at.
YardWise is built around real conversations, real challenges, and real solutions. Throughout this episode, you’ll discover why so many attendees described last year’s event as transformative, how the expert roundtable sessions give direct access to leading specialists, and why collaboration and community are becoming essential tools for future-proofing equestrian businesses.
Whether you’re struggling with rising costs, staff management, horse welfare, compliance, diversification, pasture management, marketing, contracts, risk management, or simply trying to make your business more sustainable, this episode provides a fascinating insight into the topics shaping the future of the industry.
In this episode you’ll discover:
• Why YardWise has expanded to two days for 2026
• The biggest challenges currently facing equestrian businesses
• How welfare and business success go hand in hand
• Why networking with fellow yard owners can be game-changing
• What makes the YardWise expert roundtables so unique
• The industry-leading speakers and specialists attending this year
• Practical ways to improve efficiency, profitability, and long-term sustainability
• How one piece of advice could transform the way you run your yard
Most importantly, you’ll hear why so many business owners left last year’s event feeling inspired, supported, and armed with actionable ideas they could implement immediately.
If you’re involved in running, managing, supporting, or developing an equestrian business, this episode is packed with insights, inspiration, and expert knowledge that could make a real difference to your future success.
Listen now and discover why YardWise is quickly becoming one of the most valuable events in the equestrian business calendar.
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Transcription
Here is a transcription of the podcast. (Please note this is an automated transcription, so we apologise for any errors from the original podcast.)
Okay. Hi, i’m dr david marlin and today i’m here with jim chiapetta who is the founder Of the Flair equine nasal strips. Hi jim. How are you? Hey david. How are you doing? Well, thank you good. ⁓ I mean we’ve known each other quite a few years and ⁓ perhaps we’ll come to that in a bit but For people who who don’t know about you. ⁓
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, how you became involved with horses and ⁓ then in equine sport? Sure. I started out as an equine veterinarian in the States and had a surgery practice across the street from a racetrack. And I did that at the start of my career for about eight years. And after that, I got involved with a ⁓ human
position doing work on spinal cords and spinal stability. And I started working with him on the side and doing some surgery for him. And ⁓ over time, I decided to leave veterinary medicine at the time and I entered law and I went into the world of patent law and worked from there. got into human medical products. And so I spent a good chunk of my career ⁓ working on FDA medical products for the heart, for the brain.
And, ⁓ but my passion has always been horses and my friends and colleagues over the years have always been horses. so somewhere in there early on, after I’d left veterinary medicine, we came up with Flair strips and, ⁓ I, was going to stay involved with that company and that product while I was in the corporate world. And how long have Flair nasal strips been on the market? We launched them at
Breeders’ Cup USA 1999. wow. So a long time now. And I mean, you know, when you started this, you because they’re pretty much around the world, you know, so did you imagine that it would get this big?
We really didn’t know ⁓ what would happen with it. No, I think the thing that ⁓ happens, but it’s a process, right? It takes time was when studies were conducted over the years that studies, those studies started adding to the data where now we’re seeing them show up in veterinary textbooks and more recommendations from veterinarians, ⁓ but it’s a process. So.
At the time, I think if you knew it was going to take that long, you’d scratch your head and say, what am I doing? So it’s probably good to be naive at the time on how long it does take to really educate and make a change and introducing something like that to the world. And I’m guessing you watched Badminton just recently. Last week, was quite a few horses on cross country with nasal strips on.
Yeah, I was really pleased to see to see that quite a good turnout with flair strips on the course So I could watch it streaming from the u.s. This year and then of course, mean Well, we have people from all around the world listening to this Of course people in the uk perhaps aren’t so familiar with barrel racing, but I know For example Flair strips are really big in barrel racing in racing in the u.s. eventing is
Is it fair to say those are the major disciplines? Yeah, think it’s three day eventing is significant. Thoroughbred racing as well as barrel racing is a large market for us. But barrel racing in the United States is a very big market. And what about endurance? Because, well, we probably, I’m getting ahead of myself here, but I’m always intrigued by why, you know,
I see them as a legal performance enhancement. You know that, but and again, we will come on to what the first two, but it’s, it’s funny how some different areas of the question will pick them up and really run with them. Others seem to not be so ⁓ receptive, shall we say? Yeah. I mean, you would think something like endurance where those horses are.
Definitely getting fatigued in the time that they’re out there would be a bigger market. It hasn’t been a huge market for us. By the same token, we’re a small company. And so you kind of pick those markets that are easiest to access. And you have to pick your targets that I think endurance, there’s a significant role for the strips. We just haven’t really penetrated that market as well as some of the more ⁓ shorter duration, higher intensity.
Okay, well look, we should we should delve into that in a bit more. I’m thinking back, you know, we said at the start there that we’ve known each other for a long time. I’m trying to remember, did we first meet at Kansas State University? it? Yeah, I was thinking of that this morning. I think you were doing a postdoc at Kansas, but we were at a meeting like an American college.
veterinary and so I don’t think I met you physically at Kansas State. You were there at the time, but we were in a different meeting, maybe in Chicago that we met. because obviously that was the stage. I was going to a lot of the respiratory stuff like the World Equine Airways Symposium. And then what was the other one? ⁓ Comparative Respiratory Society.
Yeah, something like that. So yeah, I’m pretty certain we would have met at those. I know we had a lot of interesting discussions because I was working with Colin Roberts doing upper airway endoscopies and ⁓ we were measuring airflow in horses with the ultrasonic system, the really low resistance. ⁓
probably still the best system in the world for measuring airflow in horses. ⁓ But yeah, so I was really interested in that. And it’s funny when, you when you started talking to me about this, the problem of the skin over the nasal incisive notch being sucked inwards, you know, you see it every day and you don’t really see it. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
the fact that that flap of skin on inspiration when horses are running hard gets sucked in so much. And of course that increases the resistance to breathing. What we say that about 15 % of the total energy a horse expends is work of breathing. So that’s not insignificant. And of course, well.
that we had those discussions and you know, the nasal strips for people, there was good science behind those. that’s perhaps people don’t realize humans, we call, ⁓ we are not obligate nasal breathers, we can breathe through our nose and through our mouth. Of course, the horse can only breathe through its nose unless it’s got some sort of abnormality. So how did that sort of
Where was the light bulb moment? You said we’ve got to make these for horses.
That came from actually my original partner, Dr. Ed Block, ⁓ who I started out ⁓ with as a veterinarian. He had called me one night ⁓ and just brought it up in topic of why no one had thought about doing it in horses. And we laughed about it. ⁓ But it was a time after I had left veterinary school, but I had a lot of friends still there and they would leave the back door open of the pathology lab and on post-mortem.
I went in and started dissecting the horse’s nose and looking at it and where we, how we could have an impact on this, if we could have an impact on this. And it became clear that there was this area of the nasal passage, not the nostrils, not the nostrils, behind the nostrils, which ⁓ was the much narrower than anywhere else in the respiratory tract. And as time went on, we did find literature. I think ⁓ art is a great, ⁓
paper out there on where the greatest point of resistance is in the horse’s upper airway, right? We know 50 % of the resistance, well, it’s more than 50, comes from the upper airway and breathing. And of that, 50 % is in the nasal passages. And the nostrils, they open up and you see these huge nostrils, but it’s everything behind there that the size starts to shrink where you have this issue of
tissue collapse. And we just ⁓ focused on that in our dissection and that kind of led us to where we should consider putting the nasal strip. And then I think we learned more as time went on. think one of the most fascinating things I learned is I have an uncle that lives not far from you. You know, when I visit you, I go and stay with him. a prophet. Cambridge. And he was reading a book one day and he said, hey, look at this. And it was taking place in the 1600s.
and warriors before they take their horses to battle, whether you think it’s humane or not, would cut that tissue out because it gave their horses more endurance. it’s, know, in a way it’s not a new concept. We kind of missed it for a while, but according to this chunk of literature, people thought about it back then as well to help the horse, ⁓ you know, make up for this, what I consider an anatomical shortcoming in, ⁓ for a horse that only breathes the red snow.
And that’s a really interesting point that I wouldn’t mind picking up on because people say, well, you know, why do you need to support this? Surely, you know, the horse is evolved to be able to breathe. Well, of course, in the wild, they they sprint for 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds. They don’t do 20 minutes cross country, 15 minutes cross country or, know, that’s a bit long. But, know, they don’t do 10 minute cross countries.
They don’t do 20 minute polar matches. don’t, you know, they don’t race flat out for two minutes. So they evolved to be able to the breathing funny enough, wasn’t probably that important to them. It was mainly an anaerobic short term sprint. and you know, that, that wasn’t really that important that there was high resistance in the, but it
Of course, the longer you go on and the harder you’re working, the longer you’re working, the more important the respiratory system becomes. mean, they are the ultimate athlete being able to do all these different things from sprints to endurance. But it’s an interesting one that we’ve never really managed to breathe into them a better upper airway.
or the evolution hasn’t caught up with the rate of our demand on them for their performance that I totally agree. I think the system works wonderful if you’re a grazing animal that happened to be a grazing animal with an amazing capability in their lungs for aerobic performance. But the whole system wasn’t designed for that. And we’re asking them to go longer, further, harder than nature ever asked them to.
And that’s where it puts ⁓ demand on this tissue. And we do that with a lot of our athletic events, right? We push ourselves beyond what we were designed to do. And so we’ve got to look for ways to, so if we’re overstressing the system, are there things we can do to help mitigate that overstress, to help optimize the health and performance of them as we ask these, know, more demands, as we make more demands from them. And really that leads us into something that
I guess we should talk about in the next session, but of course, exercise induced pulmonary hemorrhage. know, people say, well, why do they, you know, why do they bleed in the lung? you know, when they exercise more than a sort of, you know, even really a slow trot, you know, but if you’re only exercising for 10, 20 seconds, you’re probably not going to get that much damage. But of course, the harder you exercise and the longer you exercise, we know they do get more damage.
But one of the things that was different about Flare, think, ⁓ a lot of companies, a lot of people introducing new products in the equestrian world tend to spend 90 % of their money on marketing and not very much on supporting their claims. You went down that other route of investing in studies to support.
any claims that you were then going to make. mean, you know, that was that was I would say that’s a good choice. Being a scientist, what? Yeah, I mean, I had two concerns as one as a young veterinarian. ⁓ I was always confronted with new products coming to the market and you try to find data to find out if it was real or marketers. And 90 % of the time it would be marketers. And so
The other thing is when we started this product, we started it with the Human Breathe Right Company and they asked that very difficult question, which is, does it do anything? Otherwise, this is a gimmick. And we said, yeah, we totally agree. We believe that it reduces EIPH. And the reason was there was a guy at the time at Tufts University, ⁓ Robert, I can’t think of his last name.
He was doing a lot of work with the throat size and he was finding that horses that were roars. Was it Bob Cook? Bob Cook. Yeah. And he had come out with some work on roars having a higher incidence of EIPH. And the reason being those horses when they had a paralyzed flat bur had to work harder to bring the air in. And we speculated at that time, well, if you think about it, the nasal passages,
probably do the same thing because it’s one long tube from the nostrils to the lungs. And so anything you do along that tube that changes resistance could have an impact. So that was the first study that was done is, is, ⁓ CNS, the, the human breather company took the product to, ⁓ Kansas state, because at the time they were a leader in EIPH research and you know, Howard Erickson, Dr. Erickson looked at it and laughed and said, this thing’s not going to do anything.
And I tease Howard about it now because it ended up their program did a lot of research and understanding of the nasal passage. I think that was one. And then two, at that time I had left veterinary medicine and I was then into human medicine and doing a lot of work with the FDA. And you always ⁓ for any product that’s going into a human being, you have to be able to support those claims. And it made life a lot easier that I wanted the
credibility and the validation from you and other people. And the only way I was going to get that was studies. Fortunately, we didn’t have to do a lot of those studies ourselves. There were studies done to prove that we were crazy and they ended up proving us right. ⁓ That, yeah, this part of the nasal passage really does make a difference in efficient uptake of oxygen into the lungs. I do remember one study that was
negative that we all kind of laugh about because it was scientists and vets will probably know the group we’re talking about. They were a group that actively went out to disprove everyone else’s research in horses in the sort of like in the 90s. And but we all laugh because they came out with a study saying the Flair strip didn’t do any good, but they put it so high up on the nose.
It was almost underneath the eyes and, you know, it’s not going to do anything there. But I mean, how many studies did you actually end up with in the end? I think there are eight that I’m aware of. There’s some other ones that I’m aware of, one or two in Brazil. And every once in I read, you know, graduate student doing another
Look at it. There was a study done recently at Rutgers University and they’re looking at cool out and. ⁓ I the study showed a tendency that horses cool out quicker when they’re wearing a Flair strap. The interesting thing was. The horses won’t work very hard and when I talked to the lead researcher, he said, well, somebody brought the study to me and I wasn’t going to work the two horses too hard because I didn’t want.
I didn’t there are research horses, so I really couldn’t there. So we the data definitely showed that the horses cooled out better, but we couldn’t show enough of it because they hadn’t gone fast enough. So I’d like to see more work in that area. We we we have ⁓ that study a couple others smaller studies that show that it does benefit and cool out. We have an awful lot of barrel racers that swear by them because they do cool out quicker afterwards. But if you think about it, what’s a horse doing when it’s cooling out?
Yeah, it’s it’s pulling air in it’s pulling through that same passageway and those tissues collapsed just as much when they’re cooling when they’re trying to get that air and to to cool so it’s moving a lot of air in when they’re hot, they’re moving a lot of air after exercise. You know, and we’ve we’ve published my groups published a lot of papers showing that you can basically tell how hot a horse is from how it’s breathing. ⁓
So it makes sense that anything you can do to allow the horse to move the ear in and out more effectively should have an effect on the recovery. Anyway, actually brings me on to something else I want to explore. you kind of touched on it. It’s like the reaction from people, you know, what was it like 50-50?
now this can’t work or 50 50 I’m interested or you know how did that go in those first few years when you were you were putting them out there. I think it was. ⁓ I don’t think we have 50 50 on our side. I have one old veterinarian that ⁓ legendary veterinarian that that went publicly and said we were crazy.
We were crazy. And ⁓ I was fortunate enough to meet up with him before he passed away ⁓ in Kentucky. And he took me on a tour of the Kentucky Museum and a little bit of his legacy. And he said, you know what? You were right. You were right that this is an issue, the upper airway. And that was great to see. We have another person who passed recently ⁓ who had really proven it in his PhD thesis, and he forgot it.
and we brought it to his attention. His PhD thesis showed where the most resistance in the upper airway was there. And when we showed him his paper, he became a champion. And that particular university gives strips out as horses go home now because they’d become a big supporter. But I think that happens a lot of times. You’re challenging, and it’s a scientist’s job to be a skeptic, right? I mean, you can’t believe everything. You go on the internet, you got all kinds of things to believe.
The scientists were doing what they should do is prove it. And fortunately, we had enough that were interested in just proving us wrong. And they ended up proving us right and supporting us. And kudos to them that when they found the data, they went, ⁓ let’s look at why this is. This makes sense now. I think for me, was probably around that time, I was doing a lot of respiratory mechanics.
I remember writing chapters for some of the the very textbooks on upper airway function and upper and lower airway function. And I was working with Pierre Lacour, ⁓ working with Howard Erickson, David Poole at Kansas, ⁓ Mike Davis, ⁓ Norm Deschamps, Upper Cornell, so Ed Robinson.
And I think I I yeah, I I’m a terrible skeptic. really am anything new comes out I go where’s the evidence, you know that that doesn’t make sense How are you gonna how are you gonna have an effect deep in the muscle with an LED? That’s only you know half of what? Under and the wrong wavelengths, you know, it’s like yeah, I am a terrible skeptic I think I was probably I was probably kind of like 50 50 60 40
when I saw the Flair strips. ⁓ You know, because the thing is, the theory is fine, but then of course, does the device actually prevent that inward collapse? And I remember one of the really good things that I saw was you got some endoscopy images showing the movement with and without the Flair nasal strips. think that for me, they’re probably some of the
most convincing evidence that it is supporting, you know, some mechanical support for that tissue. Have you still got those videos? Oh yeah. And that was worked by Ed Robinson’s group at Michigan State University. Yeah. And if you remember, our original studies were EIPH focused. Yeah. Do they reduce EIPH? But then the question was asked, well,
what exactly are they doing? Do they help them breathe easier? And that was the question Michigan State answered was, let’s put aside EIPH and the net effect of breathing easier. Do they allow them to breathe easier? And that’s where that study that you’re referring to came out, where we put the scope in there. So, I really wanna talk with you on some work we’re doing now that I talked to you a little bit about that.
When you get into the physics is I’ve been watching the nasal passage as horses blow out. And what’s amazing is horse after horse when they’re blowing out inspiration in blowing out that tissue flutters and it actually closes the nasal. Has to just close down on a horse is blowing out. So think about it. You’ve got a hollow tube and you just blew a lot of air through. So you’ve created a.
negative pressure inside that tube. So as the horse is blowing out hard, the negative pressure actually pulls the wall of it down. So you think it should open it wider when they’re blowing out? It starts to flutter and creates oscillations in there. So I want to explore that more because how important is that when the horse is exhaling to be able to get the air out easily. And with some redesigns we’re doing to the strip, we believe we’re
the tissue when that blowing out is occurring as well. So just keeping that working with that tissue. But I had never really thought about the exhaust phase, if you will, air coming out. So we’ve got some great videos to show you in slow motion where you just see that tissue and then having the ability. The phylloctrine would contribute to turbulence, which would increase the resistance. the way out. Yeah, interesting.
And so while reviewing these videos, thank God for chat GPT these days, I just started querying on what happens if you push a force through a tube. it immediately, when I started putting nasal passage in and saying, on a horse, a tube the size of the horse’s nasal passage, you’re going to create a negative pressure in there that’s going to pull that tissue down. So suffice that to say.
We’re proposing that theory with you here. We got our work to do on it But I really want to explore that more with you because I think ⁓ If you look at these horses slow motion, it’s pretty amazing how that tissue just flutters When they’re shoving the air out as well as getting sucked in when they’re breathing air in interesting interesting I we’ve talked a bit about already about a IPH and of course the
The one interesting thing about EIPH is that I think most lay people either think it only affects race horses, ⁓ you know, or it only matters if you see blood at the nostril or it only matters if your horse has been scoped and you see blood in the trachea. Of course, EIPH is one of these really interesting phenomena in that every horse that does
you know, a slow canter will get, will break some blood vessels. The, the, some horses have a tendency to break more than others, but they all get progressive lung damage over their careers. In fact, we’ve just got some research that’s coming out that I did with Chris Riggs at the Hong Kong Jockey Club showing that it doesn’t matter whether your horse has been diagnosed as a bleeder inverted commas or not based on scoping. ⁓
the ones that have been diagnosed as having blood and the ones that haven’t had blood, if we look at the amount of damage to their lungs, it’s the same. There’s no difference. So pretty much every horse is experienced some degree of EIPH with repeated bouts of exercise. Showjumpers, ⁓ probably not so many of the dressage horses, but showjumpers, endurance horses, inventors.
resources, we know they all experience the IPH. And that obviously the interesting thing about the IPH is when they bleed, they get fibrosis within the lung and that lung loses some of its function. It loses its elasticity. It loses the ability for gas exchange. So it’s a progressive kind of condition. I can’t call it disease.
⁓ And I think, but it’s often overlooked. People don’t really pay too much attention to the respiratory system. Everyone’s kind of focusing on nutrition or the heart or on muscles, tendons, lameness. Why does the respiratory system often get pushed to the side?
I had a Canadian Olympic rider say that to me one day. She said, we always used to think about this silent organ because we never paid attention to it. And I’m not sure why. I think some of the things when your horse isn’t performing just right, they’re a little tired. They don’t have that kick. We started looking for vitamins and we started looking for a lot of different things. We don’t stop and think about the airway. We should. And I think the simplest way to think about why.
is I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna just put a simple test to you. ⁓ For the next five minutes, you can’t eat anything, okay? Or for the next five minutes, just don’t breathe and tell me which one you’re gonna feel the greater effect from. I mean, it’s all about breathing. There’s just no two ways I’m biased, but I think it’s all about breathing. I wouldn’t disagree with you at all.
You know, we’ve got so many studies out there from so many different groups showing that even what we call subclinical respiratory disease, respiratory disease that you wouldn’t know is there unless you start doing advanced diagnostics or endoscopy and you’re looking for inflammatory cells and mucus. We know that subclinical respiratory disease has a significant effect on performance in the harder they’re working.
the more that effect is. But even for the showjumpers, the event as the dressage horses, it’s having an effect and often people don’t even realize. So that to me exemplifies why the respiratory system is so critical. And of course, it’s the one system that’s so important that doesn’t change with training. Now, there might be people listening to this podcast are going, I’ve read all the textbooks that they say that the respiratory system improves with training, of course.
You know, from Colin Roberts and my study, you know, from Pierre Lacour’s study, there’s, think there’s one other study now that escapes me, but all of those studies showed no change in how much air a horse moves in and out from when it’s unfit, when it’s fit. Of course, the heart gets bigger or more efficient and can pump more blood. The blood volume goes up. The muscles improve, can use more oxygen.
all of those important systems change, the lungs don’t. So even more reason why we should be taking a special care of the respiratory system, giving it all the support we can. When we look at the microanatomy of the lung, it’s not a system hyperactive with enzymes, systems, etc. It’s a simple mechanical structure that efficiently
moves oxygen and carbon dioxide back and forth. And that’s not gonna change. Like you said, as your enzymatic systems and the muscles are gonna get more efficient at metabolizing anaerobic byproducts, et cetera. But that’s the rest of your body getting more efficient at using that steady state of oxygen that the horse gets. And I want to go back a little bit on EIPH, because I think one day somebody
brought the question to me of, well, do horses bleed in the pasture? And I think I might even bring you this. you know, everybody kind of wants to stay away from answering that. And I think the short answer is, well, it depends what the horse is doing in the pasture. If the horse is running, you know, a fast mile, probably going to bleed. If the horse is grazing, probably not, it’s not the location of the horse. It’s the work we’re asking them to do. Absolutely.
We frequently hear people say, my horse isn’t a bleeder. And I’ll tell you, when I look at a barrel horse, that horse bleeds. The pressure that’s putting on that horse, it bleeds. You may not see it at the nose, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a bleeder because bleeding occurs in the lungs. I think we have to think about that membrane in the lung that makes these horses super athletes. It’s because it’s a pretty,
It’s a membrane that allows this easy movement of oxygen and carbon dioxide, but that makes it vulnerable to rupture when we put it under different ⁓ condition. So we talk about horses being bleeding. I think you’ve probably found in some of your studies as well, know Kansas State did work where they put the horses on a treadmill at a low-inclined trot, and you see more blood in the airways. Is that bleeding? Yeah.
Is it pathological or is it physiological? And I think you’ve talked to me too about the components that make up the blood that’s in the airways is a little bit different than whole blood. So he knows there’s this issue of fluid oozing through something because of pressure changes. And so when we think about it, we got to think about, ⁓ I think pathological or physiological, it’s
It’s a membrane that allows things to get through easily so the horse can perform the way it does. But even a good thing can have a bad side to it. When they get pushed too hard, it gets too leaky. We do know if you get blood in the airways, it’s not a good thing. Blood shouldn’t be in the airways. And the more blood we get in the airways, the more likelihood there is the horse is going to bleed next time. So it’s like anything, it’s managing it.
to reduce the amount of stress that happens on those membranes so that we reduce the amount of leakage that occurs. And at some point, horses have had enough leakage that they’re more vulnerable and they are going to be a true bleeder that you would consider because you see blood at the nose or you see all the clinical signs of they’re running like the wind and all of sudden they hit a wall. But these other horses at the other end of the spectrum, there’s some bleeding there too.
But some of that is physiological, just normal pressure change. They’ve had inflammatory airway disease, though those airways become ⁓ more permeable so that fluid can leak out, but it’s a continuum. And I don’t think it’s a black and white. My horse isn’t a bleeder. yes, it is. They’re all bleeders. It’s whether or not they’ve been subjected to conditions that could cause more blood to leak into the airways than we would prefer to have happen.
Yeah, I think that’s spot on. the probably the bad thing here is that we’ve never really published the data about the fact that you get, as you were saying, because you’ve got high pressure within the blood vessels inside the lung, that you get protein and fluid squeezed out and that that happens before you start to get the breaks in the membrane.
⁓ so I, I totally agree with you that it’s a, it’s a continuum. then potentially though, when we have horses that bleed at the nostrils severely, that my feeling is that that’s another condition entirely. And that involves much larger blood vessels. because that is Frank blood. Whereas what we’re talking about when we see blood, what we, what we call blood actually isn’t.
It’s not the same as taking 20 mils of blood out of the vein and squirting it into the lung. It’s not the same ⁓ composition of what we find in the lung. But again, you’re absolutely right. know, once we start getting even some of that protein and blood in the airways, it’s not good. ⁓ Blood is one of the best things that ⁓ in activating lung surfactant and lung surfactant for
people who are listening who not aware is it’s the stuff that lines your airways. It’s a bit like has the same function as washing up liquid. But what it does because these airways are so narrow, the surfactant is there to stop them collapsing and closing. ⁓ So once you lose that surfactant function, then you get areas of the lung that become shut down effectively. They don’t get ventilated. Then you get pneumonia.
So yeah, blood in the hair is never a good thing, is it? No, we want to keep it out and keep those lungs as healthy as we can. Because like you said earlier, you lose that, you lose it. ⁓ You don’t get that tissue back. It doesn’t regenerate. And I know there are people out there working on stem cell therapies to heal lungs. And I’m a big supporter of ⁓
getting that, but getting that where we can bring tissue back. We’re not quite there yet, at least from the literature I’ve been staying in touch with, that would be the goal. But in the meantime, how do we keep these lungs as healthy as possible? Well, know, part of my people I work with, you know, private clients, I just, I’ve been
And just to be clear, I don’t get any money from promoting Flair strips. But, know, I’ve been saying for 20, 25 years, you know, ⁓ you should use a Flair strip. It’s, you know, it’s something that you can do to help protect your horse’s lungs. ⁓ It’s legal. There’s no downside to it. ⁓ You know, it’s a no brainer for me. ⁓ The same as I’m saying to them, you’ve got a big competition.
in six weeks, ⁓ get your vet in to scope your horse in two weeks time. So that gives us four weeks if your horse needs treating, because pretty much as we know, every horse we tend to look at needs some degree of treatment for either airway inflammation or some degree of infection. You know, give four weeks for that to have an effect. It’s just for me, it’s part of my kind of tick list of things to do.
⁓ okay. Flare just run through, ⁓ for people where, where can people use Flair nasal strips? What, what disciplines and sports and jurisdictions and cause it’s not universally allowed for competition. Of course you can use them whenever you want for training, even if say, I mean, in the UK, you’re not allowed to use Flair nasal strips in racing. ⁓ that’s something.
Neither of us have ever understood. But Flair nasal strips are allowed in racing in the US, pretty much universal. They are universally allowed for racing everywhere around the globe that I’m aware of, except Japan, Hong Kong, and UK and Europe. And I think there’s, well, that’s a whole nother session to talk about the politics behind it. Now, that having been said,
It’s approved by FEI except in dressage. And to be honest, I’ve never gone back to the FEI to have the discussion because when they made that ruling, it was before we had the science out there that we do. I do know a lot of people, a lot of dressage riders that use the strips during training. ⁓ And in Wellington, Florida, I learned an awful lot of people use them for that purpose that
It makes total sense to me. But one of the things I want to talk to you about and I talked about others is I really want to understand more about breathing in dressage horses. So let me just answer your question, but I wanted to bring this up with you is other than FEI dressage in a couple of racing jurisdictions, the strips are universally allowed. They’re allowed in the Olympics. They’re allowed in cross country and stadium by FEI.
⁓ endurance organizations. So they are most places allowed and as I said, except FEI Dressage. ⁓ And that is a matter of I’d like to sit down and have them explain the reasoning behind that. My question for you is who’s done work on the breathing of dressage horses? And, you know, as I get older and you get older, I’m sure you’re doing your yoga too and you’re trying to be flexible and
You play with your breathing and I know I’m not sprinting when I’m doing yoga, but I’m breathing. What’s going on in those horses when they’re doing so many of those maneuvers with their breathing, with the timing of their breathing. And I haven’t seen anyone do any work on that, any good work. The biomechanic people I talked to talk about biomechanics, but they don’t talk about the biomechanics of the lungs. And I think when you are breathing efficiently, the strips…
can benefit you in that type of sport. But I just like to understand horses breathing and breathing patterns during different phases of dressage too, because I’m not gonna say any one of the new movement in dressage is the same as another, but you’re working your core. You’re doing a lot. The horse is doing an awful lot there that is impacted, I believe, by breathing and vice versa. Yeah, I think that’s it.
That’s a good observation and interesting question. Of course, we know that horses in canter and gallop, ⁓ if they don’t have any abnormality, they or significant disease will take one breath perfectly in sync with one stride. So stride influences breathing or conversely, breathing can influence stride length. ⁓
Of course, when we’re at slow canter, they don’t need to maintain that strict coupling and they can end up having one breath over two strides or slightly decoupling their breathing and stride. The other thing that’s going on with dressage is of course the head and neck position, which is going to increase upper airway resistance probably quite significantly anyway. We know that. ⁓
if we were looking at sport horses on the treadmill and doing upper airway endoscopy, we’d often put side reins on to try and bring the head in to see if we could make a horse displace its soft palate or to see if it would worsen laryngeal hemiplegia. So the head and neck position ⁓ puts more load on the upper airway and the low speeds in canter
could lead to less than efficient breathing. Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s really looked at these. It’s not easy because as you know, we’ve had very few good field-based systems for measuring ventilation in horses. Funny enough, I do have a grant in with some other people I work with to
To actually bring back some more field based ventilation measurements to answer a few questions that are out there. And I think dressage would be a good one to look at. ⁓ Yeah, interesting. I think sound is possibly underused as well because of course sound is often a good surrogate for how well upper airways functioning. We had some grants to look at this in
Brachycephalic breeds, because I think you probably know if you try and put a mask on a bulldog to measure its ventilation, you’ll probably kill it. It’s going to stress out and and you know, it’s going to keel over. So we we looked at some novel techniques and one of those techniques was using sound recordings and correlating the noise that the dog was making with MRIs of the upper airway.
and ⁓ measurements of lung function using whole body plethysmography, which is basically you put the dog in a perspex box. ⁓ That’s not a cruel thing. can see its owner, but it’s a lot less stressed. And we measure the pressure change within the box as a surrogate of measuring what’s happening in the dog’s airways. So yeah, think dressage, yeah.
I think that’s a really good area that needs more research. Well, I think it’s one long, it’s a tube. And I don’t know that it matters if it’s a blood vessel or if it’s a garden hose is when you get restriction at some point along the tube, anywhere else along the tube that you can ⁓ reduce restriction is going to have an impact on the overall system because it’s a closed system tube. And so I think in dressage, a lot of
Like you said, head positioning, ⁓ equipment used, et cetera, has an impact on the breathing. And we’re looking for relaxation. And I think animals do relax more when they can breathe easier. I think humans breathe, you know, relax more when they can breathe easier too. Yeah, when you’ve got a cold, you become very aware of your breathing, don’t you? When you’ve got a blocked up nose. And you do suddenly become…
aware of your breathing where you probably weren’t before. Right, yeah, absolutely. All right, so we’ll look weird. Where are you going next? What’s next with with flair? it you mentioned that you’re developing a variant on the product and you’re looking at the expiratory? And you’ve got some markets that you haven’t really explored yet, such as.
Or that aren’t using Flair perhaps as much as they might like endurance. ⁓ Anything else exciting coming up? We have some other projects in the hopper that we you know, maybe we can spend another time chatting about those in the future. But as far as Flair, think one of the things I I look at Flair and I look at with anything in the respiratory system and I think.
EIPH is a great example of it, is that these conditions aren’t ⁓ binary. There’s not one cause and effect. And it’s looking where the synergies lie to keep horses healthy. And I think we think about marginal gains, how we keep these horses optimally fit. And I think it’s part of using tools together and getting ⁓ synergistic effects as well. I think when we think about
EIPH, it’s not one and done. And I don’t think we’re ever going to come up with a silver bullet and say, ⁓ we’ve cured EIPH in horses. It’s a condition that’s a result of many factors, lung health, environmental conditions, how you keep your stable, the horse’s vaccine status. And so I think it’s
Really looking at other areas that flair plays a role synergistically with other things we are doing for our horses from recovery to efficient performance and recognizing those synergies for benefits across a lot of different areas with performance horses.
Yeah. And I think it’s about that. There’s there’s it’s a double edged sword in a way, isn’t it? It’s it has a beneficial effect on the horse’s health. And, you know, if that doesn’t tick a box for you, then it’s got also potentially a beneficial effect on performance as well. So, you know, you’ve got potentially two benefits from using it. And I think, you know, everyone
Is focusing on welfare now? ⁓ quite rightly ⁓ and and I think it’s it’ll be interesting to see if the Jurisdiction say on racing that currently don’t allow start changing their mind Especially in the fact that it is allowed in so many other places one other thing to finish up on I mean and I always worry about this and and it’s
People say, ⁓ yeah, but I don’t need, I don’t need to use that. only, I only do, you know, be eighties or only, you know, only show jump locally or, you know, ⁓ my horse doesn’t work hard. What would be your, your response? I, I, ⁓ I heard Alex brag, make a comment the other day at badminton where somebody was asked about Flair strips. And he said, every horse.
typically is performing out there what’s optimal for them. And so they’re working just as hard, even though you’ve a VA80 versus a five-star, that horse is still working at a level. So I think we have to look at how much work is being exerted at the time and what it’s compared to. If I go out now,
and I haven’t run in a while, so I’ll run a pretty sad, say, 10 minute mile, maybe four mile. It’ll be working pretty hard for me now for a marathon or it’s a joke. And so we’re working at our level and you have to really look at the work that the particular individual is doing and that’s where the benefit comes and that’s the benefit we’re trying to perform or provide is that each stage
How can we make it more comfortable and more efficient for you to continue to get better? Okay, well look, it’s been fantastic chatting. Where can people go if they want to find out more about the science behind Flair strips and all the other information you’ve got? Go to flarestrips.com, F-L-A-I-R-S-T-I-P-S.com. We just put a new website up.
and we continue to put content up. And I’m sure I’ll be bending your ear to provide more content to put up on our side as well. But just trying to be a resource both of how Flair plays a role, but more importantly, how respiratory system plays in the overall horse and how you should think about it. Brilliant. Well, thanks very much for the chat, Jim. And hopefully we’ll catch up again soon. Sounds great, David. I always enjoy it.
Yeah, take care. Cheerio.
