Report on Animal Health
(horse stable in Austria)
The youthful mare 
Many people know the feeling – their hands swell so much in summer that their rings can only be removed with difficulty using a lot of soapy water, and their feet swell up so much that shoes become too tight. Cold towels and sitting with their feet up seem to be the only way to relieve the problem. However, horses can also suffer from this, as Birgit Minnich from the Haidehof riding school in Eisenstadt, Burgenland, found with her 24-year-old mare Sunrise. The elderly horse had suffered from water retention in her legs every summer for five years. She was treated with cold bandages, diuretic medicines and other medication to improve her circulation.
Then Birgit's father had a Grander unit installed and since then Sunrise, and the 37 other horses, only drink revitalised water. Everything else has remained the same: the stables, the feed, the paddock and the care the horses receive. There was one startling outcome to this change in drinking water, however. Sunrise’s legs stopped swelling in the summer.
‘Originally I would never have thought that this could be anything to do with the water. I was just surprised when Sunrise had no swelling last summer. Then I started thinking – the only thing that has changed is the water,’ says Birgit. ‘Our old horse now has the legs of a three-year old. The chronic tenosynovitis has improved and Sunrise is a lot more lively - as if she had become younger.’ | 