Sarah Allison

I swear by Omega Horseshine, I've given it to all my horses and they all have gorgeous coats. It's very cost effective and easy to feed.
What's special about Flaxseed is it has the correct blance of Omega-3's and Omega-6's. When something has the incorrect balance of these, it's actually bad for the horse, like corn oil

For mud, I always hard brush all the mud off first thing. If you think about it, the curry is just going to grind all that dirt in. After you get as much as you possibly can off with the hard brush, then go in with the curry since now it'll actually be able to do it's job kicking up the dirt and hair, then proceed to brush as you normally would.
And for shedding, I tend to be old school, just tons of currying with a regular rubber currycomb. It's great for skin and works to get all the hair out. A good rule of thumb is to curry for at least 10 minutes every day!

First make sure the horse's teeth and mouth aren't causing any pain, and second make sure then that the bit and bridle are totally comfortable and fitted correctly and aren't causing pain. Just to cross all that off the list. I'm not sure if you live in a cold area, but always make sure the bit isn't cold, a lot of people don't think if this.
To help break the habit, put a sugar cube and the but on to the palm of you hand when bridling, they will learn that the bit = goodies

Just to clarify, I'm hoping to learn some sort of method or technique to better take care and preserve the forelock hair. He's got great nutrition and all his other hair is in fanastic condition, he's just got extra delicate forelock hair. I'd love to learn how the people with the long haired breeds like the friesians and gypys and the like, who do the breed shows where hair matters, how they like to preserve their forelocks over the winter

(last post got cut off) but it was under very close supervision of a trainer who'd worked with the pessoa for years, and my horse was extremely well trained on how to lunge.
The other thing to consider is it simply isn't the right tool for many horses. Any horse that gets claustrophobic or feels trapped, has a history of rearing, is prone to outbursts or likes to take off, a horse with any unresolved physical issues or has confirmed back or hock problems, or isn't obedient on the lunge, all shouldn't be put in the pessoa, it will cause more problems.
Even with all this, I do think it is a good tool that has its place, but it must be used only in the right situation in the right way. Hope this helps!!

I love Flax, I always feed it to my horses, but I haven't ever seen it add weight. It has amazing fatty acids which are super essential in the horse's diet so I would definitely feed it either way (I've always fed ground flax seed, I imagine oil would get expensive).
For weight gain I've had the best success with Amplify, I would recommend researching and talking to your vet about adding that in to your horse's diet.

Side note- someone below recommended vegetable oil, while that used to be the standard thing to feed to add weight, it's actually got an bad ratio of Omega-3's to Omega-6's for the diet and will do more harm than good. Flax has the best ratio, so definitely a much better choice.

I love Piper breeches from SmartPak! Also like Romfh's