The most dangerous thing WPRA Heading and Breakaway World Champ Hope Thompson asks of a rope horse isn’t a run.
It’s the drive to get there.
Colic is among the most common medical emergencies in horses, and its risk factors read like a rodeo schedule: long hauls, feed and water changes, disrupted turnout, heat and stress. For a horse that lives on the road, the road itself is the exposure.
Thompson, a WPRA world champion breakaway roper and rope horse futurity trainer, runs two kinds of horses through that exposure—the finished horses she ropes on for a living, and the young horses she is building toward the futurity pen, horses with years of work in them before they ever run for a check. Her answer is a SmartPak program built around four supplements, each doing a different job, fed every day whether the trailer moves or not.
“I can control how these horses are trained and how they’re legged up,” Thompson said. “I can’t control what 12 hours on a trailer and a different water source does to their stomach. Their gut takes the hit before anything else does. People see the two and a half seconds in the arena. They don’t see the feed bucket at 5 a.m. in a fairgrounds stall five states from home. That’s where you win or lose a horse’s health.”
The workhorse: SmartPerform Ultra
The anchor of the program is SmartPerform Ultra, SmartPak’s research-supported multi-purpose formula that stacks joint, gastric and hindgut support in one pellet—built for exactly the horse Thompson hauls.
On the joint side, it carries the complete SmartStride Ultra formula—glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, the building blocks of cartilage; MSM for its role in managing normal inflammatory response; hyaluronic acid for joint fluid; hydrolyzed collagen and silica for tendons and ligaments; and resveratrol, turmeric and boron rounding out the antioxidant support. In a 28-day study at Texas A&M University, that SmartStride Ultra formula was shown to increase range of motion in the hock at the walk, with a tendency toward the same at the trot—the joint a horse loads every time it stops.
On the digestive side, SmartPerform Ultra adds the ingredients SmartPak builds its gut-health research around: L-glutamine, an amino acid that fuels the cells lining the intestinal tract; ButiPEARL Z EQ, an encapsulated butyric acid and zinc combination researched for gut-lining integrity under stress — the “leaky gut” problem hauling creates; CLOSTAT, a Bacillus subtilis probiotic; and Diamond V yeast culture to support fiber digestion in the hindgut, where colic risk lives. Magnesium carbonate and sodium propionate round out the stomach support.
“A futurity horse is learning its job on the same body it’ll make a living with,” Thompson said. “I’m not going to support the hocks and ignore the hindgut, or feed the gut and let the joints wear. This covers both ends of the horse with one scoop.”
Whole-horse coverage: SmartCombo Ultra
SmartCombo Ultra covers the same whole-horse ground from a different angle—four systems in one pellet. Joints get 10,000 mg of glucosamine, 10,000 mg of MSM, 1,000 mg of chondroitin sulfate, 100 mg of hyaluronic acid and 5,000 mg of vitamin C, with 1,000 mg of collagen and 500 mg of silica for the soft tissue that joints depend on. Hooves get 35 mg of biotin—a working dose, not a maintenance one—alongside methionine, lysine, threonine, zinc and copper, the raw material of hoof wall. Skin and coat get more than 3,600 mg of omega-3 fatty acids, including DHA and EPA from fish oil.
Then the part that matters most on the road: a full digestive package of prebiotics and probiotics, digestive enzymes and yeast—the daily support that helps the hindgut’s microbial population ride out water changes, hay changes and trailer stress instead of being wrecked by them. A hoof grows for months and a coat blooms for weeks, but the gut gets tested every single haul.
“I need feet that hold a shoe through a year of hauling, a coat that looks right for judges and for buyers and a gut that handles whatever water we find,” Thompson said. “I’ve seen my horses bloom from head to toe and stay healthy with the SmartCombo Ultra because nothing is missing.”
The easy keepers: SmartMetabo-Lean
Not every horse in a trainer’s barn is a hard keeper, and the ones who stay stout carry their own risks. SmartMetabo-Lean is built for them: a no-sugar-added, beet pulp-based pellet designed for horses fed little to no grain, formulated to support a healthy metabolism and weight.
The formula pairs 5 mg of chromium and 5,000 mg of magnesium to support proper insulin function with 1,000 mg of cinnamon and 150 mg of bitter melon to help maintain healthy blood sugar levels. Around that core sit taurine, acetyl L-carnitine and L-tyrosine for metabolic function; vitamin E, grape seed extract, quercetin and Siberian ginseng as antioxidant support; psyllium husk for the digestive tract; omega-3s from fish oil; a B-vitamin package; and a Lactobacillus acidophilus probiotic at 4 billion CFU—so even the diet horse gets daily gut support.
For a performance barn, the stakes are soundness. The heavy horse is the one whose feet, joints and metabolism pay for the extra condition, and managing weight on a horse that gains on air is daily, unglamorous work the feed pan has to help with.
“The easy keepers will fool you,” Thompson said. “They look great right up until they don’t. Keeping weight and metabolism right on those horses is a soundness decision, the same as shoeing or legging one up. Some of my best horses have been easy keepers, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need added nutrition to keep all of their systems firing on all cylinders.”
The mind: SmartCalm Ultra
The fourth leg of the program works on the horse’s mind the way the others work on its body. SmartCalm Ultra—SmartPak’s best-selling calming supplement—is an herb-free, nutrient-based formula: 10,000 mg of magnesium, a mineral whose deficiency shows up as nervousness; 5,000 mg of taurine and 2,000 mg of inositol to support normal nerve function; 1,000 mg of thiamine (vitamin B1); and 500 mg of L-tryptophan, the amino acid the body uses to make serotonin.
Because it’s nutrient-based rather than herbal, it avoids the botanical ingredients—valerian and its relatives—that many competitive organizations prohibit. And there’s a gut angle here too: a nervous hauler is a stressed gut on legs. The horse that settles in a strange pen eats, drinks, rests and travels better, and every one of those is colic prevention by another name.
A young horse’s first year on the road is one new thing after another—new pens, new noise, new water,” Thompson said. “The quicker one settles, the quicker it eats and drinks. A horse that’s drinking in a strange place is a horse I don’t lie awake worrying about.”
The safety net
Two of those supplements do something else. SmartPerform Ultra and SmartCombo Ultra are both ColiCare-eligible: fed in SmartPaks on AutoShip, they qualify the horse to enroll in SmartPak’s free ColiCare program, which provides up to $15,000 in colic surgery reimbursement if the worst happens.
For a futurity trainer, that number is not abstract. A colic surgery runs well into five figures before aftercare, and the horse most likely to be on the table is the one with the most invested in it and no earnings yet to show for it.
“I’ve got two or three years and a lot of money in a futurity horse before it ever comperes,” Thompson said. “One colic surgery doesn’t just cost you the vet bill. It costs you the season, and maybe the horse’s whole futurity career. Knowing that if the worst happens, up to $15,000 of that surgery is covered—that’s peace of mind I can’t put a price on when I’m 1,000 miles from my vet.”
More on ColiCare-Eligible Supplements
Where it fits
Thompson’s job is keeping horses sound and feeling their best long enough to become what they could be—the ProRodeo horses to the end of their careers, the young ones to the futurity pen and beyond. The supplement program is the unglamorous end of that: joints, gut, metabolism and mind, covered every day, so the horse that steps off the trailer is the same one that stepped on.
“My whole program is about getting a horse to its potential and keeping it there,” Thompson said. “Gut health is where that starts. If the gut isn’t right, nothing else I do matters.”