Kara Gardiner keeps her own herd on a farm in Meota, Saskatchewan. She trained to be a farrier and trims her own horses’ hooves, keeps her herd fed through prairie winters, and found Nzymes the same way most of our families do: with a sick animal and a phone.
Meota, Saskatchewan
It started with the farm.
Kara moved out to her farm in 2012 and bought her first horses that same year. What started as a move to the country became the whole shape of her life: a herd she handles every day, daughters she raised through the local 4H program, and the kind of riding hours you only put in when the horses live outside your window.
Anyone who keeps horses on the prairie knows what the winters ask. Feed rations tuned to each individual horse, and animals that depend on you showing up in weather nobody should be out in. Kara did all of it, and then went one further: she trained to be a farrier so she could care for her own horses' hooves herself. The style of work she does is barefoot trimming, a farriering technique with no shoeing or iron work.
The fall of 2017
Two sick animals, and a phone call.
Kara breeds Dalmatians, and Denver was the foundation of her breeding program. By the fall of 2017 his allergies had gotten so bad, and left him so sick, that the thought of him fathering another litter was off the table. At the same time her daughter's six-year-old Arabian Paint, Bergen, was diagnosed with heaves and was struggling for air.
On November 10, 2017, out of options and watching two animals she loved suffer, Kara picked up the phone and called Nzymes. She still remembers the date, because it's the day things started to turn around.
Bergen and Denver, the two who started it all.
Denver, the Dalmatian
She got her dog back.
Kara started Denver on the Nzymes program right away. Within six months he was himself again: comfortable, thriving, and back at the head of her breeding program. He has fathered 44 puppies since.
Bergen, the Arabian Paint
Breathing easy again.
With daily support, the young horse who had been fighting for every breath could breathe freely again, and got on with the business of being six years old.
She believed it enough to make it her life's work.
By spring of 2018, Kara had become an Nzymes dealer. Today she's a full member of the Nzymes family: she answers our customer emails, she'll be the person behind our chat line, and she takes the equine consults, because she is the only member of our team who owns and works horses.
That matters more than any title. When you tell Kara your horse is stiff starting out, or off his grain, or flinching away when you brush around his sternum and girth line, you're not describing it to someone who has read about horses. You're describing it to someone who was in the barn at six this morning.
And when you tell her you're scared you're losing your animal, she doesn't have to imagine that either. Whether she's out feeding her herd through a prairie blizzard or on the phone with a stranger and a sick dog, it's the same work to her: helping people find what she found for Denver and Bergen.
"I found this company the way you probably did: worried, up at night, out of ideas. Somebody here helped me. Now that's my job."
Nine years ago, Kara made the worried phone call. Now she's the one who answers it.
Free equine consultation
Tell her what you're seeing. She'll tell you where to start.
Bring her the whole picture: what you're feeding, how they're moving, what's changed. Kara will tell you honestly what she'd do. She's been on your side of this call, and she treats every one the way hers was treated.
