10 SIDELINES AUGUST 2014
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
Continued on page 12
Tigger Montague & BioStar:
On Course to Help Save the Earth
By Lauren R. Giannini
BioStar’s founder has a mission: Tigger Montague wants to
save the world and she intends to accomplish this one day at a
time, one person at a time by opening their minds to what they
feed to their horses, to their dogs and to themselves for optimum
health and soundness of mind, body, wind and limb.
Tigger is a modern day, high-tech version of David taking on the
Goliath of Monsanto. Armed with more than 30 years of experience
in the supplement industry, she’s determined to spread the gospel
of authentic whole food nutrition.
Before this story can proceed into the health benefits of
BioStar’s equine and canine products, understand this: Tigger
is anti-processed foods and anti-GMO (genetically modified
organisms), period. She wasn’t always into “health food” and that
provides a vital key to understanding her awakening to “food as
medicine” because it involves herself and, perhaps even more
importantly, Lionheart, her Grand Prix dressage horse, whose
bursal inflammation refused to respond to every effort by Dr. Tim
Ober to treat it, but how the last-ditch option for a neurectomy to
keep the horse comfortable was avoided.
Dr. Ober was there every step of the way to witness how food
healed this “career-ending” injury and allowed Lionheart to return
to training and competition at the Grand Prix level. It’s a wild ride,
to say the least.
Lionheart’s Story
Lionheart, the Hanoverian dressage horse Tigger trained and
competed up through the levels, was diagnosed with inflammation
of the bursa after his first Grand Prix show. He was 16 at the
time and had been with Tigger since he was 4. They tried coffin
and navicular injections, shock wave therapy, ultrasound therapy,
Isoxsuprine, Bute and Tildren. Nothing worked and Lionheart
remained unsound. Left with no other options, Dr. Tim Ober, the
USEF Jumping Team veterinarian, recommended a neurectomy
— cutting the nerve to Lionheart’s foot.
Tigger thought that Lionheart might benefit from whole food
before his surgery. She mixed sprouted quinoa, sprouted flax and
sprouted buckwheat, shaping bars that she put in the dehydrator.
Lionheart devoured them. He ate nine bars per day, in addition to
his regular feeding. About two weeks later, Tigger noticed that her
horse looked better.
“I thought it was just wishful thinking and I called Dr. Ober,”
recalled Tigger. “He watched Lionheart come out of his stall and I
put him on a lunge line. He couldn’t believe it either. I think one of
Tim Ober’s great strengths, as a diagnostician and as a practicing
vet, is his ability to be open-minded enough to say, ‘I’ve tried
everything and nothing is working and now I see an improvement
in this horse — what did you do?’
“He gave me the idea to look for food that would increase
circulation, particularly foods that stimulate the body’s production
of nitric oxide, because if we could open up the circulation to
Lionheart’s feet, that would help the inflammation of the bursa.
I went back to doing more research — I call it going down the
rabbit hole — and learned that nitric oxide increases circulation by
dilating blood vessels and that the amino acid arginine is essential
for nitric oxide production and that it doesn’t exist in any foods
without the presence of one particular amino acid, lysine. That’s
what led me to put together the Furnace bars that made Lionheart
come back to soundness.”
Tigger blended soaked pumpkin seeds, sprouted sesame
e
Tigger, looking great at 26, playing with one of Tigger’s Australian
Shepherds.
Photo by Tigger Montague
Tigger and Lionheart competing at Dressage at Devon in 2003
Photo by Mary Phelps
