Horse and Pony Pampering

I  mentioned at the tail end of my previous post that Wolfie, Honey and Buttons were trying out a couple of new products. I can't say too much about them as we're still in the early stages of trialling them. So far so good though - they are all loving the natural scent and I am delighted at how easy the Hoof Therapy Balm is to apply. It just melts right in, absorbing straight away. What's really special about these new products is that I know exactly what's in them - absolutely no chemical nasties for a start! They've been made specifically for me, nice and fresh, by a local skincare specialist.

All this pampering, they'll be getting ideas!

Looking forward to sharing more details soon.

Think thin!

Wolfie was weighed on Wednesday.  He's 532Kg.  Ideally he wants to be around 500Kg, but he's getting there.  I actually thought he was a bit heavier than that and my weigh tape is no where near accurate.  He has lost weight all over and parts of him condition scored at a 3 and other parts were a 3.5 and a couple of 4's.  He has to lose some (or all!) of his fatty crest, but that will be last to go.  I'm pleased with how he is doing though as his weight loss at the moment has mainly due to really restricting his grazing and putting him in with the ponies.  He hasn't been in consistent work due to one thing or another.  Yesterday I got to the stables to find that he had taken a large chunk of hair and skin off his near hind, up on the gaskin.  No idea how he has done it as it doesn't look like it could be a kick or a bite.  It's not deep, but it looks sore and the surrounding tissue is obviously inflammed and bruised.  Not helping with all this mud everywhere.  He's settled in well now with the ponies and G.  Honey always greets him with a nice whinny.  He tends to look a little bemused at his little orange friends but they are getting on.  Hopefully if this leg doesn't look too bad, I will get some riding done at the weekend.  

We are product testing a new itch cream and a Hoof Therapy Balm at the moment.  I'm very excited about them.

In the land of the Little People

Big changes for Wolfie this week.  I walk past Wolfie's field to get to my car every night.  Last Sunday as I walked down the road past the field, Wolfie was up to his belly in grass, literally.  The electric fencing had been moved around 30 feet in width, the whole length of the field.  Wolfie was skipping around in the long grass thinking all his Christmases had came at once.  Wolfie just can't have access to that type or amount of grass.  I am trying to get more weight off him and he can easily put weight on in the space of hours on grass like that.  He can't possibly be expected to be athletic and have a useful working life when he is carrying too much weight.  I tossed and turned all night, worrying about him on the grass.  Eventually  I made the decision to do the only thing I haven't yet tried....put him in with the ponies.  Wolfie has never been allowed in with Buttons as he tends to be too rough trying to get him to play and ends up using Buttons as a football.  There is also a rule at the yard that mares and geldings are kept in separate fields and do not get to touch over fence lines (Buttons is the exception to this rule as he lives with girls).  When I got to the stables on Monday, Wolfie had exhausted himself gorging on the grass all night and spent most of the morning sleeping off his grass hangover in his stable.  Once he'd woken up, I turned him out with the ponies and stayed down in the field poo picking so I could keep an eye on them.  He was fine, he tends to herd the ponies around a little bit, but he doesn't rush them and he's not being mean to them.  It's not completely ideal as there is probably too little grass in there for him and they are all supplemented morning and night with soaked hay.  But this way I might actually get him down to an indeal weight whereas at the moment he has sort of plauteued and is back to putting weight on.  He was a bit upset to start with as he has been in the same field with the other geldings since he was 2.  He can still see the other boys, so he did a lot of shouting the first couple of nights and he kicked off when he saw one of the boys being led down to the field which resulted in a puffy fetlock (near hind this time).  He didn't really understand the piles of hay being put out in the field and cantered around jumping them.  The ponies were most annoyed as they were both standing at a pile eating during all of this.  He is settling more every day and I know it's the best option I've got to get the weight off him.  He's got company and he doesn't need to wear the grazing muzzle.

Either Buttons has said something funny or Wolfie thinks I'm having a laugh putting him in a field with hardly any grass

A feed Rep from Dengie is coming to the yard mid August and they are bringing a weigh bridge with them.  It will be interesting to know all 3 of their weights as the weigh tape is not really that accurate.

Wolfie is sound (apart from the puffy fetlock).  I long reined him a few times last week and I hope to take him for a short hack tomorrow.  The weather once more has been most unkind and I don't know how anyone (without an indoor school) is managing to get any sort of consistent riding done.

Wolfie is a star

There was a time when Wolfie found it difficult to even walk near a folded up tarpaulin on the ground, never mind walk over it or have it touch him .  Today he was doing this.

I am so very proud of him.  It is very humbling when you think about what horses will allow us to do with a little time, patience and trust.  We have put a lot of work in with the tarp and today he was really relaxed about it all.

We never managed to get a little long reining done, due to the rain and the midges (I have never seen anything like it.  Clouds and clouds of them.  The horses looked like their skin was moving there were so many crawling all over them).  We did a little more with the clicker, continuing with the target training.  Hopefully this week, the weather will hold out and I can long rein him and maybe have a little ride on him by the end of the week.

"Tell me Clarice.....have the lambs stopped screaming?"

I shouldn't joke, but Wolfie's grazing muzzle bears more than a passing resemblance to the mask worn by Hannibal Lector in the film Silence of the lambs.  Even looking at a photograph of Wolfie wearing the muzzle makes me feel really sad.  I understand grazing muzzles have their uses and many people have great success in managing their horses weight using them, but I am struggling with the whole concept of it.  It is completely restricting their natural behaviours and ok they can still eat and drink, but they can't nip whilst playing or groom each other and it must be so frustrating for them.  I  bought the muzzle last year and never used it.  Last year Wolfie was kept in a fenced off part of one of the fields on restricted grazing on his own.  This was initially due to him being in isolation with his virus and then it continued to try and get some weight off him.  I completely disagree with keeping any horse on its own, and by the end of his time in isolation, he was pretty miserable.  As Wolfie is kept at a livery yard, I have little control over where he grazes and how much access to fresh grass he has.  His weight is actually very good at the moment, I would like him to lose another few kilos, or certainly not put any weight on.  We are having completely different weather conditions from last year and all the rain we are having is washing a lot of the goodness out of the grass.  The downside of that is that the fields are waterlogged and boggy.  I've been considering once again putting the grazing muzzle on.  I've been trying it on him for 5 to 10 minutes at a time to try and get him used to it.  The other day I put the muzzle on and took him down to the field.  I stood with him for 20 minutes to make sure he was ok.  He cantered around for a while tossing his head.  I don't think he was so much distressed, more like furious.  I thought I would walk up to the gate and watch to see if he settled.  I must have taken only 4 or 5 steps when i turned around and the grazing muzzle was lying on the ground and Wolfie had a huge mouthful of grass.  I couldn't work out how he had managed to get it off, as it was all still fastened and there was nothing nearby that he could have rubbed it on.  I put the muzzle back on, sat down in the grass and waited.  After about 5 minutes he lifted his left back foot up to his left ear and hauled the muzzle over his head and ears.  He then wandered off leaving the muzzle dumped on the ground.  The first time it might have been coincidence that he was scratching behind his ear and the muzzle came off.  The second time when I saw him, he knew exactly what he was doing.  I was already concerned about how tight the muzzle was, if I tightened it any, it would dig into him.  So Wolfie has solved the dilemma over the grazing muzzle....if I put it on, he'll just take it off.

The idea that grass can at times be harmful to horses is difficult for most people to understand.  After all, horses love lush green grass.  But allowing some horses a large constant source of the green stuff can really be detrimental.  Much of the grazing in the UK has been improved i.e. re-seeded with grass species chosen for maximum milk and meat production in sheep and cattle (animals that are not known for their athleticism, or expected to live a long and active life).  Whereas horses evolved to thrive on forage that is sparse and low in nutrients.  My dream would be to have my own grazing where I could set up a track system like paddock paradise.

Wolfie finished his Danilon on Monday and he's back being turned out overnight and brought into his stable during the day.  He's been trotted up and looks sound.  He's still been resting as the weather has been awful and the ground conditions are not suitable for doing anything.  We've been working a little with the clicker, mainly just on touching targets, but it's good fun and Wolfie is a wonderful student, if not a little over enthusiastic at times!  If the weather stays dry over the weekend, I will long rein him and see how he is.

And just randomly, this statue is part of Glasgow's culture.  The rider always has a cone on his head.  the police and council have stopped taking it off as a cone just gets put straight back on.  I quite like it.  I don't think I've ever seen it without a cone. 

Not as sound as a brass bell

Wolfie is lame.  He got cast in his stable last Tuesday, there was no-one else at the stables at the time, but I managed to get him back over but as he was standing up he slipped and his off right hind leg went right under him and hit the floor.  I give Wolfie a massive bed as the floor in his stable is like an ice rink, but obviously he's still able to reach the floor and this is what happens.  I've now invested in rubber matting (something I should have done ages ago), so hopefully it will be here before the weekend.  There was nothing to see on his leg and he walked out alright so I turned him out for the night.  Wednesday he seemed ok, but on Thursday I popped him on the lunge and within 2 strides of trot it was clear that he was unlevel behind.  I couldn't tell exactly which leg it was, but given the events of Tuesday I thought it was probably his right hind.  I kept him in on Thursday night and the vet came out on Friday.  I was totally dreading the vet coming.  After his virus last year, Wolfie has been horrendous with the vet and he's never had a full lameness work up before with the vet picking up his feet etc.  I was imagining all sorts of scenarios involving Wolfie and the vet in an open space and me clinging onto the leadrope.  Surprisingly, Wolfie was an absolute star.  He seemed to thoroughly enjoy trotting up and down and wasn't overly concerned about the vet picking his feet up.  I suppose it makes a nice change from having needles jabbed in you.  A flexion test confirmed it was the right hind.  He also reacted in his foot to the hoof testers on that leg, but nothing really significant.  To be honest I think he was just wanting to put his foot down, but the vet removed his shoe anyway, just to check.  There was nothing to see.  Given what had happened, the vet thinks it's likely that it's some sort of soft tissue injury higher up the leg.  He was to be box rested until today when he got his shoe back on.  This was mainly due to how water logged and boggy the fields have been with the torrential rain.  So he's been in, I poulticed his foot for a couple of days seeing as the shoe was off, but nothing showed.  He's on a course of Danilon for 10 days.  He got his shoe back on today and he was to get turned out.  He's been very good being box rested, but by today he had evidently had more than enough and was getting dangerous leading him out and he had started manically box walking and trying to climb the door.  I would have liked to have turned him out in a small fenced off area so he couldn't mess around, but there was nowhere else for him to go.  I made sure he was really hungry before I turned him out and let him across the field over to the other horses, I held onto him while he grazed and then tried to take his headcollar off hoping that he wouldn't notice and would just continue grazing.  Famous last words as he whizzed past me like a rocket.  Actually for Wolfie it wasn't too bad, I've seen him a lot worse and that's when he hasn't been on box rest.  I like how the other horses just completely ignore him as if it's just not happening.  I'm glad though as if they'd joined in that might have set him right off.  He quickly got his head down to eat.  He was out for a few hours today and he's back in the stable overnight. He'll go out around lunch time tomorrow and I'll just build his turn out up again till I try him out overnight. Just need to see how it goes, but hopefully he's just given himself a twist and it will settle itself with time and a bit of rest.  Horses eh.

It takes 8,460 bolts to assemble a car, and one nut to scatter it all over the road - Author Unknown

Kelly Marks recently posted a photograph on her facebook page which says 'Ruby's dead, why? Because someone couldn't wait one more second to get home'.  Next to the words is a picture of beautiful horse Ruby lying dead on the road partially covered by rugs and jackets having been hit by a vehicle towing a trailer.  It's a graphic picture and not for the faint hearted, but one that every road user should see.  Although maybe the damage that was caused to the vehicle that hit Ruby would hit home more with some drivers who have absolutely no consideration for horses on the road.  This is a subject which is very close to my heart.  I ride along a short distance of road because I have to.  Every time I do it, I feel as though I am taking mine and Wolfie's life in my hands.  Why?  Because of drivers.  I am corteous at all times to drivers, I never ride on the road in anything that I consider to be adverse weather conditions, both me and Wolfie wear so much hi viz that we can probably be seen from google earth.  I thank drivers for slowing down, if I don't, it's because I am not in a position at that moment to take my hand off the rein, but I do try to acknowledge them.  I am on the road for a short amount of time to get to a track, I am not out for a jolly deliberately trying to be an obstacle in peoples way or an inconvenience.  My biggest bug bear though is when I do request a driver to do something ie slow down and they completely ignore it.  Do they not understand the highway code or do they not reliase quite what will happen if my horse lands on top of their car.  The other day for example, Wolfie and I were hacking along the road, there were a bunch of balloons tied to the fence next to the road side.  A car was coming up behind us, I asked the driver to slow down incase Wolfie moved out passing the balloons which were bobbing around in the wind.  The driver didn't even brake, overtook us at speed on a blind corner.  I have spent a lot of time preparing Wolfie for the road and trying to ensure that he is as safe as can be expected with traffic.  He is in actual fact very good with traffic, but he doesn't see many bunches of balloons tied to fences so that may have been something he reacted to.  It makes me really angry when drivers don't treat him with a little respect and do  as the back of my jacket asks 'please pass wide and slow'.  I have emailed and written to the council on many occasions regarding the speed of drivers and the complete disregard for horses on the road and the lack of awareness, they tell me they will raise it at the next meeting. Ruby's owner has started a campaign to try and create awareness to drivers and has started some e-petitions wanting a compulsory section in the driving test about passing animals on the road, a TV advert for horse awareness / hand signals and to make more off road riding available to riders.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34397

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34346

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/8657

If you are a rider, or a cyclist, or an animal lover or a driver or all of these, please take the time to sign the petitions, for Ruby and all the other horses out there.  And please, if you are driving past a horse on the road, please pass wide and slow, it is a really kind and considerate thing to do and is very much appreciated.