New purchases

A few necessary purchases made today at Guy's Farm and Yard, my go-to for horsey stuff. Haven't been there in a while.

A hole on the left side of Dude's flymask near his temple has been slowly getting bigger. I thought that there must be a game of fly mask tugging going on with one of his pasture mates, but barn manager Paula thought he was rubbing his head on his stall door frame in the morning while waiting to go out. In any case, I decided I'd better get him a new one before the loose fabric ends starting poking him in the eye. The Cashel Crusader seems to fit him best; he has such a large jaw that it's kind of hard to find a mask that fits well. (And who knew Cashel has so many different products; I'd never looked at the site before including the link in this entry.)

After looking at a couple options on the shelf at Guy's, I decided to try the Absorbine Fungasol to treat the creeping crud on Dude and Bestie's back hind legs. I've been fighting this all summer. I don't know if it's that the summer has been wetter than normal or what, but I just can't get it to go away. I've been scrubbing with an iodine solution - which has worked in the past - and also with a tea tree oil wash. A couple of times I've felt like I'm making headway, but then I won't get to the barn for a day and it seems to return with a vengeance. So after buying the Fungasol today, I treated them both this afternoon. The instructions say to treat every day until the crud is gone. It has a scent that sort of reminds me of bathroom cleaner, which is kind of odd.

I also bought a couple bags of shavings, which I haven't needed in a few weeks. There for a while I was easily going through two bags a week, but the horses seems to have a thicker layer of shavings in their stalls recently and I haven't felt the need to add any.

I was going to ride Dude today, but there was a bit of thunder and it looked like a storm might blow up. Instead we had a nice long hand graze not too far from the barn in case we had to get inside quickly. Bestie got her usual "lite" graze - she's rather well rounded at this point in the summer.