A Friday night at the barn

With book club and yoga this week, I hadn't made it to the barn Wednesday or Thursday. Friday it snowed all day, so the first order of business upon arrival was ... getting in the door. The way the entry door is positioned, the wind seems to swirl in along the side of the barn, past the door and back out the other side along the silo. With snowstorms, the snow accumulates right in the entry. After getting through the snow to the door, I found it was so tight that I actually thought the door was locked; even with a few knee prods and hip checks, I couldn't budge it and ended up walking around the barn to the side door.

No one else was there that night and as I entered, the horses all swung their heads my way. Because our stall walls don't go all the way to the ceiling, a few were peering over the tops of their walls as I came in. Such a funny perspective to see their ears and wide spaced eyes peeking at me.

It's always so great to get to the barn. No matter if my arrival is daily or there are days in between visits, I always get the major welcome from Dude and Bestie ... Dude's deep growly nicker and Bestie's high pitched whinny.

Second order of business was rehanging Dude's Jolly Ball. It's his stress reliever for when it's turnout time and he's impatient; he bangs it with his nose to emphasize the fact that he wants out NOW. Better than kicking the door, which he also does when he's worked himself up into a REAL tizzy. The twine holding the ball wears through every so often and has to be replaced. It's funny, when the ball is on the ground he pays absolutely no attention to it..

Third order of business was grooming. It's that dandery time of year, and their coats get just plain yucky between the dander and shavings that work under the blankets when they roll in their stalls. After brushing them both, there was still some time before the feeding of evening hay, so I grabbed a flake for each of them. 

It's pretty warm in the barn - typically it doesn't get much below 35 degrees even when it's below zero outside - so I had left Dude's blankets off while I brushed Bestie. To air him out, ha ha.

After redoing the buckles on the front of his blankets, I slid down the stall wall just to hang out for a bit, sitting in the shavings with my back against the wall. I love the peacefulness of being in the barn at night alone as the horses eat. That peacefulness didn't last long - after a minute Dude stuck his nose under his hay pile and tossed the whole thing in the air - over me. End of peaceful contemplation. :)

An appointment with the farrier

Usually I am not at the barn when farrier Justin comes because the appointment is almost always right smack in the middle of the day. So after the visit he calls me to do a little review. He's really conscientious about that follow up.

Bestie takes about 2 seconds - "Yep, she looks good" - or something to that effect. This shot shows her feet a couple days prior to the visit; a little long, but not bad. Her hooves typically stay pretty well shaped and smooth, and we've never had to treat her for any thrush.

Now Dude, on the other hand, is a different story. Safe to say "Yep, he looks good" has never been said. Dude's portion of "the talk" usually starts with, "Wellllll, Dude's feet..." Sometimes they're looking a little better, sometimes they're not. Sometimes his front feet look terrible and the back look ok. Or the back hooves look terrible but the front hooves look good. It's a never ending battle.

After years of watching the cycle, I've noticed that Dude's feet don't look too bad until about a week and a half prior to the appointment. That was true with this latest visit. I had been using Life Data Treatment with tea tree oil and he seemed to be responding great to that. About two weeks prior to Justin's visit, I ran out of the Life Data and it inexplicably went missing in the local farm store. And it was really hard to find online. I ended up going back to an Absorbine product. We've used them all. I think there might have  been a few stallbound days in there due to weather. That never helps his feet.

Here's Dude a few days prior to his trim. Again, a bit long. What you can't see in the photo is that the inner edge of his right front hoof was all chipped away. Love the casual resting going on with the back right left. Yup, just hangin' in the aisle.

This is his front left hoof - this is actually looking GOOD for him; there's a defined frog visible although parts of it are kind of soft. He's got super constricted heels.

And here he is all trimmed up. This time, Justin found his rear hooves to be thrushier than his front hooves. His feet got cleaned up pretty well ... the cycle of staying on top of it begins again.

The "whatcha doing" nose.

A cold (but not the coldest) night at the barn

So we've hit a cold stretch here in northern Vermont. I'm looking at my home thermometer and we're at -7 and dropping.

At the barn last night, the clock in the indoor arena registered 12 degrees; wayyy below the temperature I consider my cut-off for riding (25-ish). I noticed after I took the photo that the helpful temperature guide indicates that we were indeed in the "VERY COLD" range last night. This clock clearly was not made in Vermont since what it identifies as the COLD range of 30-60 degrees is more like what's considered to be NORMAL here. :)

The horses didn't go out because of the cold and also because light snow had caused some icy patches and treacherous walking. Since the barn was pretty quiet, I was able to bring them separately into the indoor for some romping time. Bestie rolled, then strolled about sniffing. I got her to free lunge, although she kept looking at me with that "why are you making me do this?" expression.

Dude had a couple long leisurely rolls, then trotted around, and finally, got fixated on a gate latch clanking in the wind outside. 

Here he is, intently staring in the direction of the mysterious clanking noise, apparently using his x-ray-through-the-walls vision while trying to figure the noise out. I kept running around the arena like a crazy woman, trying to get him to run around too. I warmed up, but couldn't distract him; he was far more interested in listening to the clanking. So much for romping time!

 

Just for fun

Barn owners Larry and Julie work really hard to keep the property in shape. Keeping it in shape means nearly constant attention to routine chores, plus the seemingly endless fix-it projects that pop up. There's so much to do that I would think both of them would be exhausted and wrung out, but they're always super pleasant, quick to smile and laugh, and ready to help with anything. With all they have going on, I thought it was really great that Larry could spend some time doing a silo re-do, just for the heck of it.

I had gone to the barn for a couple days in a row and noticed that the lower part of the silo was being painted. I just figured that they were painting the whole silo red to match the barn.

It wasn't until at least my third day of parking the car and walking by the silo that I noticed that the silo paint job was  mimicking the barn entry - part of which can be seen on the left. I asked Larry about the project and he just shrugged and said he thought it would be fun. Just for fun ... so simple!

A good afternoon at the barn

Because I was out of town last weekend, the goal today was to spend some quality time at the barn. A good hour after arrival was spent cleaning out my corner of the tack room. We've all been hearing the telltale rustling of mice, so I wanted to sweep out the corner and just sort of tidy up a bit. Plus, the weather forecast was for snow showers - it was a good day to bring in the winter wear for the horses. 

This is the "before" shot:

And this is the "after" shot:

Hmmn, it doesn't look a whole lot tidier, now that I look at the photos. :)

I brought another plastic crate to put blankets in, so that added to the stack. And I took home the English saddle and the bareback pad, which haven't been used in months. The English saddle makes my knees ache, and the bareback pad never fit Dude well. That was a plan that didn't work out at all. The pad kept sliding backwards, even thought it had the sticky bottom to supposedly keep it in place. I brought back Dude's Western saddle back to the barn. It's on the lower rack since it weighs about a million pounds. Well, close to 40 pounds.

I swept out the corner (tons of mouse poop, blech) and cleaned out the shelving (Banamine from 2006, anyone?) and brought home the jackets that had been hanging in there since last winter to wash them.

After all the cleaning, I saddled up Dude to do a little walk in the indoor. By the time I walked him down to the new indoor, which has the deeper, more comfy footing, the saddle had slipped back. He has so little muscle on his back, the saddle doesn't fit right. I got on him bareback, but just did one circle at the walk around the indoor ... I felt bad subjecting him to the combo of my bony rear end and his bony back, but he seemed pretty peppy and happy.

As I went to get off, I don't know WHAT I did, but as I swung my right leg over his back, I slid right off onto the ground. Wish I could have gotten a picture of Dude turning his head to look at me sort of quizzically - whatcha doing down there? It was pretty funny. What a good boy, though - perfectly well behaved after a good 6 months not under saddle.

After we got back into the barn, I tried Bestie's saddle on him and it seems like it will work. I'm going to bring the breastplate just in case. We'll have a go with that Monday night.

The mystery of stinky Dude

Dude's had a little personal problem over the last couple months or so ... a smell. It's kind of strange. I noticed it, but didn't think too much about it until our barn manager mentioned it. It's the usual horsey smell but a little mustier (I say) or sweeter (our barn manager says). It's like when people eat a lot of garlic, like the scent is coming out of his pores.

When the vet was out for the fall shots a week or so ago, I mentioned it to her. She sniffed him, but said she couldn't really determine what it was I was talking about. So the smell wasn't at all obvious to her, which I found kind of odd. She checked his teeth and filed down some points, so was really all over his mouth, and didn't find anything out of the ordinary in there that would be causing a smell.

She also cleaned his sheath. He's definitely on the 2x/year plan for that now; he needed the fall cleaning.

So with him basically all cleaned up, I started thinking more about what he's taking in.

In terms of what he eats, for most of the summer he was in a paddock with not much grass at all. Changes over the last several months included the addition of a vitamin E/selenium supplement (at the suggestion of our vet) and a new joint supplement.

To investigate the possibility that the smell was being caused by the joint supplement, I emailed our supplement company, HorseTech, to see if they had any record of the supplement he's on, HylaSport OTC, producing a smell. It seemed to me that the smell started about the same time that he transitioned to this supplement from another one of their products. It seemed like kind of a long shot, as the ingredients are not  that different from the other supplement, and our vet said she hadn't ever heard of the ingredients producing a smell in horses.

A customer service representative from HorseTech called me. She had no previous records of such a thing happening, and was pretty intrigued by the situation. We had a little chat about the circumstances so they could establish a record, and at their request I followed up with the lot number of the supplement and said I would keep them posted on any developments.

I took him off the vitamin E/selenium supplement a couple weeks ago to see if that would make a difference. I figured it probably takes a few weeks to get out of his system. Today at the barn I didn't think he smelled as strong, but I'm kind of starting to feel a little crazy about the whole situation,and not really trusting my nose anymore. Dude probably wonders why I'm always sniffing him.

I've googled ("odor from horse" "musty scent from horse" etc etc) to try and find similar situations, with no luck. Right now I'm weighing option A) - taking him off the HylaSport to see if the smell goes away or option B) - doing the vet-suggested metabolic work-up to see what that shows. I hate to take him off the HylaSport because he's responded really well to it in terms of joint support. And I hate to do the metabolic because I don't want to spend the money ... and he appears to be perfectly fine. Debating. Sniffing.. Driving myself crazy.

Nice to meet you, Wonder Dust

Twice this summer, Dude scraped up the inside of his front left leg. This photo was scrape #1, not too bad, basically a surface scrape. We think he's somehow catching himself with the edge of his shoes when he rolls. Scrape #2 arrived just after Scrape #1 healed. It was uglier. Pretty much a surface scrape again, but longer, and with a  little divot about half way down.

It took forever to heal. At night I would swab it with 3-way ointment and keep it wrapped with a layer of gauze and a just enough Vet Wrap to hold the gauze in place. Since it was fairly low on his leg, I didn't want mud getting in there, or risk him catching himself again. A week went by with not much progress. I think between the wrapping and the warm humid weather, it just couldn't heal. Then barn manager Paula suggested ...

I had never heard of the stuff; amazing, after all these years with horses. Luckily the barn had a bottle stashed away. It wasn't too full of the magic dust, so it took me a bit to master the proper poofing of the dust onto his leg. But once I got the poof technique down, it was pretty cool. The next day I could really see how the scrape was drying up. Went to Guy's Farm & Yard and bought my own bottle the next weekend.