Horse books

I'm currently reading The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson. It's the story of his and his wife's efforts to find healing for their young son Rowan, who has autism. Rupert stumbles upon the calming effect that horses have on Rowan, and this discovery along with a connection to spiritual healers takes the family to Outer Mongolia on a quest to heal Rowan. A trip born out of love and desperation. I'm about a third of the way through the book, and they have arrived in Mongolia and connected with a group of shamans. I was tempted to skip work today and just stay home and read.

Reading The Horse Boy has made me think back to all the books I've read and loved over the years that have horses as part of the story. As a kid I belonged to some sort of "horse book of the month" club, and that's where I got many of the books above, which I still haven't parted with. I remember being so excited when a new one would arrive. They're pretty dog eared; many of them I read them multiple times. Flipping through the Thelwell ponies set still makes me laugh. The illustrations are so awesome and the situations so recognizable to anyone who has spent time with horses.

Son of the Black Stallion is really in bad shape; it's the book in the upper right hand corner of the photo above with the missing spine binding. I don't remember the particulars of how I got it - if the school library was getting rid of old books or if I checked it out and, once in my clutches, never returned it. Looking at the dates on the checkout card, 1972 would have been 5th grade. My name is on the card, as are the names of lots of my friends. The names bring back fun memories, as do the books. We were all horse crazy.

Frolicking with Dude

Now that we're well into March, we're getting out of the deep freeze ... kind of. Like today, I woke up to 8 degrees, but the temperatures made it into the high 20s. And it was sunny, so some melting of the snow occurred.

This pattern has happened a few times now, and the fields are starting to take a beating. They're not exactly icy, but the snow has melted in some spots and refrozen in others so there's this mix of bare ground, some ice, and weird crusty stuff.

When I have the time, I've been taking Dude and Bestie into the indoor to walk them around so they can stretch their legs. Dude in particular has been pretty full of himself on these walks. Barn manager Paula said that he's really tentative outside and doesn't seem to like the crunchy footing, so I guess he's looking to blow off some steam.

About a week ago I brought him in to the arena to handwalk him, and he dropped and rolled, then leapt up, reared, and bucked all in one fluid motion. It was quite impressive - the fluidity, that is. Not the rear and buck, as he only got about a foot off the ground. Last Sunday he must've rolled at least four times - since he can't fully roll over, four times in Dude's world is roll to the left, get up, roll to the right, get up, repeat. Then he pranced up to me and snorted and sort of pushed at my arm, which we've always taken to mean he wants  to play.

So we ran down to the other end of the arena. When I stopped to look out the window, he ran in a circle then came running at me, veering off when he got about 6 feet from me. That is his favorite trick when he's loose in the arena. I hold my spot, he veers off, and then he almost always stops and looks back at me.

He's so crazy. Bestie never does stuff like that. If I take her in to handwalk her, she rolls, then sedately gets up and looks at me like, "Ok, I'm done. Now what?"

In an attempt to delve into Dude's psyche, I Googled all kinds of phrases, including "romping with your horse." That one turned up lots of videos of horses playing together. Fun to watch, but not quite what I was looking for. I did find a site belonging to trainer Franklin Levinson in which he answers a question from a woman asking about the meaning of her horse bucking alongside her during ground work.

In his reply, Levinson said, "I would suggest not trying to figure your horse out too much. ... Could be the animal was simply playing and enjoying being with you and active with you in a different sort of way." I love that! Play is good. Maybe Dude just wants to have fun.

Dude photo bombs

This makes me laugh every time I look at it. I was trying and trying to get Bestie to perk up for a photo and she was like, meh, just not feeling it. She had just swung her backside over to the other side of the aisle and messed up the angle when Dude stuck his head out of his stall - whatcha doing?

A change in supplements

Here we go! Another attempt to have two horses happily on the same supplements.

Dude has been off supplements for a bit to see if the funky smell he developed this summer would go away. It did. No one could successfully determine why he had a funky smell, and he seemed perfectly happy and unconcerned about being a stinky guy. But it just didn't seem right to me to keep him on something that might have been causing him to smell. Wouldn't that mean his system is not processing an ingredient correctly? 

So, moving on, I looked at a bunch of options, knowing I wanted to stay with a multipurpose supplement - joints, coat, and general peace, love and happiness. And even though I did read up on several possibilities, I really kinda wanted to stay with HorseTech because overall I've been happy with their products and their customer service is really great. And the bottom line was that in the end, HorseTech did seem to have the best match for what I needed.

Bestie recently finished up her old supplements, so about two weeks ago they both started on HorseTech's TriSport, with glucosamine, chondroitin, and MSM as the key ingredients. The previous supplement Dude was on also had hyaluronic acid, but I'm just not convinced that's a deliverable in powdered form. Bestie was only on glucosamine and chondroitin previously, so she's getting a bit extra oomph with the new supplement. They've been on a half dose for two weeks.

The only bummer is that the TriSport doesn't have a pre/probiotic, so I bought a container of HorseTech's DFM ProLactic. I started adding a half scoop of that in their containers this week. Over the next couple weeks I'll increase to the full dosage for both the probiotic and the joint supplement. 

I also recently doubled the rice bran Dude's been getting to two scoops, and he's still getting rice bran oil also. The good news is that I'm seeing an incremental change along his top line and sides. I didn't go to the barn for a couple days and when I took off his blanket, I noticed he's not so ribby. Funny how it's easier to see when I'm not looking at him every day. I'm also giving him an extra flake of hay at night when I'm there, which is most nights. I'm like the hay police, making sure that even if I've given him an evening flake, he still gets the two flake allotment that all of the horses get for their late feeding. He definitely needs the extra hay.

Probably all of these factors - extra hay, rice bran, rice bran oil AND keeping him in an extra sheet under his midweight have contributed to the little weight I'm seeing. The winter has been so cold he easily could've kept dropping weight. It's a relief to see him gaining; it's been a long haul over several months.

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!