Bestie has a birthday and Dude has a bad day

April 30 was Bestie's birthday, 19 years young. She celebrated with a carrot. I usually don't go to the barn on Thursdays because of yoga, but because I was going to be away over the weekend and because it was her birthday, I drove over there after class. There was just enough light to get them both outdoors for a few minutes of grazing. The fields are still mucky, and not all of the fields are usable, so the horses are on short rotations of a couple hours outside in order to give all of them some much needed outdoors time.

Bestie's longtime pasture mate Sadie left last week. They've been going out together almost since we arrived at Maple Valley, so, hmmn, I would guess 6 years or so. They just kind of did their own thing happily in the field - primarily grazing, with occasional acknowledgements of each other's presence. It seemed like a pretty peaceful relationship. To my knowledge, there was only one mysterious altercation in all those years. That occurred in the last month, a little tiff with no repercussions, thank goodness. Sadie is being leased by a young girl, who took her home for the summer. Bestie seems no worse for wear over Sadie's departure.

Now, Dude, on the other hand...

Dude's bad day was yesterday. I got to the barn after work and from the wild and woolly look of him, I could tell that he had gotten worked up about something. Barn manager Paula filled me in. Dude's girlfriend on the left, Berry, had left Sunday to go to a new barn, and a gelding moved in to her former stall. Dude was Not Happy about that. And Eve, on his other side, is in major heat, constantly whinnying and swishing her tail at him. So even though he generally is not attached to her, for the moment, he thinks he is. Also, when they did the turnout shift swap, it made Dude Very Angry to have to come in. But when they put him back out, he took out his anger on his pasture mate Nate, bossing poor Nate around and boxing him into a corner of the field.

So Dude was brought in to hang out in his stall with some hay, which most horses would be perfectly fine with. But by the time I arrived, it was clear he'd been stewing all afternoon. It was like he had decided he was mad at the world but couldn't really remember what made him so mad. Paula quietly observed that it was just not a good day for Dude. I took him out for a half hour of grazing ... the magic cure to calm. And today he was fine. He didn't even look at Eve when she started carrying on. Kind of embarrassing for her.

Time for a saddle cleaning

I was a total loser as a rider this winter - just couldn't do it with the frigid temperatures. Particularly in the older indoor with the metal walls, it was like riding in a freezer. Not fun. My last ride for the winter on Bestie was in early January, and I just got back on her (once) about a week ago.

In the interim, the saddles accumulated a lot of dust in the tack room. 

A couple weeks ago the May issue of Western Horseman arrived, and I read the article "The Secret of Suds" with interest. The saddle cleaning tips in the article are the shared wisdom of Canadian saddlemaker Ken Cameron. 

I liked it right away because he started with the assumption that  your saddle had not been used all winter because you'd been in hibernation. Yep.

I learned that my main problem is rushing the job. I soap it up, rub it down, apply conditioner, and off I go. To do it right, you should soap it up - and Mr. Cameron is ALL about plenty of soap suds; in fact, he describes the goal in the soaping process as "a froth." The next step is to let it dry for two or three days before doing anything more. Giving it plenty of time to dry minimizes the chance of rot, particularly if you're applying some sort of sealant/conditioner-type material after cleaning.

I learned that Murphy's Oil Soap can be used as a saddle cleaner.

I learned that using too much oil in our damper climate could lead to mold and mildew.

All in all, a very useful read.

While I couldn't find the actual WH article online, Mr. Cameron does share his tips here

4H Regional Day

I've been on the county 4H Foundation board for quite a while, and somehow have never been been an evaluator at Regional Day, which was held this past Saturday. Folks were needed to evaluate, so off I went to the middle school in Burlington where the event was held. It was so much fun!

Six of us were there to evaluate tabletops. I think I was the only one who hadn't been to evaluate at Regional Day previously; there were actually a few "pros" who come every year because they enjoy it so much. We broke into pairs and each pair of evaluators looked at roughly 7-8 projects. 

We had a sheet with criteria to measure on a point spread, and looked at things like use of space, design, whether they included the sources or not, neatness, etc. We looked at the age of the 4H member in order to assess their work and also read their written reflection on their project that include their goals and what they learned.

My co-evaluator Elaine and I spent about 20 minutes with each project. We'd give it the once-over, then work our way through the criteria with quite a bit of discussion. 

Projects ranged from model barn plans to robotics to items needed for hunting to facts about polo. Honestly, all the projects were really well done and informative. In fact, we gave every project we looked at a blue ribbon (although since they were scored with a point system, while they all fell into the blue ribbon category, some received more points than others). 

I enjoyed the little touches, like  a particularly beautiful color scheme or the model barn project that even had a little water in the tiny horse trough! I especially loved the fact that a couple of the horse businesses developed as tabletops (a summer camp and a rescue horse barn) even had references to checking out the business on social media. :)

Not that I needed a reminder about what a wonderful organization 4H is, but being part of the day underscored to me again how many opportunities 4H membership offers kids. It was really great to see the kids in action. Nothing like all that energy and enthusiasm to refresh my perspective on our monthly business meetings! 

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.