Category: Horses

My friend and I took Havoc and Lily out on a short trail ride today in the mid-afternoon. I had spent some time training Lily to get in my trainer’s trailer and we both needed a break. Although Lily loads fine into a slant load, she doesn’t like the looks of my trainer’s straight load two horse trailer. She also loads well into my stock trailer as long as there aren’t any horses in it. Nor does she permit any other horses to be loaded behind her. Since my stock trailer has no dividers, this means that a three horse trailer can only hold one horse.

Last year when I took Lily out on trail rides, she rarely wanted to stop and graze. She has relaxed a lot since then, or grown up a bit, because she now is quite eager to graze. Since I’ve done a lot of clicker training with her, I just click to her when I wish her to eat. She seems to really like trail rides now, and all the juicy grass, which is usually hard to come by in Colorado.

While we were out on the trail, we listened to the meadowlarks, and looked at the profusion of wildflowers. We ride on a ranch (slated for development, unfortunately) and most of it is open grasslands and rolling hills, overlooked by Pikes Peak. Our prize find among the wildflowers was a single, perfect wild iris. We didn’t see any pronghorns like we did on our last ride. It is still not unusual to see them west of I-25, despite the encroachment of suburbs.

This morning, I was gathering up the feed buckets in the barn and saw a bit of movement out of the corner of my eye. A skunk had crawled out from under the pallet of stacked hay, about six feet away. Needless to say, I left the barn quickly. I usually worry about sickness when wildlife is so bold, but in my brief glimpse it looked sleek and healthy.

I hope it doesn’t feel threatened by any of the horses. It is bad enough deskunking a 110 pound dog.

This photo of Hap grazing is a very good thing, because Hap was showing signs of colic this morning. I heard a tremendous racket in the barn as I was finishing up feeding the horses, and rushed in to see what was going on. Hap had evidently been down briefly, and hit the sides of his stall as he got up. As I watched, he twisted his head around to look at his side, and then started pawing. I checked his concentrate and it didn’t look as though he had touched it. I took his concentrate away since I didn’t want him eating if he had an impaction.
Continue reading A Good Thing

I enjoyed today’s Non Sequitur which reminds me of many a trail ride on Hap. One time the poor horse couldn’t find anything better to spook at than a butterfly. (Link expires in two weeks.)

This time of year we usually feed the horses after sunset. Although we have electricity in the barn, there are no lights between the house and the barn. I know the way so well that it is usually no problem, even on moonless nights, to walk out to the barn and turn the lights on. I actually enjoy the walk, because I can look at the stars.
Continue reading Hoofbeats in the Dark

After Hap finished playing in the water on Saturday, he walked over to the fence line to see why people were laughing at him.

On warmish days, Hap likes to play in water. Since it was a nice day, I put him in the horse trailer and took him to my trainer’s today so I could ride him briefly in the arena. She has a visitor’s paddock out front near her arena. Hap must have emptied twenty gallons from the stock tank in ten minutes. On a really hot day, he can empty a stock tank: using his head as a shovel to scoop water on his chest and front legs. I’ve even seen him totally submerge his head and part of his neck in the water.
Continue reading Water play

Lily has what my trainer and I suspect is a slight stone bruise so I didn’t ride her today. In a day or so it should either clear up on its own or get bad enough that we can tell which foot it is in.

So I rode little Cody today. Cody isn’t really that little, just an inch or so shorter than Lily, but I have been in the habit of thinking poor little Cody, and it sort of stuck.

Unlike most of the horses at my trainer’s boarding barn, Cody came in fairly recently: late last summer. His owner had not been pleased with his former boarding situation, and he was about a hundred pounds underweight. He seemed a pleasant enough gelding: very much the Quarter Horse type, and the same bright sorrel as Lily. He doesn’t have papers, and was supposedly about 13 or 14. (For geldings, I think the main benefit of papers is you know how old they are.)

The day after Cody moved to the barn, his owner was in an automobile accident which left her with serious neurological problems. Not long after that Cody suffered colic caused by a torsion, which fortunately untwisted before he had to be put down.
Continue reading Cody

The farrier found a roofing nail in Rags’ foot. We believe these nails are a remnant of our old barn’s (really a shed) former tarpaper roof. This one hadn’t done any apparent damage to Rags, since it seems to have missed any soft areas.

My farrier also pulled Hap’s shoes. We had been debating whether to do so since he won’t get much use for a while. Not only would doing so save me some money, but barefoot horses do better in the snow. She was happy with the way his feet looked, and the ground should be soft from the snow for a few days so he can adjust to his new barefoot status. He had suffered the effects of poor shoeing when I bought him, and it took a long time to get his hooves looking healthy with solid hoof walls and adequate soles. I still think of him as having soft feet, even though he has great feet now, at least for a Thoroughbred. I will probably worry about him for a few days until I see how he is doing.

Smoke was the hardest horse for her to trim. He can’t hold his right front leg up long enough for even a trim, due to apparent stiffness in the knee. My farrier had to lean down a lot further than she would like to be able to trim and file the foot. She thought he looked in good weight. Making sure old horses get enough calories is a challenge since they don’t have any teeth. My farrier only sees him every eight to ten weeks, and she has a better idea of whether he is maintaining his weight than I do, since I see him every day.