My version of horse colors

 

Pop quiz - what color is this horse?

What’s this posting two days in a row?  I must be bored.  http://justanotherdayoutwest.com/my-version-of-horse-colors/

Beware the Ides of March…

I have to know if anyone else has had a less than fantastic day.  Is it because it’s the Ides of March?  Is it because Mercury is going Retrograde?  Is it because I just have to have at least one weird/off day once in a while?  Is it because it’s a Thursday, which like Arthur Dent I struggle to get the hang of?

A year ago to the date the bay colt was born.  His was a rough delivery and I was very relieved when he stood and four hours later finally nursed.  Meanwhile, his momma retained her placenta then developed an infection that took serious veterinary care to get under control.  (Read: major drain on pocket book.)

So, today is his official First Birthday.  Happy Birthday little bay boy!  Actually, he is almost as big as Sierra right now.

This morning I went out to get Sierra and saw a yellow nose peeking out of the fence on the pasture next to hers.

In the back is Ka'ala (the bay boy's momma), then the filly, Ginger and Cricket.

Ok.  The filly got through the fence between her pasture and the big girl’s pasture.  Without a mark on her.  Thankfully.  While she seemed just fine with being in there with the big girls, she didn’t argue about getting out of there.  When she had gotten in with Ki and Shilo, she seemed to hold her own, this didn’t look any different.  I suspect in a year or two she will be the Queen ‘B’ out in the field.

Obviously, there has been an issue with the fence for the pen where the yearlings are supposed to be.  Sunday the boys started walking through it.  Really, it was just the bay colt.  Slick was behaving himself.  I no sooner put the bay colt back into his correct pasture than he was back in with the big girls.  So, I moved both colts into a smaller pen that I knew was carrying a charge.  I left the filly where she was figuring she wouldn’t test the fence.  And I was right, for a few days.  Now, she is in the small pen with the boys.  Tomorrow we get to restring all the wire for their pasture.  Hopefully that will fix wherever it is shorting out at.

This morning I took Sierra to see a chiropractor.  What I have been doing for her doesn’t seem to be addressing her issue at the lope, so I needed another opinion.  He couldn’t find anything really out of place with her.  She was tight in her back, again.  His suggestion is to have the vets look at her if she gets sore again.  That appointment will be the 26th.

When I got back with her, about 10:30, I noticed Dixie was laying down.  Dixie is the momma to Slick, Kanak, Ki and Shilo.  All the other mares she hangs with were still eating.  Not a good thing.  I had noticed she was laying down when I pulled the filly out of their pasture and hadn’t thought a whole lot of it.  The mares will snooze in the mornings some days.  But, ignoring food in favor of laying down is a bad thing.

So I did a really bad job parking the trailer.  Went in the house and drew up a dose of Banamine.  Walked out and caught her, tapped a vein and got the drugs in.  Then I put her in the one and only stall on this place.  She was dehydrated at first, she seems to have drank enough water to come through that now.  She’s still in the stall tonight.  She seems to be comfortable, but has only pooped once since I put her in there.  She does have some gut noises.  I gave her a little bit of hay.  I have no idea why she was dehydrated.  The other mares all seem fine.  They had plenty of water.  It would really help if she could talk and tell me all about her belly ache.

To top off the whole day, the guy said this morning he had an earache.  Tonight he asked me to look at it, to see if there was a bite or something.  He has one angry red swollen ear.  No bite that I can see, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.  We both agree that the best course of action is to just cut the thing off.  Maybe not…

Also, it’s rainy and windy here.

The role of body work in conditioning a horse.

Today I worked with Sierra again.  As I was going through doing my thing with her I was making mental notes of where we are at, where I would like for us to be and what might be getting in our way.  So that others might learn from what I have learned I figured I’d share.  Get comfy though, this is a lengthy one.

Ready to work... she is still showing some extra tummy that needs to slim down.

First a bit more background on what has happened with her.  Last summer she came down with Pigeon Fever.  No it’s not from Pigeons, the name comes from the typical ‘Pigeon Breast’ look that develops as an abscess forms on their chest.  Google it, there are some really yummy pictures out there!  It is caused by a common bacteria in the soil, Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis.  Typically they get a ugly lumpy puss filled spot, it breaks open, drains then heals up.  Aside from the overall nastiness of draining pints of puss out of a horse, it’s not a big deal.  Sierra got weird in her training, then went mildly lame, then her whole belly swelled up with edema, then she got a spot that broke open (on her left side, just behind where the cinch goes), then another and another right next to the original.  Then she got some other abscesses that opened up back by her right udder, and another and another.  The usual treatment consists of keeping the horse comfortable and letting the infection run it’s course.   After a few months (yes months!) of dealing with this and thinking it wasn’t right, that it wasn’t just a normal case of Pigeon Fever, one of the vets I use suggested a course of antibiotics.  It’s not a simple five to seven day run of penicillin or Uniprim.  This was thirty days of Rifampin and Sulfa drugs twice a day.  Cost was roughly $700 and they cut us a great deal.  Yes, that was a deal.  (BTW – Love these guys!)  Sierra was an angel with her treatment.  To get the right dosage of each drug she wound up getting three syringe fulls of medicine at each treatment.  In other words I was cramming crap down her throat six times a day, for a month.  Pretty sure none of it was cherry or peppermint flavored.  Personally I would probably have been biting or kicking at the end of the first week.  She took it all, very well.  Other than not really wanting to be caught, she never argued about getting her meds.

The end of the drug therapy was early in November.  She had lost a lot of muscle tone overall.  She was particularly atrophied in her left shoulder region.  In her lameness she would not extend her left front leg at all, she would bring it to neutral (straight up and down) but not place it out in front of her body.  This persisted for so long she apparently lost all tone in her triceps.  At one point I wondered if there had been permanent damage to the muscle.  Timeline wise, she was off by mid-July, first abscesses broke mid-August, meds ran October into November.  Five months of sick horsey.  Poor mare.  Luckily it didn’t appear to go internal, although that is a complication that can happen, similar to a case of bastard strangles.  It was definitely a systemic infection.  My guess is the main hangout for it was her axillary lymphocenter, just my guess though.  In my brain, it would best explain the persistent lameness.  There was also some residual swelling on her left side in her chest and down her pectorals.  No heat, and not really edema-ish, more squishy making me think there might be a lymph drainage issue.

The theory is that the drugs and her immune system beat the infection.  Although, in typing this all out I just got the weirdest deja vu feeling that I had shared this story and she got sick again.  Some altered form of Murphy’s Law, that once you think you are in the clear everything goes wonky again.  For now, I’m operating on the idea that the bacteria no longer poses a threat to Sierra’s health.

Figuring that even if the whole infection had been kicked that her body needed lots of recovery and recuperation time she had all of November off.  I really didn’t do anything with her until mid-December.  Six months off by that time.  With her body pretty well beaten up by the infection.

I started her back with light round-penning and some time on the hot-walker.   Then started saddling her and continuing the light work.  Currently I ride her lightly.  Working on going forward willingly, staying soft through her face and sides, and light lateral work.  About every other ride I push for a little more, taking her up to the edge of “do I have to”.   Hoping to find the balance between progressing and getting soured.  Today all we did was walk and trot with a bit of extra attention on soft willing upward transitions.  Although I didn’t time the ride, I might have been on her back for all of ten minutes.  Including a minute or two of just standing there petting on her after I stepped up on her.  She likes to have the backs of her ears scratched.

Willingly moving into a forward relaxed trot. I would not mind seeing her head drop to show a bit more relaxation. But, she had good rhythm and was more balanced than this picture shows. (The joys of action shots with a cell phone!)

The goal with her is to earn points and/or money in competition with her and ultimately breed her, maybe someday if the horse market comes back.  I would like to get her to the show pen sooner, rather than later to start proving her.  Of course I would be much happier and closer to that goal had we not lost six months training and conditioning time.   With that in mind, I’m gearing her more to reining than the cow horse events.  There’s less to learn.   She does have to be fit to show in reining, but not quite the ultra fit that is required in the cow horse.  Even in my eagerness to go do something with her we won’t go show until she is ready both in training and conditioning.

Where does the body work come in to it?  While she was sick, I didn’t do any massage.  Systemic infections + massage = bigger mess.  I did try some light touch (CranioSacral Therapy) and energy (Reiki) work with her.  The CranioSacral work just didn’t feel right while the infection was still cruising through her body.  Even though what I was doing wouldn’t stir up the tissues so much, I got kind of busy signal from her body.  Like it was overwhelmed with what it had to deal with and couldn’t process anything else.  Ok.  Her body seemed to welcome the Reiki work.  If nothing else it is usually comforting.

Now, I check her body every day that I work her.  I also pay attention to little things.  For instance, she acted flinchy if the back cinch was at all loose.  Typically I have the back cinch to where there isn’t a big gap between the belly and cinch, but not snug against the belly.  She seemed more comfortable if it’s really snug on her belly.  Odd.  I don’t remember her being that way before.  When I got done working her I checked and she had some tight spots in between her ribs.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  I checked her CranioSacral Rhythm, it’s solid.  She is tender in her muscles, body sore from getting back in shape.  To me it’s a good sign that her belly and ribs are where she is sore and not so much in her back.  It says we are working the right muscles.  If maybe telling me to back off a tad.  I am mindful that after a systemic illness of that nature it may be a year until she is fully back to herself.  Doubtless there are many instances of scar tissue to work through along with the effects of a long term course of antibiotics.  There is probably another three months of conditioning I have to do before she is mostly back to where she was.

A bit hard to see, but the left and right shoulders, the triceps in particular, are pretty even in development now. Still showing an ever so slight amount of swelling in the left pectoral region. Oh boy, can you see just how undeveloped her neck muscles are!?

Now I find myself using massage techniques and CranioSacral Therapy on her after every ride.  To a degree, I’m not even consciously looking for things to work on.  I just find myself spending time with my hands at certain places on her body, checking if any changes need to occur.

I’m toying with whether I should set aside one day a week as body work day, or keep going with work after every ride.  I’m sure riders and trainers who are not body workers make due with getting their horses help maybe once a week, maybe every other week, once a month…  Depending on what they can afford and what schedules allow for.  I like the idea of catching things that are not quite right before they become a larger problem for her.  For me.  Then again, the idea of devoting one of our working days to just making sure her body is feeling good strikes me as a more thorough way to help her.  Thinking it out like this, now I’m leaning towards doing both.  That should cover all the bases.  All I know is I would hate to be bringing her back into shape without my knowledge of body work.

An uneventful day…

and I don’t mean that facetiously.  Worked on a couple of people in the am, did a quick trip to town, then worked a few horses.

First up was Jr.  Let him bounce and play in the pen.  He just feels sooooo good.  He is also pretty sure that he IS all that AND a bag of chips.  I tell ya, what testosterone does to the male psyche.  After he finished up playing he got to hang out on the hot walker.

Generally speaking I am not very enthused about having a stud horse around.  I feel I’m a pretty harsh critic of horse flesh and I make an effort to not be barn blind.  The world can always use another good (even fantastic) gelding, right?  I already know that the yearling colts will be gelded – both of their mommas are just mares, with no show record.

Jr still has his testicles for quite a few reasons.  For starters he has a strong sire and dam.  He is a good color and well marked.  (Just because I don’t care much for Palomino doesn’t mean other folks don’t just go ga-ga over it, and four perfect socks are pretty doggone classy.)  In other words, he is a good looking, flashy colt.  He has a good mind/good temperament and is very trainable.  So far, when he does try to be an unmannerly idiot talking to anything that could be a girl, very simple corrections and more than anything re-directions fix the situation.  He is not a HERDA carrier.  In a nutshell, there are no marks against him.  Once you geld one, you can’t put them back.  However, he will have to prove that he can do the job.  It is not absolutely certain that he will be a stallion to stand at stud.  However, that door does remain open to him though.

Anyhow, once he was out of the pen I pulled out his momma.  She’s 22 years old now.  She still kicks up her heels and rips around the pen.  I try not to let her over do it.  Given her history as a cutting horse, I know she’s spent her fair share of time covering miles on a lunge rope or in a round pen.  Just going in circles.  To watch her play and fart and buck looks to me like she’s giving the hoof to all those hours spent just working off the fresh.  She’s some stubborn old lady saying if I feel good then why shouldn’t I go run and play?  All I can tell her is yes, but please look after yourself.

A few notes: first don’t pick on an old lady for her figure, or lack thereof.  This girl has had her fair share of foals.  Yes her tail is very short, thank Jr for that.  Finally, yes part of her mane is rubbed out – that was her teaching her filly this year how to find the choicest bits of hay on the outside of the gate.

She’s a good mare.  She’s sound.  The last time she was shown she was 15 years old.  That’s another reason Jr is not gelded.  His sire retired sound from the cutting pen.  I don’t know about you, but I have dealt with my share of unsoundness and injury in horses.  Unfortunately, soundness is something that seems to have been lost in some parts of the gene pool.  Knowing there is a sound sire and dam behind this colt, makes me want to give him a chance.

So look at the top picture of Karat and then look at the mug shot of Jr that sits to the upper left of the page.  See the resemblance?  Yeah, he’s a lot like her.

Speaking of Jr again, after his momma had her fun, he got to wear a saddle for the first time today.  He was dorky about getting dressed.  He’s itchy because he needs a bath, but it’s too cold.  Every time I would bring the saddle up to him he would squirm around to try get scratched somewhere – anywhere would have been acceptable to him.  After dumping the saddle on the ground once, by moving out from under it, it was successfully on him – cinched up and all.  No explosions, no OMG what is that (!SNORT!), no eek what is that going around my belly.  Once the saddle was in position, he didn’t care about the cinches or that he had this thing on his back.  Truthfully, I don’t think I have ever sacked this colt out.  But, he has been handled since he was born.  Not imprinted, just handled.

Since he was handling it so well, I figured I’d let him move around in it.  He walked nicely back to the round pen.  As soon as I turned him loose he went all out bronc.  After a while he settled down.  I was not able to take a picture though, if I ignored him for any length of time he would roll.

So far he has been a very sweet tempered colt.  He never gives me a dirty look.  He always looks bright and happy, ears up looking around paying attention.  Today, I got a few dirty looks.  He’d tip his nose back to stirrup like he was trying to figure out why it was there.  He’d keep trotting around and eyeball me.  I know he was just thinking what is the deal with this thing, lady.  At one point he stopped for a minute, but didn’t roll, and was reaching back checking everything out with his nose, mouth and teeth.  Shortly after that he started pawing so I sent him forward again.  He started to bronc a bit, then decided rearing might work, he went so high he about sat himself down.  Which surprised me, as he always knows where his feet and body are in relation to the rest of the world.  Then he settled back down and trotted around some more.  Once he did that I thought we were good for today.  More time packing a saddle around tomorrow for him.  I’m thinking it will be a few days before he quits trying to figure out ways to get the saddle off.

I promise you more tomorrow about colt starting.

BTW – I’m adding a picture of the charcoal ham and beans to the post from Monday, if you are interested.