Spring Sprung (Then Changed Its Mind)

It’s warm! It’s cold!  However, it’s shedding season no matter how you look at it.  Lucky is fat and lazy after spending all winter off (what with the ice and all) but along with Easter, robins, and song sparrows going south while juncos go north, the surest sign of spring is when the horse starts coming out in clumps.  Yesterday was warm enough I almost regretted wearing a hat while we walked the dogs.  This morning, the ground is frozen solid again.  

The search for a buddy for Lucky continues.  Stay tuned–there are leads.  I hope he has not developed any sort of complexes about redheads.

Merry Christmas!

With peppermint candy canes and alfalfa for all!  (Since the alfalfa was the only kind we could get, His Royal Highness has decided that he does not care for grass hay.)

Fall Foliage

We’re going for a ride.

Checking out the turkeys out by the apple trees. And where is the Corgi going?

Across the field…

The fall foliage…

Getting Down to Work

As much as not having ridden much in months and the weather allows, of course. For the observant, yes, we’re riding in the corral, because there basically isn’t anywhere else except the field, and for his first ride here, I’d rather stick to inside the fence. (Yes, safety mavens, the fence is off.)

We have an escort. Actually he’s just looking for an excuse to hang out under the corn crib where the skunk lived.

Pardon my sweats but it’s 93 and it’s not like we’re jumping.

Despite a brief pause to fuss over the tractor and cutter in the field, not that he hadn’t been staring at it all day, he did pretty well. Even cantering, not for long, true, but he managed to get the lead both ways and held it through a half-circle. We also went up the hill behind the barn, which was fortunately not at all exciting.

Since he worked SO HARD (in his mind) he got a Vetrolin bath and a special treat:

“See? CLEARLY, I worked. I wouldn’t get a poultice otherwise. Obviously I am in intense work. More peppermints.”

Yeah, he probably didn’t work THAT hard, but pampering never hurt anyone. In any case it’ll keep the flies off his legs.

Sneak Preview

Lucky continues to settle in. Had a few leads on a pasture mate (despite hearing “If you buy a goat, you are NOT bringing it here”) so we’ll see where that goes. Hopefully he’ll have some company soon.

Take a look who came to visit today:

Lucky does not usually have this big a crowd for his vet visit. And those are just the people you can see.

No guarantees that he’ll be on the show, but you can see the new season of “The Incredible Doctor Pol” and Lucky’s new neighborhood on NatGeo Wild starting August 25.

Vote for Puff, The Secondhand Dog!

http://www.thundershirt.com/contest/#!/entry/424301

Puff is in the Thundershirt commercial contest–please vote for him! Support nervous dogs and their boomshirts. (Puff has gotten much better about booms since we got the Thundershirt.)

More Pictures!

Lucky realizes what I had in mind when I put those wraps on him. Irony: we have a trailer with a ramp because OLD OTTB wanted nothing to do with step-ups, and he was a bad loader.

So where are we going?

Where are we?

Oh. We’re here. Wherever here is.

Got the place to myself, it seems….

I was using that stall….

Well, there’s grass…

Lucky’s Big Move

Today, the old barn where Benny lived was ready for a new occupant.

No, Puff, not you.

The Brenderup was cleaned out and hitched up.

No, Tucker, not you.

Dad and I hit the road down to the barn.

Yes, it’s a Brenderup. It’s almost twenty years old and still in great shape.

We loaded up the stuff first, which was more than I thought it would be. How does horse stuff just…accumulate like that? And six bales of hay plus a net full to keep him busy.

So then I went out and got the boy.

Yes, that’s the pasture, even after rain this week. We have a drought all over the state.

It’s been a really long time since I did wraps (if I ever did in the first place; I honestly can’t remember.) Yes, I use quilts, not boots. The one set of boots we had seemed to come off Benny, while the quilts were still good and I have quite a few.

I think I did a pretty good job, actually.

Lucky was not all that enthused about loading, but with Dad on the lead and me tapping his butt with a dressage whip (okay, it verged on ‘smacking’ a couple times until it finally got his front feet ON the ramp) he finally managed to step in. He’s probably jumped fences and lifted his back legs less than he did going up SCARY RAMP. But he went in.

Maybe he’s bigger than I think, as he actually does a pretty good job lenghtwise filling up the B’up. THIS is why he didn’t like the idea of loading in the BO’s two-horse even for practice…

Lucky, once in, didn’t seem overly perturbed.

A little curious, maybe.

We had the windows cracked and the hatch on the ramp down so he wouldn’t get too hot.

Lots of head room and he could even see out the window.

It was a pretty long drive, but fortunately the temperature today was lower than it has been and he felt good about emptying his hay net by the time we arrived.

The welcoming committee was waiting….

After some walking around and cramming his mouth with all the green grass he could grab, I put him inside so he’d be out of the way while we unloaded hay and stuff and discombobulated the cats and dogs.

As you can see, he likes the shavings, and demonstrating he’s athletic or at least coordinated enough to roll in his stall.

Tomorrow I should have the photos from Mom’s camera, featuring the Dogs and a few prettier shots of Lucky arriving! And maybe some pictures of him turned out on green grass.

A Dry Spell

Despite a few hours of rain one day last week, the grass is yellow and brittle and the ground is still hard as rock. Between the bugs and the concrete-like ground, Lucky has stomped his foot to chips on the left front. As I’m now officially unemployed (if you are wondering, about half that article is true and the other half is creatively phrased at best) and it’s Monday anyhow (a day I didn’t normally work) I was able to be at the barn for the farrier. I don’t normally get to talk to R. directly.

It was nice, first off, to see that Lucky is still by and large a farrier’s dream come true–stands, head hanging half-asleep, maybe turns his head back to see what’s going on. If anything he’s probably a little too stoic. It’s hard to tell when he doesn’t hurt and when he’s just being obedient. R. explored up into the crack, after rasping off the chips and flakes and telling me to go ahead and just do that when it starts flaking, and found that there was no sign of white line disease or thrush and it only went a little way up. His theory is the crack is probably the result of an old injury to the foot, and as long as we can keep it from getting infected, it appears to be growing out. So Lucky spent some time with a bag over his foot, soaking in medicine. I learned the interesting trivia that there is 90+% rubbing alcohol available, and the farrier mixes a bit with thrush medication to help dry out infections.

I also learned why Lucky’s front feet never appear to ‘match’ precisely, and probably why he prefers whenever possible to pick up the right lead instead of the left. It’s not a matter of trimming or the right having been the foot with the quarter grab. The farrier says he would call Lucky’s left fore a level one, maybe level one-half, club foot. It’s narrower, naturally higher-heeled and shorter than his right, and were we to shoe him he’d probably be a full shoe size smaller. The other foot, which he tends to put more weight on, is more prone to having a low heel, which is why it took longer to fix the long toe/undershot heel on that side. It doesn’t impede his way of going and (again, unless he’s the most stoic horse in the world) he has no pain or heat on that foot, but even if he had trims every four weeks, he would probably never have precisely the same shape foot on each side.

The Heat Goes On

It’s hard to express how a drought feels to people who haven’t been in one. It’s even harder when you’re in an area not known for a shortage of water. But here we are. The ground is now rock-hard, and the grass has turned brittle yellow. So far, my garden survives thanks to the hose and judicious watering morning and night, and one squash plant even has a blossom. I’m watering the puddle in the driveway, even, to the benefit of the swallows nesting in my open shed and the wasps who are looking for mud daubs. The dogs refuse to walk for any length of time, between the heat and the deer flies, and we encountered a box turtle (a land-dwelling species, but everyone needs to drink) making a long journey across the neighbor’s field. The crops are in trouble again–the fruit farmers are already doomed, as the summerlike temperatures in March caused things to bloom early, and be wiped out when normalcy reasserted itself in April and the hard frosts hit. Now the corn and soybean fields have irrigation systems going constantly.

At the barn, finding a patch of grass that’s actually green is a challenge. The clover flowers are all turning prematurely brown. Everyone’s hooves are dried and Lucky’s that has the split looks worse. They all stomp, constantly, because of the flies, and they don’t want to move too much because of the heat. I went out Sunday morning, earlier than I normally would, hoping to maybe lunge a bit, but wound up simply bringing him in, grooming, and giving him a bath. Maybe the tea tree shampoo from Finish Line will add that astringent cooling factor and feel better than just a bath. I didn’t even feel bad when he immediately rolled-dirt is just one more layer for the bugs to punch through. The heat on Saturday was oppressive in a way that’s hard to describe-not humid, not especially dry, but intense and constant and inescapable.

Today we lunged, briefly, and I remembered I had oil-based wipe on fly repellent. I swear, at one point in the crossties, when he couldn’t reach around, Lucky actually presented his hip so I could smack the horsefly chomping on him. He was cooperative, for him, on the lunge, though I kept it to walk, a bit of trot, walk, reverse and repeat. Today the weather wasn’t as hot, but there was just enough humidity to taunt. It was overcast when I arrived and while we worked, but by the time I left the sun was out and the promising clouds were gone. All day, the weather taunted me. I think I even heard thunder this evening, but Puff remains calm and the ground is still dry. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing dark clouds pass by and wishing it would rain, and then they pass by.

(Yes, I saw the Belmont anyway. I didn’t really care who won, still not a fan of Union Rags, and still want to know what on EARTH Guyana Star Dweej was doing in that race.)