A Cause and Comedic Relief

Thank you everyone for your thoughts about Addie. I heard from Peggy today and we all are in a state of shock. The results are not anywhere what we expected. It seems Addie died from peritonitis caused by a perforated stomach. Colic symptoms and fever are some of the signs, but normally they show intense pain. Her vet was baffled by how she little pain she presented. After reading about peritonitis, I am glad she went quickly because it is a hard road to recovery that may not even work. The rest of the results will take awhile longer.
Poor Peggy, who takes superb care of her horses, is now trying to see what she missed. I really think Addie ate something that went through an ulcerated portion of her stomach. She was the type to be prone to ulcers and Peggy fed her accordingly. Addie did not have intense weight loss which can be a sign of a chronic problem. Nothing seems to add up, making it hard to accept. It was hard to find the words that would help Peggy. I told her that Addie had 15 years to learn internalize and manage her pain and worries. Her only external sign of stress she really showed was cribbing. Recently her cribbing had decreased to the point of only doing it because it was a habit. She was moving great and more importantly willingly. Her 6 years with Peggy were the best of her life. Hopefully Peggy can soon see all the good and not focus on the end.

The good news is that the vet cleared Comrade. He can go to the show. It will be purely for fun and learning on the jumping part because with everything that has happened, we did not do all the preparation I would have wanted. Plus, I have to shake off the blues. He can at least show off his hot new athletic body in the breed classes though.

And now for the comedic relief after the heavy stuff.

"You only said I had to wear my muzzle..."

With Cobs and Corgis you can't go long without laughing. Saturday I ended up having to find and replace fly masks on both Cobs and Rosemary's muzzle. She is bad about using her mask to take off the muzzle. Plus they have tiny ears that are no help what so ever. So we use baling twine to loop around the muzzle and then braid her mane through it. It works, but she is finding tough weeds to pull out the braids in addition to using her fly mask. I told her she had to wear it and proceeded to put a loop of baling twine on her fly mask too. Both were attached to a braid.
Sunday they all went out on pasture, except Winston, because the house was having a party and we wanted them away from all the people. I suited up Rosemary and sent her out. Monday she greeted me in the above picture. My braid stayed in and she carried her mask and muzzle around as she happily grazed on the grass. I swear this pony is an escape artist. She is going to have to deal with flies while on grass because it is more important she keeps the muzzle on. Luckily she did not kill the muzzle. Peggy says Comrade is finding ways to get his off too. Ah, Cobs always keeping us on our toes.

Duct Tape+ Plastic Mesh= Happy Winston

Recently we noticed that Winston was getting grumpy. All our horses like to work, but with the wet weather he has not done much. So we tried taking him out for spins on the longe. That helped somewhat. I started racking my brain for what to do.

I figured he needed time to be able to run in the big fields. The sacrifice area just is not enough room. Then the question is, what to do about the grass? The Hannibal muzzle is way too open for the pasture and even the Best Friends type of muzzle is a bit big.

As I was cleaning around a blanket box, I found one of our spare rubber muzzle bottoms (cut off damaged muzzles). That got a idea brewing. Using the muzzle piece, I cut out a piece of plastic mesh we use to wrap hay in to slow down eating. Then I used the duct tape to attach the mesh to the muzzle piece. Finally that combination was attached to his full muzzle with duct tape. This cut the eating area down to about half what it is normally. The two rubber pieces protect the mesh from damage.

View looking into muzzle

 With this muzzle we let Winston go out with the boys in the pasture for 1-4 hrs depending. Most of the time he comes in looking for easier food before we think about going to get him. Then he goes in his little area for the night. He seems happier just being able to flat out run if he wants to and that he gets to be with the boys. And Mom and I don't have to worry about him overeating.  Plus he is less grumpy. He even played over trot poles set on a circle like he has done them forever. Small things can make a big difference.

"Hey, this is tough"

Finding balance between a happy horse and prevention is challenging, but after getting the opportunity for Winston to get the Laminil all the steps are worth it. His videos are now helping promote Laminil and hopefully raise funds. According to their video, all 42 horses showed improvement. Here is the link: http://vimeo.com/72319445
Hearing about the number of people who applied to be part of the trial the first day and knowing that I applied a couple days after the announcement, makes me realize how lucky we were Winston was an ideal patient. It was a high point after a bad work day.

Now it is onto show preparations. My list is almost done :)

Hannibal Lecter Club

Comrade's weight have improved since the show in May, but he still has that cresty neck. Wetting his hay helped a lot. The problem was that not all his hay was soaked. So dry, rich hay and grass actually put some weight back on.
His feet have not been growing well either, which is unusual for a Cob. My farrier said it has been a bad year for feet. Roscoe and Rosemary both busted up their feet, but when I trimmed away the rough stuff they still had a good amount of hoof wall. Not so with Comrade.
So when we put all the factors together, we decided to bring in the big guns to attack his weight. Bring on the muzzle.

I did not realize Peggy had another muzzle like the one we have been using on Winston.

Yesterday after my ride, we fit the muzzle to Comrade. He was so not impressed. This muzzle will slow done his hay eating and limit his grass intake. We left him to figure out how to eat with it on.
Well with help from Sonny, Comrade got the muzzle off last night. Peggy may have to wrap his mane around the crown piece and make a pony tail.
He greeted me looking pathetic. I don't know why he is not happy about joining the Hannibal Lecter Club with Winston, he he :)






 

I took a picture of Comrade today to track his weight loss. Peggy will be changing his food to a mineral pellet. My horses are on the same pellet with good results, so I have high hopes it will help Comrade.

May 2013

Aug 2013

 

Necessary Evil

Over the last few weeks our grass has really started growing. All the horses are on a schedule of one day dry lot, then one day pasture with muzzles. Depending on how they look we may even go to two days dry lot, then one day pasture. Roscoe as a 2yr old does not really bear the same risks as the older ones eating the grass, but we are muzzling him too. Having experienced a founder horse before, I never want that for any of mine. Muzzles require care and maintenance, but save lives.

Roscoe asking Mom "What's up with this?"

So yesterday Roscoe wore his muzzle for the first time. Even though he is grey hound skinny right now, the grass is too rich to just put him on it. The muzzle will help wean him into it after two weeks of no grass. He played up pathetic really well. He even tried coming up to me and putting his head down asking nicely for me to take it off, like we would his halter. Eventually he went to try to eat. The good part, Roscoe cannot take off the others muzzles or pick off pieces like he did last year.
This morning he was doing the Winston pout, butt to the fence with a leg cocked not eating. I led him to his stall and freed him from the torture device. He immediately started on his hay bag like a starving pony.

"Okay I ready for this to come off now"

Trying to be like DaVinci and Winston

I reluctantly took him away from his hay to work on walking onto the trailer. Armed with a banana we were able to get him to walk on and back off a few times with only a little hesitation. I'll take that for now. During the process DaVinci about raised the roof with a neigh, thinking we were taking his buddy away again. Not this time, but soon Roscoe will have to go.
Fortunately for us, Dottie does not seem to be in raging heat any more. So Roscoe does not get teased as bad. He had a moment the other day when he seriously thought about rearing and tearing towards the girls. I could see him work through it and nix the idea. Soon I got him moving around me, then sitting and turning. He settled into the work and even ignored Dottie when she talked to him. Score one for early, consistent training. This bodes well for him staying a stallion.
Roscoe is definitely happy to be home and boy are we happy he is there :)

Muzzles

For Easter, Rosemary and DaVinci got to join Dottie and Winston in the joys of wearing a muzzle. When we got home from our trip we could tell Rosemary had put on a few pounds. Gotta love spring grass.
For all the horses except Dottie, I can order $20 muzzles from Horse.com and one each normally lasts the season. Dottie has to have the $45 draft size Best Friends muzzle. To help prevent rubbing, there are a lot of accessories out there. I like the cheeksavers Horse.com sell. They are a simple neoprene pieces with velcro that prevents rubbing by the clip. Unfortunately we found out the hard way that DaVinci is sensitive to neoprene. He got a really bad reaction. So we found a nice alternative  right in the store where we work, moleskin. Dr. Scholls makes a great moleskin product that sticks right to the muzzle basket and nylon straps. We wrap all the contact points on the muzzle. If it gets dirty, just brush it off. Great stuff. In this case the off brand moleskin does not work as well.
The other accessories we use are generic halter fleeces or sheepkins. DaVinci has a few on his muzzle, but they may not last long. Roscoe thinks it is great fun to pull off the fleece and sometimes he even pulls off the cheeksaver. He has not figured out how to take off moleskin yet.
We don't like to leave them in muzzles all the time, so for a couple days at a time all the horses go on dry lot. A couple areas around the run in sheds can be closed off from the fields. The horses can eat the grass down in those areas making them our "fat turn outs." We toss some hay and they are happy ponies.
Ah the lengths we go to, to make sure our horses stay healthy. After seeing one horse we knew founder in all four feet, I believe better safe than sorry.