December 29, 2021

The Future of Horsing for me

Looking back at the past few years I see my neck surgery that prevented me from riding for a year really set me back, only physically for a period of time, doctor's orders, after that it was mental.  Once I was back and able to ride I'd honestly been out of the habit of riding regularly. It was too easy to just fall back to not riding and prioritize other activities.  We have more than enough projects at our house and on the property that I've done more with those items than riding Daenerys. Why?  That's the hard part...lack of motivation, tired from work, the gosh darn humid hot summers I hate....who knows.  

Chance is officially retired due to his degenerative suspensory ligaments (DSL) in his hindlegs.  We are trying to manage his heaves and Cushings and hopefully not riding him will keep him comfortable in relation to the DSL.  He's a sweet horse to have a around and for Dani to boss around. But Dani, she'll be good to go I hope in a few months.  She never was going to be an eventing horse but well, I'm not an eventing rider either!

The evil equihaler

What do I want in the future of horsing? That's a tough one, I feel like there is often stuff in my life I want to do but then I just get tied up with other stuff.  I have to stay set on my priorities; that's always been difficult for me.  What I always wanted to do is go on trail rides, go to clinics about doing trail obstacles and fun trail competition (ride and tie, small endurance type events etc). I love riding Dani but there will come a day when she can't or shouldn't be ridden just like with Chance.  

Then there is the trailering issue, I have not had success with trailering Dani. She has gotten on a trailer and has been a good girl at times but swinging the dividers or closing the door, that's when she really puts up the fight.  I haven't been able to deal with that as someone not experienced with trailering horses.  Adding this complexity to it had been a bit much and moving to NC I lost my horse network that helped me with these types of things. Here I have to trailer my horse to events to build that network but I can't trailer my horse....chicken and the egg. My fearful mind would wonder "what if I successfully trailer her somewhere but then can't get her back on afterwards and I'm stuck in a parking lot with a silly horse that won't load?"

Dani is a homebody and that's okay.  I love her to pieces not matter what.  She is my first horse, the horse that I could trust after having some fearful falls, the horse that I knew was a great match for me.  She had some challenges but is a perfect partner to play around with; my crazy chestnut mare.  With the new pasture design we are working on there is an area in the difficult slopping pasture that is flatter; I am going to make this my dedicated riding area.  Maybe someday it will officially be like an arena with good footing but for now it will work as a dedicated pony work area.  This was going to be the area for Steve's workshop (my riding area was then going to be where we tore out an older shed). We priced buildings and were floored so he's altering plans and now I have too....that's how it goes.

I'm starting to research a future horse.  A younger but well trained horse that I can cart all over the place and do clinics, trail rides etc.  I've been wanting to learn about some gaited breeds too.  This next year I'll be looking at some Kentucky/Rocky Mountain horses, Paso Finos and maybe Peruvian Pasos, I've already reached out to breeders where I can come meet their horses and ride some to help decide if I want a gaited breed and if so what kind.  If I have a horse that I can trailer with no problem I'll be able to start to build a horse friend network here that I haven't thus far; not being able to bring Dani to events has been a little isolating. When I boarded her....I met people, I rode with people and there was a shared good time by horse people.  I loved that about boarding.  

Steve is not really a rider.  He really needs a horse that he can just get on every once in a while having not ridden in 6 months...so probably no horse for him.  He'll go for a trail ride at a trail ride rental place with me but he doesn't have the time or desire really to learn to ride and do it regularly.  That's fine.  He really wants a donkey, so we'll get him a donkey someday I guess. In Colorado we'd planned on getting that 3 horse trailer and then another horse and perhaps a mule or donkey and going on trips, and overnighters with the riding club.  Obviously that never happened.

I was hoping the venture of horse riding was going to become a thing Steve would enjoy.  He loves the horses and loves caring for them but riding and getting out on trails isn't really a draw for him. For me I need to truly understand that and continue on my own.  Sure he'll come to some events and hang out.  Maybe I can get him involved in a ride an tie type event since he wants to get back into running....so do I actually. If we get a horse that we can cart around we can do an event like that and maybe have a ball together!  And when it's just me and that horse we can do other events.

So the next few months I plan to get into better shape, just like Dani I've had a bit too much grass!  I may ride locally at a place I found that rents horses for trail or arena work. And then I'll work with Dani once I get the vets okay and play with her around here. My neighbors ride in the woods nearby and if I get Dani back up to speed we could go too I hope. My neighbors are nice but I'm not sure how comfortable I'll be riding with them since even after 6 years we are still the new kids on the block.

Dani's a good horse that you don't need to ride often to keep their head in the game, that's one of her great qualities.  She could be a horse Steve could hop up on occasionally if I keep her ridden some.  She's my special girl.  I love her to pieces and I really hope that she will be long lived. I will do my hardest to figure out how to manage Cushings and insulin resistance in her. I won't give up on trailering her either, with a future horse that can be trailered why not try and see if Dani can come too?  That would mean getting Steve to come out to ride....I have to just concentrate on me.....going off on tangents and the same dream as before.  This is my hobby, my love.  I have to do what is right for me.  Steve's supportive but not a cowboy.

I'm reminded of Colorado, me and skiing. I went a lot with the man I dated before Steve.  This man was passionate about skiing.  I loved it too and went with him and we really enjoyed skiing.  When I started dating Steve I continued to go skiing and he occasionally went with me and we had fun. I started going less and less though since I missed hanging out with Steve and I didn't have ski buddies to go with, it was fun but I was becoming bored honestly.  It wasn't a passion, so it didn't bother me that much that I went less.  Then I started leasing a horse, then I bought one.  Weekends were now pony time! 

Since horses are my love I can't be held back by wanting to do other things with Steve or by all the house projects I have on my to do list.  I have to dedicate time to riding and I know he understands and encourages it...it's the voice in my head that wants to hang out with him or do stuff together and feels bad that I'm out in the barn or what not.  There is time for hanging with the hubs, I just have to prioritize my interests too.  I have to cut out the time for myself and my pony friends, pen it in on the calendar. It's important for me.  


But now I have a thought, perhaps it was easier to plan this time out when it wasn't a "daily out the back door gotta muck and feed everyday" kinda thing. When my horse was a car drive away and I didn't see her everyday, each time I made the trip I was there to ride, I groomed, I played! It's been too easy to fall into the idea that I see my horses everyday and I muck and feed everyday, pick hooves or clean up a silly beast that rolled on poop...that's good enough. It's great I get that time, don't get me wrong.  I love having horses in my back yard. Going outside to grill or get a tool from the shed I'm nickered at; that will never get old. I have to block off time to do the really fun stuff, the riding and training stuff!

With time being so limited on this earth I need to make the time to do what I love.  Dani will heal and I hope I will be riding her early next year. I also hope to find a horse that I can load, trail ride and go out and meet horse people here. I miss the comradery that is "horse people". 

It's very alien to think about buying another horse.  I knew logically I would eventually get another horse as Chance was aging and Dani is only one year younger. This laminitis episode has made me really assess my horse life. I will ride Dani when she's better, I'm confident that will be a possibility. And I will begin a new adventure with another horse too, that can expand my horizons some.  In my head I feel like I would be abandoning Dani but that's silly.  If you only have a Fiat but you need to haul things because hauling things is how you make a living, well you buy a truck right?

I knew buying Dani that she didn't load or haul well.  I accepted that, she was perfect for me in every other way and I've grown and learned so much with her and continue to learn!  She is my heart. I shouldn't feel weird about getting another horse to do more with right? 

So this is the future of horsing for me.  I miss being fully immersed in the horse world with other horse people.  This coming year I have breeders to meet and horse breeds to learn about. This world is full of noise that pulls you in so many directions.  Don't forget your center.  What is your center, what makes you calm, whole, happy? Is your center painting?  Is it skiing? Mountain biking? Hiking? Writing? Horses?

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Horses.

December 08, 2021

Rusty Trailer- New Beginnings


We sold Rusty....I actually cried after he was gone.  We put a lot of work into him and had plans to haul Dani, a future horse at the time and perhaps a mule or donkey and do the overnight trips with the Kit Carson Riding Club in Colorado.  


We moved to NC and Rusty made the trip hauling a lot of our stuff.  And since then he's basically sat. Owning horse property has been so much work and I've been easily sidetracked from riding. I never got Dani successfully loaded so therefore plans to go to clinics or trail rides here just never happened.  Steve really hasn't had that much interest in riding and the one time he did ride Chance he fell off. Dani, loading in a trailer is still an issue and maybe one I'll be able to work on with her in the future but really I'm not sure I'm up for that.  I see riding her around here but loading her on a trailer is just not in the cards at this point.


Rusty has basically sat and been unused for many years.  For a couple years Steve has been telling me to sell him.  We'll buy another smaller trailer when we need to is his thought.  A smaller two horse trailer would be one that I can haul a single horse in easier than our big three horse one and go on rides with groups myself. So I power washed Rusty and took pictures to show his condition.  A lot of the paint had peeled off since I wasn't a professional metal painter so there was yet more rust. We got a ton of inquiries though! I was floored with the response! We bid farewell to Rusty.  Hopefully the next owner will get good use of him! 


I'm at the point in my life when I have a future trailer that needs repair I'll pay the ones who know how to repair it to do the work.  I'm reassessing where I am in my life and my horse life.  What do I want to do? Where do I want to go?

Stella our 2015 New Truck

Buddy was donated to Veteran's Association

We said goodbye to Buddy our GMC 2500 too since all of his rusty related issues finally caused the battery to have a short and not charge. He had non-working mirrors, no AC, and other electrical issues.  I ended up buying a 2015 Ford F250 named Stella.  She'll be our work horse and trailer hauler from this point forward.  It's so nice to be in a truck that has working dash gauges, windows, mirrors and A/C!!  It was hard to say goodbye to buddy too but I really like driving Stella!!

It's hard to look to the past and see what plans you had that did not come to fruition but it's best to learn and move on.....more on this in a later post! Buddy was sold for a decent amount and it went to a great cause.  Rusty will be with someone that will fix him up again and haul horses around!

December 07, 2021

Daenerys Update

Dani has been doing well.  She foundered on Oct. 10th but luckily we caught it early.  She recently had a hoof trim after thanksgiving and was maybe a little tender still but doing much better.  I hand walk her when I can with her Cloud Boots on. It's difficult now that it gets dark so early. My farrier is having me apply Hoof Armor to help protect her sole from wear.  I'll have to make a post about that this weekend when I put on the next application.


Both her and Chance are now on Prascend (Pergolide), the medicine for Cushings.  Chance was tested and had a higher reading than Dani!  She most likely foundered due to insulin resistance which she also has. I probably won't be riding her until March or April but I am hopeful that she will be healed well enough to do riding around the property.  Obviously I don't trailer her since that's never been a success for me....


Older ponies, Dani will be 23 and Chance will be 24 in early 2022. Since Chance has COPD and his leg issues he's officially retired.  Steve never really rode him much which is a bummer.  Overall they are both doing well right now being doted on and loved with no work in sight!  Chance is having a flare up of his COPD or Heaves.  We have an inhaler ordered from the vet to give him a 10 day treament.  The syrup he normally is on is on back order now, thanks Covid for the supply chain issues!


We are managing as best we can and will be turning our two connecting pastures into a pasture paradise track system.  I will have to post about what that is but it's a system to make horses move more naturally, meaning more often, since they don't normally sit in nice rich pastures in the wild. It's hard for our pastures to not be green here in NC!

November 09, 2021

Laminitis

This has been a hard year for many reasons and this one is at the top.  My 22 year old Morgan mare had laminitis with founder (aka rotation of the coffin and pedal bone). The vet thinks we caught it early but I'm very quick to blame myself and wonder if I missed subtle signs. I noticed her walking very tenderly on the Oct. 10th and we had the vet out asap.  We'd iced her hooves and had a two week regimen of pain killers and other laminitis drugs.  I got her snazzy cushion boots and bedded up a stall to keep her on soft ground.  She's recovered well enough and walks around fine without pain or limping.  We had her tested, yet again (but with a more sensitive test) for Cushings.  She is positive for Cushings and insulin resistance.  So she will be on Pergolide (Prescend).


Dani has always been an easy keeper and never been slim in any sense of the word.  She's been in a grazing muzzle often.  This year has been a crazy year with my Stubs having a kidney issue, Chance having a strained branch of a tendon in his hind fetlock, then my carpal tunnel has gotten worse so I had injections which helped but were painful for the first few days.  I also had to go out to Colorado for two weeks to help my parents, my mom had three major spinal surgeries and my dad was her care giver but right when she got to a rehab facility in early September he gets admitted to the hospital with a major colon hernia. He nearly died and has been recovering since then, he's still not fully recovered.


There has been a lot going on and I feel like I must have missed something, must have slipped in my care.  I didn't get the horses off the pastures when we started having cooler nights (always something to worry about since this causes spikes in sugars of the grass). I did delay in getting weight off her this year, I didn't ride, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't.  I will beat myself up forever but it all comes down to one thing.  I'm human and if I missed something I can't be too hard on myself.


My farrier will be out in a week for the first trim post founder.  It will be many months for her to fully grow out any issues that develop in the hoof wall.  Trimming can help to realign the hoof to the bone inside and hopefully continue to keep her comfortable.  


She's a trooper.  Even in pain she had enough spunk to put up a fight about taking her medicine.  I had to pump a large syringe of ground Bute, aspirin and another med into her twice a day.  She is stubborn for sure, I love her though.

Looking at her 1 month after the beginning of the laminitis event she is doing well.  She's bossing the gelding Chance around (hopefully not too much where he restrains his tendon) and begging for food constantly.  They are both in the dry lot of the property, two of my pastures will be converted into a track system (Paddock Paradise - Information on how to create it (all-natural-horse-care.com)) since we were needing to redo the fencing anyways. I'll post more as we progress.  We have some planning and a small section of woods to clear out for this project.



I don't know the timeframe for healing Dani, I'm currently hand walking her when I can, have her on a Laminox supplement, and changed the ration balancer to one with an even lower rated non-structural carbohydrate ratio.  I'll have to consult with the vet in a couple months as to when it will be safe to ride her and then progress to other types of exercise for her as well. I also will be testing Chance for Cushings, he is 23 and has kept his coat some springs a little longer than normal.  He's been negative in the past but I don't think he was tested with this more sensitive test.  He already has heaves (COPD) and his tendon....man, old age sucks for ponies just as much as humans!

July 06, 2021

The Shitty Side of Things

We hired out a  project at the end of last year in order to get rid of our falling apart pallet manure bins.  We hired a crew to make us a nice monstrosity of a poo bin out of concrete.  It's three bins that are wide enough (ugh, will get into that later) to accommodate my front loader. My desire for the concrete was so I didn't keep gouging the clay bottom of the bins like I did with the pallet system and so I could have something that would last longer. We also wanted to come up with a lid system to keep the rain off the manure because that shit gets heavy when it's wet!


When it rains and it rains a lot here, the manure gets so bogged down with water that I can't use my manure spreader.  I've gotten around that issue by taking big scoops in the tractor and trying to drop little piles of manure throughout the fields and then later go over it all with a harrow to spread it into fine particles that will feed the grass versus smother the grass.  It works decently at least.  I would just prefer to use my mini manure spreader and get the job done in one step and consistently spread; you know, and use the piece of equipment I paid money for!  

I transferred all the manure still in one of the pallet bins to the concrete bin once it was able to receive the manure. We didn't have lids on yet so the manure still became water logged and I had to spread using my front loader and harrow system but at least scooping the manure from the bins is much easier with concrete bins.


Initially I was having major issues with getting the front loader into the bins without hitting the sides, each bin is smaller than anticipated due to during construction the supports bowing inwards so I have very little wiggle room for the front loader.  The first bin is the most narrow and my husband still plans to go in with a tool to cut out some of those bows and make it more user friendly.  The other two bins work well now and I certainly have become more precise in my operation.  I have a solid base of gravel that had evened out the surface leading up to the bins since one tiny bump or dip in the soil made the tractor lean just enough that the tilt left or right was magnified at the front loader end of things.  It's still a tighter fit than I prefer but it works and Steve can get the bins adjusted as we go.


We now have lids on all three bins and I've noticed that when I transferred the manure from bin 2 to bin 3 that it was a normal poo moisture content, it will hopefully be good for using our spreader again and not bind up the mechanism like our saturated peanut butter poo of the past. I'm all for making some of this "farm work" easier.  It's just amazing how much manure comes from two equines.  I luckily can spread it on my 3.77 acres and reuse the nutrients for the soil but I'm curious what others do to manage manure.  I've been at places that just pile it up in a huge dung heap or others that have it loaded off by I guess companies that then compost it?  What do you all do with your horse manure?