Sundowner Trailer

 I had sadly sold my old trailer last year, it was just rusting in place, large and needed more work again and I was just not up for another project that was going to take me away from my horses.  Dani is not a loader and with her tender feet I think she may be more of a home body.  I'll see what I can do about teaching her to load but I'm not going to hold my breath. Chance for sure is a home body since he is not rideable.  So my two older ponies can live the great life at home and I can ride Dani around here.

My future plan is to begin looking for a younger trail horse that can trailer and is calm on trails.  If I can get Dani to come along great I can may bring Steve too!  But I do need a horse to stay with Chance and I doubt I'm going to expand from my two horses all the way to four at the moment. So for now the plan is a trail horse for myself that I can take all over.

I casually was looking at trailers online and was interested in a couple but never really pursued any.  Then I saw an ad in the local agriculture paper for a 2004 Sundowner in Bahama, my very tiny town in NC.  I called the seller up and then went over and checked out a very well kept two horse trailer with a walk in tack room.  I was beyond happy with the trailer. So we bought it on the spot and brought it home...now for a name....Sunny is too obvious....

We'll need to get new tires and then rerun the trailer hookup electrical line since it's a bit worn out and attempts to fall off when hauling thereby loosing working lights when it does but these are minor issues.  It was a great price so I'm excited to have this trailer!

Now the harder part, beginning to look for another horse with trail riding and trailering in mind.  Dani is a hard horse to beat with her personality. The fact that she's been off for nearly two years and I barely had any issues getting her back in gear for riding speaks volumes about her mind.  She is such a sweet and willing horse, certainly more whoa than go. She may just be a horse for rides around the property and up in the forest nearby she is a confidence building for sure.  I love her to pieces so to find another trail riding horse is hard for me, I feel like I'm giving up on her.  In honestly I'm being realistic.  She has health issues and with the laminitis past I don't know how much she can take on a trail even if I could load her.  I want to get out and about and go up in the mountains and ride and do clinics and finally meet people in NC that like to ride.  I don't see doing that with Dani unless she can load in a trailer and I don't know if she'd hold up for hours of trail riding with her past laminitis issues.  

Only time will tell so I am keeping a close eye on her health. If we can get the track system to have less grass grow in it that would be fantastic.  I definitely saw that she moved a lot more on it which is great! She and Chance are our forever horses so they stay here until their last days. The next horse I bring home will be the same, so I need to find the right riding partner.  That's the long hard part for sure. Trailer was easy!

Chance's Crazy Month

While Steve and I were away in Iceland Chance had a run in with that spring gate I'd talked about in the previous post. I have no idea exactly what happened but the spring gate got caught on his tail, he probably ran around like crazy and Dani was probably chasing him. Then by the water trough he barreled through the top rail either kicked it or hit it when he tried to jump it....this is my feeble 24 almost 25 year old horse with all the health issues. He normally just plods around the paddock and pastures like the effort is enormous. Anyhow, he got out of the paddock and then ended up down the street where my neighbor later found him. All four legs had big scrapes on them and he was bleeding some. He was in pain.

My pet sitter was alerted while our friends who had been helping care for our dog and indoor critters got home from work and tried to patch up the fencing. My pet sitter called me and was really concerned about how Chance was moving, he wasn't putting weight on some of his legs. I told her to get the emergency vet out. We were afraid we'd be making a decision from Iceland that we didn't want to make. Luckily the vet treated his wounds, they weren't as bad as my pet sitter suspected and the pain meds helped him too. She kept him separate from Dani for the rest of the week. Poor guy and my poor pet sitter, she is in the process of cutting back to give herself more time for travel so I'm sure this was the final straw! Just kidding, she's still gonna help out but I found another farm sitter group for our travels so I won't have to worry about critter care.

So Chance recovered from that and then a few weeks later I had the vet out again on a Sunday because he was acting off. I suspected colic or impaction with his behavior and lack of eating or pooping. The vet came out and they said his gut sounds were good. We didn't know what to do and I wasn't going to make a call at that time. We decided pain meds to get him over what ever issue was going on and stayed on the course of wait and see. Moist food was provided. The next morning no better really and he seemed to be more agitated and not laying down for long at all when he did. This time they gave him more pain meds and electrolytes. I'd even called his former owner since she had not seen him in a while and I really wasn't sure what way we were going.  

We did get one bowel movement and the gut sounds were still good. We became more aggressive with electrolytes and damp food. I got some alfalfa cubes that I soaked, some mash and electrolytes. Chance pulled through and began eating more. I kept him separate from Dani and soaked his food really well and continued with the pain meds for a day as well as continuing to finish with the alfalfa. He's been loosing weight so we've had him on more grain lately but not so recent as to cause this. I think we just need to really soak it for feeding him at this point since 1) he's getting more than just the 1lb a day and 2) he's older and his teeth are probably not as good.

A tooth floating is on the books for both horses, fall always seems to be that time of year. I'm very happy that he seems to be doing much better and is eating well again. He's got a lot of health issues with Cushings, Heaves, suspensory ligament degradation (DSL) and the vet questioned maybe sidewinders....still have to read about that. He holds his body off when he's in pain so that may just be a coincidence since I don't see it now that he is well. We are just trying to keep him happy and comfortable for as long as he desires. We'll know when he's done. I didn't think he was this time around and I'm glad we held on with pain meds and let him work through this minor issue. With the good gut sounds we still don't know if he was slightly impacted or colic or what. I wish horses could talk; happy to have my bay Arabian pony still here though! :-)

Something So Obvious

Wow.  This post has been in the draft stage about a year now....just forgot about it.  It's something so simple and yet my life in the barn has become easier because of it.  

What you ask?  Stall door holdbacks.  I have the swing doors in the barn that came withour property.  It's always had these flimsy little holdbacks that really annoyed me since they take a lot more fine motor skills to get them hooked and unhooked.  If you have a horse in the other hand it gets really annoying.

We'd redone an old trailer so I had come across trailer hold backs and one day it finally dawned on me....why not use something like that in the barn?

There is an "innie" and an "outie" part of the hold back, and yes those are technical terms.  The doors are held open with a quick push as the metal piece goes into the rubber center of the innie part of the hold back.

It works perfect on my tack room door, the two stalls and then the gate to the barn area that usually is open.

Next was the "gate" for the one pasture, we could never get our tractor through it without having to hold up the grass shoot flap.  It was a pain since it was a tight squeeze.  Well come to find out that there are electric spring gates that can be used in a larger gap in the fence and viola (vola?)!  We have a "gate" that is much easier to use when we need to mow.

Now I'm going to give a Public Service announcment.....DO NOT USE SPRING GATES!!!  We had a crazy issue with this gate when we were in Iceland of course where Chance got is caught in his tail apparently.  I'll post about that another time.  Now I just use a string of hot rope and it works just as good.

AGAIN, DO NOT USE ELECTRIC SPRING GATES WITH SILLY HORSES!!!!

    Both horses are doing well as I type this.  I have a lot to catch the blog up on but things are getting a little bit back to normal here.  Knock on wood.  Happy Fall!