Herd Update

I felt guilty Saturday. I still feel guilty today. There was a sale at the Mitchell Livestock Sale Barn and at Kramers Sale Barn. I couldn’t bring myself to go. We are tapped out. I’m financially, physically, mentally, and emotionally spent. I keep getting requests to take in horses but I don’t have any room or additional money. I feel guilty. I knew going to an auction would only add to the guilt.

So instead, I decided that I would play with the horses at Borderlands instead to try and ease my guilty conscience. I pulled King out (a non-rescue) to see if the easy boots would fit him that I bought a while ago. I should have brought them out when the farrier was out earlier in the week. Nope, the boots don’t fit. King’s feet are flared just a little bit too much. He has such flat feet. And being that in the summer he goes lame because of the acid build up in his muscles, I didn’t see a point in putting shoes on him. I may try putting shoes on him anyway just to see if that helps his feet. With the colder weather, I can actually ride King without having any muscle issues flare up (except he can only be ridden on soft ground because of his feet). I decided that I need to start messing with him. I need to go in search of a stretching and massage book. I think doing stretches might help with the sore muscles once we start seeing higher temps.

I putzed around on King for only a little while and then decided to work with the fillies on haltering and leading. I started with Sahara because Mayhem was playing the “catch me if you can” game. Sahara and I worked on leading and stopping. She did beautifully. We did a little bit of backing up but kept to simple forward motions. Considering I couldn’t touch her even a month ago, we are making huge strides. She does have a very small hernia. It’s no were near as big as Mayhem’s and I think may go away. Fingers crossed.

I switched to Mayhem and we worked on leading, stopping, and backing. She’s a quick learner too. Within two “whoas” she was stopping the minute I said the word. These young minds are so easy to mold. My knowledge is lacking immensely but what I can do on the ground with the fillies is fun. I love watching them learn, comprehend, and understand what I’m asking. I really haven’t worked with either filly very much but they both caught on quickly. I need to start saving for Mayhem’s surgery. There is simply no way that the hernia is going to go away. I don’t believe it bothers her as she was running and bucking yesterday but I don’t want to take any chances. So if life ever slows down and I can rub two pennies together, I’ll start saving for that surgery. When I talked with the vet before bringing Mayhem in, I was told the surgery would cost around $300 to $400.

I switched pastures around and put Tommy and Skippy where Savanna and Prize were (that’s a story I’ll tell later). Tommy and Skippy loved the bigger pasture. Those little pony legs were pounding the ground a mile a minute, running, bucking, rearing, and just having one heck of a good time. I don’t think anyone could match their glee in racing around.

I am going to have to begin preparing myself for a loss. Dick is not fairing as well as I had hoped. I had hoped that he would gain weight out on pasture but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The winter coat hid his age but now that he’s in his summer coat, the age is more obvious. I had hoped to wait until sometime in the fall but we may be looking at some time this summer. I’ll be keeping a very close eye on him to ensure that he’s not losing too much weight. If he can maintain his current weight, we’ll wait but if he begins dropping weight, I’ll be making that awful call.

Yesterday I decided to do a bit of round pen work with Maverick. We were in the bigger pen because Thor and the mares were in the smaller pen. I thought the ground work might be a little tougher but Maverick behaved for the most part. His running got Mayhem all stirred up. That in turn got Thor all upset. Luckily Maverick bores quickly with ground work/round pen work so we could go back to the normal routine. Mayhem wanted to run and run and run. I thought maybe Sahara would want to run too. Nope. She stuck to Babe’s side like glue! I had Queen out grazing on the lawn so there was less mare protection. Thor didn’t appreciate Mayhem’s antics and got upset but quickly settled down after he found his bearings again. Babe was the solid old mare that she always is. She didn’t care that Sahara stayed by her side the entire time. Sahara was a little black shadow against Babe. Mayhem would run right up to Babe and Babe would simply stand her ground with that “ho hum” attitude that I love.

I took Bo, Chaos, and Skippy to the vet on Friday. I’ll share that story in a little while, along with the adventures of moving Savanna and Prize to a new pasture.