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When I spend three figures on a horse, I know I can still get quality (if I search carefully), but condition will probably be an issue... this was certainly the case for my new horse "Chance." A 5 y.o. TB gelding that had been abandoned at a barn in SC and spent the better part of a year turned out with no routine care, Chance's feet are so bad that he was very lame. He has multiple cracks that go all the way up to his coronet band. I had the farrier do a moderate trim, started him on a hoof supplement, and brushed Hoof Heal on his hooves every day.
For three days after the trim he improved a little each day, then suddenly he was toe-pointing, hopping-to-the feeder lame. Coincidentally or not, the problem was most acute in his left front foot, which is slightly clubbed. Logically, I knew that an abscess was the most likely cause of the sudden, dramatic worsening of his lameness. His legs and joints were clean and cool. Yet I had fear, deep in my heart, that I had purchased a horse with a broken bone in his foot.
I stalled him on dry shavings, soaked his foot in Epsom salt baths, and gave him some Bute to take the edge off his pain. I consulted with my vet and she agreed with taking this conservative approach before jumping to rash conclusions and spending money to X-ray his foot. Chance lay down in the stall, but seemed cheerful and munched hay as he rested.
For two long days I didn't see a change, then suddenly he was putting some weight on the foot again. Looking closely, I could see a trickle of pus from the front of his coronet band. It wasn't a huge amount, but he had turned a corner. I soaked his foot again then poured iodine on the place where the abscess had finally broken through. The next day he was very restless, so I opened the back of the stall and let him out into the paddock. He walked around, grazed a bit, then came back to the dry stall. Chance seems to have a sense of taking care of himself.
Now I'm happy to report that Chance is back out in the pasture and getting sounder every day. I'm using Venice Turpentine on his soles to try to toughen them up, and of course he is getting plenty of Biotin and other good vitamins. So maybe, hopefully, we are on the road to recovery. Yet now I'm discovering something else about my leggy, slighty gawky horse who reminds me of teenage boy who has grown quickly and still doesn't quite know what to do with his long limbs... he is just a little accident prone, judging by the way he scraped his cannon bone on something... *sigh*
********If you think this blog is funny, read an excerpt of my book here "Horsewomen in Foal and Other Equestrian Adventures" -- this comes with my exclusive Laugh Until You Pee Guarantee (certain exclusions apply: guarantee only good for women who have had at least two children)
The maxim "No foot, no horse" expresses the age-old wisdom of realizing that without sound hooves, a horse is going nowhere. I blew by this truism (and a dozen others) when I drove down to SC last week and picked up a TB gelding that had been abandoned at a barn.
Hello, my name is Claudia, and I'm addicted to Thoroughbreds.
Yes, I admit it, after all the talks I gave myself about how I have no business buying a young TB (now that I'm 48)... about how foolish it is to buy a horse, however cheaply, that can't be test ridden because he is too lame... about what a risk it is to purchase a horse without a vet exam... I did just that.
Now the particulars in these kinds of deals are often sketchy, and the closer I got to this horse the sketchier things became.
After I had already driven two hours and I was within five miles of the barn, my phone rang. "I know I said yesterday he had a current Coggins" the barn manager said "but I got here this morning and realized it just expired last week." After some fruitless discussion and me missing my turn, I told her we'd just talk about it when I got there.
Doesn't sound THAT bad, right?
Until I got there, examined the Coggins, and saw it actually expired in July 2012.
"I haven't been here, I've been out of the barn two weeks because I've been sick, so things are a mess" the girl explained, perhaps responding to my raised eyebrow when I saw the horse in question standing in a stall with no bedding, but plenty of manure. Fortunately for the gelding he had mostly been living out, albeit in a very creatively fenced pasture (think fences made of industrial strapping material).
Anyway, the horse is a 16 hand bay gelding who let me fuss over him, although he doesn't like to lift his front feet, probably because he doesn't want to put all of his weight on one front foot. Both of his front feet are horrendously cracked and broken off. He stumbled down the asphalt floor of the barn aisle, but walked more freely when he got onto grass.
Long story short, I gave her some cash (not much), got the Jockey Club papers and a bill of sale, and hauled him straight to my veterinarian. The gelding, who I renamed "Chance", loaded without so much as a backward glance. From the start, he struck me as very intelligent. This impression was confirmed when we got to the vet hospital, where I had to leave him in a chain link side yard that is normally used as a dog run. He waited there calmly for two days so that my vet could vaccinate him, run a fecal (I've never seen that many worms), and get the negative Coggins back from the test lab. I visited twice per day to feed and check on him. When it came time to take him home, I loaded him by myself without a problem.
The most difficult thing we have done so far is get through trimming his feet for the first time. I gave him bute the day before and the day of the farrier visit, because I knew it would be challenging for him to balance on three sore feet so that the fourth could be worked on. He did take his foot away from the farrier a few times, but we were able to work through it... and now it is a matter of time, good nutrition and supplements, and luck. Time will tell whether I have a bargain show horse or expensive yard art!
*******If you think this blog is funny, read an excerpt of my book here "Horsewomen in Foal and Other Equestrian Adventures" -- this comes with my exclusive Laugh Until You Pee Guarantee (certain exclusions apply: guarantee only good for women who have had at least two children)****
My husband put new handles on my wheelbarrow, so I grabbed a fork and went out to pick up the paddock. It has been a while since I did this; I was without a horse for about three years, and then last fall I got my current horse. She is actually a large pony that is incredibly low maintenance. Still, after keeping her in a stall with an attached half-acre paddock for a month because of bad weather, it was past time to pick up.
While sending manure piles flying into the wheelbarrow from several feet away (some skills you never lose), I mused about the things that used to occupy mind when I ran a boarding and lesson operation. This horse had pulled a shoe. That one's coat was really blooming since starting on rice bran. Time to buy hay-- and so on.
Nowadays, my thoughts run in other directions. I ask myself questions, many of them unanswerable: Is being proactive really better if it means I mistakenly left my older son at school for an afternoon activity two Fridays early? Why am I apparently the only person in my household who knows how to operate the dishwasher? And, of course, the classic riddle, the ultimate koan of housekeeping: If ammonia is what makes cat pee smell bad, why do we use it as a household cleaner?????
********If you think this blog is funny, read an excerpt of my book here "Horsewomen in Foal and Other Equestrian Adventures" -- this comes with my exclusive Laugh Until You Pee Guarantee (certain exclusions apply: guarantee only good for women who have had at least two children)
Another Craigslist classic, apparently these minis are so precious they're only allowed to graze on deep pile carpet. Yesiree, we pamper them... the only problem being that THEY'RE STILL HORSES and probably don't want to live in the house. Or the doublewide, either, for that matter.
It's a little hard to know what to say about this, except that horse people are even crazier than I usually think.
