Is it too early to post about 2010???

As I wrote in the last post, I have been itching to ride again! So I did the next best thing, I sat down and thought about what my actual goals are for riding in 2010.

Assuming our son is born November 1st, he's healthy and I'm healthy and I take it easy and focus on family only for the first 6 weeks, here is what I've come up with:

December - work in hand

goals: 2-3 times per week, build rider fitness, enhance horse/rider communication after time off, establish familiarity with trail network around home (i.e., come up with some trails....)

January - work both in hand and under saddle

goals for in hand work: One day/week continue with December's goals

goals for under saddle work: arena work 2x/week, to reinforce riding basics of steering, stopping, rating at all three gaits, and to teach lateral moves (sidepass, pivots) This is when I want to set the foundation for riding on a loose rein bitless before I take her out on the trails.

February - work under saddle

goals: Ride outside 2-3 times per week, continuing to reinforce the basics out in the open, while gradually building horse (and rider) fitness through longer trotting periods (long, slow distance).

March - work under saddle

goals: Ride 2-3 times per week, building up intensity, possibly trailering out for a training ride or two towards the last half of the month.

April - work under saddle

goals: Ride 2-3 times per week, continuing to build trotting and intensity, more training rides, and if all has gone well, our first slow limited distance completion at Chicken Chase!

After that, we'll see how things are going, and re-evaluate (although I'd be lying if I didn't say that I truly hope to ride in every ride in Indiana in 2010) Maybe a slow LD multiday at Top of the Rock in May, conditioning in June, Salamonie in July, conditioning in August and September, then Spook Run in October, and just maybe, our first 50 in November (cooler weather, having had all season to condition, taking it easy)?

We'll see how it goes, take one month (or ride) at a time. 2009 certainly presented it's share of obstacles between tack issues, injury, pregnancy, and now the abscess - we may not even make it to our first endurance ride at all, but one can dream and hope and plan, can't they?

Update

Haven't posted in a while again, so I thought I might mention that Arabee is going sound again (yay!) but the hole in the bottom of her sole has not yet closed up, so she still requires a bandage to keep the dirt out until it closes up. So she's still in her stall, and not too thrilled about it, either.

This beautiful fall weather has me just itching to ride! But, of course I won't be doing any of that for a while, anyway, between being very pregnant and Arabee's abscess.

I finally had to give up trimming hooves myself, and now Matt has taken over. So far, he's only trimmed Arabee, and Jack is going to get his hooves done tonight. All in all, he's done a great job, especially considering he barely knew how to pick out a horse's hooves, let alone handle them long enough to trim them! If he could just take the hoof off and trim it, he'd do great, as it is, Arabee is especially good at testing him with her hind feet, and let's face it - it's disconcerting for anyone, let alone a beginner, when a horse jerks their hind legs at you!

With all the stall rest, her walls were plenty long, and we did try using an electric grinder on the hoof. She handled the noise and vibration well, but there was just too much material to take off to use it for a whole trim. I may be able to take back over the trimming if I use the electric grinder about once/week - just a few passes over the hoof should keep things in pretty good shape at that frequency. It's just that bending over for any length of time is not my favorite thing to do, and our baby doesn't like it either judging by how often I get kicked in the ribs when I try!

Arabee has an Abscess

Yesterday I hauled Arabee down to a new vet - not new to the area, but new to us. We/I decided it was a good idea to switch our equines to someone who specializes in equines, and I have to say it was a good experience yesterday. It was nice to deal with a vet who wasn't afraid of my "large animal" or who wanted to handle her like a cow.

Drove the almost 45 minutes down there, stopped in the office and found out I had driven too far, that I'd need to back up about 75 feet, around a curve, and then drive around the barn to the horse examining area. Interesting, because backing isn't really my thing! But, I was very slow, and actually VERY successful doing so! In front of us in line was a pair of gray geldings - the trailer hauling them in had Henryville, IN written on it, and Rocky Mountain Horse stickers everywhere. They were getting their teeth floated. They left, I pulled the truck and trailer up a little bit farther, and waited until they were ready to see us. (it's so funny...I'm used to taking my daughter to her well-child doctor's appointments, and I am using the same language as I am now talking about taking my HORSE to the VET! "...they were ready to see US")

So the tech came out and asked me what was going on, I explained that on 8/2, the rescue 20 helicopter had flown overhead very low, and that evening she'd come in pretty lame on the left front/right hind, so I figured she hurt herself trying to get away from that, but she had significantly improved the next day, and incrementally gotten better each day after that, so I assumed she was on the mend. We left for vacation on 8/8, got back 8/15, and she still had a slight lameness. Towards the end of that week, she was getting progressively worse again, and that weekend was very obviously sore on the left front. I called the vet and set up an appointment, and as soon as they could fit us in, we came.

She had me unload Arabee, and take her into the exam room. They had a stall, a tie area, two sets of stocks, and rubber floor mats. Another horse was in there, with his feet being soaked (for abscesses, go figure!). Arabee was glad to see that other horse, and quickly calmed down and stood quietly. The vet came out and had the tech walk Arabee so she could see - she was tense and hiding the lameness a little, but it was still obvious. Brought her back in the building, and felt her leg and hoof carefully, then picked up the hoof and started cleaning it, used the hoof testers, and started cutting sole away. I asked if she had a hunch of what it was at this point, and she was pretty sure already it was an abscess. She'd already found a little hole at the bottom of her sole that when she squeezed the hoof next to it with the hoof tester, would ooze liquid.

Apparantly an abscess is good news. While it does cause big time lameness, it's temporary, and she said that with this wet summer, that they've seen a LOT of abscesses locally. She said there wasn't much you could do to prevent them, aside from shoeing your horse, but even shod horses can get them. She asked who my farrier was, and I told her I'd been doing the trimming myself, and the hope was to keep her barefoot, and boot with easyboots or renegades when needed.

She slathered a piece of cotton with Magnapack, an epsom salt gel poultice-like green product, and then wrapped the entire bottom of her foot up to her pastern in cotton batting, then vetrap, then duct tape across the bottom of the hoof. I am supposed to soak her leg, bandage and all, in warm water with epsom salts once/day, and change the bandage every 3-4 days. So unfortunately for Arabee and for me, this means stall rest. Again! She just really hates that, and I do too, since it means hauling water buckets and manure, and hay. Oh well, if it will keep her foot clean which will get her sound faster, it'll be worth it.

I am seriously considering purchasing a pair of Easyboot Soaker boots. Not just for this application, but since I've been soaking Jack's feet for thrush once weekly, and probably will start doing Arabee's too, it'd be way handier to use these boots than try to get them to stand in that rubber tub.

I still want to do a thorough web search of how to treat abscesses, especially barefoot hoof style abscess treatment. If anyone has any helpful links or knowledge, send it my way, please!

Honest Scrap Award

This little blog of mine has (waaaay back in July!) been awarded the Honest Scrap Award three times! Go Diego Go, If the Trees had Ears, and Endurance Granny all nominated me! Thank you. I'm honored, but haven't been blogging an awful lot lately, so it's taken me a while to get around to posting this!

When you receive The Honest Scrap award you must stick to some rules:

Recognize your award presenter and link back to their blog in your post.

List 10 honest things about yourself that others might not know.

Present this award to 10 admirable bloggers and link to their blogs.

Leave a comment on your recipients' blogs to let them know to visit your post to retrieve their award.

Here are 10 honest scraps about me:

1. I am ridiculously excited about the birth of our son, who's estimated due date is November 1st. I cannot wait! Getting to meet him, to hold him, nurse him, bathe him, introduce him to our daughter, who will be 22 months old when he's born - I just can't wait.



2. I am a stay at home mom, and I absolutely love it. I think if you are a mommy, that is the most important job that absolutely needs first priority over everything else. No one else can impact the lives of your children more than the person who cares for them most of the time, which ideally, is their mother.



3. I really enjoy working in the kitchen. I've started baking our bread (have you had french toast from homemade bread???), we preserve a lot of foods that we grow in our own garden, I make my own refried beans - in my not-so-humble opinion, my family eats REALLY good, every time I fix dinner! And surprisingly, the more I cook, the easier it is to maintain a healthy weight - I guess less eating out is the key to that one?



4. When driving my car, every time I see a nice little ditch, or woods, or farm lane - I picture myself riding Arabee, right down to the gait we'd be riding in, the feel of her motion, the smell of the horse, the sound of the saddle and her hoofbeats.



5. It's a lot harder to come up with 10 things than I expected it would be!



6. I don't want to be a "sheeple." As in, it's important to me to make decisions based on what is best for the situation, rather than what everyone else is doing. It may seem easier to just go with the crowd, but that isn't always the case.



7. I'm firm in my faith, and that is what keeps things going. Without God, nothing is possible - but with God, all things are possible. There's so much more to being a Christian than just going to church on Sundays, and it took me a long time to realize how freeing it is to rely fully on Jesus for all things - I guess I'm still learning that.



8. I've always loved animals, and horses especially - but I never wanted to be a vet, because animals don't like vets! They just don't understand the fact that that guy with the needle is actually helping them.



9. Even before I ever met my husband, I always felt that farmers were the best people - hard working, honest, and trustworthy. I married into a farming family, and now I know that's true. Farmers were (and still are) the first to be good stewards of the land, have always wanted the best for the animals they raise, and even so, they catch a lot of slack for using the best management practices, from environmentalists and animal rights groups that simply don't understand the reasons certain practices are in place.



10. My family lives in a home that was built by my husband's great great grandmother, built in 1902/1908 (exact year not certain) that we renovated in 2005, the year we were married. I love our home's charm, and have been really enjoying building flower beds and learning about perennials to add to our landscaping. I am taking forever to hang things on our walls, because I want to be sure it is just right! Barring flood (unlikely, since we live on a big hill) or fire, or tornado, we plan to live here forever, so I guess I have plenty of time to decorate.

And, here is my list of blogs I will nominate for this award. I'm going to keep it to the blogs I make sure I read every post on, but I do follow quite a few additional blogs that are also great, and I check in on others that I don't officially "follow" so please don't feel slighted if your blog isn't included here. I get a lot out of every blog I read, but I enjoy the ones I am listing the most.

1. Generation Cedar - a Christian blog which has included several eye-opening and thought-provoking posts, things that make me question things I never really thought about before.


2. The Equestrian Vagabond - often breathtakingly beautiful horse photography!


3. Endurance Granny - I met Jacke at the 2008 AERC National Championship ride in Clarksville, and enjoy reading about her bitless, barefoot trail riding, and enjoy riding with her when we had the chance, and hope to do so again after this baby is born!


4. Karen's Musings and Endurance Ride Stuff - this blog is full of information pertaining to endurance riding, especially interesting for me since I choose to keep my horses barefoot.


5. The Barb Wire - Beautiful photography, amazing writing, and full of useful information that relates to the sport of endurance

Interesting Horse Watering Product

I found this website today for the H2orse Animal Watering System.

My first thought when seeing this waterer is that it may be the perfect solution to both hauling water from home, and watering back at the trailer when finished riding for when we haul out for training rides at various parks.

I'm picturing mounting the waterer directly to the side of the trailer where I tie the horse.

I emailed the inventor with these questions: Would the plugs hold up at highway speeds to keep the water in the tank and out of the drinking bowl? What are the dimensions of this product? What does it cost?

I'll update this post when I get a response.

Adventures WithOUT Arabee

Last spring, I wrote about how I was able to use an indoor arena a couple of times to ride in. That's the same place I go now once each week to volunteer for a therapeutic riding program called Reins to Recovery.

It has been a really great experience. We have one rider at a time in a 45 minute lesson, and as a volunteer I help by grooming and tacking up the horse before the lesson, either leading the horse or being a "sidewalker" - someone who walks next to the rider to help make sure they stay on, and then untacking and grooming after the lesson. It's a pretty simple job, but it has been so much fun, and very rewarding. It's great to get to see improvement in the rider, and to be a part of it.

This Sunday, August 23rd, they will be having a fundraising event in Nashville, IN, from 1-5pm. A hog roast, a silent auction, dancing, live music, pony rides, games - should be a fun time that will benefit a great cause. I have some tickets to sell if anyone is interested in attending!

Thrush Treatment

Well, now that I've been treating Jack's hooves for thrush for a couple of weeks now, I might as well post about what I've been doing and how it's been working.

First, I'll admit that I sat around and waited waaaaay too long and allowed the problem to get much worse than it ever should have. His frogs were in BAD shape by the time I got serious about treating it, and for that I am ashamed. But, late is better than never, and the treatment I've been using has greatly improved his hoof health.

Here's my basic strategy:

Pick hooves twice daily.

Soak a pair at a time in Borax solution. Fronts one day, Hinds the next day for 5-7 days, Applying "Pete's Goo" immediately afterward. Trim diseased frog away, to keep dirt and bacteria from getting packed in.

Continue twice daily hoof picking followed by "Pete's Goo" until frogs begin to appear healthy again

Continue twice or at least once daily hoof picking forever after.

Recipe for "Pete's Goo"
Equal parts of (triple antibiotic ointment plus) and human Athletes Foot Cream (1% Clotrimazole) applied with a syringe into deep parts of hoof.

Shopping List:
Big flexible rubber tub for hoof soaking
Triple Antibiotic Ointment
Athletes Foot Cream - 1% Clotrimazole
Lysol or Borax

So, I began the twice daily picking of Jack's hooves the day of the July 7th post asking about thrush remedies. By Wednesday evening I had assembled all the stuff on the shopping list, and Thursday evening I soaked his front hooves for about 20-30 minutes. Friday morning I soaked his hinds. Then on Friday night I soaked his fronts and trimmed away extra frog on his fronts and applied "Pete's Goo". I had to trim away a lot of material, he had big cracks and the central sulcus was really really deep. Saturday morning I soaked his hind feet, and did the frog trimming and put "Pete's Goo" on them. Sunday evening I soaked, re-trimmed the frog, and "goo-ed" his front feet, and Monday evening soaked and "goo-ed" his hind feet.

After that the week got super-busy, and I didn't take the time to soak his feet anymore, but continued with the twice daily hoof picking, and put "Pete's Goo" on one pair of feet daily for the rest of the week. Now I've run out of the goo, but am still doing the twice daily hoof picking.

I have seen a lot of improvement in his frogs - the central sulcus is not nearly as deep, and the frog is beginning to grow back healthy and nice. He quickly began to be much more cooperative about picking up his feet, I think because it quit hurting every time I tried to pick the dirt out of them. It took a LOT of hard work to get to this point, especially with this big ol' belly I'm getting, but definitely it was my fault that they got this bad to begin with, so it was time well spent. I'm hoping to be able to soon cut back to once daily hoof picking, but I will wait until his frogs are 100% healthy again.

I'm glad that Jack's hooves are on their way back to healthy. At 29 years old, he's got his share of problems, and I'm glad that finally his hooves won't be one of them. Now if only I could just keep weight on him! All day grazing, twice daily pelleted Senior horse feed, and regular worming is not enough for him!

Yes, I'm still here

I have a couple of posts planned, but first I have to find the time to do it! Been busy, and it's hard to come in and sit down and type when it's so nice out. All I want to take time for is to read the blogs I follow and then go do something!

But soon I'll write about how Jack's thrush treatment's been coming along. Mostly nicely.

I'll also write about some of my recent and ongoing "Adventures withOUT Arabee" but still involving horses.

Plus, I have received an award, and that requires it's own post!


But I have to first post about Arabee's mystery lameness, read about it here.

One and Three Quarters Sound

No, this is not good news. (although I'm hoping not terribly bad news, either!)

Went out to do chores last night, and as I rounded the corner of the barn, I found my mare holding her left front leg up. Uh oh. I poured Jack's feed in his bucket, and had her move to the other side of the gate as usual, and it becomes clear that it is not just the left front that is sore, but also her right hind.

So Arabee is hobbling around on two good legs. The 3/4 comes in because the right front is the hoof that she cut back in April, and the cut in the hoof wall is still growing out (a little over halfway through). She doesn't walk lame on that leg, but it sure is at least visually compromised, and likely if she were in work, she'd be touchy there.

She looks much better this morning than she did last night, and actually trotted and threw in a couple gallop strides on the way out of the gate into the pasture, but she is still CLEARLY lame.

I picked her feet, checked them and they're not hot at all. I picked up her leg and squeezed around on it, and there were no obvious signs for me to tell where she hurt it.

The only thing I can think of is that she was trotting around in the pasture yesterday, and found a slick spot, and strained/sprained that diagonal pair. Actually, the Rescue 20 helicopter flew overhead yesterday just as the dew was mostly dried off, and they were flying pretty low, I assume looking for their landing spot. I didn't notice any activity in the horse pasture, but then I was looking up in the sky at the helicopter. It wouldn't surprise me if the chopper scared her and caused her to startle, and slip.

My plan was to wait a day or two, since she is moving much better now than last night. I think she'll work it out on her own, without having to call the vet. Any other opinions?

Thrush Treatment

I trimmed Arabee's feet over the weekend - they look great. I may or may not post the pictures I took....we'll see how ambitious I get!

Jack, on the other hand.....well, his frogs are in terrible shape. I need immediate thrush treatment on his feet, and it needs to be effective!

First, I need to start cleaning out his hooves daily, or twice daily, no exceptions. Typically, after a trim I start out good the first week or two, then forget the daily hoof cleanings. Daily hoofpicking is a must.

Second, I'm hoping to find a "safe" thrush treatment I can apply to his hooves. I don't want to use a harsh chemical since I'm pregnant, but his thrush has gotten to the point that it NEEDS attention. Has anyone tried anything that they recommend? I'll be doing an internet search later on, but would love to hear suggestions if anyone else has tried something that works well.