15 Minutes Today

Today my husband got home early, so I got to get outside while it was still light, and it wasn't just to do chores! I think he'll get to take a half day tomorrow, which will be even nicer!

So, I headed out and called in the horses from the pasture. I haltered Arabee and brought her out and picked her feet. They look really nice after the trim. It's clear that there's some loose frog that needs trimmed away (which can be an indicator of thrush) so it's a good thing I plan to do some hoof soaking.

After the hoof picking, we took a quick walk. It was clear that she's been used to being "wild and free" by how high-headed and snorty she was - glad we're taking the time to do some ground work before getting in the saddle! I made sure she stayed with her head at my shoulder and had good manners - she needed many reminders in the short walk we took.

I picked her feet again after walking on the gravel, took her halter off, gave her a good rub on the spots where the halter was, and that was it! Altogether it was about 15 minutes. We are starting slow, and not solely because of the horse - it's mostly due to my reconditioning after the pregnancy and birth. It feels so good to be active and outdoors again!

Getting Closer

It seems the going is slow! After my last post, the next day I trimmed Jack's hooves with the hoof grinder as well, and he behaved well also. The fact that he's thousands of years old (ok...will be 30 in 2010) and can't hear probably helped! His hooves are black, and quite a bit more firm than Arabee's mostly white hooves, and took a few more passes with the grinder (or else the wheel wasn't as sharp after being used on Arabee) Either way, they were much nicer to look at after the trim than Arabee's - I'm going with the operater's skills had improved with practice.

Recently the temperatures have been much too cold for taking my kids outside, especially the baby, so I had been staying inside almost constantly. My husband and father in law have been doing the feeding chores (horses, goats, and our LGD) instead of me since before the baby was born, and we had moved the goats around and several have been born - I didn't even know what to feed my own animals anymore! So we took Cora and Luke to their grandparent's house last night and Matt taught me how to feed the animals again. It was fun!

My plan is that I will do chores at night, and work on soaking a pair of hooves at a time. When we trimmed them the other weekend, I discovered a bad case of scratches on Arabee, and I want to renew thrush treatment on Jack, to make sure he keeps the progress we made in the fall. I have a pair of Easycare's soaking boots, which are really nice - your ornery old gelding can't pretend he accidentally stepped out of the rubber tub you were soaking his hooves in - they are strapped to his pasterns!

So, the only thing I need now is a good tying spot. I got away with not having a place to tie my horses for several years, mostly because Arabee will stand ground tied, but if I'm going to try to soak hooves and be doing other things, I need a safe, secure place to tie.

Ideally, it will be all of these things:

• Level
• close to electricity and water
• have footing that won't get muddy
• be secure enough that if I have both horses tied to it, and they pull back at the same time that it won't come down
• wither height
• have a lighting source
• be reasonably close to my tack room
• free of obstacles/sharp things to get hurt on

Can anyone think of other important criteria to have in a tie area???? Let me know, I'd appreciate it!


I think I might have my husband really glad to have a good idea of something to get me for Christmas and my birthday, and I will be thrilled to get it! Until then, both horses are in serious need of mud and mane tangle removal, so it won't be a bad thing for me to babysit them while they soak.

So, with these cold temperatures, chores and soaking and hopefully handwalking is what I'll be doing with Arabee for the rest of December. I'm starting to really look forward to riding again, but my stomach muscles have a long way to go before they'll be strong enough to keep my butt centered in the saddle during a big spook, so the grooming and groundwork will be good for me.

Begin Again!

Today was my first "real" day of doing anything horse related after Luke was born.

And it was a bit of a doozy!

I trimmed all four of Arabee's feet using an electric grinder! She handled it like she'd been having her feet trimmed that way her whole life.

I on the other hand have a bit of a learning curve to overcome on the machine. It works super fast and I love using it because I did the first hoof in half the time it usually takes me. The trim isn't perfect, but it will do for her current use, which is pasture ornament. Each hoof I did looked better than the last, so I'm at least improving.

After the trim, Arabee and I took a walk to the mailbox. She will have a lot of getting-used-to to do - she had a cow over the shed that the goats were in, the newly weaned calves in the barn, the replacement heifers in the pasture across the road, and the mailbox. I will have a lot of fitness to restore - my shoulders and arms are quite stiff, and will be sore tomorrow, and if the baby allows it, I'll sleep well tonight! So, a good (if not slow) start to getting back at work to building rider endurance.

Birth Announcement

After much anticipation, our son Luke was born on 11/10/09, at 3:35am. He weighed 8 pounds, 1 ounce, and was 21 inches long.

He is 2 weeks old today, and we're all getting used to being a family of 4, with 2 children under 2!

I am still way too sore to even THINK about riding a horse, but that will change with time!

I won't bore everyone with the details surrounding his birth here on this blog, but if you happen to be interested, you can read about it here.

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!