Month: May 2017

As I was handgrazing Henry the other day, I got to thinking about how different he and Sadie are to handle. Not that Sadie is difficult, but she’s definitely smart, and if she thinks you’re a pushover she will both literally and figuratively walk all over you. Henry is more like an old lesson horse (albeit one who’s had too many cookies and is probably a bit spoiled but let’s ignore that). He’s just kinda there, and he might glare at you but he’ll do pretty much whatever you want without argument as long as it doesn’t involve putting anything in his ears.

Sadie, on the other hand, can smell dominance from a mile a way. If you’re assertive, she’s very simple. But if you give her an inch, she’ll take a mile. Her general temperament has a definite “Hmmm… how sure are you?” theme. This was illustrated really well when she was at the vet clinic with Presto, because the guys that cleaned the pens were very clearly terrified of her. They would slowly tiptoe into her pen, keeping their eyes on her at all times, and if she moved toward them at all, they would go running. I don’t totally blame them, she is a BIG horse that had a sick foal by her side, but I’m pretty sure Sadie found their terror to be hilarious and it became a game to her. Yet if I went in there she was a total lamb and I could move her backwards just by pointing my finger at her (which I’m fairly certain the workers thought that was some kind of majikal horse whispering voodoo). Mare ain’t stupid, she knows who’s alpha. And if you’re alpha, she’s great. If you’re not, you aren’t going to enjoy her very much.

Yet once you’re in the saddle she’s so easy and simple that it’s borderline ridiculous. At her first trail ride as a 3yo, fresh from the breaker, she was the bravest, quietest, easiest horse in a big group of seasoned trail horses. I can’t leave just anyone holding her unattended, but I’ve always been able to throw literally anyone up on her and say “keep your hands down and you’re golden”. And she was. A blind geriatric monkey could ride that horse. She loves to work and the answer is always yes. The more difficult it is, the more interested she is. She’s the most pleasant, happiest mare I’ve ever ridden. And she is definitely more rideable than Henry. I’d classify both of them as fairly easy horses to ride but he is more sensitive and naturally more tense than she is, thus he requires more tact.

Yet if you spent 5 minutes with each horse on the ground, almost everyone would probably guess that Henry was much easier to ride. I’ve noticed over and over that it seems like a lot of people think that temperament and rideability go hand in hand. You see it a lot with people that buy babies… “oh he’s so smart and quiet, he’ll be a great ammy horse.”. Enh… well… maybe. I personally have not seen a strong enough correlation between temperament and rideability to ever bank on that.

The only really reliable indicator I’ve seen is a genetic one, and it’s why rideability was so important to me in choosing a stallion. Some lines have strong reputations for making horses that are easy to train, ride, and are forgiving of mistakes. Others are known for creating quite the opposite. In that case I don’t care how good the temperament seems, I don’t want one.

But really, you don’t know what you’ve got until you swing a leg over and put them to work. I’ve had one that was super stupid on the ground but super easy to ride, and I’ve had one that was bombproof on the ground but a total moron to ride. That’s the extra fun part about breeding, buying a young horse, or buying sight unseen: it’s a surprise! Whether it’s good surprise or a bad surprise, well… that depends.

It’s that time of year again… 90 degrees with 9000% humidity, and it’s only going to get worse. Anyone who knows Henry is aware of his heat intolerance issues. He sweats like a champ, he just can’t breathe, especially when it’s humid. By this point I’ve had 3 different vets look at him over 3 different summers with no real solid answers. Last summer I also tried putting him on a supplement called Lung EQ, hoping it might help, but really the only thing that made a difference was going to Arizona where there was no humidity.

Of course, it’s not really feasible to just up and go somewhere else every summer. He’s been manageable enough at home, I just have to be careful when I ride him. By this point I’ve gotten it down to a science, really, and have a whole box of special summer stuff for Henry. I haven’t given up trying different things though, so every winter I think about what else I can try, and every summer we give it a go.

This year we’re trying two things: body clipping and an Omega Alpha Equine supplement called Respi-Free. The body clip was an easy decision. Henry is naturally a thick-coated horse, and even his summer coat is more like what you’d expect on a shetland than a thoroughbred. His front end was pretty slick, but his butt was hairy,

I’ve never body clipped one of my horses in the summer, so I wasn’t sure how it would look. Before I started I even had the thought that I might have to go buy a Fine blade, because his neck and chest hair might not be long enough for the Medium. HA!

There was plenty of hair. PLENTY. Once I started I was shocked at how much was peeling off. He accepted his fate without much protest, and an hour and half later I had a much sleeker horse and a huge pile of “summer coat”.

I also started the Respi-Free the same day, which is the supplement that was recommended to me at Rolex by the Omega Alpha rep. Basically it’s a combination of all of their other breathing supplements, intended for horses with general respiratory issues and/or horses with COPD. All 3 vets have ruled out COPD, but the “general respiratory issues” part does apply. In the summer anyway. Respi-Free a liquid supplement that contains natural cough suppressants (which, Henry never coughs, but…) and bronchodilators. I hate supplements in general, liquid supplements specifically, and liquid supplements that have to be given by dosing syringe are like top of the chain kind of hatred. But I’m willing to try anything to make summers easier for him, so I figured we’d try a bottle and see how it goes.

So far, so good. We’re only a few rides in since the clip and starting the Respi-Free but he’s definitely breathing a little easier. He’s still puffing when we’re done riding, but he actually seems able to decrease his respiratory rate on his own as we walk out (before it really wouldn’t go down until I got off and started hosing). I don’t know if that’s the body clip at work or if the Respi-Free is actually helping, but I’m not going to complain. We’ll see how things go over the next month or two!

This is not really the Presto update post that I was picturing last week when I planned to go visit him. Remember how I said it just felt like we got too lucky with him and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop? Call it a premonition…

On Saturday Presto presented with a very snotty nose, rumbly sounding lungs, and a fever. We got him inside and cooled down a bit, and the vet was called. From the description and his age, the vet was 95% sure it was rhodococcus. Banamine was administered, and the vet said he would be out first thing Sunday to confirm.

As soon as he pressed the ultrasound probe against Presto’s ribs, there was no doubt. There is significant infection in the right lung, with some pretty sizeable abscesses. The left lung is only minorly affected (apparently it’s typical for rhodococcus to be more unilateral).

Rhodococcus is a very common bacteria that pretty much all adult horses have. It’s another fun one that foals are particularly susceptible to picking up, especially down here in Texas where we’re always warm and the ground cover is not as lush. It’s easy for the rhodococcus to live in the soil. Typically foals get it in their first week of life but it doesn’t present outwardly until 2 months of age or later.

As a matter of course the “prevention” for rhodo is to administer plasma at day 3 and day 21, which we do. Obviously he had a metric shit ton of plasma while he was sick with Chlostridium. Like gallons, no exaggeration, for the first 3 weeks of his life. But the vet thinks that because he was SO sick, his body likely burned through all the plasma before the antibodies could really take effect. Thus the rhodococcus took root and has been sitting in there waiting to rear its ugly head.

The good news is that as long as Presto responds to the medication (please please PLEASE), the prognosis is fairly good and he shouldn’t have any lasting damage. Not to say that rhodococcus isn’t serious and scary, because it definitely is. It’s quite the unpleasant illness, and the medication can have some gnarly side effects. Most dangerous of which is hyperthermia… they can overheat and die of heat stroke very quickly if they’re out in the heat and sun.

He’ll be spending his summer days in a stall in front a fan, and just go out at night. The vet also thought it wouldn’t hurt to body clip him and get a lot of that coat off, so we did. We thought we’d basically have to pin him against the wall to do it, but true to Presto form he just stood there while I went to work with the barn’s big loud Clipmasters. He actually seemed to like it (he’s so itchy at the moment) and it definitely has to help, getting rid of all that hair.

So all we can do now is medicate and be really careful with him, and hope that the meds do their job. My poor nugget… he has had way more than his fair share of hardship in his short life. At least this one doesn’t seem to effect his general demeanor, since he still tried to bite me at one point and strongly objected to alcohol being poured on him. My heart just hurts for him though.

It’s been a bit quiet on the home front lately, but a few things have really been winning for me this week…

Duolingo

I decided that if we’re going to Germany, I should probably learn some German. Like… aside from the little bit of German that I already know, because I’m pretty sure that sattel and springpferd are not particularly useful when it comes to conversation, travel, or food. I researched all the free language learning tools before deciding on Duolingo and I was immediately hooked. If nothing else at least I now know a lot of food items (esp the important ones like kartoffel, käse, brot, and schokolade), how to greet people or answer basic questions, how to say “that horse is cute!”, ask for directions, and say please/thank you/sorry. We’ll see how much more I can learn in the next few months but so far it’s really fun!

RICE

No not rice, but RICE – rest, ice, compression, elevation. Because remember on Monday when I said I thought I’d done some soft tissue damage on my ankle? Yeah well I have a little tear in a tendon by my ankle. Doesn’t hurt that much anymore unless I try to lift my toes off the ground, or if I do a long ride, mostly thanks to RICE and NSAIDs. Lesson learned: do not be so eager to get to pie. Or just don’t put stairs in my path when I’m trying to get to pie. Let’s go with the second one, it’s more realistic.

Fat Buckskin

New blogger (long time friend) Michele of Fat Buckskin in a Little Suit found out that she’ll be in Austin for a work thing in a couple weeks and she’s made plans to come visit while she’s here! She’s short on time but I’m going to try to drag her out to see Presto (don’t think there will be much dragging involved really) and I have a secret plan to toss her up on Henry. It’ll work, I’m pretty sure. Plus it’ll give her good blog fodder, ranting about how crazy I am for a while.

RPSI

Some of you might have heard that RPSI and Westfalen are combining their registries, which is really really interesting and has been the buzz of the breeding world this week. But that news aside, I finally got a certified copy of Sadie’s upgraded papers with all the dam side information filled in from RPSI. I paid for a new copy of her passport too, but that will probably take a while to get here. Either way, many thanks to RPSI (and the Jockey Club) for being so easy to work with on this and helping me get it done with minimal headache and expense. It’s very exciting to finally see Sadie’s entire pedigree verified in their official database. And it means she and Presto are good to go for the sBs inspection in September!

Riding Warehouse Sale

Yay, Memorial Day sale! Time to stock up on fly spray and salt blocks from my faves at Riding Warehouse. Plus RW is carrying Kask helmets now (lord help me), my most favorite Ovation Aqua-X breeches are available in new colors, the ECP all-in-one XC pad that I posted about a couple weeks ago is only $43, and they have those very-budget-friendly-yet-still-cute $12 fly bonnets that will hopefully save lots of horses from bad DIY attempts. Don’t forget the sale section gets an additional 20% off when you add it to your cart, too… I saw some good stuff in there: RJ Classics breeches for only $87, Kastel polo shirts for $15, Majyk Equipe dressage boots for $51, fly masks for $8, Roeckl summer gloves for $27, etc. It’s worth a look!

I’m also pretty excited about this 3 1/2 day long weekend. Definitely planning on going to see Presto (you have a few days to brace yourselves for picture overload) and fitting lots of rides in on Henry! In the blazing heat. It was 92 yesterday and is supposed to be 95 today. Welcome to summer in Texas.

 

My marbles are definitely lost. There are bats in my belfry. My cheese done slipped off my cracker. There’s a kangaroo loose in my top paddock. My cuckoo clock is stuck at 12. However many other euphemisms you can think of for crazy, they all apply.

I entered a dressage show.

Like… one that doesn’t have any jumping at all. Not even a combined test. And they do real USDF dressage tests (although thanks y’all for letting me do my lil’ USEA test cuz I don’t have any more room in my brain to learn more). I have never been able to fathom why anyone would want to willingly do a dressage test when you don’t even get to jump afterward as a reward, but I guess I’m about to find out what this business is all about.

How did this happen? I dunno. Moment of weakness? Sometimes I have ideas that seem really good at the time but are actually crap? Or I go along way too easily with things that Trainer suggests… that’s probably it. I’ve noticed I’m very agreeable to anything that is presented to me dressed as a learning/development opportunity. I should remember that in the future (but I won’t) because I think Trainer has figured out how I work. Damn her manipulative ways.

But I sent my little entry in for a dressage test at a show next weekend. Luckily it’s just a schooling show, and the whole point of going is so I can practice my Training test B before our event the weekend after. Test B is really stupid, just in case anyone asked my opinion (they didn’t). Who wants to do a figure 8 of 15m circles at X and canter lengthenings on a circle? Literally no one. Definitely not me and Henry. Maybe I should wear green instead of navy so that no one recognizes me? Or I could just wear a shirt with the USEA logo plastered all over it so that everyone knows I’m an eventer and gives me a wide berth?

Dressage judges freak me out. They’re so… judgey and…. dressagey. At least at an event they know in advance that they should probably lower their expectations. At a dressage show I don’t even get a disclaimer. On a scale of 1-10 how big of a faux pas would it be to say “OMG I’M AN EVENTER PLEASE HAVE MERCY” as I trot past C before I start my test? I’m, uh, asking for a friend.