… is that they don’t live forever.

We adopted Quinn (the corgi) in 2015. At the time he officially brought our menagerie up to 3 dogs, all 8 years old or older. The rescue we got him from wasn’t 100% sure on his age, their vet said around 7, but our vet thought closer to 9. So… we just went with 8.

We specifically sought out an older dog from the rescue, knowing that they are harder for them to place. Indeed the rescue hadn’t even bothered listing Quinn, because he was both older and deaf and came to them with a horrid skin condition (he had been surrendered by his owner to the local shelter, so no one really had any information about him. They didn’t even tell the shelter his freakin’ name, only that he was aggressive towards their kids.). When we applied and specifically asked for a senior dog, he was offered to us.

He’s definitely a total weirdo that was NOT socialized properly, but we love him all the same. He’s been a good dog overall, and he especially excelled in his very part time gig as a mobile tack shop greeter.

We’ve had him for 5 years now, so he’s somewhere between 12 and 14. We’ve never really had any problems with him (aside from nasty teeth and the fact that trying to bathe him or clip his nails is akin to wrestling a grizzly bear) until he started to show some loss of mobility and feeling in a hind foot last year. For corgis especially that’s a biiiiiiiiiiig warning bell. And unfortunately the warning bell turned out to be right – he has DM.

Being a pembroke corgi of likely questionable breeding/origin, this isn’t such a surprise. It’s pretty common within the breed, and something I knew could happen. It is a progressive eventually fatal disease, so in the past few months I’ve made it my job to find out as much as I can and connect with others who have experience dealing with it.

The good and bad thing about it being so common with corgis is that there is a lot of support out there to be had. Facebook groups, websites, books… you name it. I bought a book, joined a couple facebook groups, and started looking at what we could do to help him out. He’s lost most of the mobility of both hind limbs now, so he can’t really walk unassisted, he mostly just scoots. We started looking at wheelchairs, but $500+ is a lot to plunk down for something that will get relatively short-term use IF he will even adapt to it and use it at all. Through a facebook group I found CorgiAid, a 501c that helps fund rescues, but also runs a wheelchair rental program. We applied, sent his measurements, paid the deposit and shipping, and now have a cart coming for him. If it works and he uses it, we’ll look at buying one for him.

Through a facebook group I was also able to procure an EZ lift harness, which should help make the short outside bathroom trips easier. Right now we just have to hold his hind legs kinda wheelbarrow style and toodle around the yard with him. I’m excited to get the harness and see how it works.

He still has some motion and feeling in the hind limbs, just not enough to move them on his own in a coordinated effort. Most importantly, though, he’s still very happy and bright. As long as that’s the case we’ll continue exploring ways to help keep him that way. We’re trying to keep him as mobile as “usual” for as long as we can. The good news is that while DM is totally devastating, it isn’t painful. Still, we won’t let him get to the point where he’s completely paralyzed and unable to move on his own.

Thanks to the book and online resources I think I have a pretty good idea of what to expect going forward and how to deal with it, which makes me feel slightly better. It makes me sad to know that the writing is on the wall, so to speak, for Quinn, and now it’s really just a matter of time. We lost Delia, one of the other seniors, a year ago yesterday, and neither of us is really quite ready for that again. Knowing there’s nothing we can do to change it, we’re just trying not to dwell on it.

For now Quinn is really enjoying getting to spend more time on the couch, having me sneak him extra treats, and sleeping in that california king that we really bought mostly so he would have ample bed space. ❤

So I was scrolling mindlessly through facebook yesterday afternoon, as one does, when this article caught my eye:

Link to it here, in case you also need your mind blown today.

See, I have a bump on the roof of my mouth. And until yesterday I had NO IDEA that most people don’t. NO IDEA. NONE. I THOUGHT THIS WAS HOW ALL HUMAN MOUTHS WERE SHAPED. Being the natural skeptic that I am, I starting asking friends. Surely everyone has this mouth bump right?

WRONG. Out of the first 8 people I asked, no one else had a mouth bump. They just have these big ol’ empty bat cave mouths, apparently. Finally I asked my dad and he too has a mouth bump. He is the standard by which I judge all other humans, therefore I concluded that our mouth bumps are normal and all you smooth-mouthed people are weird. What do y’all do with all that extra space? You hiding something in there? A weapon? A snack for later? Pills to help you cope?

Being a Weird Horse Girl, it only took a matter of minutes for me to make the leap over into wondering if horses have this or not (apparently not – the closest thing for them would be a low palate I suppose) and then thinking to myself “boy I would NOT like a ported tongue relief bit at all, would I?”.

But… it really does make you think about just how differently mouths can be shaped and why finding a comfortable bit for your horse is so important. I fell soooo deep into a rabbit hole about horse mouth anatomy. I know that Henry doesn’t have a low palate (I’ve spent a lot of time staring at the inside of his mouth thanks to his weird teeth and the vet bills they bring) but he does have a fat tongue… we’ve already been down this road with all of his mouth weirdness and bit-searching in the past. But I’ve not gotten a super good look inside of Presto’s mouth yet. When we pulled his wolf teeth I was more preoccupied with what was coming OUT of his mouth. I feel like we’re pretty programmed to be focused on teeth but maybe not so much on the shape and characteristics of the mouth itself. Not gonna lie, I’m gonna be creepin’ on the dentist for every horse I come across from now on. I must see more horse mouths, it’s fascinating.

I’m still a little shook about finding out that there is a whole other species of Bat Cave Mouthed humans out there, though. Some intense googling did reveal a study that loosely linked the mouth bump to higher bone density, but otherwise all I learned is that mouths are inexplicably freakin’ weird in all animals.

Do you have a bump-mouth or a bat cave?

Presto had TWO rides over the long weekend! One was about 15 minutes and walk-only, so might not count, but whatever lets go with it.

On Friday (ride #10) he had two landmark moments in his 15-minute walk-only ride. First, it was his first time being ridden in the ring with another horse. The barn owner and I wanted to take the babies (her 5yo and my 3yo) for a short little hack across the property, so we started in the arena first. I led Presto out with the mare, got right on him with no lunge, and proceeded to stand in the middle and play tripod while I videoed the mare doing a few w/t/c laps around the ring. He stood like a champ and didn’t mind at all when she passed close by him at speed. I’m not sure you could ask much more from a 3yo that hadn’t been ridden in a week.

Then we walked out through the pasture, down the path, to the back of the property. Presto has gone a little ways that direction before, one time, but never all the way to the spooky back. He was interested, but stayed calm and quiet, and seemed to enjoy having a companion. It was a quick hack but both babies were super.

On Sunday (ride #11) I wanted to do more of what has become his “normal” short w/t/c ride. Well, first I wanted to check on the canter. You might remember me saying last time that I didn’t even canter him, because he’s growthy right now and was falling out of his canter lead behind on the lunge line. Out of character for him, but that happens sometimes in growth spurts. So first I lunged him for a couple minutes each way, checked the canter (his balance is back to normal!) and then got on.

He’s at that stage right now where he retains things so much that you feel like you’re building something tangible out of Lego’s. There’s a real satisfaction to getting on and seeing that despite going a week or two between rides, it’s as if the last ride was just yesterday. On his last real ride we started doing figure 8’s, changes of direction across the diagonal, and even big 3 loop serpentines at the trot. He was a little confused by the changes of direction at first, thinking he needed to walk through them, but this time he never even tried, just kept trotting right on through like “ok, now we go dis way”. He’s also getting a little bit straighter on his trips down the long side. I wouldn’t say he’s anywhere near actually being straight, but… it’s less drunken. The trot rhythm is starting to get a bit more consistent, too. It’s far from perfect but there are little baby improvements with every ride and I’m quite pleased with his progress with only this many rides spread over 2 months time.

Since his canter looked better on the lunge we went ahead and cantered under saddle too. He was a bit quiet about it that day so I had to encourage him forward a little more. Granted, this was, what… the 4th time he’s cantered under saddle? Sometimes he wants me to sit on him a bit more and help him balance (usually in the turns) and sometimes I need to get up off him and just leave him alone/send him forward. It’s a fine line between not hindering him but also not wanting to help him too much. I try to just adjust what I’m doing to suit how he feels underneath me at the moment.

I propped my phone up in the corner of the ring so I could get some stills and maybe a few flashes of video. I’m not editing all 13 minutes of the ride down to take out the “empty space” so I just nabbed the last minute that shows some canter and trot. Sorry, this is where my level of commitment is at right now.

The good news is that I finally caved and ordered a Pivo “robotic cameraman”, so hopefully I will have improved video capabilities soon. I was a little skeptical about the Pivo at first, but as they’ve done more updates it seems to be getting pretty good reviews from riders, and it’s very reasonably priced, so I figured why not try it. If you haven’t seen the Pivo, it’s this little device that you set your phone into and it tracks you/rotates as you ride around it, so you can get video on your phone while you’re alone that isn’t just a bunch of passes by the camera on a fixed tripod. Pivo seems to have recognized that it could potentially have a good market in equestrian sport so they’ve been doing a lot of updates, support, and marketing toward us. From the feedback in their facebook group it seems that the original Pivo (the red) works pretty well too, but the Silver has 2x faster tracking ability so I figured for $30 more I might as well go with that. There’s a good video review of it here.

I’m not expecting it to be perfect but even if it only gets half of my ride, it would be worth it to have the phone video footage that doesn’t just consist of “trot past… wait a few seconds… trot past in the distance… wait a little more… oh there he went again… now enjoy the view of the arena for a while…”. Nobody likes that, me included. The Pivo seems easier and less fussy than the SoloShot or Pixio (you legit just pair the Pivo to your phone, plop it onto a tripod or a barrel or a mounting block, and start recording – that’s the level of work I’m into), albeit definitely far less fancy. Granted, it’s also only $110-$140 vs $700+. I’m hopeful that it’ll work well enough for what I need it for.

I’m also currently in the process of trying to plan Presto’s first off property trail ride. The plan all along was to get him broke enough in the spring to where we could spend the summer mostly hacking and trail riding, and I think he’s there, so I’m keen to see if I’m right. Maybe in the next couple weeks!

Good news – look what finally made it from Australia!

It’s a little hard to tell in the picture because my phone just could not get the color right, but it’s navy with dark green sheepskin, and gray and dark green piping. The sheepskin runs along the underside of the panels as well. I kind of wish I’d gone ahead and gotten the correction system built in, since this one is for Presto, but I didn’t since I already have a correction Mattes half pad for him. Right now he is in a real funky, weedy stage, so I’m definitely having to use the correction system. For now this one will be living in my trailer, waiting for Presto to a) fill out b) be a show horse. It’s a really pretty trailer decoration though.

My PSoS/Horselet import fees situation still isn’t resolved, although it seems to have been resolved for most other people. They remain responsive and helpful, so my fingers are still crossed that we can fix this by end of day tomorrow so the package doesn’t get booted back to Sweden. We’ll see. It’s out of my hands at this point.

My pre-ordered masks finally showed up as well!

I’d been looking for some nice lightweight masks so I have extras, and these from Dreamers and Schemers definitely fit the bill. They’re really lightweight and comfy, so much so that these have now become my primary masks and my other one has been delegated to the extra-one-I-keep-in-the-car. Somebody in Lowe’s on Saturday noticed the F-bomb mask and chuckled, saying “accurate”, so… the sentiment is shared right now I think.

While literally nothing exciting or noteworthy is going on, I’ve still been riding.

It’s getting hot for Henry, but I’m trying to keep him ridden at least 5 days a week while I can. Lately it’s mostly been hacking out, as I’ve been waiting for the mowers to come and hack down my jump field. That got done yesterday afternoon, so this week I’ll go set up a little course again. I still haven’t been able to get Henry out for the gallop he so desperately needs, and it’s currently rainy, so I’m not sure if/when that’ll happen. Jumping should make him happy though, and help take some of the YEEHAW out of him.

Presto has been on some adventures too, but we’ll talk more about that tomorrow. I gave up on finding him one of those big corner feeders I talked about last week, and opted for a simpler solution for now. I got him just a simple corner bowl type feeder that bolts in, so we’ll see if/how this one lasts. If he’ll keep his feet out of it, it might be ok. At least for now he’ll actually get more of his food into his mouth, rather than what he was doing before with flinging the bucket off the wall, tossing his food from one end of the stall to the other, and eating basically none of it. It just ends up mixed in with the shavings, and then he won’t eat it. Considering how much I spend on his high-fat low-NSC feed and fancy oil, I sure would like if he’d eat it instead of stand on it. 

I bought the feeder from a place called Corro, which I’ve mentioned on here before. I first found them when I bought Henry’s sparkley boot last Black Friday, and now I’ve ordered from them 4 more times, mostly because they’re one of the few places that has Presto’s flaxseed oil, they have the best price on it, and they don’t charge an extra freight fee to ship it. Their product range is still a bit limited, but 1) their prices are great, 2) they ship FAST. This time I tossed several things into my order. All I really needed right this second was the corner feeder and another jar of the latest breathing supplement I’ve been trying for Henry, but I wanted to get to that $75 free shipping threshold so I figured I may as well stock up on stuff I would need eventually anyway. Well ok, I hit that $75 threshold once I added a gallon of fly spray (which I won’t need for a few more weeks, but their price was $2 cheaper than even the sale price at other places) but I decided to grab a couple other necessities as well. Like a new manure fork (I’ve been wanting a nice aluminum one but didn’t want to pay $40-50 for a shit fork. This one was $18. SIGN ME UP.) and more fungus spray (I’ve probably got about a month’s worth left but we’re entering that season where Henry’s face hair likes to fall off in mass quantities, so I don’t want to be caught without). 

So basically, I stocked up on essentials that I could have waited a few weeks to buy but figured I may as well toss them all into one order. I should be good til at least July. And despite all that big, heavy stuff, Corro still didn’t try to slap me with an oversize or overweight shipping fee. It all shipped for free! AND I ordered on Thursday night and everything arrived on Saturday. I remain super impressed and pleased with Corro, all of my orders from them have gone this way. That combined with their prices are making them really hard to beat for basic stable supplies/supplements like this, especially the stuff that I can’t get at my usual favorite places. If you’re interested in trying them I think using this link will get you $10 off your first order of $50 or more. If not let me know and I’ll email you the link directly. 

We’ll see how I feel about the AniHist after this next jar. With the first one I wasn’t convinced that it WAS helping, but I wasn’t convinced that it WASN’T helping either. Henry doesn’t really care for the taste of it but he does eat it begrudgingly, and there were a couple of humid days where I thought he should have been puffing a lot more than he was. But then there were other days when I was like “yep, this is how awful he always looks in the summer”. So I dunno. May is still a bit early yet to be a true litmus test, so I think I’ll find out for sure in the coming month. I would be delighted if it did help him, since nothing else has, but I remain skeptical since… nothing else has. But it’s only $20 so I figured it was worth giving it another month before reaching a verdict.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about what Presto has been up to (well, aside from tossing his food all over the place and making us all want to throttle him)!

Since all the 2020 foals are finally here, the Foal Friday posts can now be all-inclusive! Right now they’re turned out in pairs – the two older ones Remi and Oakley, and the two younger ones Ollie and Ellie. As you can imagine, the latter pair is somewhat comical, with Ollie so little and Ellie so big. They’ve only been turned out together for a couple days and their dams are still being a bit overprotective, so they haven’t interacted much yet, but Ollie is a spitfire and Ellie is a gentle giant, so I think it’ll work out. So what have they all been up to this week?

When he’s not zooming around the pasture like he was born with a rocket booster implanted in his bum…

Ollie’s been spending some time climbing the round bale like it’s his own personal jungle gym.

Right now he’s definitely the most boisterous and exuberant one. They all like to gallop and play of course, but Oakley and Remi have settled down a bit as they explore things like eating grass, and Ellie, while she’s unfolded a lot, still has a whole lot of leg to manage.

She manages them pretty well though, and remains super balanced, as she’s been from the very beginning.

She’s been doing some running and bucking herself, but isn’t quite as zoomie as little pocket rocket Ollie.

As I mentioned, Ellie and Ollie just recently got turned out together, so while they aren’t quite interacting yet, they’re getting pretty darn close. They’re definitely curious about each other, and with foals it usually never takes long for them to start playing once the curiosity wins out.

The mares just aren’t quite having it yet, both still a little overprotective and territorial. They’ll relax and give up on trying to keep the babies apart soon, and I bet by next week we’ll have some pics of Ellie and Ollie playing. I kind of can’t wait to see that.

As for Remi and Oakley, they’ve had an exciting week too. Well, mostly Oakley. It’s been very hot here in Texas (triple digits) and Oakley had a super thick fuzzy coat, so she was sweating to death. Remi and Oakley are both starting their foal shed, but still mostly just on their faces/legs, so Michelle took pity on Oakley and clipped her a bit. Not only is she much happier, we can get a really good look at her color and the dun markings that were under all that fuzz!

I think she’s going to be one of those bay duns that remains pretty light, more buckskin looking, and her leg bars/dorsal stripe/black-tipped ears are quite a strong contrast. Her head and legs remain unclipped (this was a clip job for practicality, not for beauty) but they’re shedding out nice and dark. She’s going to be a pretty color.

Oakley has also caught up a bit closer to Remi in size, their butts are only about a hand different in height at the moment. If I was a gambling woman I’d say she’s going to end closer to the 15.2 end of the spectrum, but we’ll see.

As you can see, she still very much owns Remi. He is 110% obsessed with her and she’s got more of the Regina George “why are you so obsessed with me?” response. Remi is still a complete super model, but Oakley doesn’t seem wooed by his good looks and charm.

These two both lead really well and have good manners, and of course Oakley now bathes and body clips too. They’re well on their way to being solid baby citizens.

While the babies will remain in their paired groups for a while, they do share a fence line and have gotten themselves acquainted over the fence a little bit.

As their personalities and herd dynamics continue to evolve, there’s one thing for sure: they’re all still ridiculously cute.

Happy Friday, everyone! Who’s your favorite foal from the 2020 class?