All posts filed under: Horses

Did you ever hear the story of the ‘Ugly Duckling’?

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You know the one where he finally realizes he is a beautiful swan… I finally got some clear photos of Beaugart in his ‘ugly duckling’ state.  Truth is, he looks better everyday!  He has integrated nicely into the herd.  I caught him playing with Doc yesterday…shoulder to shoulder.  Every morning I find Manny standing near Bogie…both of them snoozing.  He starts pushing him around when he realizes I’m there with breakfast….but I know he likes him 🙂  Reno’s another story.  I’m convinced Bogie has never seen a mammal as big as Reno and he will not stand within 20 feet of him.  They’ll get there I suppose… I shut Bogie in a stall at night for the last couple of nights, just to be sure he was getting his fair share of hay and to monitor his fluid intake.  I also needed to get some wormer into him.  That sure proved challenging!  I finally had to blindfold him to get  it into him.  I guess I’ll be working on that with him in the near …

Beaugart meets the herd…

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Introducing a new horse to a stable herd is always an undertaking.  It takes nerves of steel and an optimistic attitude. Ideally, a new horse would be exposed to the new herd over a fence line for a while, then have some turnout with a low-ranking herd member…so they have a buddy.  Then they enter the herd proper.  There is always some squealing and some running around.  They all have to sort out who is the leader and who follows. Beaugart does not like being kept in a stall.  I like that about a horse and I understand it.  I knew I needed to get him outside and soon.  Being winter, I have limited options…its hard to move fences in January, lol!  So my only option is to integrate him into the herd relatively quickly. My vet was out today and looked him over.  Besides being underweight and slightly dehydrated, she thought there were no serious issues and thought some outdoor exercise would do him good.  She did not recommend adding him to the herd …

Beaugart

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Beaugart is a 5 yo Arab x national show horse (1/2 arab, 1/2 standardbred)….reads mostly arabian;)    He’s registered and well bred.   Unfortunately, he, his herdmates and his owner fell on hard times this year and all have been doing poorly.  I became aware of the situation only a few days ago, made some room in the barn and drove down to rescue one of these horses today.  I came home with Beaugart. He loaded right on the trailer and as soon as he discovered that there was hay in there, he had no intention of getting out.  I took off his halter and switched it out for one of my own while he happily munched away.   His simple delight at his very own pile of hay made me smile instantly.   I let him settle in the trailer while I perused the remaining horses…stallions, mares, youngsters and babies.  I struggled with the urge to take them all home. I give alot of credit to the local law enforcement as well as Patricia Morris, a  local …

Learning to plow…

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I think of plowing as the quintessential activity of a real farm.  In fact, I hestitate to call my place a real farm because of the lack of said, plowing.  I’m fond of the ‘lasagna’ method of growing crops…layering compost and straw and cardboard.  I’ve run a rototiller a few times, but its just not my thing.  So recently, when I had the opportunity to learn to plow….for real…I hopped on board, quite literally. Some of you may know that I have agreed to sell Peanut to a nice couple in Vermont who plan to farm with him.  He is on trial with them as I write this….staying at Ted’s place, where they are learning the ins and outs of driving a work horse.  I brought Peanut up last week.  Ted and I had hatched a plan (well, mostly I did) that we should put Peanut and Clayton together to plow at the GMDHA fall meeting.  Ted wanted Peanut there a few days early to practice. So Thursday morning, I help Ted harness up the …

Reconnecting with Manny

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The past year has been so full of youngsters, rescues, rehabs and the rebuilding of my practice, I’ve had little time to spend with my best horse Manny.  He’s 15 this year and we’ve been together for over 10 years now.  He’s the type of horse now that remains reliable even after a lengthy period of time off.  He wasn’t always like that and we’ve had our fair share of differing opinions, outright arguments and plenty of wrecks….mostly the type where I am on the ground with him glaring at me from above.  Being a very alpha horse, he knows how to make his point.  I’ve learned from him over the years how to be a confident leader and a sympathetic rider, more partner than master and we have come to appreciate each other immensely over the second half of the past decade.  I think of him more as Mensa than horse.  We have a magnet between us…when I see him at the gate, I have to walk over and rub his muzzle.  When I …

Feedback

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Feedback is a really important part of training horses…any animal for that matter.  Being non-verbal for the most part, horses use body language to communicate their mental and emotional state, as well as their physical well being.  Its important as a trainer and as a caretaker to observe this feedback and make adjustments in our agenda to address feedback, when necessary.  Some feedback requires nothing more than acknowledgement, such as a horse wrinkling his lip with pleasure during a good grooming session.  Some feedback requires action, such as a pony pinning its ears during feeding.  In such a case, I might simply insist he share his food with me or request he back away from his supper for a moment for an attitude adjustment. Feedback can be quite complex and the body language difficult to interpret….is it fear, is it dominance, is it confusion? Using punishment or dominance with a horse that is scared or confused will produce unsatisfactory, sometimes disasterous results. Such is the art of living and working with an animal.  To complicate …

Riding Reno…the first 3 rides

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Reno’s training is primarily as a driving horse.  I believe he has been ridden sporadically by some kids, but no formal training.  He’s got a pretty cooperative personality, so I didn’t think it would be huge deal to get him going undersaddle.  I also felt I could help him rebuild his topline and atrophied musculature in his haunches putting him through some low level dressage maneuvers such as ‘shoulder in’. Our first ride was mainly a ‘meet and greet’ event.  Teaching him to pick me up at the mounting block and stand quietly.  Walk, simple turns, stop, back up.  By the end of the session we were doing some walk-trot transitions as well.  What I learned about him is that his driving experience had set-him up well to understand rudimentary rein cues undersaddle.  I had to reinforce leg and seat cues with the verbal cues he already knew…kiss, whoa, back up, easy, etc….in the beginning, but he very quickly understood what I was asking.  We ended our first ride by taking a leisurely, trail ride …

Spring and Summer with Reno

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My last post about Reno was in late March and was full of optimism, as we had finally seemed to overcome his hock injury and were in ‘rehab’ mode.  There are many reasons why I have not updated his progress.  Foremost is a lack of time.  Spring is always a very busy season for me with pasture maintenance, veggie gardening (this year I have extensive plots of potatoes and corn) and this year pigs.  But in all truth, I was waiting to feel optimism again. Two weeks after my last post regarding Reno and the beginning of what should have been his rehabilitation, he had a set-back.  I found him on 4/7/9, standing alone in shock, hemorrhaging from his previously injured left hind.  He had had a fight with the fence and wrapped the poly wire around the leg, struggled (and eventually tore down a complete length of fencing), lacerating the leg below the hock right down to the canon bone.  My vet confirmed that he had severed the extensor tendon completely.  In addition, she …

Pigs and Horses…

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This post was lost in my edit file from April.  Made me smile remembering that day.  The horses and pigs are surprisingly tolerant, even curious towards each other nowadays. April 2009 I brought home my first pair of piglets last night, Spam and Hamlet. I decided to put them in the barn because of the weather (freezing rain here) to settle in for a few days. While I got the stall across the aisle from the horses stalls ready for them, I left them squealing in the back of my truck. The horses, having never seen a pig, decided to vacate the premises and ran off to the far end of their winter paddock. Ever curious, they carefully crept back to the barn area just in time for me to haul the first squealing pig to its new home in the barn…pandamonium set in and off they went again to the far end, nearing tripping over each other in their hasty getaway. Well, I waited for them to creep back close (they were afterall hungry …

Reno Update

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Reno has been turned out with my gelding herd for 2 weeks now. My vet and I both agree that he has shown enough improvement that he now has to USE the leg to get function back. Still on oral antibiotics, we’ve had no set-backs despite alot of playfulness in the mud with the other horses. Pictured here actually ‘resting’ on the bad leg…a very good sign. He finishes his antibiotics (a full 6 weeks) in a few days. I’ll be watching him carefully for any relapse at that point. So far, so good.