no-riding log and Minnie has an attack of Mare

[quietann]

So I went up to ride with J today. Minnie had lost a shoe, but J planned to put an Easy-Boot on that hoof. We were going to trailer the horses to the indoor ring we usually go to, since the woods are really, really muddy and losing more shoes would not be good, and riding on the roads isn't good for a horse that is missing a shoe, even with an Easy-Boot on.

Minnie and Trumpie are both shedding like mad, and for that reason, it was a good thing that I ended up having plenty of time to groom Minnie. First there was the matter of the missing trailer hitch. That was settled when one of J's tenants found it at his place. In the meantime we'd called to ask permission to ride at a nearby indoor ring. So trailer hitching happened while I was continuing to curry Minnie. Then J discovered that Trumpie had twisted a shoe and it was half undone, so she had to pull it off. And there is only one Easy-Boot, so there went our riding plans. The farrier is supposed to come in the next few days to get Minnie and Trump back into their shoes.

But I curried Minnie a lot, and combed her mane and tail a bit, and fed her apple slices. Underneath her dying winter fuzz, there's a nice shiny bay coat that is sooooo soft.

She was fussy throughout, and we didn't realize what was going on until I'd turned her out, and she came back into the stall, and we all -- 2 horses and 2 people -- ended up in the stall with Minnie pitching a fit. She stepped on Joc, and she bumped me in the thigh with either a hoof or a hock (I didn't see which.) She was in heat, and like many female mammals, her hormones get to her sometimes. Silly pony!

Comments

[unclebooboo.livejournal.com]

>She was fussy throughout, and we didn't realize what was going on until
>I'd turned her out, and she came back into the stall, and we all -- 2
>horses and 2 people -- ended up in the stall with Minnie pitching a fit.

There's an important safety lesson here- never get caught in a stall with a horse that might act up. A basic rule is to spend as little time in the stall with a horse as possible- just enough time to catch and halter the horse. It drives me nuts when I see people go into a stall and hang out with a horse (spreading wood shavings, cleaning the stall, or whatever.)

Although having shoes on a horse is important on roads or hard/rocky trails, they really aren't necessary for horses that are ridden on good surfaces like in an arena. In fact, horses that are unshod tend to develop better hooves. There are nuts that believe all horses should go without shoes nearly all of the time. A more reasonable approach (recommended by my farrier) is to pull the shoes during the winter when you aren't out showing or riding on difficult terrain and then put them back on during the more active seasons. I've actually kept Pace barefoot for the last year and a half- the field where's he's normally ridden isn't a bad surface.

As long as the hoof didn't appear to be damaged and there was no other sign of lameness, I would probably have ridden anyway. I'd want to understand how the shoe came off though- it's easy for a horse to get injured in the process of losing a shoe.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Normally I groom Minnie in her stall, haltered and tied. Trump gets groomed on cross-ties in the barn aisle just outside the stall. I will catch her from the paddock and not let her go into the stall until Trump has passed through and J has put up the stall guard. She then stays tied until it's time for bridling.

This seems to be the best way to deal with her separation anxiety. If J takes Trump out for a ride, Minnie will walk the fenceline and whinny, sometimes for the entire time they are gone. Today, when I turned her out, she went right outside to her hay and started eating, but when Trump didn't follow immediately, she started fussing and came back in.

In this case, I had forgotten that I had a couple more apple slices for her. Had I been thinking, I would have stayed outside the stall and just handed them to her over the stall guard. In fact, I remember thinking I should do just that but for some reason I did not. Had J been thinking, she would have waited for Minnie to go back out before leading Trump through the stall to the paddock, or she would have led him out through the other stall. Needless to say, we were not thinking!

We're dealing with rather different conditions than you are, here in New Hampshire, not the least of which is 35 to 40 inches of precipitation per year. Our winter terrain is the most difficult. The horses need shoes for winter riding because of the ice and snow; Minnie, because she is ridden much less, goes barefoot behind year-round, but gets shoes in front year-round when she's being ridden, with borium studs during the winter. Trump gets shoes on all four feet and studs in front in the winter. Right now, it's mud season and in a way it would make more sense to have the horses barefoot, because the mud just sucks shoes right off. But I defer to J's judgment here because she's been a horsewoman for all her life, and she's had these horses for a very long time and knows their needs.

(At Windrush, shoeing is less season-dependent, because the horses are mostly ridden in a ring, an indoor when the weather is bad or cold, and an outdoor when it's nice. Bearito goes barefoot year-round; he has the toughest little pony hooves! Most of the full-size horses are shod.)

Trump actually did have a small injury, a cut I think, from his bent shoe, and getting that shoe off caused a little bit of damage to his hoof where the shoe clip was, but it's all fixable by the farrier, and Trump was already scheduled for a trim and reshoeing this week anyway. My guess is that he caught the shoe on something like a tree root; that seems to be the most common way for him and Minnie to lose shoes.