Sunday, December 18, 2011

Gaaaah

I am a horrible horse mom. Over the past weeks, I have been tied up in work and pains and being ill and tired when I get home and then there is the early setting sun and the coooold... and all of this adds up to a horse who's basic needs are met... or so I thought, but much neglect of quality time happening.

Due to this neglect, I had failed to notice that my horse has not been in the best of condition.

When I saw that today was going to be nice, I thought "I might go for a ride today" after all, today is my 7-year-pony-owning-anniversary. And then after I got home from work, Molly the neighbor girl called and asked if I would like to go for a ride with her. I agreed and had my lunch and then went to get the pony.

I realized upon actually getting a good look at him that his fuzzy winter coat has been hiding two things from me. First: he's lost a lot of condition, and a good bit of weight. He's a little bony. Maybe a 3.5 on a body scoring chart. Better than a 3, not quite a 4. I doubled his hay tonight and gave him a bit more grain. I fixed his grain as a warm mash this evening, his first ever warm mash. He gobbled it up like "Dang, woman, why haven't you ever fed me this before?!"

The second thing I noticed is that he has a rather nasty case of rain rot. I peeled off every scab my fingers could find, but my Shapley's MTG is at the other barn where I had taken it for use on Bay's scratches. I'll be bringing that home tomorrow so that I can start treatment.

Needless to say, there was no riding today and will be no riding until his condition improves and his rain rot clears up.

*sigh*

Happy Anniversary, Siaga. Sorry I'm such a bad horse mom.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Still no riding

Still haven't really had time, or been hale enough, to get a leg over that horses back lately.

There's been lots of rain and some snow, frost every morning, cold air and burning lungs. On top of the bleh weather, I've been working with pulled muscles in my back and bruises on my feet from boots not meant for working, but mostly waterproof. And then yesterday I gave myself a rather nasty cut across the bottom corner of my palm, was little, but I got to watch my skin split apart like a tomato skin when dropped in hot water. But, it's nice and closed up and only hurts a little. :)

Anyways, today's supposed to be about 50 F out, and I don't think I can stand it much longer, may sneak out and go for a ride around noon or so.

For an update on animal health: Puppy is still itchy, but not as itchy as he was. Fully on a grain free diet now, I even found grain free treats at walmart.

Greedy has stopped vomiting, thanks to a grain free diet for her, too.

Siaga's looking quite well, thanks to higher quality hay.

For those of you with problems in your animals, look to their diet and see what, exactly, they are taking in. It's a little expensive to put your cats and dogs on grain free, but Taste of the Wild, available at TSC, is pretty comparable to Blue Buffalo's Wilderness feeds and not as horribly expensive, and even made with purified water. If you go on BB website and compare your current dog or cat food to the BB brand, you see just how much grain based foods are lacking and how much extra fillers and junk are in the chow your giving them.

I greatly suggest going grain free for cats and dogs, they love the grain free foods and it's SO much healthier and if they have health problems, like Greedy's vomiting or Helden's itchies, it may even help fix the problems.