Concerns, Cookies, and Colors

First off, I had a request to bring the donate button back for Bay Girl donations, so of course here it is!

We are up to a little over $700 at this moment in time.... sooooo close!!!!!

I really can't wait until this colt gets weaned and poor Bay Girl gets to get on with her life. I'm a bit concerned right now with her condition, and I am essentially powerless to do anything about it given the fact that a) she isn't yet mine and b) anything I do to try and help her could potentially affect the nursing colt, and that is a big gigantic no-no. The main physical issue going on with her right now is her gigantic humongous boom belly, and it only seems to be getting bigger with time. Her condition is better than it was when she first came back, but she is wide as a house and saggy to boot. Coupled with the fact that she has no topline anymore and you can still see her ribs, I'm beginning to suspect that a few things are going on with her.

As far as I know, Bay Girl has probably never had a fecal done in her life, and she probably has also been out on god knows how many pastures with other worm-filled horses, so her worm load is probably high and contributing to the issue. Just because she has been on a "regular worming schedule" doesn't mean anything since we don't know what we are up against. The potbelly with some ribs and a generally poor appearance could of course also be linked to her having a parasitic colt latched onto her at all hours of the day and night, but it of course could also be worms.... or ulcers... or both. The other suspected culprit is ulcers, which also wouldn't surprise me. She has lived in terror for most of her life, fretting about everything under the sun... who wouldn't get ulcers from that? She also eats quite a lot of oats and sweet feed every day, which aren't exactly the foodstuffs I will be choosing for her.

Of course, she could also just have a massive grass belly from stuffing herself with not-so-great quality pasture and coastal hay all the time. Hmm.

She has also gotten a little bit gassy twice now, which is concerning... also potentially related to all of the above things. Her gassiness passes by itself without help of drugs, thankfully, but I'm worried that there will come a time when she will get colicky and it will not be ok.


This is Bay Girl about a month or so ago, looking not so hot:



The big belly wasn't so noticeable then. She always strikes that funny pose when nursing.... no idea why.



Sigh. Hang on baby girl, we'll get it fixed as soon as we can!



In better news, I FINALLY GOT HER TO EAT A DIFFERENT KIND OF COOKIE! It took some convincing, but I was finally able to convince her that it was not poison.

I tried a few tricks first.... first, lure in your prey....




Second, try to fake her out by offering both tasty cookies at once...




Third, watch as she eats the first cookie, then suspiciously snorts loudly at the second, and turns and walks away.




Okay. Guess she is not to be outsmarted.

What worked? I have no idea. She just walked up to me today when I offered her a cookie - the third or fourth time I've offered this same type of cookie, with no interest until now - and she just took it in her mouth and crunched! Apparently she liked it well enough, because even though she made some weirded out faces, she didn't spit it out. Hooray cookies!



Thirdly, and this one sort of comes as a surprise to me too, but I think Bay Girl is actually a rabicano. No, seriously! Despite the fact that she is bay as the day is long - bay enough to be named Bay Girl - she has a curious pattern of white hairs at the base of her tail. I always thought it was weird, and wondered if she had been rubbing her tail enough to cause white hairs to grow. They never changed, however, and continued to grow on in their curious barring pattern. Here's an extremely bad picture of it:



I'll get better ones. But you sort of get the idea.

After much googling for skunk tails, I was able to piece together the idea that she might be a rabicano:
"Rabicano is a specific set of white markings that usually affect the base of the tail, flank and belly of a horse. In its most minimal form, it will show only white frosting at the base of the tail, often called a coon or skunk tail because of the striped appearance. A medium expression will have the white tail base, plus white hairs interspersed over the horse’s flanks, creating a roan appearance."

How weird is that. But the description of a minimally expressed rabicano fits!

You all know I love weird colored horses, so I guess Bay Girl just had to make sure that she fits in!

A Very Big Day

Can you spot what is missing in this picture?



Look closer!




That's right, Bay Girl's catch halter is OFF! (Hopefully for good!)

This is a very big step for both of us. The catch halter is my security blanket, and I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about doing things without it. If it goes poorly, it will of course go back on for a little while, but hopefully we won't need it anymore. It wasn't all that long ago that I couldn't even catch and halter her while she was in a stall, after all! She has been great about being haltered and having her face handled, so hopefully the progression continues!

This is a HUGE DAY for both of us!!

What Bay Girl will look like....

..... once she gets her topline back and loses that saggy mom-belly.

Aah, the wonders of extremely rudimentary Paint. ;)



It was suggested after my last post that I take the donations I have and make an offer on Bay Girl and see what they say. Seeing as we now have $700 (!!!!!!!!!!!!), I think I might just do that. I have a feeling they'll say no, but you never know!

Playing Catch-Up, and Quincy

(This is partially crossposted to the Pangea blog! Sorry for the overlap!)
Sorry for my brief absence - I've been out of state at a practicum for a few days and have been insanely busy in the meantime! I didn't even have time to say I was leaving! I made it back all in one piece thankfully, armed with ever-increasing knowledge and a desire to get under even more horses. (I'm glad you all are horse people, because upon reading that sentence for a second time, it could be taken horribly the wrong way.)

The one thing I never even got a chance to mention before I headed frantically off for my journey was Quincy's day. May 3rd marked the 8-year anniversary of his death, and at this point it seems like such a sad, distant memory. He's been gone for so long... sometimes it feels like just yesterday, sometimes it feels like an eternity. Take a little time to go and honor his memory, if you like reading about Pangea, Gogo, and Bay Girl. I wouldn't be here without his love, and neither would any of them.

Tributes to Quincy

I miss you, Fuzzman. Every day, and I always will.







In Bay Girl news, we are up to $686!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The response so far has been completely overwhelming, and I can't thank you guys enough. You guys are THE BEST. THE ABSOLUTE BEST.

Today was deworming day for the entire farm. I long ago strayed away from this practice with my own horse, but the farm horses are still on a rotational program, so first thing in the morning I nailed everyone with their dewormer. If you remember, Bay Girl once had a violent opposition to being dewormed, but today? She stood quietly and let me do it!! I can't hardly believe it... who is this mare and what has she done with Bay Girl??

I also tried at the end of the day to give her a different kind of cookie, a flavor I haven't tried before. I've only just started to get her to accept those rock-hard Manna-Pro cookies (which was what happened to be laying around at the time), but other cookies? With one suspicious sniff, she said no.






Oh well. We'll keep trying.


Now, since all of you have been so amazingly awesome and helpful, I figure you guys should choose what Bay Girl and I work on next! We're essentially stuck working out in the pasture until her colt is weaned, and he is a total pest to work around. (He got an elbow in the esophagus today when he tried to mount me.... colts.) Here are the things Bay Girl knows how to do at this point:

- Catch
- Halter, but needs work
- Be sprayed down from a spray bottle
- Stand for brushing
- Feet handling
- Fly mask
- Lead and back away from pressure, but needs refinement
- Deworming
- Crossties and standing tied, mostly


Things Bay Girl doesn't know how to do:

- Everything else


We're pretty much starting from complete scratch on everything, but that's all right. Remember that we started out with a mare that wouldn't even come near people at all, so the fact that we've gotten this far is astounding!

My basic list of things to work on is something along these lines: introduction to clippers, practice haltering, more refinement of groundwork and leading, backing, etc., and more of this type of stuff. So readers, what would YOU work on with a mare who is limited to pasture-only work, and who has an obnoxious little colt at her side? Let your imaginations run wild!

Bay Girl. vs. Flymask...

...... flymask wins!!






Poor Bay Girl. I introduced her today to the torturous flymask, something I'm 100% she has never had to deal with before. Now that summer is in full swing (no, really...), the flies have become unbearable, and I wanted to give the poor girl a little bit of relief from the neverending swarm. She is pretty sensitive to bug bites, and has a number of little welts all over her. A good spritz with the flyspray was no cause for concern, but the flymask? Would she let me get it on?

Barely, but we did it. I rubbed her casually all over with the mask, letting her sniff and get accustomed to the idea of the weird meshy thing before attempting to rub it on her face. She didn't seem to mind much, pulling away a little when it touched her forehead, but she soon relaxed into it. When it got onto her forehead, she pulled back, alarmed and unsure of what was about to happen. I couldn't reach out to her while she was scooting around at the end of her lead rope with the flymask half on, so I had to just talk quietly to her and let her think it out. This has worked well for her in the past, and this time was no exception. Bay Girl's consistent response to anything she is unsure about is to skitter around at the end of her rope until she realizes that whatever she is concerned about is not going to eat her, and then she stops and thinks about it. This time was no exception, and after a moment, she stopped and waited for me to help. When she stopped snorting and flailing, I was able to talk gently to her and pull the flymask up onto her ears and attach the velcro. After that, she was fine.

Following her dinner, I was watching her mill around for awhile, and I became a little concerned when she started doing the flehmen response repeatedly (AKA the stinky smile). Since horses tend to do that when they are a bit colicky, I was pretty worried, but decided instead to try taking off her new-smelling flymask and see if that was the problem. Sure enough, she stopped when the flymask came off... maybe it really did just smell weird. She was not amused with the removal of the flymask either (oh god, it's touching my ears!), so we will see how she does tomorrow with the mask.

I was also able to do a better hack job on her mane than the previous hack job that I had done. Poor thing was sporting a horrible bowl cut... I had to do something!




It's not great, but it is better than it was! She's looking rough right now... no topline, saggy mom belly, somewhat empty demeanor. I'm not sure she really enjoys her mom job all that much... it's taking a lot out of her to keep that colt fat and well-fed.

After me walking in repeatedly to check on her after I took off the flymask, I think she was a bit tired of me at the end of the day! On my final check, she moved away a few steps like, "please just let me take a nap! I'm fine!" All was forgiven with a good scratch and a facerub though. Sweet girl.

Donations have now reached up to $468.20!!!!!! That is almost halfway there!!!!! :D

Holy moley!

THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed to the Bay Girl-A-Thon so far!! The ChipIn doesn't show all of the donations... we are actually up to $416!!!!! I never in a million years would have thought that in TWO DAYS we would have accumulated this much money.... I never would have thought we could have accumulated this much at all!!!

Bay Girl says, it is hard to get pictures of me because all I want to do is follow Andrea around all over the place!



Silly sweet mare looks so sleepy. Tomorrow she gets a better haircut (not that horrible hack job she is sporting right now!), and a good grooming for some glamour shots. That is, if I can get her to stop following me around everywhere! The girl who was once uncatchable is now the ultimate Velcro-pony. Not because she is looking for treats, not because she wants to play.... but because she genuinely wants to be close to me and wants her forehead rubbed for as long as possible. She truly is a sweetheart.

Bay Girl's Origins....

........ are still completely unknown. Sighhh.

BUT I managed to track down the stallion station that she technically belongs to, FINALLY. After calling repeatedly to every place around here that I could think of, I finally managed to talk for 5 seconds to the owner of the colt and found out which place she was from (I never see him so it was quite a feat!). Once I found that out, I called the main farm, and was told that I had to call ANOTHER number. I called that number... no answer! I called a second number, and finally was able to get through to SOMEONE that had an idea of what was going on. After some sleuthing, we found exactly what we already knew: her approximate age (somewhere between 7-10), and her color, and her brand. And that was it. I talked to the main vet as well, and he said that all the recipient mares come in on a dealer truck, and the dealer didn't keep records of them either. So basically, we still know absolutely nothing about her, except that at some point she was probably in a feedlot. I'm glad she is no longer in the feedlot, but still... being a mishandled uterus isn't much of an upgrade really.

He told me all the recipient mares are up for sale at $1000 each. While that is kind of pricey for a mare with an unknown history, it's basically what I expected him to say. One quick update on Facebook about it, and suddenly I had a huge flood of people telling me to put a donate button up on the blog to see if I could raise up enough money to buy her. With the trimming business exploding, it is certainly doable at this point in my life to have two horses... so why not? Who wants to help me buy Bay Girl? Who wants to see that fancy little 257 on her butt turning down the centerline, cause I know I sure do!




EDIT: I took out the "Donate" button because with that you can't actually see the progress bar go up... we're already over $160!!

As a disclaimer, obviously you never REALLY know what is going to happen in a circumstance like this, so if I get a whole bunch of donations and the whole thing falls through, I will donate every cent of it to a charity of our collective choice. It's a win-win situation either way, no?


She says, pleaaaaase help me get to a good new home!




In other news, Bay Girl's second trim without sedation happened on Monday and I was SO PROUD of her! I don't do her farrier work, so instead I held her while we locked her colt in a stall and did her outside of the stall. She was an angel... AND she stood with both her hinds up in the sling on the hoof stand... considering she used to kick at anyone who came near her hind end at all, this is huge!!!!! What a little angel!!!!

So? Whadda ya say folks?