The Shine, An Update

I'm happy to say that my total panic over lack of shine in my horses seems to be a little bit unfounded.

For example, Pmare:

Yeah... that's pretty close to a mirror finish, and she's filthy too.

And while I don't think O looks as good as she should, she's still, you know... not half bad, really. But, she looks completely rough compared to how she *should* be looking. Or maybe I just have really high standards.

 

"Ugh, stop taking pictures, time for food now."

I think I have an idea of what exactly is going on. Apparently, mine is not the only one this is happening to - horses all over Texas are all struggling to produce a nice slick summer coat. They are all hanging onto their ratty old winter hair, and it is making them all look like garbage.We had THE strangest weather this year, complete with completely random freezes all the way into mid-May (after lots of 90 degree days in a row, it was quite shocking).

Luckily for me, this week O has gone through some pretty rapid coat changes. Her yucky, ratty old coat suddenly started standing up at attention, which looked REALLY horrible, and then she started in with a new round of shedding. She is suddenly WAY darker than she was before, which is great. Under the yucky old stuff, there is a whole lot of extremely slick new stuff. 

We'll still be doing a fecal and adding alfalfa, but I'm more confident now that this is not a belly/nutrition issue. With a vicious assault with my curry, I seem to have loosened a lot of the old hair, and hopefully it will be gone within short order.

I've been crazy busy all week, but inbetween giant rainstorms and a million clients, I had time to sneak in a nice hour long hack down the road, and two lunge days. There are days when I'd really *like* to ride, but I need to be at XYZ farm and not have disgusting helmet hair, so on those days I opt for a lunge or day off instead. I try not to do *too* much lunging, but sometimes that's just what we gotta do!

As per plan, I tried out hacking in just a halter/Indian bosal, and it went very well. She was uppity to start - this was coming fresh off our extreme WWE Smackdown fight, so I wasn't really surprised - but she settled down shortly.

Pardon the encrusted mud and half-asleep mare. I think she got some mud/dirt in her eyes, they were a bit puffy that day.

We had an exceptionally good lunge today. Our last lunge was a bit productive in the fact that I got irritated with her ignoring of my commands, and instead of letting her fizzle it out, I got after her about it and insisted that she listen. She must have gotten the message, because today she was quiet, responsive, listened to her voice commands, and barely broke a sweat. Good girls only have to do short workouts, which is something I always try to make a point of ("hey you were really good, you're awesome! now we're done!"), so we only lunged for about 15 minutes. both directions included. That's a pretty far cry from two lunges ago, when she cantered for 45 minutes in one direction before she finally decided to play the game. Good girl.

And gahhh is she not gorgeous?