The Shine

EDITED TO ADD: I went around and looked at 7 of the red horses that live at the farm I was at this morning. ALL of them have that weird yucky retained hair! Most of the bays were largely shed out, but several of the greys had retained hair too. It HAS to be something environmental.

It is no secret that I pride myself on the freakish level of shine that my horses have.

I mean come on. That is some SHINE right there. That is intense.

But unfortunately, and very suddenly, O has lost her freakish shine. She is now kind of a normal horse shine, which to me is a) completely unacceptable and b) indicative that something is wrong. She also has quite a lot of hairs doing that wonky curl/fishhook thing, which is alarming. Usually that is a sign of either parasites or a copper deficiency. Since her vit/min supplement should in theory have the copper covered, we are probably looking at something else.

I have some theories on what it might be.

1) We had some WEIRD weather this spring. 

O's winter coat looked great - I recently talked about how shiny and gleaming she was. She started to shed out in March, and in theory should be long done by now, but she is not. She is hanging on to a lot of curling, yucky old hairs that are standing up and giving her more of the crushed velvet appearance rather than the sleek summer appearance that I would have expected by now. After she had started to shed out, we had a few hard freezes and cold days (after having lots of 90 degree days in a row), and she was left shivering and shell-shocked a few times. This possibly should have freaked her system out and caused her coat to retain... maybe? Hard to say. She is definitely still shedding, slowly but surely, so her coat is by no means fully shed out. Underneath it, I see lots of gleam, but there is a lot of crud still hanging on.

2) The mares are completely off alfalfa for the first time in a long time.

Last year, all through the year, the mares got a 1/2 flake to full flake of alfalfa before meals, along with their freechoice grass hay. They were all gorgeous and shiny. In the late fall, our usual supply of timothy ran out, and we instead got bales that were timothy/alfalfa. They were SUPER full of alfalfa, so much so that we stopped giving actual straight alfalfa. We fed that for awhile, and then our supplier ran out of it again, as well as regular timothy. We actually had to switch to a completely different supplier altogether, and the horses are now on (and have been on) straight timothy with no alfalfa at all. The alfalfa really gives them that extra bloom, and is a bonus to feed right before workouts, so I'll definitely be putting both the girls back on it as per their usual (1/2 flake to full flake before mealtimes, in addition to freechoice timothy).

3) Parasite problems.

When P came back I did a fecal and deworming before she even set foot on the property. She had a small worm load, and she was dewormed again and cleared. O was dewormed as well at the same time, but I haven't done a recent fecal on her. She very well could have picked up any leftover parasites that P had shed. (That typical 'fishhook' type curl that some of her hairs have always makes me think of parasites.) We'll do a fecal and see what we have going on for sure.

4) She has had on and off tummy issues throughout the winter. 

After her first LD when she wasn't quite gastrically right, I went into gut health overkill with her. She had that certain personality that invites an ulcery system, so I'm really, REALLY careful with what I give her and what I do with her. While I think I have everything covered in every different direction, she very well could have some leaky gut issues that are affecting her nutrient uptake. I don't *think* so, but it could be. It is something to keep in the back of my mind for sure.

We'll get it figured out. It's always something, isn't it? HORSES!

Black Beauty and Ginger

(One of my friends made the comment that O and Tre reminded her of Ginger and Black Beauty.
Oh man. They DO, don't they? Even down to the part about Black Beauty's knees and Ginger's mental issues. Who knew.)




On Wednesday, Future Hubs and I made the journey down to Austin to pick up Tre. It is NOT my usual policy to take on a horse sight unseen, but given all of the circumstances it was worth taking a chance on. I had all of the rads and a currently sound horse in front of me - and a place for her to go be a happy broodie if she doesn't stay sound - so it was worth taking a chance on. While she was smaller than I had originally anticipated (just so feminine and delicate!), she was very gentle and sweet, and was happy to let us pull her out of her stall, brush her off, put a cooler and boots on her for the trailer, and stay standing quietly in the crossties. She loaded onto my trailer fine.... aaaaand then she totally lost it. My shipping halter is too big for her, and she popped out of it a few seconds after shutting the escape door - we had to use a regular halter instead. The bouncing and pawing began as we pulled down the driveway, and she banged up a STORM for the next half-hour. We stopped for gas and left the truck parked for about 10 minutes while we ran in for some food, and we could actually see the trailer bouncing up and down from inside the store.




Thankfully, by the time we ordered our food and made it back out to the truck, she had totally quieted down. She had also completely pulled down all of her boots, so I ended up just taking them off and leaving her legs naked. She was silent the rest of the way home, thankfully.

She unloaded quietly and was pretty at peace with her surroundings. She has been in a stall for a large part of the past two years (common with show horses) and been fed spaced out meals (also common with stalled horses), so the way our setup is probably looked like heaven. 24/7 high quality slow-fed hay, 24/7 turnout, a friend to live with, no shoes and no hard grains... what more could a horse ask for? Make no mistake, my animals are athletes and they work very hard for a living, but letting them live like horses is the best thing I ever did for them. I'm *sure* the day is coming when someone will get hurt or sick, but I have not had one issue with lameness, sickness, colic, or anything else since I switched from stalling and babying my horses to letting them be who they are. To me this isn't about being a weird hippie natural horsewoman... it's about common sense. A horse is a horse... so let it be a horse. Simple as that.


Tre was super excited to be outside.... O was not quite as amused. I was not sure who would come out on top, but after some back and forth squabbling O firmly asserted herself as the alpha mare. FIRMLY. It has taken a few days, but they have finally gone from O not letting Tre anywhere near her to eating off of the same haybag... finally. They thankfully do not seem to have taken too much interest in being too good of friends, something which I hope will not change. I would rather not have two screaming attached maniacs if I can help it!

O let her eat some of the hay in the shed, after she had already pooped on it, of course.

And then they were finally friends.... and Tre let Kali know that she was NOT welcome at all!

She is going to be VERY pretty once she gets muscled up. VERY pretty!

Of course, as of right now, she has no muscle at all. She is pretty darn SCRAWNY compared to big beefy O! I expect her weight to fluctuate a little bit - after all, walking around 24/7 when you were mostly in a stall before is in and of itself a HUGE increase in exercise. Having 24/7 netted forage is a huge help for getting weight on a horse, so that's at least a start... but she really, really is not a fan of our 'grainfoods.' We feed hay pellets, a pelleted fat supplement, and supplements. Since Tre was on straight Senior before (AKA candy), she is not particularly fond of switching over to the new regime (AKA raw veggies with no dressing). She ESPECIALLY does not like any of the new supplements, and also doesn't like the food to be wetted (harder to pick out the good bits, so instead she mushes all the parts she doesn't like into a glob in the bottom of the bucket and then ignoring the rest). I need to get her eating as I need her to gain some weight, but seeing as she has been living in a stall and was being fed meals, the likelihood of gastric issues is extremely high. She also smells not quite right to me... just sort of chemically and acrid. I'm hypersensitive to that smell, so I'm sure it would go unnoticed if she was with anyone else. She doesn't act like an ulcery horse in any way (except for being picky about her supplements, but that is probably just that she doesn't like them!), but the sooner I can get her fully transitioned the better. Being outside with a friend with hay all the time is huge for helping any gastric issues, no matter how small, so that is half the battle right there. 

She is currently sound, very very sound in fact! She looks even better in person than she did in videos. I pulled her shoes yesterday and was pleased to see her instantly moving better, stomping around on rocks like a champ. All four feet are somewhat contracted, which isn't surprising given her exercise level, but I expect them to beef up within short order. She was very happy after her trim and went running around like a wild thing. Surely she thinks she has died and gone to heaven here!

Her rehab schedule has started with a week of handwalking, walking her over elevated poles and up and down hills to help give her hind end a head start before I get on. She thinks this is great fun and has been very agreeable and easy to handle. (She is fresh though... there is occasional leaping and rearing/striking out like a frisky colt!) She is not very fond of the Theraplate yet (scary vibrating monster) but I at least have her standing still on it at a low setting for a few minutes. On Wednesday, I will get on her and start tackwalking!

Nom nom...

Hills and poles!

Learning to tie... she's a smart girl. Well, mostly. (I did teach her to pony on Friday... there was a lot of rearing and flailing until she figured out exactly what was going on.)


More updates on O shortly!

Some More Comparisons!

O-Ren, not quite 4 weeks with me:

P-mare last February (2012), and P-mare this April:

Immy last March (2012), and Immy this April:

There was a long discussion on Facebook about why she was so unhealthy last year (check out her crappy body condition and her ripply feet!) but was still covered in shiny dapples, and is way way healthier this year but doesn't have a single dapple... I assumed it was because of possible ongoing gastric issues (she gets cowpats at the drop of a hat and stresses so easily, despite the one million things I've done for her - at this point we're thinking she may have permanent intestinal scarring from years of stress/parasites/poor diet), but someone mentioned that pregnancy hormones can do that too, and sure enough, some Google-sleuthing confirmed that for me. She's clearly a LOT healthier this year regardless.

Also, check out the changes in her feet, from flat, flared and ripples to well-connected and strong:

Just goes to show that sweet feed is JUNK FEED! It is my personal opinion that there is NEVER any reason to feed sweet feed to horses, EVER! 

I have been forgiven!

Hooray! I have been forgiven for my deworm-y trespasses. No longer am I the Evil Scary Dewormer Lady... I am now just the regular old Nice Lady that I was before. Last week was a bit of a nightmare, and unless another situation like this arises where I feel like a PowerPac is really needed, I'll be sticking with moxidectin for my encysted strongyle needs. As it stands, the PowerPac did exactly what I needed it to do in this situation.

Following her PowerPac, she went through a few days where she was hard to catch, then when caught she refused to do more than just pick at her grainfoods. Part of this may be due to the fact that she was out of several of her important herbs (note to self: my herb supplier is REALLY SLOW at getting orders to me, so order them sooner than I think I will need them... when I run out, my order will NOT be here in time!) The missing herbs did include the marshmallow root and slippery elm, so potentially her belly was hurting after all the worm die-off and several days worth of chemicals, and she didn't want to eat grainfoods. She is also extremely picky though, and perhaps she just didn't want to eat the foods since they tasted different without her regular herbs. Who knows. Either way, she is now back to completely gobbling down her food, even more so than pre-PowerPac. (This is a huge relief for me... I fret about this like crazy!)

She lost a few pounds in the past week for sure, but will likely gain it back quickly. With luck, our Omeprazole will be in shortly, and we can do a test trial with it to see if it makes a difference for her or not. If it does, great! If it doesn't, then I will have lots of Omeprazole handy to dose her before any sort of major stress or travel. 

It stormed like crazy here last night, so everything is mushy mud, and the mares are both completely encrusted in mud. Immy is enjoying her bit of downtime while her body recoups, and she is back to being her regular old self. 

She was not amused to see the blanket being hauled out AGAIN. It is supposed to be 29 degrees tonight, which is absolutely shocking for nearly mid-March in Texas. I don't even know what to do with myself... this winter has been SO long and rainy and cold and crappy! All the little flowers keep trying to come out, and then they die again because everything keeps refreezing. Ugh!

Winter! Just GO AWAY!

The Great Deworming Debacle

I am pretty sure that deworming a horse who is deathly afraid of dewormers ranks as one of the most horribly unpleasant horse things to do in the history of top-rated unpleasant horse things to do. Seriously, it is right up there with bean-picking, rectal palpation, and scraping foal-heat diarrhea off of baby butts. I'm serious!

Being the neurotic freak that I am about gastric health, it was absolutely guaranteed by the universe that I would end up with a sensitive mare who has probably been gastrointestinally fried for most of her entire life. Longtime readers will remember her huge, swinging, pendulous belly long after she had given birth to the Red Pest, and all along I have been saying that I have suspected ulcers/digestive issues/worms. Here we are a few months later, still trying to perfect the issues - while her last fecals were shown to have only the most trace amounts of strongyles in them (so few that the vet called it a negative fecal), the likelihood of still having encysted strongyles is pretty high. If she does have them, they are likely causing ulcer issues. Deworming can also irritate ulcer issues. What is a girl to do?

Well, fecals will never tell you if your horse has encysted strongyles or not, so much in the way that you still need to hit for tapeworms (which also don't show in fecals), you usually just have to go for the big guns if your horse has suspected issues with encysted creepers. Your two legitimate choices are a Panacur PowerPac, or Quest/Quest Plus. The PowerPac is a huge pain in the butt, a 5-dose pack of megawormers that need to be given once a day for five consecutive days, but it gets all encysted stages of parasites. The Quest does not get Stage 3, but it is only one dose. As I understand it, fenbendazole (PowerPac) is a cousin to omeprazole, the drug used to treat ulcers, and is a slightly milder/safer drug than moxidectin (Quest), and so therefore can be usually given to a somewhat ulcer-prone horse relatively safely. (Or so I hear.... ulcers can be aggravated by pretty much everything in the world, so who knows.) Everywhere you turn, somebody is going to tell you that their horse responded beautifully, or it made their horse horribly ill, or it didn't work, or it was a miracle, or whatever. Sometimes, you just have to go for it and stop listening to what other people have to say about it.

As we all know, Immy is a picky eater. Anything weird in her food, and she won't touch it. If I so much as keep her favorite cookies in my pocket for too long, she thinks they taste like pocket, and won't eat them. (Cookies fresh out of the bag are ok though.) She won't eat apples, carrots, mints, or most types of cookies at all (barring those horrible rock-hard Manna Pro cookies... she loves those!) Getting her to eat nasty things is not a lot of fun. I have had success in the past with mixing a dewormer into her food, but that was before I owned her and she was still on a junky sweet feed. That sugary goodness concealed the taste of the small dewormer, and voila! Down the hatch it went. The last time I dewormed her I had success with the same method, and figured I would shoot for it again this time, seeing as she is SO bad about being dewormed.

Well, so much for that idea! One taste of her dewormer-filled meal and she spit it out and turned up her nose. I convinced her to get about half of it down, and the other half at dinnertime, but she was not happy about it. The next day, I mixed the next tube in with her breakfast, and she refused to touch even one bite. I couldn't even get a bite into her at dinnertime either, so I gave up and decided to just paste her with the next tube. What a horrible nightmare that was... I essentially had to back her up into the corner of a stall and hang on for dear life while she flung dewormer in every direction, getting it all over her face, all over me, all over the walls, and generally everywhere but down her throat. Of course, following this I tied her back out next to her dinner, and came back to find that NOW she was eating it. (She only ate a few bites, but still. Mares.)

Now, of course, I am Scary Dewormer Lady. She did not want to be caught this morning, but I managed to get her so that I could pull her blanket off and offer her up a completely dewormer-free breakfast. She turned her nose up at it, and refused to touch a single bite. Adding insult to injury, she needed her next dewormer tube, so another battle to get it into her ensued. (She was better today, and I got the entire tube in, but no matter how quiet I was about it, she still trembled all over and snorted at me like I was the boogeyman. She is absolutely terrified of dewormers!)


Four tubes down (well, one party consumed...), and only one to go tomorrow. Will we make it through this saga? Is she burning up with ulcers? Am I going to give them to myself as well? Who knows, but I quite imagine that whatever the dewormer is killing in there is making her feel pretty crappy, so she may have a few days off, depending on how she is doing. She is snarfing up her hay like crazy, as usual, which is great... if she starts to turn her nose up at that I am going to kill myself. Either way, despite ALL that I have done for her gut health, I am probably faced with an upcoming ulcer treatment.  I know she's a picky eater, and I know she's a nervous personality, but... I can't not fret about it. I've never had a picky horse who turned away from food before, I can't NOT think ulcers automatically!

Our trial of blue pop rocks is ordered, so now I just have to wait for them to get here... in the meantime, there is UlcerGard to get us through. In terms of other supplements aside from all of the herbs and calming things that we have tried or she is currently on, she is already on EquiShure but someone suggested that I should try RiteTrac or Egusin... has anyone used these? They are not cheap, so any input would be appreciated! I definitely think the EquiShure has helped, but it isn't enough.


The girls getting ready for a ponied trailventure the other night:

And out on the trail:

Immy had to cross a few creeks, splash through mud puddles, and trot alongside P for quite a long ways. She was SO GOOD! (She jumped most of the water crossings instead of just going through then, but she got over them! It's a great start!)

So in reality, it isn't all bad... it is just very, very hard to get all the puzzle pieces to come together properly. We'll get there!!