2016 is well and truly over, which is a little hard to believe. And part of the reason for my silence on this blog is things have been tough going for us as far as the horses have been concerned for the last many months. Looking back at my stats, I spent only about 100 hours on horseback this year — by far the lowest number ever since I’ve been keeping track. This was mainly because, of our four horses, three have been having major issues. Those issues have been pretty varied, but can be summed up quickly enough.
Piper
Piper still isn’t reliably sound. We’ve got a good farrier who is working with us, and she’s much, much, much better than she was. But we’re coming to accept she just might not ever make it back to 100%. So we’re trying to digest that and figure out what to do with regards to finding her a life where she can thrive as much as possible given her limitations.
Laredo
Laredo has been struggling with an intermittent yet persistent cough for the last year or so. Multiple different vets and a long haul to a fancy clinic in Ames so he could get scoped and have lots of bloodwork done have yielded very little by way of concrete information on how to improve the situation. The problem comes and goes, which makes it hard for us to ride him consistently. The vets in Ames diagnosed him with a very early case of heaves, and recommended he not be on a round bale. That’s not possible for us. So again, we’re looking at making some tough decisions as far as trying to give him the best possible life going forward.
Nevada
Nevada bucked me off in September. I landed badly, leading to trauma to my lumbar spine and three weeks during which I couldn’t even really walk. Once I was kind of up again, I returned to light rides on Steen. But it wasn’t until late December that I was able to do much of anything without having to be super careful. Now I’m more or less back to normal, but neither Brian nor I have been on Nevada since the incident. Of course, these things are never the horse’s fault. She’s young and extremely athletic and despite having so much positive time with her under saddle last year, she still has these explosions every now and then that so far we’ve had a hard time tracing to an underlying cause.
Steen
The good news of the year, however, has been Steen. He continues to be my bombproof goofball. He’s a horse I can crawl onto and feel safe on even when I can literally barely walk, a horse that’s great for the cold because I can just set my reins down and stick my hands in my pockets and ride all around, a horse who is, impossibly, 17 this year but still acts like a foal sometimes. Let’s hope he stays that way for a long time to come.
Anyway, I miss this blog. I miss writing about what we do with the horses. But even more than that, I miss having a record to look back on after the fact. It’s been hard to want to write about all the bad news. But hopefully we’ll get some of these issues sorted out, I can get back in a better blogging habit, and 2017 will be the year things turn around.
Horseback Hours YTD: 1:30
Thanks for the tip! Unfortunately we board our horses, so we don't have much control over how they're fed. Currently the round bales are always placed under nets, which supposedly helps as well. But I will take a look at the Klene Pipe Structures and mention them to our barn's owner. 🙂
Thanks Erica! Yeah. Coming off is definitely a bigger deal than it used to be. 🙂
Look into Klene Pipe Structures round bale feeders. We will be getting some this year. The rep said these feeders greatly reduce the dust associated with heaves/ COPD.
Wow, that all does sound rough. Especially getting bucked off, ouch! Here's hoping things get better this year!