Our First Horse

A very important grooming item is hoof care. I have to admit that I have been very lax in this area. It’s supposed to be easy to do, but I tell you, I did it today and I’m beat.

Here’s the deal: You have to convince your 1,000+ lb. (in my case, about 1,200 lbs.) animal to lift his foot for you and then you hold it and pick out the bottom of the hoof. It’s a very strange-looking piece of anatomy. It should be concave, and in the middle is an anatomical structure called a frog. Here’s a pretty good photo of a healthy (and shoeless) hoof:

(credit: www.barefoottrim.com)

All around the frog is the stuff your horse has picked up and packed in there that needs to be picked out, without damaging the frog. Valentine’s hooves, I’m ashamed to say, were quite packed with all kinds of stuff: mud (mostly), manure, straw and even a couple of rocks. There is a pretty good chance, based on the odor emanating from the junk I picked out, that he has thrush. That’s a nasty little fungus that grows in a hoof that isn’t kept clean. Here’s what his hoof looked like while I was cleaning it:

I’m also sorry to say that Valentine seems to be limping on his right rear leg now. He’s appeared to have a limp on that leg since we got him - that was the hoof that cast a shoe before we got him - but it’s more pronounced now. I think we’ll be calling the farrier out. Updates later.

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I’ve heard scent is the strongest trigger for memories. Mikki’s been under the weather the past few days so I’ve been cleaning Valentine’s stall. These past few weeks a childhood memory flashes to my mind every time I enter his stall. I don’t know why but I keep thinking of my mom cleaning our house when I was a child. She must have been cleaning glass or something because I don’t think ammonia is used very often in cleaning these days. Apparently equine urine contains a lot (cough cough) of ammonia. As I was laying down some straw to soak up the horse urine I realized I can no longer associate the smell of ammonia vapor with something being clean. Just the opposite!

I’ve read that ammonia vapor is one of the reason you need to be diligent about cleaning your horse stall at least every day, especially if your horse sleeps there. Your horse will lay down in the stall to sleep. If you don’t clean up the urine regularly, he/she breathes the ammonia gas and that can be harmful or in some cases even fatal.

Incidentally, dry straw doesn’t soak up urine very well. I’ve heard about some kind of fluffy wood pellet thingies you can use to soak it up better than straw and I’m thinking we should start experimenting. More on that later.

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Mikki is sick today and it’s cold and wet outside here in East Tennessee. So today I’ll be handling horse duties. All bundled up, I went out to let Valentine out of his stall. I would have preferred to open the barn gate to let him out that way but it’s muddy by the gate so I decided to halter him to let him out by our yard gate. Now Mikki does this every day, something about it being better for training your horse about your leadership role, despite the fact that the barn gate would be far faster and easier. I don’t have a lot of experience with the halter since I usually opt for the lazy, quick way - through the barn gate. So today I grab the halter and spend the next 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get this stupid thing on Valentine’s face. I was amazed how patient he was even though I bent his ears a couple of times. I lead him out to the pasture and slowly remove the halter and this is when he became impatient and shook it off. That was followed by a push by his nose…head…the long thing at the end of his neck. “Hey!” I’m not afraid of him and I won’t let him push me around without responding but it’s pretty clear to me that we need to spend some time on this leadership role thing. But he’s a fine horse and we’re happy to have him.

On a technical note about the website, I’ll changed the login requirement so you don’t have to register and login to post comments. I personally hate having to login everywhere to make a little comment. We’ll see how this goes. Hopefully we won’t be inundated with spam. If you see spam in the comments, we’ll remove it when we notice it.

Also, we’ll be changing some of the links around a little and probably adding a discussion forum soon for better online discussions. Someday you might see a few tasteful ads around here. We’ll keep them relative to the topic at hand. We’re billed for the web space and all so we’re going to try to recoup some of that expense.

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It’s true. Hard to believe, I know.

More shocking news: there is actual mud here, not sand! So when it rains, as it very often does, the pasture and anything else that has been deprived of ground cover turns into a soggy, sucking, sticky mire of muck. It’s also really slippery. What that means is, only the most die-hard rider would venture out in this weather. I really don’t want to get that wet. Also, I’ve seen my horse walk in the mud, and frankly he’s not as sure-footed as you might expect. So I guess we’ll wait till it dries up a bit.

In the meantime, I’ve stuck Valentine in his stall to dry out so I can brush off the mud that is plastered over his entire left side. Klutz.

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Okay, I have to admit, I haven’t ridden my horse again. It’s not because I don’t want to (although I did want to wait until the giant bruise on my inner thigh faded a bit). The weather hasn’t been very nice, and we’ve been pretty busy. But we have been working on our relationship. He’s still pretty feisty, but I really think he’s getting attached to me – and not just because I feed him. Bill says I’m spoiling him by bringing him apples or carrots every day and petting him and talking to him – but I say, if I can get him to connect the apples with my hand, he’ll be less likely to toss me off and break that hand. Besides, I don’t let him push me around. That’s the most important thing.

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Okay, I spent several days comparing the picture in the catalog, the pictures we took of Valentine all tacked up when we met him, and every other picture of a horse with bridle on I could find, and decided that today was the day.

I finally rode my horse, by myself.

First, we had to remember how to put the saddle on. It took a long time, but I’m pretty confident we got that right. It stayed on the whole time, so that must be a good sign.

The bridle was another story. I did the best I could, but I’m not confident at all that it was right. Valentine was so good and patient while I tried every combination with those straps that I could think of. I think he was annoyed by all the giggling, though.

Once the bridle was looking as close to right as I could get it, and the bit was adjusted pretty well, we maneuvered Valentine over to the tack room, which has a foot-high step up, so I could get on. Then Bill led us out to the pasture, and it was time.

Was that a wild ride! There are a few factors that came into play here. Valentine’s former owner hadn’t been riding him regularly, and we hadn’t ridden him at all in the month we had him. We were using tack that was all new to him. He is only 5 years old – a “teenager.” And, probably most importantly, I’m a total greenhorn and he knows it. So he spent the whole time I was on him trying to get me off. He ran under trees. He brushed up against the barn. He charged up to the barbed wire fence. He ran to the low point of the fence at the corner of our property, where I thought for a split second that he was going to jump it! He ignored every command but “whoa” and was slow to respond to that one.

The good news is, nothing he tried worked. I managed to stay on the whole time, and didn’t get off until I was ready.

Can’t wait to do that again…

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