Our First Horse

Our dogs look forward to farrier visits. I think they mark it on their little doggy calendars, in fact. When the farrier visits, he trims all eight of our horses’ hooves in neat slices, just perfect for gnawing. This to me is disgusting. Mikki and I pick up the shavings but invariably one or two get by us and a few days later we see one of our dogs happily chewing on it. They must be good, too, because our dogs will protect this illicit snack with their lives. This can’t be healthy for them, right? I’m sure hooves carry all kinds of nasty bacteria dogs shouldn’t be ingesting. But then again as much as I love dogs, I realize they are pretty gross. I mean how do you reason with something that will eat its own barf and dig “Almond Roca” out of the cat litter box for a particularly chewy treat? Can horse hooves really be worse than poo and week-old garbage?

Our worst offender is our older Jack Russell terrier. He is a hoof aficionado. This last batch he got into didn’t settle too well in his tummy and we got to see what it looked like partially digested…on our living room carpet. Pretty gross. But that’s the dog theme…gross.

Do you let your dog(s), if you have any, munch on horse hoof trimmings?

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I love the smell of my horse. If you don’t have a horse, that must be a weird thing to hear someone say but it’s true. She smells horsey and I like it. But today for some strange reason as I kissed her long face and breathed in, I detected the scent of something smoky. In fact, it smelled like…marijuana. Why does my horse smell like marijuana? I wish I knew. We don’t smoke it and don’t know anyone around who does. I really don’t think our neighbors do. Are there plants in the wild that smell like burning marijuana cigarettes or should I be on the lookout for hippies in my pasture? This was an isolated incident but worth noting, nonetheless.

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We spent a good part of this past weekend setting up a garden. Now the significance of this for us is that we’re previously desert people and are not used to gardening. I haven’t had a garden in almost 20 years and Mikki, an Arizona native, has never had a garden. Horses and the ability to garden were two of the top reasons for us deciding to move to Tennessee. So this weekend we put up some fencing, tilled the soil and began planting. As a horse owner, the thought occurred to me that we really ought to devote a portion of our garden to vegetables our horses like. I’m not sure we’ll save much money…a five pound bag of carrots at Costco and Sams Club runs around $2.50. But if we stagger our carrot planting, for example, at least we won’t have to make a trip to the store to buy them this summer. And we’ll know they were grown without any pesticides, except maybe some sevin dust, if needed.

The only trouble with this plan is, I don’t know what else to plant but carrots. I gave Valentine and Moonshine a radish the other day. She like it, he didn’t. I like radishes too but I could give Moonshine the ones I don’t want. I’ll call them horse radishes (haha). I suppose celery is an option. I’ll have to do some experimenting. Our garden is about 25 foot by 20 foot so we’ve got ample room to grow tomatoes, beans, some corn, strawberries, melons, etc.
As a horse-owner, having a garden is great. Now I know what to do with all that composted manure from the past year. I walked right past the fertilizer section of the Home Depot garden center and laughed.

So this horse owners garden right now consists of only carrots. Any suggestions on other veggies I should try, specifically for horses?

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I just got caught up on our year-to-date horse expense list and chart. 2007 is shaping up to be more expensive for us as horse owners. It looks like the biggest reason for that is because we’re just coming off of the cold months and winter is definitely more expensive for maintaining horses. Last years expense list started in summer. Now that the grass is growing and our horses are spending less time in the barn, our expenses are going down. If it wasn’t for farrier expense in April, our monthly total would have been only $74. But horses (usually) need shoeing!

Here are some expense changes implemented recently:

• We find ourselves using more wood pellets these days, as it makes our job cleaning stalls each day much easier.
• We got some good deals on more expensive feed from Purina and now we’re hooked. We really like Omolene and Strategy. I think we’ll stick with Strategy for now, which sells for about $3 more per bag than local feed-store sweet oats. We’ll also be cutting back slightly on the amount of feed we use.
• We’ll start buying fly parasites again this month (May). We tried them last year and they worked. Today I noticed TONS of flies in the barn. We should have ordered the parasites a little earlier.

On an administrative note, the horse expense list page is looking cluttered to me so I’ll be redesigning it. The information is good, it’s just getting hard to read.

Here’s the updated graph:

Our 11 month average is $157.

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At the horse show this weekend, Mikki and I made an interesting social observation. There are very few boys/men riding at these shows. It’s true. I’d guess 85% of the participants are female and all the boys/men were constantly surrounded by cute girls/women. Our son is only 10 but when the time comes for him to be interested in girls, I’m going to suggest he ratchet up his interest in horses, too. It’s nearly a perfect dating scenario. Horses are masculine but also feminine. Guys look tough on horses and girls like horses and guys who look tough. It’s easy to date someone who is interested in similar topics, such as horses. Chemistry can develop when you’re involved in some friendly competition at a show. And supply versus demand gives guys the edge. Eighty five percent! Why aren’t more guys into this sport!?

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