Our First Horse

We once again have fine east Tennessee Moonshine at our farm. This evening we went over to ride her and get Lance’s final evaluation before bringing her home. The report? Well, not so great. We observed Moonshine hunching up her back at canter and this is after she had been longed. After some demonstration and instruction from Lance, I hopped on and rode her around the ring a few times. She was tense and it was obvious to me she simply didn’t want to move. And I was on high alert and nervous as can be, given her odd performance last week. I walked her and she gave me no trouble doing it except I really had to push her just to walk. I wasn’t ready for anything more than that. Lance reiterated his advice that we should get rid of her and find another horse. I’m still not completely convinced of that but at the same time I realize the insanity of keeping a horse you’re too afraid to ride. I might be more open to it if I knew she would have a good home but who wants a horse you can’t easily ride? I’m afraid she’d be treated with a heavy hand and have a miserable and possibly short life. Uggg. I guess if I can’t work with her I’ll have a 20-year pasture ornament. I love this stupid horse, darn it. I almost wish she was mean to me so I could more easily send her to auction.

Lance brought her back tonight and the boys (Sinbad and Valentine) were quite attentive. We put Moonshine in a stall so the horses could sniff and nicker at each other for a while. Then we let her loose into our pasture so she could re-assert her authority. It was less dramatic than we expected but still funny. I shot a short little video of it (below).

But just so you know, we haven’t totally given up on her. We’re going to explore horse chiropractics and look into marbling (someone mentioned it in comments). In the meantime, it’s good to have a backup horse (Sinbad).

Even though she’s trouble, we’re glad to have our sweet Moonshine back.

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Oh, my aching back, legs, rear, etc.! Saturday we spent a wonderful day riding horses next to a beautiful lake. This was supposed to be the day we got Moonshine back to try her new riding skills but due to the incident from a few days ago (Moonshine gets hit by a car), she’s on the injured list and wasn’t ridable. In her place I rode my backup horse, Sinbad, a well broke, ridable by almost anyone kind of horse, 25 years old and still full of energy. Mikki and I met up with our horse friend Shari, Lance (the guy training Moonshine) and some other horse owners. Shari and Lance were kind enough to pick up Valentine and Moonshine on their horse trailers (we need one of those!) and off we went for a day of riding. Now I knew I’d be a little sore because I use a cheap saddle and haven’t ridden any distance in 6 months or so. But five hours later, my rump we tender and I was ready to call it a day. Today, Sunday, I could barely get out of bed. I just may have overdone it. Perhaps we ought to bump a hot tub up on the priority list for future purchases!

Notes from the trip:

1. Mikki’s horse Valentine LOVES the water. He was splashing around on it like a little kid. We were all pretty concerned he’d want to roll in it.
2. When there are 11 horses together on a trail ride, it makes sense that some of them won’t get along. We had to rearrange horses a few times. For example, Sinbad is a tailgater and the horse in front of us was a kicker. Not a good combo!
3. Horses are very good at walking over downed trees, though some like to jump over them.
4. Fearing her own weight was giving her horse trouble navigating through some deep water, Shari bailed into the drink and emerged horseless and soaking wet. Her horse was easily caught and she finished the trip still wet.
5. Cheap saddles make for sore butts on long rides. According to my body, five hours is considered “long”. You get what you pay for in saddles, apparently.

We’ll definitely head back to this area soon. I’m looking for a new saddle and possibly the add-on gel pads to hold me over. And hopefully a future trip will include Moonshine.

Below are some more pictures from the ride. Yeah, warm weather!

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Isn’t this just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? This is a miniature horse foal, born on Wednesday. It was a difficult birth, and her mama didn’t have any milk for her, and the owners had to leave town on urgent business, so the vet brought her back to the office where we’ve been bottle-feeding her. She’s thriving so far, so we have high hopes. She’s about 14″ high at the withers, and her mama’s maybe 6 inches taller than that.

If we weren’t all full up on animals at our house, I’d bring her home. She is adorable.

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We had the vet out to look at Moonshine yesterday. She had good news for us - she says it looks like just a sprain, and there’s no evidence of serious damage to either her leg or her insides. Both hind legs are swollen, especially the left. We sprayed it down with a cold hose for a while, then Kristina slathered it with Magna-Paste, wrapped it and gave her a shot of Banamine, an anti-inflammatory. (Since she was poking her already, she did her spring vaccinations too. If ya’ll haven’t done that yet, it’s time.) She left more Magna-Paste and dressings with the trainer, with instructions to cold-hose it again in the morning and re-wrap it if it was still swollen. Unfortunately, our planned ride tomorrow will not include Moonshine, because she will need a few days to recover.

Now that the medical side is under control, we have to address the bigger question: is Moonshine safe to ride? Three experienced horse people - Shari, the trainer and our vet - think she may be too dangerous based on this incident. We want to heed their advice, because obviously they’re about a zillion times more knowledgeable than we are. But part of us (is it the emotional part, or the logical part?) thinks that since she has never done anything remotely like this, there must be a logical explanation. We had suggested that perhaps she was stung by something. Bill suggested yesterday that it might have been fire ants. They are very common here, and both her actions and her symptoms both fit that theory - when Bill was stung on the leg by fire ants last summer, his leg swelled up like crazy. Both her back legs are swollen, and she certainly didn’t hit that car with her hind end. But the vet says the swelling is due to muscle strain, not the impact, and the trainer says that even if she had been stung by something, she shouldn’t have gone nuts like she did. He says he’s been riding a horse when it was stung by wasps and it didn’t go crazy. (That horse is tougher than I am – I most certainly did go crazy when I was stung by wasps!)

So what do we do? Moonshine is a total sweetheart on the ground – affectionate, calm, obedient, gentle. Her only problem thus far was that she “crow-hopped” when being ridden, usually at a canter. We were making progress with that – the trainer said that she never did it if he longed her before riding, so we just planned to longe her before every ride, and Bill would learn how to react if she did do anything funny. But now we have a horse that may or may not be unpredictable (like any horse isn’t). Shari has long been of the opinion that we should sell her, but who would buy a 10-year-old horse without an impressive bloodline that few people can ride? We’d have to sell her at auction, most likely, and her future would not be bright. We couldn’t do that. So if we can’t ride her, we’ll have a very expensive pet for the next 20 or so years.

She will be coming home from the trainer the middle of next week. Shari has promised to ride her on our trail rides together, to get a feel for how unpredictable she might really be. I guess we’ll just evaluate her over the next few months and see how she does.

So please keep us and our sweet, nutty Moonshine in your prayers. We’ll all need them while we work through this, hopefully with no further injuries to either horse or riders.

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Here’s some clarification.  First of all, we didn’t have a contract with the trainer - he’s not that kind of trainer.  We live in the country, and it’s a country kind of thing - agreements on a handshake and all.  Believe it or not, I’m pretty comfortable with that, at least in this case.  He’s a nice guy who’s very good with horses and up to this point, he’s done a really good job with Moonshine and with Pistol, our friend Shari’s 3-year-old filly who was there all month too.  He’s completely torn up about this incident and in fact is offering to pay for all damages.  We’ll probably come to some sort of agreement about that.  Again, the country way.

So what happened is this.  Lance was trail riding Moonshine this morning.  He has ridden her every day, at first just inside the arena and paddocks, but as he got more comfortable with her, he started taking her out on trails on his property.  It’s unclear exactly where he was riding her today, but for the last several days she has been no trouble at all, so he was comfortable riding her on open trails.  He came across a neighbor and stopped to chat.  The neighbor was not on horseback, so Lance dismounted and tied Moonshine, possibly to a tree.  She stood quietly while they chatted, as she always has for us too.  Then she suddenly, for no reason he could discern, went berserk.  Before he could grab her she had broken the reins and started bucking like a wild bronco.  Again, she has never done that.  Up till now, her problem - and only when being ridden - was “crow-hopping,” a kind of half-buck.  She nearly ran him over; bucked to the fence, where he thought she was going to go through it; stopped at the fence then continued bucking in another direction, down the driveway where she started half-running, half-bucking toward the road.  He ran after her at a dead run (so she must have been going at a pretty good clip) but she made it to the road, where she ran into a moving car.  The car did not hit her, she hit it.  On the passenger side.  Lance knew the woman, who stopped and talked to him.  She “knows someone” who does body work and says she’ll do it cheap.  A $400 figure was bandied about.  We’ll see on that, I guess.

As for Moonshine, she has a small abrasion on her left hip; she ripped a shoe off (the nails ripped right out, leaving tears in the hoof but the soft structures appear to be okay).  There is no heat or swelling anywhere on her body, so far.  She seems to be a bit shaken but okay.  Lance wasn’t there when we came by to see her tonight, but his mother was keeping an eye on her while he was gone.  She thought he would probably be staying with her in the barn all night.  He has a supply of meds and our vet’s number - she sees all his horses too (on a side note, I’m now working for our vet; I’ve been there 2 1/2 weeks now.  It’s sure a good connection to have at the moment).

We’ll update you tomorrow, once the vet has seen her and her condition is more clear.  Thanks for all your kind thoughts!

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I don’t have all the details yet but Mikki called a little while ago to tell me Moonshine was tied up at the trainer’s barn and suddenly went berserk, bucking continually all the way down his long driveway and into the road where she met a car. No one was hurt and it appears Moonshine sustained only minor injuries. The car, apparently, was no so fortunate. I’m told the impact dented a door and broke a window.

Obviously this raises several concerns and questions:

• Is Moonshine really OK? Time will tell.
• Why did she suddenly go nuts, bucking down a half mile driveway? Is she safe to ride? Was she stung by a bee or something?
• Who is responsible for the damage to the car?

We have LOTS of other things to write about but obviously this gets the most attention first.

More when I get more info.

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