Our First Horse

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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There are a lot of factors to consider when choosing a horse, and one that people don’t always think of is gender. We have two geldings and a mare, and I’m happy to share our inexpert opinion with you. We love our mare, but I would say this: if you don’t want a lot of headaches, chose a gelding.

Stallions, of course, are notoriously difficult. Without doing a lot of research on why, I’m guessing it’s the testosterone. Having a stallion in your barn, especially if he will be around mares (either at home or at trails, shows, etc.), is a challenge for even an experienced horse owner. They can be aggressive, domineering and hard to control. It takes a firm hand to keep a stallion under control.

Mares…I know people who won’t own a mare because they are such a pain. What makes them such a pain? The months of March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October…longer if you live somewhere warm. Warm weather brings a mare into season. And if you think women can be moody and B I _ _ _ Y (well, this is a family show, let’s say “cranky”); a female horse can teach most women a thing or two about moody and cranky. Like women, mares vary in how they react to their “time of the month.” With some, you can hardly tell. With others (Moonshine!), you wonder where your sweet little horse went. Moonshine is irritable, doesn’t like to be touched and if there are male horses around, she has only one thing on her mind, and it’s not trail riding. Our poor geldings: when she met each of them, she had high hopes. She acted a coquette for days, being as sweet as could be. That is, until she figured out they weren’t going to be able to help her. Then she was just a witchy thing, snapping and kicking and bossing them around. Of course, she goes through the same thing whenever she encounters a new male. The last time we tried to ride her, she was in season and there was a new potential suitor in the vicinity; her mind was elsewhere. So mares can be very sweet, but sometimes not. Both in the same horse. Sometimes in the same day.

And that leaves geldings. Life is so much easier without all those hormones. (As the mother of a former teenager and one about to enter his teenage years, I know what I’m talking about.) That’s a very simplistic view, of course; all horses are different and they can have many, many issues separate from the chemicals that may or may not be racing through their bodies. But starting with a blank slate, so to speak, can sure make things easier.

That’s my two cents. What do you all think? Mares, geldings, stallions, no preference?

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Don’t worry, it’s not forever!

I’m not sure how much we’ve shared about Moonshine, but to make a long story short, she hasn’t been fit for us to ride since we got her. Our horse friend, Shari, says she’s “green-broke” - she got only so far in her training, and then somebody stopped training her. Not far enough for someone who’s a green rider to feel safe on her. We have Sinbad for Bill to ride now, but he won’t be with us forever, given that he’s (1) not ours and (2) 26 years old. We’ve been going back and forth about getting another horse - namely Champ, the neighbor horse - but Shari is pretty adamant that we should not invest in another old horse who may , in addition, be arthritic. So she came up with an alternate plan.

Shari knows that even if we can never ride Moonshine, we can’t bear to get rid of her, so we’ll have a horse we have to pay to keep for no reason. She suggested that we take the money we were going to use to buy Champ and invest it in training Moonshine. She knows a trainer, Lance, who she highly recommends - he’s going to train her filly too. So Lance came over last Wednesday and worked with Moonshine for an hour. He suggested that it might be best for her to stay at his farm where he can ride her every day. We agreed, so today Moonshine left for boarding school for a month. We’ll miss her, but Lance has high hopes that after a month of intensive training she’ll be a fine horse.

So wish our Moonshine good luck! We hope she studies hard and comes back a new horse - one that doesn’t want to dump Bill off every time he gets in the saddle.

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I hope so! We had to leave town for a while, because our covers were blown…no, not really. Well, we did leave town, but it was to attend a friend’s wedding in Phoenix. We stayed with our kids in the southeast part of town, and all the rest of the family & friends were on the west side of town, so we spent a lot of time in the car. We haven’t been able to spring for the satellite internet service that goes with you wherever (despite the Kid’s pleading), so our internet access was a little scarce.

Anyway…so after a week away, ignoring you all again, we got home to find out we had no site. Network problems, again, apparently. Bill thinks they’re trying to get rid of us because we are grandfathered in to a sweet hosting deal. I have to admit, it sounds suspicious.

But for now, we’re up and running again (knock on wood). All our critters were fine when we got back. The weather here is awful, especially compared to Phoenix, where it’s spring already. We are really looking forward to spring here! We have lots of fun horse-related things planned (and some horse-related projects, too). Our next big adventure, we think, is to go ahead and buy the horse across the street (Champ). We’ll keep you posted on that.

In the meantime, please accept our apologies and those of our hosting company (if they are indeed sorry). We’ll try to get this issued resolved one way or another, and start posting more often.

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