Our First Horse

There are two very important people in your horse’s life, besides you. First is the vet; second is the farrier. As we’ve mentioned, we live in a small town, so service people are kind of scarce here. When we got Valentine, he needed to be re-shod (he had in fact thrown a shoe, and he was due for a trim anyway). We asked the former owner for his farrier’s name and number, which he gave us, but after several calls, the guy - we’ll call him G - wasn’t calling us back. So I found someone else on the Internet and made an appointment; the next day, G called. He was going to charge less, and already knew my horse, so I went ahead and canceled the first appointment.

On appointment day, we waited patiently at the appointed time of 9:00…and G came at about 10:30. He apologized, said he was already behind. We later learned that 9:00 is usually his first appointment for the day, so he must have put someone before us.

It’s been over a year now since G started shoeing our horses. That’s about 8 appointments. He has been at least an hour late for every one. It takes several calls and at least a week to get a hold of him. Here’s the thing, though - he’s a really nice guy, and in our inexpert opinion, does a good job of shoeing our horses. He’s shod Valentine for years (through 3 owners now) and puts up with his antics. So for a while, that outweighed the unreliability. But the last episode kind of overshadowed the good points. Valentine lost a shoe about 2 weeks after his last shoeing; we called G and made an appointment to replace that one shoe, and he never showed. He also never returned our calls about it. Unfortunately, we left for Phoenix shortly after and never had time to follow up.

After the first few months of spending days trying to get a hold of G for a regular appointment, we had realized that it was much easier to set the next appointment while he was there. So we had a pre-set appointment for June 19. G never showed. He didn’t return our calls for about a week; we missed that call, he left a voice mail saying he’d try again. That’s the last we’ve heard from him, despite a call a few days ago informing him that Moonshine is down to only one shoe and her other feet are all beat up.

So the day after our last call to G, we again prevailed on our best horse friend, Shari, for the name of her farrier. It only took him 2 days to call back, and his next open appointment was only a week away, so it looks like we might have a new farrier. (We’ll call him J, and let you know how it goes.)

Sorry for the rant…sometimes you just gotta rant. I’m thinking the farrier change was way overdue, but maybe you just have to put up with some BS if you find a decent farrier, especially in a small town. What do you all think?

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As promised, here is Moonshine’s new fly mask, modeled by our very own Bill. Yes, he’s driving our truck.

Hopefully Moonshine will look as good.

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Our neighbor down the hill, Buddy, rode his lawn mower over yesterday for a visit. We talked about a lot of things, including gardening. His garden is directly downhill from, and shares a fence with, our pasture. Apparently, our horses like to stick their heads over the fence when he’s gardening. He thought they were just being friendly, but we know better. They’re wondering what he’s growing for THEM. “Hey, Buddy, got any carrots? Apples? Blackberries?” (They do like blackberries - we discovered this while picking wild blackberries in our pasture yesterday. We’re lucky we escaped with any blackberries at all.)

Buddy is a nice guy, and we know he wouldn’t bother our horses. He probably wouldn’t feed them anything, either, and if he did I’m sure it would be something safe, like a carrot. But on the other side of the pasture are the neighbors my dad affectionately calls “The Bumpuses” (yep, another “A Christmas Story” reference). They do not have a bunch of hounds - just the two - but they do have three, ahem, rowdy children. They also share a fence with us, and apparently said children routinely played in our pasture when the previous owner lived here - whether they had permission or not is kinda unclear. In any event, they’ve caused us worry ever since we brought our horses into the pasture. Some concerns are horse-related, some are not. Since this is a horse site, let’s talk about the horse-related concerns that neighbors can bring.

• Fences. Fences are notorious for needing mending. If you share a fence with someone, who’s in charge of that fence? Sometimes there’s no question; last summer, our bush-hogger knocked a fence post down while bush-hogging our pasture. Obviously, we fixed that one. But sometimes it’s not quite so clear. Also, the fences we share are barbed-wire and we want to replace them. Do we have to get permission? Maybe they like the barbed wire, because they’re sure it’ll keep the horses out. Which brings us to:
• Horses damaging neighbors’ property. What if our horses decide Buddy’s garden is just too irresistible? I think you have to ensure your horses are contained as well as you possibly can, to keep the neighbors happy. And the horses safe, of course.
• Neighbors feeding your horses. For the most part, I think people have common sense about what you can and can’t feed horses. But there are some things you can feed a horse that seem pretty safe that really aren’t. Some plants, for instance. It’s entirely too easy for your horse to be fed something bad without you even knowing.
• Landscaping. This is even touchier. We want to block our view of the Bumpuses’ mobile home. This in turn will block their view (of our pasture). I think we have every right to plant some privacy-ensuring trees or hedges, but I’m sure they won’t be happy.
• Children in your pasture. We’ve gone back and forth on this one. As I said, the children were accustomed to playing in our pasture, and now we’ve asked them not to. I know this also doesn’t make them happy, and I also know that our requests have been repeatedly ignored. How far should you go to let them know you don’t want them over there? Is a verbal notice okay, or should you send a certified letter or something? Because sometimes you need a legal trail. Which brings us to…
• Liability issues. I remember being a kid. I remember being around boy children. I knew a great many kids, particularly boys, who would not have been able to resist the urge to ride a horse that lived practically in his backyard, as my horses do. I can tell you that neither of our horses would take kindly to that. Or a child could get stepped on, or kicked, or bitten. Most of all, I don’t want anything like that to happen to anyone, but also I really, really don’t want to be sued by a neighbor for something I tried to prevent.

So the point here is that, in addition to the many other responsibilities horse ownership brings, there is the added burden of trying to be a good neighbor. We do what we can…but I’m pretty sure the Bumpuses don’t like us.

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We are battling the flies again. In some ways, I don’t think they’re as bad as they were last year - probably because of a late frost that killed off a bunch of our normal pests - but the ones that are deviling our horses are really bad. Last year, we had a three-pronged approach to fly control: Equispot on the horses, feed-through fly control in the horses, and fly parasites in the horses’ environment. This year, we just weren’t prepared. Between the weird weather (One day, “It’s spring!” Then, “Wait, it’s winter again.” A week later, “I think it’s summer already!” The next day, “Nope, winter again…”) and our traveling, the flies kind of got the jump on us. Our poor horses are really suffering.

We are in fact using the fly parasites again this year, and I think they work really well. Unfortunately, without investing in a really big supply of them, we can only effectively treat the barn area. So the barn is virtually fly-free, but the pasture, where the horses spend most of their time, is still pretty fly-infested. That’s where the feed-through fly control would work. (Both the fly parasites and the feed-through fly control work by stopping fly larvae where they are laid - in the manure.) We like to get ours from a local feed store because it’s very economical, but haven’t had a chance to get over there (”local” for us means within 75 miles; this place is about 50 miles away). In the meantime, we’ve been using fly spray, which our horses hate and which doesn’t seem to work all that well anyway. We’ve also applied SWAT to their bellies again, which is very nasty and messy but does seem to help.

Since the flies seem to bother their faces the most, we decided we’d give fly masks a try. We got just one yesterday to see if they would even consent to wear it. We bought a SuperMask II without ears. Since my horse is was a fancy show horse and therefore seems to be more open to weird things being done to him, we thought we’d try him first. We put him in the stall, got out the mask and brought it over to show him. He backed away like I was holding a snake! Not a good start. But after letting him sniff it all over and giving him lots of reassurance, he did actually let me put it on with no trouble. He wore it for a couple of hours out in the pasture and didn’t seem to care at all.

One reason we didn’t try the mask last year is that we were concerned that it would affect their vision. All the fly mask companies claim that their masks don’t obstruct vision, but since “keeping an eye on things” is so important to a horse, we didn’t want to impede their sight in any way. So we tested it on the way home to make sure you really can see through - Bill wore it while driving. He says he could see just fine. So I don’t think there’s anything to worry about there. Isn’t he a devoted horse owner?

On the down side…it sure looks goofy. On the horse, not Bill. Well, okay, on Bill too. It’s a hard look to pull off.

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I don’t know why this surprises me. All mammals have a belly button, after all. But it doesn’t show as prominently on furry mammals. I was talking with someone recently about belly buttons and somehow horses came up. A little research revealed that horse belly buttons are sort-of where ours are located. On both male and female horses, their belly button is three to four inches in front of their genitalia. Valentine has an “outy/outie”, making it much easier to see, while Moonshine has an “inny/innie”. I risked my very life to bring you this picture of Valentine’s belly button so I hope you appreciate it.

Cute, isn’t it? Not unlike a human belly button, except for size and furry-ness. I have not been around any horse births so I have to ask, do foals need those belly button clips we put on baby humans when their umbilical cord is cut?

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About 6 months ago I posted a note discussing the wood-chewing habits of my dear Moonshine (Protecting Wooden Stall Doors - Part 1). We thought she was bored while in her stall overnight figuring that would explain why she like munching on her main stall door. So in November I went about fabricating an aluminum door cover to make it harder for her to destroy the door with her teeth. I was initially concerned she might bite through the aluminum, causing sharp edges that might cut her tongue or mouth. Six months later, that still hasn’t happened. The aluminum trim is pretty attractive still and hasn’t been damaged by my horse at all. Although at first she liked to lick it after eating her oats, she doesn’t seem to do that anymore. In fact, she doesn’t seem to chew on wood anymore. I mentioned this recently in the post titled Wood chewing habit update. It seems that since we changed to a different feed - Purina Strategy - Moonshine stopped chewing wood. From what people have been telling me, it seems like the feed store sweet oats we had been feeding her were lacking something she wanted/needed. Strategy provides it. Prior to Strategy we tried Purina Omolene 100 and that seemed to work, too.

I don’t plan on removing the aluminum shield I made but at this point I don’t think I’ll be making one for the other door. If you have a chewer and changing feed doesn’t work for you, in addition to trying some horse stall toys, a stall door cover/shield might help protect your barn and your horse until you have the problem licked.

Part 1 - Protecting Wooden Stall Doors
Part 2 - Stall door protection concept - 6 months later (this post)

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