Sunday, April 3, 2016

Eventually It Comes Together

Everything is finally starting to come together. Mostly...

I have had to cancel 3 different castration appointments for Ruger. Even though I am checking the weather forecasts prior to making these appointments, so far, each time a little cell of ick weather has come through, bringing unpredicted moisture and fluctuating barometric pressures. I don't like putting colts under anesthesia under those conditions, so I'll just give it another week or so and hopefully the weather will straighten out again and Ruger will finally get castrated.

Other than that, he's doing good. I have started turning the young boys out in the geldings dry lot with Shooter. One day Ruger goes out with Shooter, the next day Flashy goes out with Shooter. I wanted each of them to learn the size of the pen before turning them both out together. We will see how that goes. It didn't work out to put them together in the small pens. Flashy put Ruger on the outside of the pen and proceeded to work him like a cutting horse does a cow and he wasn't letting up. I had to rescue poor Ruger from him. That darned Flashy can be an ornery little sucker. He's a whole lot like his Uncle Moon. It might make a difference in a big pen and with an adult horse to moderate...and it might not. I guess if they have to have alternate turn-out times, it won't be a big deal.

I finally got everyone's feet trimmed up. Now it's time to start all over again. It's a never ending cycle of trimming feet around here.

Spring dewormings are done and I have started on getting teeth done. The other day I took Jet and Shooter to have their teeth done. While I had them there, I had the vet look at Shooter's hind leg to see what he thought was going on there. All of the sudden all of the hair around and below the old scar on his leg just peeled off in big chunks. I wasn't sure if it was a fungal or bacterial thing or just due to the scarring. The vet didn't think it was an infection or any sort, but told me to scrub it with betadine or something along those lines and maybe use a dermal cream on it. I did and a whole lot more hair came off, but there is already new hairs growing in in the bald spots, so I guess nothing to really worry about.

One of the reasons I scheduled Jet in for dental work first was because I noticed some swelling in his lower jaw around his mouth. I vaguely remember this happening to him a year or two ago. At that time I thought maybe he had bonked his jaw fighting with Shooter over the fence. Since he was next to Shooter again when this happened, my first thought was he did the same thing again, so I moved him. But it got me to thinking...It's been awhile since he's had his teeth done. Him or Shooter for that matter. Somehow those two got skipped the last couple of years. Oops!!

Well, neither of them had anything major going on with their teeth, which is good. A little leveling and Shooter had one small hook and they were good to go. However, the swelling I noticed around Jet's jaw that prompted me to make the appointments for them had gotten much worse. The vet thought he was having an allergic reaction to something he was eating. Uuummmm...I got nothing. He's on the same hay he's been on for months now and getting the same grain ration he's gotten for years. Anyway, the vet gave him a shot of Dex and by that night the swelling was completely down. I have no idea what he could be having an allergic reaction to, but I put him on an immune booster and will just have to keep an eye on him.

Since Jet was already under sedation, I had the vet go ahead and inject his right hock and stifle. That is the leg that bothers Jet the most. I had asked my regular vet about just injecting that one leg and he resisted. Saying it wasn't good to only do one side. This vet had no problem with doing just the one side and it saved me a couple hundred dollars. At this point, Jet is just an experiment. There is no way I could, in good conscience, run that horse on barrels. His hocks are just not strong enough. The injections make him comfortable, but they don't 'fix' the crappy structure. I asked my brother if he wanted the horse back and he said yes. So I will ride Jet this summer and just get him solidly broke and take him home to SD in November or December. My brother will be home toward the end of January and he will just use Jet on the ranch. I think the horse, with care, which I SPELLED OUT to my brother, will do just fine in that kind of setting. Riding out, covering country will not stress his hocks. It works out well for everyone, especially Jet. I can take the horse of my list as far as competition goes and just use him this summer to pony other horses and keep the greenies company at competitions. That will get him broke and benefit me at the same time.

Jet is not the only one moving on...Frosty will be heading to a new home sometime in May. It's something I have been talking about with this person for awhile now and I think we are both ready to do it. Frosty is not fast enough for me. I think he has more speed, but it will most certainly not be enough to be 1D competitive. He's too young and has turned into too good of a horse to retire and yet I just don't have the heart to offer him for sale on the open market. This way I know that Frosty will be used and enjoyed...and if not...he can come back. I wouldn't stick someone with him if they absolutely did not like him. I'm actually really excited about this. I would really like to see someone enjoy him for exactly what he is.

My final bit of good news is that the supplements I ordered for Moon's respiratory are working wonderfully. I have him on Bio-Quench, an immune booster and Air Blast, a bronchiodialator. At this point I am not going to worry about putting him on a bleeders supplement. I will use the nasal flair when I run him and modify, if necessary, as we go.

Whew!! There for a bit, I didn't know when or if I was going to get everyone pulled back together...but it's finally all starting to come together. :-)

4 comments:

cdncowgirl said...

Sounds like you've got everything sorted out!
Question about Moon & the flair strips... will you only use them in competition or also at home when he's being worked a bit harder?

ps - this is my fav post in awhile ;) lol

Shirley said...

Lots going on! So- who will you be competing on this year- Moon of course- and LJ?

BrownEyed Cowgirl said...

Cdn-You know...I don't really know if I will have to use the strips at home or not. There are different theories about conditioning 'bleeders'. One theory is sprint work more often to condition the respiratory function to hard and fast work and another is less fast work at home to avoid overly fatiguing the respiratory function. Both seem logical, so maybe it depends on the horse? I am going to start taking the boys to the mounds and doing hill work. That alone will get them huffing and puffing and give me a chance to gauge Moon's breathing under stress. There is one, nice, long hill that I always figured if they could trot up that without losing their air, they were plenty in shape to make a run.

Shirley-I will have Moon (however well that works out), LJ and I will get Belle going under saddle and start hauling her with me. She turned 4 last September, so getting her rolling on the pattern by mid to late summer isn't asking too much of her. Running her and LJ at the same time should work out pretty good for me. They are both smaller, shorter coupled horses and should have similar styles.

Crystal said...

Wow so much organizing and going on, finally coming together, hope all works out.