Dentist, Water Troughs & Stuff

We've certainly been busy around the farm lately. But I guess we are always busy! We've had a couple of visits from our wonderful dentist getting annual floats done on everyone. We're not done yet as we always break it up into a few visits. While the horses are sedated I also take advantage of this time to clean sheaths.

I always find it fascinating to look inside the horse's mouths and put my hands in to feel before and after their floats. It is also interesting to me how well some horse's teeth do with age and others not so much. For example Clay and Chili were both floated today. They are both 31 this year and neither of them is even missing a tooth. Their teeth are in great shape and every year Sally always makes me verify their ages.

On the other hand Ogie is in his late 20's, just a couple of years younger, and he is missing a lot of teeth. We're really careful about how we handle his mouth. As Sally said there is so little left in some places she wants to be very careful about maximizing his comfort and ability to masticate while at the same time not taking anything way that is not absolutely necessary. She typically does a combination of a power float and hand float on each horse. On Ogie she also tries to minimize the hand floating because she doesn't want to rock a tooth loose (or I should say loosen a tooth even more than it already is!) with the vigorous rocking motion with the hand tools.

On a different topic I have a couple of horses here that are quite fascinated when we clean the water troughs. A couple of times a week each trough is dumped, sprayed with a 50/50 solution of bleach and water, scrubbed and then thoroughly rinsed. I don't know why but Elfin is obsessed with bleach. He will be nowhere in sight and I will start working on his trough and suddenly he seems to appear out of nowhere.

I spend as much time swatting him away as working on the trough. He is obsessed with the bleach. He wants to lick the bleach water. He wants to grab the spray bottle with the bleach solutions. And then when I am refilling the trough he frantically licks the sides of the trough just above where the water line is hoping to get a taste. I've asked around about this and other people tell me they have or have known horses that love bleach as well. Quite frankly I find it odd but to each his own!

Hoffy is obsessed with Cuff Links; he stands by the fence for hours waiting for Cuffie to come over and play with him. Sometimes Cuffie obliges him for awhile but then he leaves to go graze or join the mares. Hoffy calls to him frantically. Cuffie ignores his pleas. Poor Hoffy.

Elfin and Hemi; note the grass sticking out of both sides of Hemi's mouth

Hoffy and Thomas

Leo

Elfin and Hemi grooming each other

Lily and Levendi in yet another grooming session. She also grooms a lot with Thomas. We joke around here that Thomas likes to trash talk with the mares.

Lily, MyLight, Missy and Cuffie hanging out

I got over zealous with Chance's mane job and ended up giving him a mohawk; I didn't think I went quite that short! Thankfully after a couple of days it is no longer standing straight up.

Homer, Hemi, Chance, Thomas, Levendi

Ivan, Spike and Slinky having a pow wow together about something

Elfin on the run joined by Bella the dog

Lightening and Lucky were just hanging out and half asleep

Sebastian

Jason and Jo playing on the gravel pile

Thomas, Hemi, Levendi, Trigger, Ivan, Homer, Chance, Grand, Apollo

Spike, Lucky and O'Reilly

a very faded Hemi showing off his beautiful trot

Asterik

Murphy

Murphy is a 17 hand chestnut thoroughbred who moved to our farm from Louisiana. Murphy and his mom competed through the Intermediate level in eventing. He has the cutest crooked blaze on his face and it works so well with his mischievous personality. Murphy is the perfect name for this horse!

Murphy's mom purchased him in 1999. Murphy was originally destined for the race track and even has a lip tattoo but he never actually made it to a race. He had never evented when he was purchased by his mom but she saw something special in him from the moment they met.

Murphy and his mom on the cross country course at Poplar Place

Murphy's mom had received a small inheritance from a relative and her plan was to use the money to purchase a horse. Somehow she ended up trying Murphy and she knew he was the horse for her. The only problem was his asking price was twice as much money as she had to spend.

Murphy with his adorable crooked blaze

Murphy's grandmom told me that her daughter was so worried that she was not going to be able to purchase Murphy. Apparently she instructed her mom not to wash the t-shirt she had been wearing at the barn because it smelled like Murphy and had his hair on it and she wanted to make sure she could remember him forever. (I'm pretty sure I was equally as dramatic about anything horse related with my mom as well!)

Murphy and Dutch making introductions

Fate was on their side however as the sellers agreed to take her offer. She and Murphy began competing in eventing and they moved up the levels together, ultimately competing through the Intermediate level. She and Murphy have a lot of impressive accomplishments together but their biggest achievement is probably competing at the North American Young Riders' Championships a few years ago. It is a huge accomplishment to make a Young Riders' team.

Murphy surveying his kingdom

Eventually riding and competing had to take up less time as Murphy's mom concentrated on school. She is currently a doctoral candidate and a few months ago had to move several states away for her residency. She made the hard decision not to take Murphy with her as she was moving to New England where the winters would be much harder plus she was going to be so busy with her residency. We were the lucky beneficiaries of that decision!

Dutch and Murphy were very curious about something

It is easy for me to see why Murphy was so good on those huge cross country courses. He has a lot of self confidence and walks around with a swagger. I'm sure he was not the least bit intimidated by any of those cross country jumps. He definitely believes that the world is his oyster and he has the tiger by the tail!

I sometimes wonder if the horses ever compare notes and talk about what they used to do (of course now they live the life of luxury and spend their mornings at the pool and their afternoons on the golf course). Does Chili tell Murphy what it was like to work cattle while Murphy describes running and jumping cross country, and then Dutch jumps in and talks about dressage? Things that make you go hmmm . . . !

Supplies

As we prepare to move our first group of horses to the new farm I've been making a supply list. We'll have a period of time where horses will be at both locations so we need to be fully stocked with any needed supplies in both places. I've been making my list (and checking it twice) of any and all supplies I think could possibly be needed. It is really an obscene amount of stuff that you have to keep on hand to be prepared to care for horses. Most of the items will never get used (at least that is the hope!), however the minute you don't have something on hand will be the time that you need it right away. So I am trying to be as thorough as possible. So far this is where I'm at with my list:

brush kit
shampoo/conditioner
medicated shampoo
iodine shampoo
sponges
buckets
vet wrap
cotton wrap
gauze rolls
standing wraps
duct tape
feedbags/extra feedbags
scissors (several pairs)
latex gloves
nitrile gloves
DMSO
saran wrap (leg sweat)
furacin
scarlet oil
Swat
small clippers
feed scoops
masking tape
sharpies (black & silver)
dry erase board
fly masks
fly spray
vetrolin shine
water trough scrubbie
empty spray bottles
animalintex pads
soaking boot
epsom salts
poultice
brown paper (poultice wrap)
thermometer
banamine (paste & liquid)
dex
eye meds
SMZs
ace
bute (powder & paste)
needles/syringes
60cc dose syringes

Some of these items I already had "overstocked" so I did not need to purchase them, but I had to order duplicates of a lot of them. Goodness that was a big bill! It is no wonder this pastime has earned the description of the Sport of Kings.

Work is progressing nicely at the farm. There is now a fence around the barn to fence it out of the pasture which is very helpful. Since we had built the perimeter fence before we knew where we were going to site the barn we hadn't actually fenced off an area for the barn. So a few sections of fence had to be removed to allow for driveway access and then a fence was built around the barn.

The barn roof is done and fully insulated. Most of the windows are in as well. As far as the exterior goes the sides and the doors need to be done but that will go very quickly. After we complete the barn the plan is to build two more run-in sheds around it for a total of three run-ins in this area. We'll then add some cross fencing to the large area that we have fenced.

Then we'll extend our driveway even further into the property and basically we will repeat the process that we just completed. Build more perimeter fence, then run-ins, cross-fencing and a barn. Basically we want to set the entire property up as various work areas with the run-ins being built around the barns. It just didn't make sense in the long run to build one barn in the middle of 150 acres. No matter how things were laid out it was going to be a very long hike to the barn from most areas. We are laying out the property to maximize work efficiency and to make the best use of the land for the horses. It would sure be nice to win the lottery right now. I guess our odds of that would increase dramatically if we ever actually purchased lottery tickets!

I hope everyone has a wonderful long Labor Day weekend. As usual Jason and I will celebrate Labor Day by laboring!

View taken from the road, barn in front with run-in behind. We will be building two more run-ins, one behind the barn and one on the right hand side directly opposite of the run-in already built. Cross fencing will be added to make three separate pastures.

Rooftops of the run-in and barn can be seen from the very back of the property
We let our neighbors cut hay off of about 90 acres of the farm to save us from having to bushhog it. They were doing that this weekend. Look at how thick the hay is! They ended up getting 350 large round bales.

They had quite a crew working on the hay. One guy was raking, another was baling, two were loading hay and 4 people were driving hay trailers.

Sebastian, Faune and Winston

Grand and Elfin
Homer and Hemi
Murphy and Asterik hanging out
Dutch and Murphy grooming each other
Alex and B-Rad

Mina

Hemi, Baby and Chance

Levendi

Elfin and Homer

Welcome Home Hoffy

My horse Hoffy came home last week. It is hard to believe he had been on loan as a "husband horse" for 2.5 years with our friends at Zion Farm. Hoffy is a thoroughbred and is twenty years old this year. He had a career at the track and was then sold off the track as a hunter and he went on to show in the hunters on the A circuit. Hoffy isn't the greatest mover in the world but he has a big canter stride and a "10" jump.

Jason leading Hoffy to the barn after his early morning arrival last week

I got Hoffy from his previous owner about ten years ago. He had been shipped out of state to a very well known veterinary surgeon to have a bone chip removed in his knee. I remember very well the night the shipper pulled in to our trainer's barn to bring Hoffy home after his surgery. A bunch of us had waited with his owner to greet the trailer and then we were all going to head to dinner together.

I love his white face

Hoffy got off the trailer with his leg bandaged from hoof to shoulder. The only problem with this scenario was that the WRONG leg was bandaged up! Hoffy had had successful surgery on the wrong leg (no I will not be naming the vet so don't e-mail me and ask!). He then had to go through the post surgery lay-up and rehab. Of course then his owner was faced with doing the surgery again on the other leg. At that point she decided it was time to cut her losses since she was no longer riding Hoffy herself anyway and she began looking for a home for him.

I took Hoffy as a husband/friend horse as he is the kind of horse that absolutely anyone can get on and have a safe and relaxing trail ride. I also ended up actually putting him back in work for awhile and we did some lower level eventing together for fun. As long as I was careful about building his fitness and not over jumping him the knee that still had the chip didn't generally bother him.

Hoffy took to the cross country phase of eventing right away, and in fact won the first event we entered with neither of us ever having schooled cross country before. I just thought it would be fun and hey, the jumps weren't that big so surely we could handle it. Probably not one of my better thought out decisions in regards to riding! He was second after the dressage phase, moved up to first after stadium, and then stayed in first after a clean cross country round. He jumped the ditch, the bank and went through the water jump without even hesitating and I think we were both grinning from ear to ear as we were out on the course. What a good boy - and people try to say that h/j riders don't know how to do anything but perch and our horses are robots! My best memory of that weekend is Jason having a melt down about the cross country jumps.

The only thing as cute as his face are his stockings that come up over his knees

Jason had all of this to say as we walked the cross country course together (imagine his voice getting louder and louder and his hands gesticulating wildly): "Hoffy has never jumped solid jumps like this. He isn't going to realize they don't fall down. Did YOU realize they don't fall down when you decided to do this? Look at this - this is a REAL stone wall - it doesn't fall down! I think you should scratch. Why are you shaking your head No at me?? Are you crazy, or stupid or what? This jump is made of telephone poles strapped together. Why would you want to gallop up to a bunch of telephone poles and ask your horse to jump them? HOFFY HAS NEVER JUMPED THINGS THAT DON'T FALL DOWN. PLEASE LISTEN TO THE VOICE OF REASON."

I am sitting here giggling as I remember Jason's frantic voice and his hands flying around everywhere pointing at the jumps. Needless to say I did not listen to his voice of reason and Hoffy and I had fun doing a few events together. Unfortunately all of my pictures of Hoffy and I are on my old computer and I am too lazy this evening to get on it to dig them up and post them.

I was very happy to welcome Hoffy back home and he is back where he belongs with the Big Boys. I was always saying that I missed Hoffy and we made the trip to North Carolina to visit him once during his absence. Only horse people could understand that. My job is working with horses seven days per week and what did I do on one of my very rare (VERY RARE) weekends off? Jason and I drove to North Carolina to visit my horse.

Hoffy is still perfectly comfortable for trail riding and light duty arena work although the knee does get a bit creaky, but I simply don't have the time to ride him. Hoffy could care less if he is ridden or not though. He is also one of those horses that you can not ride for months at a time and get on bareback with a halter and leadrope and go for a trail ride. Hopefully one day soon I'll be able to steal enough time to sneak off on a bareback Hoffy trail ride. Mostly I am just happy to see him every day. Looking at that big, white face never fails to put a smile on my face!

MyLight and Missy grazing

Asterik showing off his cute face

B-Rad and Murphy chatting over the fence

Clay peeking out of the run-in shed

Alex and B-Rad

Asterik and Sebastian

Trigger really wanted Spike to pay attention to him; look at those lips streeeetching towards Spike

Leo, Hemi and Levendi

O'Reilly and Trigger

Trigger, Baby and Homer