A tale of two jumpers.
Now I have two jumping horses!
Campero was allowed the yard as well as his stable last night in a bid to keep him moving more. The boys were locked in the barn so that Radar was dry to clean up this morning. I came out this morning and Campero was not on the yard. And neither was he in the stable. He was in the field, eating grass. He had jumped a galvanised steel gate of at least 4 foot 6 to get there. I have no idea how long he had been out, 10 minutes or 8 hours :-((( The silly boy, if only we could reason with them. He thinks he's been terribly clever getting himself some grass to eat, and instead all he has done is make sure that from now on he is never allowed the freedom of the yard, and because of that he will take longer to get better. :-(((((
It will be interesting to see if grass makes him revert to some of his previous eating behaviour. It hasn't yet. He was sound on the soft going for his puppy walk in the arena surface this morning, but he is very lame on his near fore tonight. So he either tweaked himself jumping the gate or he is brewing an abscess. Given the amount of white line compromise under the shoe, a strong pulse in that leg and a gradual increase in lameness in that foot, my money is on an abscess. He'll be sore for a couple of days and then hopefully it will break open and he will come right again. It's a shame he's sore on it, but there isn't a lot you can do with an open white line, you can't stand them in disinfectant all day :-((
So onto the good news. Radar has excelled himself again. It was another hedge meet, with perfect ground conditions, big flat open fields, and hedge after hedge after hedge. People were again commenting on how he has come on, and our chairman was practically singing Radar's praises. "He just gets every single one right, doesn't he?" And he did. There was a team of pro photographers and I think they caught us over a couple of right whoppers. I hope so!
There's not a lot more I can say without repeating myself from previous weeks, but Radar is just a star boy. I don't know if the photographers had point and shoot cameras but I have a point and shoot horse :-))
C
posted by cptrayes @ 8:00 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Naughty FB! If you can rig a piece of live electric tape across he will respect that - he has never gone through my electric fencing, even when kept on a 'baldy paddock' with 4 acres of waiting to be cut hayfield just the other side... That said he's never jumped any of my gates either...
Hope he gets some relief in that foot soon.
I can do that if I use it to raise the height Nikki. I can't bring it forward of the gate because of where his stable door is. Do you think that would work? Or should I leave the gate open and use my 4ft tape holders to bar it off???
I did hesitate over reporting the abscess but I do like to tell the whole truth on my blog and the truth is that loads of horses newly out of shoes abscess. It's a pain, but the shoes have to come off some time. I'm sorry you have to read it though, it must make you sad for him :-((
C
mmm. Think I would try raising the height and putting live tape over the top then. Shame to stop them chatting over the gate, but needs must. Needs to be 'live' though.
XX
I am sure it makes no sense to them not to be able to eat their fill of grass and do what they need to get to it. Modern horses really do need to be managed.
What great fun on Radar! A friend gave me an old Horse and Hound and I am reading about the hunts with more interest now.
More fun doing it than reading about it ML!
C
Point and shoot horse - lovely isn't it? A dim and distant memory for me.
How about Cleantrax for the white line infections? I know it is pricey, but it does the trick nicely.
I would have suggested the electric tape above the gate too, just so he can have more room to move around.
I just wanted to ask about the magnesium. How long are you going to keep up the double dose? Presumably it is possible to overdose them, and if so what are the symptoms? I have had my pony in the yard for a couple of days as I suspected he might be coming down with laminitis, so I been giving him some magnesium tablets I have, and I ordered the mag ox powder. Farrier came yesterday and couldn't find any signs of laminitis, so I must have caught him in time.
This is the first time he has shown any signs. I am a believer in the "leaky gut" cause of lami, so I will get back on to the usual feed/grazing routine which has been distrupted with my horse still in livery - but coming home this week, back to his usual quiet, well manner self I hope and not the lout he was when he went 4 weeks ago.
Judith my understanding of magnesium oxide is that any excess is flushed straight out and not stored, so toxicity is not an issue. In addition, I don't think that it has any effects like the prevention of absorption of other minerals, like my high manganese taking up the place of copper, and the well known potassium/calcium issues. So I plan to double dose him until he has a foot which can walk over stones and not feel them. That may be less time than I had expected - fantastic progress today that I am about to report!!
C
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