A touch of spring

There is a touch of spring in the air and the ground is drying up nicely. There is so much grass on the field that I think the boys will have their last day out on it today, stay out tonight, and come in tomorrow from 10 until 7. That will please both me and Campo, who can stop messing his bed and have all the space in the barn to be in most of the time.

We did half an hour walking this morning. I started on the arena and after five minutes he had loosened up nicely and was walking freely. He didn't seem keen to do school movements and we both got bored, so we went and had a walk around out on the field. It's a bit hilly but the footing was good and he seemed to cope well. He was very footie on the stones in the yards, which in some ways is a relief. From my detailed diary I can now see that his footiness is related to how much work on the road he does, and not to whether his haylage is being soaked or not. So at least I can stop that palaver! Roadwise, every other day is a bit too much for him to cope with and I will reduce it to one in three and work him on a field one in three and on the arena one in three. Tomorrow I am working so he'll have the day off.


I also took Jumbo out for a longer hack than we have done recently and he was lovely and we had a really nice time together looking at the verges full of daffodils.  They are flowers that really seem to smile at you when they are growing wild in clumps, aren't they?

Two extremely interesting points about Campero -
 
- he has totally given up looking to eat grass. He doesn't try to snatch at the verge when led out and he doesn't head for the grass in the yard when he is moving, loose, from the barn to the stable and back. How odd, it's as if his "gimme grass" switch has been turned off. Almost as if he is avoiding it because he knows it does him no good.

- I am testing him with benzyl benzoate, because he used to get sweet itch with Nikki, even inside a stable. She told me that he can't tolerate BB, that it makes him itch as much as the sweet itch. I reasoned that the insulin resistance was causing him liver problems - he couldn't tolerate chemical wormers either, they made him tie up - and I was hopeful that sorting out the IR and giving his liver a month or so to recover might mean that his skin caused fewer problems. For four days now he has had my normal solution of 1/3 BB in water put on his mane/neck and tail root, with not a sign of a problem. If we are really lucky, then we'll be able to control the sweet itch with BB instead of having to swathe him in fly rugs from head to foot. I'm hoping those rugs will be staying in a crumpled heap in the tackroom - fingers crossed.

C.

ps I have put the address of this blog on a public forum and I fully expect to have some trolls add some nasty comments from time to time. Please do not react to anything that any strangers say, however much you would like to. Reaction is their reward. As soon as I realise that someone has posted something nasty, I will delete it. If we all just ignore them, the trolls will go away.