horse, random observation, Uncategorized

Mondays are for recovery

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Mondays need to be a day off to recover from the weekend.  Especially when Friday is a day off.

I had planned for Friday off work because who wants to work on Friday?  Friday morning, I worked with a new client and her horse.  The short version of the story is the horse has navicular, had a neurectomy 2.5 months ago, and continues to get worse.  It is a very complicated case, but hopefully we can get him back to soundness.  Then home to cut the grass and Alex’s birthday party began at 3.  6 – 10 year old boys.  We took them to Hopeville Pond for swimming, they had water gun and balloon fights for a couple of hours, pizza and a movie, and then camping in the tent.   At midnight when I went to sleep, they were still awake.  At 5:30 they came inside asking to watch tv and play xbox.  Alex was a wreck on Saturday, but had a good time.

Saturday included trimming horses in the morning, Anna wrapping up the birthday party, Vicki going to a party, picking up 250 bales of hay off the field, loading into the trailer (2 trips), and loading into the loft.  It was hot Saturday.

Sunday we got to work on fencing around the farm.  We pulled a section of board fence and reset the posts in a slightly different spot to change the flow of the paddocks and make the arena area smaller.  Now the grass arena is only about 140′ long by 90′ wide.  We also worked on putting in replacement fence posts in the front pasture and getting the electric fence up all the way around.  Starting today, the horses will be grazing in the front pasture.  The grass is over 3′ feet tall so we might occasionally lose sight of Huey.

We had an early dinner (5:45) and then headed out to the barn to saddle up.  The whole family left on a 50 minute trail ride starting at 7:15.  When we got back, Calli and I headed into the arena to work on some transitions and backing.

By the time the kids went to bed around 10, we were exhausted.  I guess it would help if we were not staying up until midnight every night. Too bad we can’t take a nap today.

The kids really enjoyed the trail ride and Vicki in particular is talking about her plan to ride the ponies every day.

aromatherapy, health

Trying out aromatherapy

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Last week I started my new job on staff at the Naval War College in Newport RI. I spend an hour commuting each way and then my day is spent in a room of florescent lights in front of a computer screen. I went from have 1 or 2 low grade migraines a week (still from the concussion in January) to a debilitating migraine every day by the time I left work. Clearly something needed to change.
Since I have been learning about complementary therapies for horses, I decided to look into some for my concussion healing. While medications may help some with the migraine once it starts, there was nothing to promote the healing of the concussion.
So this evening, after taking a short nap when I got home to deal with the migraine, I headed to Herbwise Naturals in Westerly (thanks Holly). I specifically wanted to get frankincense oil based on some reading I had do e that I indicated it helped others heal from concussions.
There was a sample bottle of the frankincense oil. I placed the sample under my nose and breathed for a short time. Within 30 seconds, I could feel the migraines sweeping back away from my forehead. The pressure receded to the back of my skull. It was amazing how fast the impact was. I bought 2 small bottles (2 different brands) and put a small amount of the oil across my forehead and on the back of my neck. Over the next 40 minutes, the pain moved deeper into my skull, then shifted to right where a ball cap would sit on my forehead and was gone from deep inside.
Then the pain settled down onto the bridge of my nose like someone pushing down on glasses. Finally, the pressure lifted completely and the migraine was gone. This is significant because the migraines rarely dissipate without a full night of rest.
I am hopeful that the aromatherapy will help with healing from the concussion instead of treating symptoms related to the concussion. I will post an update to see if the aromatherapy helps avoid the onset of the migraines.

Read Aromatherapy Follow up

horse

On the trails again. Finally.

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Moving has a way of taking up all the free time.  As a result, the horses were not getting used much and we certainly we not doing any trail riding.  However, since our 14th anniversary was Wednesday and we didn’t really do anything special, I decided Anna and I would go trail riding today.  We arranged for a babysitter to give us a block of kid-free time.

Saturday evening, we took Mack and all the kids hiking in the woods behind the house to scout the horse trails.  Pachaug State Forest is the entire rear of the property line.  The first direction we went, we encountered a creek.  So, we reserved course and headed off through the woods.  30 minutes later, we arrived at the gravel road into Pachaug, but there was no horse path to get there.  Clearing the trail of enough branches to not be constantly hit in the face would take a lot of work.

This afternoon, once the babysitter arrived, Anna and I headed back into the woods on foot to cross the creek.  The path to that point had clearly been used as a riding trail, so it was much more promising.  We took a couple of hand tools to clean up the trail as we went.  30 minutes later, we had found the horse trails we were looking for and cleared a sufficient trail to get there.  We scooted back to the barn and saddled up King and Calli for a ride.

Off we went.  Until we got to the water (which is only about 2 minutes down the trail from our barn.  10 minutes later, we still had not gotten Calli to cross the water, so we went back to the barn.  We put on her halter under the bridle and went back with a lunge line.  This time Anna rode King across (for probably the 15th time) and held on to the line to Calli.  It took some encouragement, but success!  We left the line there and continued on the ride.  It turns out, Pachaug has a lot of water right now.  The good news is, Calli didn’t refuse any more water crossings.  In fact, as we returned home an hour later, she didn’t even hesitate where we started out.  That was actually surprising, because it was the largest of the water crossings at about 12′ across.  Our little loop was just under 3 miles.

I went back out after we untacked and spent some more time improving the trails.  I believe it was actually a driving path in the past based on the size.  So, overall, it was a very successful day.  Calli got comfortable with water crossings and Anna and I got a trail ride in.  We are planning to take all the kids out on Tuesday.  It’s time to start logging some serious mileage if we are going to be ready for Alex and Vicki to ride a hunter pace this fall.

horse

Introducing Huey!

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Saturday night I flew back from WA.  Sunday, Vicki and I hooked up the horse trailer and hopped in the truck.  8 hours later we arrived at our hotel just outside Baltimore.  First thing Monday morning, we went to Hedgehog Hollow Farm, which specializes in breeding Dartmoor ponies.  Anna had been emailing with the farm and Vicki was along to specifically test ride Huey (she even got to miss a day of school).  Everything seemed fine, so we loaded up and headed back home.

Huey is a 12 year old Dartmoor gelding.  He is just over 11 hands and makes a great addition to our herd.  He is barefoot and has never had shoes.  He also lived outside in pasture in a herd setup.  The kids are very excited to have another pony.  Today, Huey got to know Precious and Devil.  Devil wasn’t too happy about sharing Precious’ attention with another boy.  Since Huey has never been contained in electric fence, we spent the day monitoring things and fixing fences.  Now if the rain will stop, the kids will get to ride him.

First conversation across electric fence
First conversation across electric fence
For perspective, Anna is 5'6"
For perspective, Anna is 5’6″
horse

What is Rob reading?

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Right now, I am sitting in the Seattle airport waiting to fly home. Open in front of me is Complementary Therapies for Horse & Rider.  It is a part of my current ESA course, Complementary Therapies.  I finished the Nutrition course, and was a little disappointed that it didn’t include any secret recipes for optimal horse health and hoof growth.  I guess we will have to keep working on every horse as an individual instead of relying on a one solution fits all recipe (like you might find in a large boarding barn).

So why am I in Seattle?  I just finished 3 days of hoof trimming with ESA field instructor Christina Cline.  Over the course of 3 days, we saw around 40 horses with laminitic, foundered, insulin resistant, cushings (IR and cushings are not always together), pasture, performance, young, teenage, old, and some healthy hooves.  It was particularly interesting to me how much different the hooves tend to grow due to the difference in environment.  While most of us in CT feed hay year round, many of the horses in WA get lush pasture (developed for dairy cows) once the spring comes around.  The result is a higher number of laminitis cases and more frequent founder for owners who do not carefully manage the weight of their horses. The pasture is just too rich.

So, it’s back to reading for me.  I am planning long term to try and learn more about things like using herbs in the diets of horses.  Maybe Anna will have to grow all the herbs we need in the garden…

horse

Things change

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As we were moving, it struck me as to how much interests change over time, and how hard it is to let go of the dream/vision that led you down that path in the first place.  For example, about 6 months ago, I finally decided to sell some of my woodworking tools because they had been sitting idle for over 2 years.  And I did sell some….  But I still have a pretty significant workshop.

And sometimes we get into crafting (like Creative Memories) or duck hunting or triathlons.  And while we are not ready to say we will never do any of those again, they don’t seem to fit in to life right now.  And it is very hard to get rid of the “things” because it seems to mean giving up on that dream.

Our horses are like that too.  We owned Cinder for 11 years, even though we knew long before he wasn’t quite the right fit.  For the past 11 months, I have been working with Calli and talking about my plans for eventing.  But the reality is, I don’t have time to train her and I don’t have time to compete.  Instead, our focus is horse activities the kids can be involved in too.  So instead of eventing, we are going to try to focus more on hunter paces later this year.  We are in a great location to get trail time and Alex really doesn’t like arena showing anyways.  And maybe Calli isn’t the right horse for those goals, so maybe we will find her a new home and find me a quieter mount to focus on the kids’ needs instead of my dreams.  I guess that is part of being a parent and growing up.

But I’m keeping the waders so I can train Mack, the golden retriever, to fetch that duck when we go hunting (some day).

marriage

The move is over!

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After a month of overlap, the move was finally finished with the final load last night at 8pm. Today we did our check out of the old house. There are still a few things to unpack, but at least the stress of moving is over. And we are still married! And we are both alive!
Too bad life doesn’t slow down and allow us to relax and enjoy the new place.

The story of our lives with horses. And goats.