Studly McPoop

This weekend we had other barn projects, and all of my horses got passed over. So today, I made it a point to go out and spend some time with Ace. For starters, yesterday I spent over an hour in the crossties with Mom's Face-Off horse rescuing her (and him) from a long neglected long tail. It drags the ground at least 4 feet, and hadn't been down in over two years. While I was tangled up in the tail, Grey Horse was in the outdoor arena running a marathon. I had to pause, sling the wet tail over Face-Off's back and go and retreive him. In the meantime, Ace was very perturbed that there was a horse in the cross ties, and he was being ignored. Egged on by Grey's ramming around outside, he also thundered around the indoor and the pipe corral.

Ace's running turned into shoving as he slammed his chest repeatedly against the gate next to the crossties causing the water bucket which is hanging on the outside of the gate to splash water in the aisle. How annoying. The third time he did this, I took down the bucket. Sometimes I do what I call "when smart people do dumb things". It didn't occur to me taking the bucket down would pose a problem. But it did. Ace was leaning over the gate trying to reach the bucket which had been taken away, and he managed to catch the throat strap of his halter on the eye bolt the bucket snaps to. He struggled with that, finally breaking his halter at the crown buckle. Oh well, at least now he couldn't splash the bucket, and he couldn't get caught again. I finished the tail, and when Ace had sorted himself out and calmed down, re-haltered him and put him away. Re-haltering the dervish wasn't too bad, once I got the halter pried back out of his mouth. He can catch anything you try to put near his head.

So today, I wanted to tie him and make sure he didn't equate breaking the halter with tying. I tied him up to the arena wall. He happily fiddled with the knot and stood patiently alone while I got some brushes and took a little more winter hair off him. Tying went smoothly. Whew... bad habit averted.

Then, I got Copy out for a hair/mud scraping. She was acting a bit weird today. She kept picking up each hoof and replacing it. She just acted very mildly colicy/foundery but with no definite symptoms. I picked out each hoof and found them packed with gravel and mud. Maybe it just felt weird? I took her for a walk down the driveway to eat some grass and further assess her condition which seemed fine... not lame, perky, excellent appetite...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Studly McPoop was having a FIT. He was out in the pipe corral beside the barn fussing and fuming over "his mare" leaving him. She was (OMG!) a good 75 feet from the barn and he was enraged. Because he appeared to be respecting the fence with no real plan to go over it, or take it down, I just watched his antics and had a good chuckle. He made a few laps bucking and kicking. Then, while straining to look over the high panels, he made a poop. On his next circuit he noticed this fresh poop. He slammed to a halt to examine it. How could this have escaped his notice? There was obviously another horse (a stallion even) in his territory. He smelled it every which way, and made an (unsucessful) attempt to poop on his poop pile. Another circuit bucking and kicking, and again the attempt to mark his territory. Poor little guy. Where is the poop amo when you need it? How very frustrating!