Precarious

That is the only title I can think of right now, because I don't know the outcome of this story.
Last Thursday evening I got a phone message from Ace's owner. It didn't sound like an emergency, and the phone number was garbled. Mom was out of town for the weekend, so I couldn't confirm the number. I tried a couple of combinations, and gave up. The next day I called the stallion owner for another reason, figuring I could also get the number from him. But I couldn't reach him... all day. No one had called again, so I sort of let it go but was starting to worry. Saturday morning, the stallion owner called me back and filled me in.

Thursday Ace was showing signs of severe colic, grabbing his side throwing himself about and casting himself in his stall twice. All normal colic procedures were started... Banamine, walking up and down hills... but there were no gut sounds. It seemed to be an impaction type, not a gas type. Our regular vet was tied up with other emergencies. Ace's owner called the stallion owner, and they decided the best course of action was to take Ace back to Cornell. So, the stallion owner hit the road (over an hour) and together they headed to Cornell (another 3 hours) arriving at 1am. The trailer ride seemed to help, and he was now passing manure. Ace was very dehydrated, but other tests did not indicate colic. (?) He was tubed with mineral oil, put on IV fluids and placed under observation.

The next day he was given wet hay, and his pain symptoms started all over again, primarily the self mutilation to his left side and anger but some Banamine eased it. By Saturday Ace's vet bill had reached his owner's spending limit, and while they had no real answers to the problem, he was eating and passing manure and so was cleared to come home. Because of shift changes, he had been seen by three different vets. The last vet said she has a hunch that there is something malformed inside, and that it isn't a new occurrence. The fact that he began self mutilating so early (prior to his first birthday) , the cryptorchid surgery did not alleviate it, and in fact, it has become progressively worse, one would think that he might have some congenital defect that is causing him intermittent pain. That intermittent pain would also explain the unpredictability of his temper from day to day. Without exploratory surgery (which would increase his vet bill to $10,000-13,000 with aftercare), there is no way to know. Faced with a risky and expensive surgery and no clear diagnosis, his owner opted to bring him home and see what happens.

Three days have passed without another episode, but she says he still isn't back to normal. Of course, he has been poked with needles, displaced and dealt with quite a bit of pain, and I probably wouldn't act quite right after that either. We've all agreed that it isn't fair to expect him to weather another bad colic and trailer ride. That's the thing with horses. Sometimes you just don't know what to do.

Maternal Influence

Now that Copy has been gone for two weeks, we are starting to see a change in Ace’s personality. He’s settling down! Hooray! He’s still a mouthy egotistical teenage boy but it’s easier to get him to think. He isn’t constantly worried about what his mare is doing and where she’s doing it. Or with whom.

I’ve been trying to get him out and about more, so we’ve been doing more hand grazing. The other day on my last post I noticed a weird anxious behavior. When we would first bring him out, he would take a few bites of grass then paw impatiently. If you said “Ace… just eat” he would go right back to eating. It took me a couple of times to figure out where it was coming from. He paws impatiently when he eats grain. If there is a lot of activity outside when you take him to graze, he starts the pawing out of habit. Knucklehead! He hasn’t done it the last two times I’ve brought him out. He’s beginning to be ruled by his stomach rather than his nuts. That’s a good thing.

Today when I turned him loose in the outdoor arena, instead of the usual “I’m Free!” rocketing off, he immediately started grazing. Hmmmm… imagine that. After a little while, I walked to the other end to entice him into a little exercise. He immediately began galloping big loops. What impresses me most about this is that he has natural flying lead changes. Some Saddlebreds don’t because they are bred more to trot. My grey horse doesn’t have a flying change at all. Ace has a pretty good automatic change. I was impressed.

As he got hotter, and more tightly wound, he started sticking to the gate corner so I would call him out “Acey… C’mon.” and he would come trotting down the rail, knees popping, head up and eyes bright like a show horse. He’s pretty proud of himself when you call him and as he got bolder coming down to the far end where I was standing, I realized when he was about 15 feet away that he had no plan for stopping or going around me. I gave a yelp and jumped one way, and luckily he jumped the other. Had we both jumped in the same direction it wouldn’t have worked out well. But that bright happy “Here I Come” face was worth it.

When it was time to go in, he was easy to catch. Then you have to get him thinking again which takes a few minutes. Mom uses the whapper stick as a pacifier, but I’m trying to get him weaned off of it and the corresponding nipping and neck wrestling. Just outside the gate she gave it to him and I cried “don’t give it to him, he can’t think with that thing in his mouth” as he proceeded to walk over top of me. But a swish of the longe whip got his brain engaged, and he dropped the whapper and started to act like a horse again. He’s like a puppy with a chew toy. In fact, it's pretty hard to keep things out of his mputh still. He'll eat any old weed, and I'm constantly removing the ones I know he shouldn't eat.

He deals very well with biting flies. Some Saddlebreds can’t cope at all. The horse flies and deer flies are really nasty this year. He always has at least one welt on him from being bitten when he’s out over night. I ordered him a fly sheet and its on it’s way. In the mean time, he’s getting used to having Grey’s put on. The first time I tossed it across his back he was pretty worried. But he doesn’t freak out, he just studies my face frantically as if to say “is this OK? What are you trying to do to me? What am I supposed to do?”

He’s even managing to cross tie without the whapper to chew on. He doesn’t fidget with the ropes as much and he keeps his eyes glued on me. He loves being crosstied and fussed over more than anything in the world. He studies every move I make and just soaks it all up. He’s fun to groom. His coat is so fine, and his color so deep I could just polish it like fine mahogany all day.

Copy is doing well in her new home. She was bred by A.I. at home earlier this week. We’re waiting to find out how that went. We did get a phone message informing us that she is a “damned hussy”. Hey, we warned you. She’d walk over you to get in the trailer if she thought it was going to Sex Camp. She has bonded with her old friend Wayne. He’s such a dedicated horse husband. When he goes out at 2 a.m. to change the turnout group, he has to go all the way to the back of the pasture to get Copy.

Here’s a photo of her departure.

The Temperment Scale

You know that temperment scale that they put on horse ads where you're supposed to rate your horse's temperment on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being "very calm" and 10 being "very high-spirited" ? I often ponder that scale because what you get used to every day might be a whole lot hotter than you actually realise. Saddlebreds are notoriously "hot". My grey gelding is probably a consistent 8. My mother's gelding is about a 3, and Ace's dam Copy is a pretty steady 2. Ace's sire, from what I've seen, I would rate around a 4. Ace has turned out to be a 10...+...+........+. Yep, I think three pluses ought to just about cover it.

Today I went through the normal routine. I led him around for five minutes then made it through the gate and up the aisle in a very orderly manner. Well, the leading in the arena wasn't very orderly, but we'll get to that. I put him in his stall, made him wait a few minutes, then gave him his lunch. It took about 15 minutes for him to clean up, then I brought him back out. You see, he wasn't particularly well behaved the first time, and I thought I'd do some more work after he had his routine and hunger satisfied.

You see, he is quite nice to work around in the stall, but he is soooooo high energy any time he is outside of it. When I got there, he was standing at the arena gate literally jumping up and down. I had a heck of a time getting a chain on him. As soon as you reach for him he tries hard to bite and I'm getting sick of it. So I gave him an uppercut to the chin with my left hand. He backed off and did the "na-na-na-na-na" routine just out of my reach. No problem. There is a tie rope hanging right there. I got the rope snapped pretty easily, and then went in and with him securely tied, put the chain over his nose. "Pttthhhh, so there".

He knows that as soon as he walks nicely we can go in and eat. But, it ain't easy. He spends plenty of time dancing around. He finds it absolutely impossible to walk past the open back door quietly. Heck, no horse goes past an open arena door quietly. Their eyes don't adjust well to the darkLIGHTdark so they always spook. I get it. Actually, it's sort of comforting as a rider to realise you can't even lead a horse past a door, much less ride one past without a reaction. So, what I do is lead him to the door frame, stop, let him look, then we start past. This helps, but half the time he ends up dancing around in a circle. OR he bulls into me with a shoulder. THAT's not allowed. Bulling gets you poked in the shoulder with the whip. He hates that. Hates it. Sometimes he balks. Balking gets you a swish in the butt with the whip. You know how he reacts the third or fourth time he gets reprimanded for balking? This:

He flat out refuses at first to move forward, and he does a perfect Levade in hand. It looks very much like that photo, only in our version, I'm facing forward and swishing behind me with my outside hand. The swishing turns to tapping, tapping becomes snapping....Levade.

Besides being willful, he is in constant motion. I swear, every time I look at him, he has his tail up over his back, his head thrown up, and he is headed somewhere. Today it made me think of this illustration from Will James's Smoky.

I hope this Smoky the Cow Horse thing is not going to be a common theme throughout his life.....

So, I decided to do more work after lunch. We headed down the aisle with his head down, on a loose lead, and I thought "oh good, he's going to be calm and steady now". WRONG.

We went through all the same antics. The shying, the shoulder bulling, the balking, the Levade. I try to get a few moments of orderly behavior and call it quits. Today we have lost our "Whoa". It is impossible to discipline him at this point. I ask for "whoa", he bulls into me with his shoulder, dances in a circle... I tug on the shank, stick the butt of the whip in his shoulder and shove him against the wall.."WHOA". Ace gets all upset rearing a bit and trying to flee. Why? Because #1 he hasn't been paying attention so he has no idea why he's in trouble, therefore #2 I must be "mean" and "attacking" him.... gee this is going well. I manage to get the chain off him between being bitten and shoved at. I'm done. Go do what ever it is you feel is so important.

Ace takes off in a cloud of dust making several laps around the arena. When I leave, he is at the gate again, bucking and kicking in place, whinnying and generally throwing a fit. Just like he was when I got here. Nice to see you too. Will this EVER stop?

The Showdown at the Not OK Corral

Over the summer, I spent two weeks take home pay on a used pipe round pen. Then, I spent about half that again to buy these rather ingenious Panel Caps to fill the joints and make it safe for Knucklehead who must always rear up and ride his mother around piggyback like a fool. I did all this so that Copy and Ace could have the benefit of grazing in the lush hayfield now that they have trampled down both of their run-ins. This gesture of kindness was pretty much wasted on the unappreciative horses. Well, at least on Copy.




Mom and I led Copy and Ace out to the hayfield. Acey was quite well behaved considering this was the longest walk away from the barn he's ever taken, and it was unknown territory. He sort of led me, but there was no biting, bolting, rearing or carrying on. He was as good as you can expect a young fella to be. Copy, on the other hand, shuffled through her deck of possible personalities and chose "Displeased Herd-Bound Crazymare". This was not helped by William P. who was so jealous seeing his two women walk off out of sight with other horses that he spent the entire time at his window calling for us all to come back.


Copy refused to settle in and graze. She ran the fence because she was suddenly way too far away from the barn, and her barnmates (who mostly don't like her anyway because of her persnickety attitude).




Ace, besides being influenced by Crazymare, was overjoyed at his new playpen with the wide open sky and wonderful view. He would have been running laps anyway.


I finally went in and caught Copy hoping that having her on a rope would settle her in and allow Ace to calm down. She did take a few bites, but told me that in her opinion, the grass here smelled funny. Ace, despite being excited about his new found freedom, and covered in flies since his mother's antics had stirred up and attracted every facefly for a mile, did do some grazing and explored his new "corral" and seemed to say it was OK by him.


After awhile Copy got impatient with me, and the funny smelling grass, and decided to get pushy, stomp around and paw. She did her best to express her opinion that this "corral" was beneath her dignity, not properly placed, and rather a waste of her valuable time. At this point, I was pretty fed up with Ms. Picky Pants. When I snapped her across the back with the lead rope to straighten her out, she threw her head way up and looked down her nose at me in her signature look of scandalised innocence which I find to be the single most entertaining expression I've ever seen on a horse. Even when I'm really really annoyed with her, which I really really was.

At least Ace enjoyed his romp.

Raging Hormones... Oh Vet Where Are YOU?!?

Ace's impending castration has been put off until Thursday, and we can't wait! When I arrived at the barn today, Mom had tried to give Copy and Ace their lunch in a tub in the run in area, and Copy IS.DONE.SHARING. She had her Alpha-Bitch hat on, and Ace was pretty frustrated. He's not used to her telling him no. I went and got a separate pail for Ace and called him inside. That went OK, but he was already ticked off and hormonal, and I could read his little face every time it came out of the bucket..."hmmm, should I bite you're shoulder or just clip you in the knee cap?" I kept wagging my finger at him and reminding him to "be nice". Since he had been running around like a fool, the biting flies were after him making everything worse, so I gave up on the grain and went for a bottle of fly repellent.

In the meantime, Copy came back inside, and the struggle was on again. As I tried to spray Copy, Ace came at her from every direction. When he draped himself over her back and grabbed her withers I realised the only way to diffuse this situation was a "time-out". I went back for a rope, caught the wicked little shit, sprayed him, and tied him to the wall. Peace and Tranquility settled over the barn. Ace has given up trying to pull loose when he's mad, and has been applying himself to learning how to untie knots. He stood casually on three legs and fiddled with the knot while I groomed Copy. Ahhhh peace. What a lovely thing. Copy twisted each leg around showing me where the worst itches were, and I got her nicely polished up.

Then I went back to Ace. He is already a lot better about having his underpinnings worked on, and he got a good rubbing and polishing as well. When I turned him loose, the little rascal grabbed the rag and knocked the brushes down, which spooked him so he darted off with the rag in his mouth. Then he thought the rag was chasing him, so he started to really run forgetting to drop the rag, which was still after him. It chased him all the way outside before he accidentally dropped it and got away from it. ***sigh*** ...children. When I left, they were casually standing around like the whole lunchtime debacle was a distant memory. Thank Heaven!

Edited to add photo and video from Saturday. Ace had just had a successful loading lesson and all was still under control.

Naptime

What a sap!

I went in to worm Copy today while His Highness was taking his afternoon nap. Nothing disturbs naptime. When I scratched his neck, he sprawled right out. He's fun when he's laying down. Even if he starts to get up you can grab him and flatten him and he let's you do whatever you want to. Sort of like a 200 pound dog. After naptime, we had a quick tying lesson. The door was open to the pipe corral, and Copy went outside, but Ace knew he was tied, and didn't test he rope at all. Good Boy!