Happy April!

By Gayle Carline
Horse Lover, Author, and Eternal Optimist

Welcome to spring! We have birds nesting in our patio, flowers blooming in our yard, and the horses are all shedding their winter coats. I began contributing to this blog on the fourth Saturday of the month, but over time, I've drifted to the first. Don't know how it happened, but this month, I can give you a post on April Fool's, Easter, or Passover.

Dealer's choice, as they say.

April is a significant month for me. Snoopy was born on the 28th, and two days after his fourth birthday, he broke his leg. Trust me, I remember it well.

Today seems like a good time to re-visit one of those days, either his birth or his injury. Since I am the eternal optimist, I choose the happier of those two. I could tell you the story of Snoopy's birth, but I think I'll let him tell you how it happened:

* * * (Excerpted from FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH: ONE LUCKY MEMOIR)

I don’t remember much about my birth, but when I was little, Mom used to tell me the story of the night I was born. I love Mom. She’s so pretty. She is a bright, bright chestnut, but she has stripes of white hairs on her tummy, a blaze on her face and a big white spot on top of her tail.

Most of all, she has the most beautiful voice I ever heard. It’s soft and low and she would let me snuggle against her every night while she whispered in my ear. She usually told me stories at night. I think she was afraid of the dark, but she never told me that. Instead, she would tell me a story.

“On the night you were born, the sun had just started going down on the most perfect of days. My Gayle came to the ranch early and got me out of the stall. She curried and brushed me and cleaned my hooves. She talked as she groomed me. I love to listen to her. I have listened to all her stories. That day, however, she was talking about me, how big I was and how slow I had become.

“It was true, I felt bigger than any draft horse. My belly was so full of you, I thought I might burst. Gayle walked me around the arena a few times. It was nice in the sunshine, even though I grew tired. She took me back to the barn, where our groom Hilde wrapped my tail so it would not get in the way in case I gave birth that day.

“I’ll be honest with you, Son—I was frightened. You are my one and only baby and I knew you were large. I was afraid I would not be able to push you out. Horses usually have their babies alone, late at night. It is our tradition, from years of being wild. We leave the herd to quietly lie down and foal, then get the baby up and back to the herd as quickly as possible. If it’s not safe to have our baby, we can even hold back the birth until the time is right.

“By early evening, Gayle was still at the ranch. Our trainer, Miss Tina was there, too. I heard Gayle ask Miss Tina if a horse’s water breaks when they give birth. I realized this was my opportunity to have you while they were there to help. I relaxed and my water broke.

“Miss Tina laughed and said, ‘It looks just like that.’”

This is where Mom would stop talking and lick my neck. Sometimes I was asleep by then. If I wasn’t, I would ask, “What happened then?”

She would continue. “I could tell the first time I pushed, there was something wrong. You were stuck. I got up a couple of times and turned around, then lay down again, hoping you were rearranged. I love you, dear, but you were klutzy, even in the womb.

“Miss Tina saw my distress and stepped into the stall. She felt around inside me and found the problem. One of your hooves was folded back. You need both front feet pointed forward in order to slide out. She straightened your hoof, then helped me by pulling. I was already getting tired.

“At last, even Miss Tina was tired, so she told Gayle, ‘Get in here and help out.’ Gayle stepped in to the stall and took one of your legs. Miss Tina held the other. I pushed, they pulled and quick as a racehorse, you were out and cuddled up next to me, like you are now.”

“And Gayle is my MomToo, right?” I’d ask each time.

“Right.”

I loved hearing that story. Of course, I don’t remember any of it as it happened. All I remember is opening my eyes, like I’d been asleep but couldn’t remember the dream. I could feel Mom’s warm body beside me and I could see MomToo in the doorway of the stall. She looked pretty blurry, but I think she was happy.

* * * 

Happy Easter and/or Passover, everyone!

Baby Snoopy (1 month), Frostie, and me.

Happy...

                                                            by Laura Crum

            Spring has really sprung in my garden, and everything is blooming…which makes me very happy.

                                     

            I am currently completely absorbed in my most recent (and most ambitious) garden project. Digging a BIG hole in a perfectly good driveway.

            In the end it’s meant to be a pool, lined with natural stone, where the water is filtered and cleaned by water lilies and reeds rather than chlorine. Because we have a small place, it will be a small pool, more of a water hole, really. But big enough to get in. And just in scale with our very small houses (750 sq feet and 550 sq feet, respectively).

            So, I am not riding much right now. But I hope to get back to it when the pool is finished and see a few more views like this one (from our ride last week).

            As for the rest of you, I hope you are seeing many lovely views through the ears, and I wish you a very happy Easter and a happy spring. Cheers--Laura

The Proof is in the Doing...and Happy Easter!

                                    by Laura Crum

            I read an article the other day that asserted that horses should only carry 10% of their weight. I stopped and thought about it. This would mean that a 1000 pound horse should only carry 100 pounds. Uhmm…half the horses I know, make that a lot more than half, are carrying quite a bit more than 100 pounds. My horse included. Are we abusing them?

            Well, I can’t answer that definitively. But I can give an answer of sorts. Let’s look at Twister. Twister belongs to my friend, Wally. A registered QH, Twister is 15.2 and not particularly heavily built. I haven’t weighed Twister, but I owned a horse named Burt who was 15.3 and built stouter than Twister and Burt weighed 1250. It’s safe to say that Twister does not weigh more than that—I’d guess him to weigh 1200 or a little less.

            Now lets look at Wally. Wally is 6 foot 2 and weighs 230 (I’m sure he wouldn’t like me telling you this). If you look at the 10% rule, Twister should be carrying no more than 120 pounds. Instead he is carrying almost double that. Certainly double that if you include the heavy roping saddle. Is this wrong?

            Below you see Twister and Wally, along with my son and Henry, at the beach. This isn’t a great photo, but it gives you an idea what they look like. Wally does look big on Twister, though they are far from the most extreme examples of this that I have seen.

            Now, to answer the question. Twister is 16 years old. Wally has owned him and ridden him since Twister was 6 years old. Twister has, on average, been ridden three days a week for this entire time. Mostly team roping, some trail riding. So, ten years of steady riding, carrying about 20% of his own weight. Has it hurt him?

            You tell me how you would determine this. I can tell you this. Twister is 100% sound. I’m good at detecting lameness, and this horse has never once been the slightest bit lame (knocking on wood). Not stiff, not body sore, not off…nada. He goes barefoot in the winter and is shod in the summer. He gets nothing to eat but ample grass/alfalfa hay. No supplements, no injections, no Adequan, no Legend, nothing. Never had a chiropractic treatment or anything of that kind. Never had any bute. For ten years.

            Now it’s my contention that, if packing Wally was hard for him, Twister would show some sign of a problem. Sore back, most likely. But he has never once shown any sign of this. In ten years of reasonably hard riding, if packing this much weight was a negative, there should be SOME sign. But there is not. Twister is a free moving, sound, sixteen year old horse, still going strong. Of course, he’s just one individual.

            But I have, over the years, known many horse/rider pairs with a similar weight balance to Twister/Wally, and I have to say that I think the weight is a very small part of the staying sound equation. Horses go lame if they have obvious structural problems (sometimes), they go lame if they are overworked (sometimes), they go lame if they have a genetic predisposition (sometimes), and they go lame because they have a freak accident. I will add that its my belief that horses often go lame if they are not happy, but this is just my own belief, I can’t prove it. I have not seen any correlation between the weight of the rider and a horse going lame.

            Now I believe it is possible for a rider to be too heavy for a given horse. I think this actually has more to do with a horse’s build than with his weight. Our pony, Toby, came from a home where he regularly packed adults. I am sure that Toby weighed less than 1000 pounds, (he was 13.2 hands), but he was sturdily built and stayed absolutely sound until he died at 22 years of cancer.

            So it’s my contention that the idea that a horse should not carry more than 10 percent of his weight is bunk. Anybody else want to weigh in? (And yeah, that pun was intentional…)

            On another note, we have turned on the word verification on this blog because we were getting so much spam. I know a lot of people dislike this, so I’d like to hear your thoughts. Do you find the word verification off-putting enough that you would not comment if you had to jump through that hoop? We are concerned that the spam comments that show up on our posts from time to time may have links that, if clicked on, would put a virus on our reader’s computers. Any thoughts on this?

            And finally, Happy Easter! Look who was outside my kitchen window--could it be?