Feeling Too Good

                                               by Laura Crum

            I am happy that Gunner, my 33 year old horse, feels good these days. But lately it’s been sort of a problem. The old boy wants to charge around, bucking and spinning and galloping up and down his pen at the drop of a hat. He especially likes to do this when I remove the neighbor horse from his pen. Gunner isn’t really worried—and there’s a horse on the other side of him. It’s just a good excuse to pitch a fit.

            The thing is, Gunner was never known for being sensible. A trooper yes, no quit in him. Friendly, kind, cooperative, playful…check. A heck of an athlete, yes. A tremendous amount of cow, super trainable…all of the above. But, sensible, no. My Sunny horse is sensible. Gunner is and always was the sort of horse who saw horse eating monsters everywhere. I believe the new term is a “sensitive, reactive” horse. I just called him a big spook. Also a goofball.

            So its not really surprising that Gunner, at the advanced age of 33, will choose to gallop madly down his sloping pen, slide to a stop at the bottom, spin round and race to the top, neighing wildly. Lather, rinse, repeat. All because the neighbor horse is out of his pen, grazing. Even though Gunner can, of course, see his buddy. He can also see the other horses. He just ain’t sensible. He LIKES getting all worked up.

            I watch these shenanigans, holding my breath. It’s fun to see that Gunner can still move so well when he wants to. But I fear these downhill charges will eventually result in the old, arthritic horse piling it up. I picture him breaking his leg or his neck, and yep, I go fetch his buddy and put the horse back in his corral. That’s how big a wimp I am.

            On the other hand, it’s not fair to Plumber, the buddy, if he never gets out. To my chagrin, I find that horses are very aware if they didn’t get their “turn.” The accusing stares and plaintive nickers that follow me when one horse does not get his turn out time speak louder than words. Plumber is a very people oriented horse and he lets me know he wants his fair share of the attention and grazing. So a week or so ago I turned Plumber out for awhile, and watched Gunner.

            It had just rained and the ground was slick. I had my misgivings. But I had not given Plumber a turn out in a couple of days. What’s a good horse owner to do?

            For awhile Gunner seemed OK. He could see Plumber grazing nearby. But then Plumber moved a little ways away, and the long unhappy neighs began coming from Gunner. He started trotting up and down the top end of his corral, sliding with every footfall. Shit, I thought. It’s too slippery.

            I caught Plumber and hustled back with him. But before I could get there, Gunner loped across the pen, slid to a stop, slipped, went down, and piled it up on the ground. He thrashed on his side, and seemed unable to get up, and my heart went to my throat. I will admit that I screamed, “Gunner!” like a teenage girl. I thought he had broken something.

            I have seen horses break their legs; I have seen them break their necks. I know what can happen. For that moment while my old horse thrashed on the ground, all these horrible scenarios flashed through my mind. And then Gunner got his legs under him and heaved himself to his feet. He limped off, but he was clearly not broken.

            I put the reluctant Plumber back in his pen and kept watching Gunner, who moved around and pretty soon walked out of his limp. He was Ok then. But my problem was bigger than ever.

            Because now I know that I am risking Gunner getting hurt if I turn Plumber out. And I just don’t want the old boy to die because I took the risk.

            What to do? I had the bright idea I might turn Gunner and Plumber out together. I don’t usually do this because my property is 1) Not perimeter fenced the whole way around, and 2) Full of places (like by the house or inside the shop or haybarn) where the horses COULD go, but I don’t want them to. There is good grazing on the verges of the riding ring, along the driveway, and in the barnyard area, and the horses usually stay where they belong. I shut (and lock) the front gate, and the back of the property (not fenced) is very steep and brushy and no horse has ever tried to escape that way (in twenty years). But…

            As a safety precaution, I turn the horses loose one at a time. That way they don’t tend to run and play and get in trouble, and I’m sure that the loose horse will not leave the others. However, I decided to try Plumber (24) and Gunner (33) loose together. Surely two old horses could graze peacefully side by side in the sunshine. Right?

            Bad idea. The very first thing they did was start farting around. Nipping each other, squealing, trotting off together, charging up the hill to the riding ring like a little cavalry brigade. Not at all what I had in mind. They just wouldn’t settle down and graze. They were having too much fun. Never mind that they can play around and nip each other in their side-by-side corrals and this was their one chance to graze on green grass. Nope, they had to go crashing about. And then the old farts wouldn’t let me catch them. Again, having too much fun. I did eventually get them caught and put away…and that was the last time I tried that.

            So now I feel kind of stuck. I turn Henry out.

                              I turn Sunny out.

                              I turn Gunner out.

            And then I catch Plumber and hand graze him, keeping him close to the corrals so that Gunner doesn’t freak out. It’s a solution, but not an ideal one. Plumber would prefer to be free, and I would prefer not to babysit him. But I worry about the downside. What would you do?

            

Hidden Danger

by Laura Crum

This post is in response to something that just happened to some friends of mine. I want to put it out there because it exposes the very real danger presented by a common horse keeping practice. This practice is “normal” for many folks, who will also tell you it has great benefits. It is something I don’t believe in, and I have once again been reminded of the reason why.

My friends have a very classy horse program. They have a big barn and a couple of beautifully fenced, well maintained pastures. Their riding horses are stalled at night and turned out in these pastures during the day. Sounds great, right?

Well, maybe. Last week, one of their gentle geldings kicked another and broke his leg. The injured horse had to be euthanized. The people were heartbroken. And this sort of injury is far more common than most folks seem to be aware.

These two horses had been pasture mates for years. The odds are they were only playing, but no one knows, since no one saw the incident. The owners came home to find the one horse three legged. The vet they use is my friend, and when we were talking about how sad it was he said something to me which he had said many years ago. And I never forgot.

Most of the broken legs he sees occurred when a horse was kicked by another horse while loose in a field or corral. Very often the horse which did the kicking was wearing hind shoes. And almost always this occurred in a situation where the horses were not constantly loose together.

I have turned my horses out over the years and I still keep my retired horses turned out in a pasture. I have never had a serious injury, knock on wood. But these horses are out together 24/7—I very carefully avoid any taking them in and putting them back out stuff. When I turned my riding horses out, I put them out on grass for a few uninterupted months and then put them back in their corrals to begin riding them. I 100% do not agree with the practice of continually separating horses and then turning them out together again. It is a recipe for injuries. Particularly if the horses wear hind shoes. I absolutely will not turn out any horse with other horses wearing hind shoes.

Now I know many folks will pooh-pooh this and say they have done the turnout thing for years with no ill results. And that’s exactly what my friends said when we were discussing this one day. But now they have lost a horse. And though I am very sad for them, and for anyone else who suffers a serious horse injury this way, I have to say that the frequently stated reason for this practice—its so good for the horses—does not cut any ice with me. Its good for them until they get badly hurt. And then its not so good. And they do get badly hurt. I have known upwards of half a dozen horses among my own acquaintances that suffered broken legs this way. Let alone all the other injuries I’ve heard of due to being kicked in turnout time. I have personally known two horses that were killed when they were driven through the fence by an aggressive pasture mate (not my horses—belonged to friends).

People often justify daily turnout in a group by saying that horses “naturally” live in herds and work through these herd dynamics. The truth is that horses in a consistent herd situation develop a comfortable hierarchy. They are together all the time, and they move around a lot. They very rarely need to contest things, and even their play is just some friendly galloping around. I have observed this often with my pastured horses.

Contrast this to the daily turnout routine. The horses are separated and penned up every day, giving each horse the chance to frown at his neighbor from a safe little stall and ponder whether he might actually be the tougher horse. Then he spends twelve hours getting zero exercise. When turn out time comes around he has plenty of pent up energy and perhaps some ideas about world domination. And all this has to be re-sorted out with his herd. Even if the horses know each other well and are only playing, under the daily turnout regime, the play is often very rambunctious. And horses do get hurt.

In my own case, I keep my horses in big corrals—about 100 by 100, with run in sheds for shelter. One horse to a corral. They are separated by pipe panels. Every horse can touch another horse and play “bite face” through the panels. Every horse can run and buck and play as much as he wants to whenever he wants to. All the horses interact as a herd, going down to doze under the oak trees together, lying down next to each other in the sunshine. But they can’t kick each other.

I turn these horses out on my property to graze most days. But I turn them out one at a time. Turn out time is grazing time. And because they can run around whenever they want and are not balls of pent up energy, they are quite happy to munch grass for a couple of hours, thank you very much.

I realize that I have the luxury to arrange things the way I want because I keep my horses at my own place. And if you board you may not have that luxury. And its certainly better to turn horses out once a day than keep them penned up in a stall 24/7. But I would be very careful about daily turnout with a group. I have seen too many injured horses due to this practice.

Probably many people will not agree with me on this, and that’s fine. But the grief my friends are feeling and the serious injuries I’ve seen and heard about prompted me to write this post. If you do choose to use daily turnout in this way, you should at least be aware of the downside and know the risks of what you are choosing.

I’m happy to hear other opinions on this subject—fire away.