I need a routine!

I feel like, especially lately, I've been running from dusk to dawn with no breaks and I still feel like I'm getting nothing done.

These weirdos have nothing to do with me getting nothing done. NOTHING.

While I did get some riding in while hubby was away, he came home last Wednesday and it took until this weekend for me to get back on the horses. Both of the riding girls (Arya and Bailey) were a little squirrely and unmotivated; clearly they need a program. I am also suffering from similar effects, so it's time to set some goals and do what I love with some direction. 

Arya's leg still has the tiniest amount of thickening/swelling and I haven't done standing wraps or bute recently. She's still sound, and happy, and a gigantic pig. I haven't been jumping her, but I think I feel comfortable slowly ramping her up in her work; maybe not in duration, but in days. She can do good work for 20-25 minutes and be done; we also have some newly discovered work to do outside of the arena. I rode her out the gate to talk to hubby and she wouldn't go back in, so I had to get off and have a discussion about forward and going and things before getting back on. She doesn't hold grudges, though, so once we were back in the ring she went back to work. I do appreciate that quality in a horse!

Bailey has been doing some jumping our last 2/3 rides; she also rode down the road with a friend. The jumping has been enthusiastic but needs some work; I find she's diving down a few strides out to the base and I am going to try a waterford to see if that works to give me back her face/some control before I start shopping for a loop ring gag or elevator bit of some sort. It could be fitness related, but she's doing it so consistently that I'm thinking she's just going "FUN JAHMPS" and doesn't want to be managed. We went on a trail ride with the neighbor and she was shockingly sane and ok to ride, despite getting eaten alive by deer flies. She started off the ride with some major stupidity; the neighbor was on a paint with a fly mask on and Bailey couldn't fathom that he was a horse; 5-7 minutes of spooking, rearing and trying to nope on out of there, I got off, made them touch noses, the gelding said "HEY BABY" at her and suddenly everything was fine. Oh, BB.

Foxie hasn't been working; I keep meaning to get her legged up but I've been distracted. I have, however, been delighted with a new product we started using with her; it's called EatMoor by ADM, and it really seems to be working. With the humidity hanging out in the "NopeNopeNope" to "I am breathing water" region, Foxie has been looking rough. She wasn't finishing her grain meals well, and her hay intake isn't nearly on par with either of the other girls, though I know her teeth are good. I introduced the EatMoor last weekend and she's now cleaning up her grain and the supplement (which is a powder like wheat germ, and normally she won't eat powder without a fight) and making a much better dent in her hay. She's looking much less angular and her coat is starting to shine, though she is a really entertaining brindle color from not being sun bleached. The stuff is expensive, so I'm already trying to see if I can find a base amount that I can maintain her on; there don't seem to be many alternatives out there for it, much less cheaper ones, so if anyone knows of something, let me know!

Clean legs!

After two weeks of battle with Arya's leg, I finally broke out the bute.

And in a haze of lack of sleep, guess who didn't even take a damn picture. Enjoy Knox and the girls instead!

And guess who's leg is clean as a whistle?

Eyerolls for ever why didn't I just go straight to the bute??

Either way, I'm treating her like she has a tendon injury and we're rehabbing. We did 10 minutes of walking and 10 minutes of trotting last night, and that's it. We'll slowly increase work, and I will watch that leg with an eagle eye.

In the mean time, I know I'm dredging up a fun debate asking, but do you use "support" boots to protect your horse? Or "strike" type boots? Why? 

(And what are your favorite ones, because shopping).

I own some Pro Choice SMB boots, but not sure they're the best. Or if they do anything.

Lumps and Bumps - What do you do?

We're sliding into home on week 2 of "Single Mother of 5". The puppy is substantially more potty trained than he was. The older dog has been good, but found a neighbor's chicken hiding in our landscaping yesterday... and did his bird dog thing. Whoops. The mares saw the farrier on Monday (and I really like him, he did a great job).

#NOFILTER

Horse wise, beyond the farrier, I've spent a lot of time staring at Foxie's butt and Arya's leg. Foxie has been kind of... lean lately. And I can't tell if it's a food thing, or a "I haven't been worked in ages why would I have muscle" thing or what. She doesn't actively eat as much as the younger horses, but even when given a regular hay net vs a slow feed net doesn't "clean up" her usual serving of hay. I tried a couple of days of electrolytes  - no visible difference, but lots of pee - and am doing a course of Sand Clear just to make sure I'm covering all my bases before I increase her grain or add something like rice bran. I've been giving her a flake of higher quality hay in with the regular stuff, but she's still wasting plenty (I can't tell if she's dropping it or sorting it out) of hay, so I feel like I need to increase her night feed instead of adding more hay. I just want the butt to stop looking so... angular. So she probably needs to go back into a lunge routine again, too.

Arya's leg has also been a problem; the girls farted around and she did a whole lot of food-aggressive chasing on Sunday night before hubs left (I was late to feed) and Monday night she had two diagonally swollen legs. The front went down the first night and has stayed down. The left hind, however, is becoming a far too familiar friend. I've been wrapping her in BOT and feeding extra MSM; so far she's been sound, and most days the swelling goes entirely down with a BOT standing wrap over night and re-appears throughout the day when she's out wearing a normal fly wrap.

She's been sound, so I've done some light riding a few days and let her canter a bit during our last ride since we've been sticking to walk/trot only the other rides. We ride in support boots with liniment, and cold hose after. The darn swelling just won't go away, though. It looked pretty amazing this morning - I finally broke down and gave her a gram of bute last night, and another this morning. I'm interested to see what the leg looks like by turn in time tonight. Maybe I can be done doing standing wraps!

Legs. oldest top left, newest bottom right.

It makes me wonder, though; what would you do? When do you call a vet? If it's tendon related, I feel like I'm following the usual instructions - cold hosing, wraps, keeping her from stomping the leg to smithereens and while maybe a vet might not recommend riding, I feel like I'm keeping her stretching and from doing too much running in the pasture. To be honest... I don't want to pay for a vet bill right now. I will if I need to, but I don't want to. You know how it is.

We're all still (mostly) in tact despite me being all by my lonesome, and I'll call it a win!

The Supplement Game: A Blog Hop

This blog hop is right up my alley; I've been enjoying feeding my horses myself, and they do get supplements (though I am trying to keep it simple). I'll lay out what I feed and what I supplement with. Here are some folks who are also jumping on the bandwagon - or started it:

https://diyhorseownership.com/supplements-bloghop/
https://codexdressage.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-meds.html
https://leothesaddlebred.blogspot.com/2017/07/supplements-blog-hop.html


Feed wise, I am a Purina person. It's always been available where I've been, and I've had nothing but good results. Foxie and Arya, being hard keeper OTTBs, get Purina Ultium, while Bailey recently got swapped over to Purina Strategy Healthy Edge. I was feeding her the Senior Active, but since it's lower calories and is usually the same price as Ultium, I decided I either needed to find something cheaper with less calories, or I needed to just keep her on Ultium, too.


Ultium is 1900 calories per pound, and with a reasonable NSC, it's my go-to for hard keepers. It costs about .48/lb to feed. Strategy Healthy edge is 1300 calories per lb and has a slightly higher NSC. It costs about .38/lb to feed.

Supplement wise, I've gone off smartpaks since coming home. Foxie has been on a host of supplements over the years, but the one that everyone gets is MSM. Foxie has left powder behind before, so she gets pellets, and the other two don't seem to leave anything behind so they've been getting powder/granules- in part because it was a cheap way to get free shipping and I'd use it. Pellets are .26/day to feed (one scoop) and the granules are about .11/day to feed (one scoop).  The pellets are a bit pricy, so I'm planning to see if I can swap Foxie over to granules and have her get enough. I could double dose her at the same cost that way. Arya has had some swelling, so she's been getting a double dose of MSM this week, but I will try to price off the baseline and not deal with all of my little adjustments.

Arya is also getting Mare Magic; I tried it for Bailey and didn't think it helped her, but I think it does kind of take the edge off of Arya. Maybe. It's .25/day so we shall see.

 Arya came with a sample of TractGuard and while she got it for about a week and a half, she's naturally such a good drinker that the electrolytes were causing her to pee constantly. She's a good eater, too, so I've been trusting the slow feeders to keep her tummy filled and ulcer-free.

The only other supplement I give regularly is Foxie's Equiox. I'm excited that there is now an on-label rx for Foxie's meds (she was previously getting Previcox prescribed off-label, as they are dog pills), and they cost a few cents less per pill, too, which is nice. Foxie gets one pill a day to manage the pain from her suspensory injury; 1.28/day. As of yesterday, I've been giving Foxie the TractGuard, as she seems dehydrated as it's been so hot. It was free, so might as well try!

The girls have slow feed nets in Hay Hoops in their stalls, which I fill with grass or grass/alf hay each night. They are currently out on pasture from 5:30am - 8pm or so, which I supplement with hay, as, due to some property problems, we can't use any of the other pastures due to hidden and horrible holes. We're planning to rest the pasture for a few weeks (and to spray down the weeds) so the girls will probably be getting a round bale to eat on during the day instead of pasture.

So, to feed them their grainfoods and supplements, here's the breakdown:

FOXIE
3 lbs Ultium (.48/lb)
1 scoop MSM pellets (.26/day)
1 Equiox pill (1.28/day)
TOTAL: 2.95/day

ARYA
3 lbs Ultium (.48/lb)
1 scoop mare magic (.25/day)
1 scoop MSM (.11/day)
TOTAL: 1.80/day

BAILEY:
3 lbs Strat HE (.38/lb)
1 scoop MSM (.11/day)
TOTAL: 1.25/day

Grand total: 6.00/day

The girls eat ~1.5 bales of hay a day between inside and out, so let's add that in for kicks and giggles. I'll round it to 2, as I have some bales that cost a bit more, and some days it's more like 2 than 1. 2 3.50 bales is 7$, so 13$ total.

If we count a month as, say, 26 days, that's about $340 to feed three horses. That's less than board for 1 horse in my area, so that's not bad at all! I'm not counting shavings in this post, but I'm still hitting my stride there; I have two super messy horses and have been trying all sorts of shavings brands to find what I like. So far, I've found that the smaller the flake - or the finer the sawdust, the better. EZ Pick is a common brand, but it's expensive. I think I'm liking the bags my hubby brought home for me from the place we buy feed from, but the jury is still kind of out if they're fine enough. I'm also experimenting with how I clean stalls. Bailey, for example, poops and pees generally around the edges of her stall, and also stall walks, so mounding the shavings in the center means she only pushes out some of them, and only some become horribly soiled and gross from her walking (though the walking itself has gotten so much better since she came home). I'm trying the same method with Arya; both of them are messy and involve picking and shaking since they stir the poo in to the shavings in individual pieces so there are rarely piles to pick up whole. I get the major pieces that way, but their shavings kind of live in a baseline of "good enough" clean, since I'm not going to throw out shavings that are "darkened". I pick out pee spots religiously, and need to find something to help cut down on the pee smell, but for now... things are going pretty good.

I'll probably check in on this regularly, because it's actually been interesting, not nauseating to look at how much I spend!

Lunchtime Sanity Check

Today is the first day of a big test/adventure for me; I'm calling it that in an attempt to be obnoxiously optimistic. Why do I need to be optimistic? Because as of today, I'm a militarily-single mother to 5. Including a puppy with the bladder the size of a teaspoon.

The big brown boy is still a little dismayed, but is enjoying having a brother (though he's too little for rough wrestling still). His name is Knox, and he's a love. He also is a poo and pee ninja, but we're working on it.

The three girls haven't been getting a ton of work; Arya has been ridden once since I got home from SLC and needs a lot more saddle time in general. BB has been ridden... twice? since my last post? including a day I got on her with the bareback pad just to prove to myself I could. I didn't canter, and the trot was so bouncy omg. But I didn't fall off. Arya is working on steering and stopping and not hanging one's mouth open. She's still food aggressive, though some "privacy curtains" between her and Bailey have prevented any wall damage other than the initial time she majorly fucked up the wall between her and Bailey right in front of me and hubs.

Foxie still needs to be put into work, but that may not happen until Hubs is home. He's away at AT for two weeks, which means that the farm is MINE! HAHA! Except not. It also means that I have the 10 week old puppy, a lot of lawn to mow and lots of chores to do all by myself. It's going to be a ton of work, and I'm already exhausted and hubs hasn't even landed at AT yet. My stress levels went through the roof yesterday; a storm rolled in, my horses were bolting around their paddock fighting because I was an hour late to pick stalls and feed, Foxie shredded a fly boot, everyone was a hot mess... it wasn't my best day in a while.

But right now, with two shorthairs snuggling on the dog bed and my belly full of lunch, I'm feeling pretty ok. Mowing and chores and hopefully riding later will be another adventure, but hopefully I can keep it together the next two weeks. Cross your fingers that my boss is understanding and lets me work from home so I can keep this ship sailing (and the puppy on the potty training train).