Mr. Magnum Woes and Strange Shoeing

Mr. Magnum's Status: Stallbound

My Status: Nervous to let strange people drive nails into my horse

Mr. Magnum is on minor setback three since we arrived. After surviving 16 hours in the trailer with me as his questionable pilot he cut his face in his stall the first night, night two he bashed his head against something and then had a swollen eye for three days, now we have made it to day eight and he sprung a shoe and stepped back down on the clip. Lovely. We soaked in the barn's soaking boot, which went slightly better than soaking him in a bucket like I tried a few weeks ago at the Otterbarn. Instead of throwing himself out of the x ties he just stood there and shook; he would move every foot but the one with the boot, the sloshing noise was too much to handle. Then we wrapped it up in vet wrap and red duct tape - he looks stunning, but at least it hides the chunk of missing hoof wall that the other clip gauged out. One journey to Walmart later, since that's essentially what the town is built around, and we have our own epsom salts, diapers and hot pink zebra print duct tape for the makings of the classiest wrap of all time. I would love to know what the cashier thought I was getting into tonight. Hopefully the clip didn't hit anything and hopefully the farrier can get to us soon, I expect we'll have to wait until after Xmas though. 

While I'm on the subject of feet, the horses here are almost all barefoot in back and they won't turn horses out together if they have back shoes. There are several horses with the flakiest feet I've ever seen, even in front with shoes on, despite the crazy diet that is supposed to keep them nice.The barefoot horses are also chipped and covered in surface cracks. Is the all the sand bad for their feet? Poor genetics on a farm where all the horses are from the same lines? Missing a key ingredient in their diet? It's very strange to see so many poor quality hooves. Most of the horses are in natural balance shoes that look like this http://www.ecis.com/~hplove/clo/heum9807.html . Many of them also have pour in pads or green rubber pads underneath the NB shoes. One of them was in a trailer accident, and in addition to living in standing wraps at night he wear's hind shoes with a closed heel that extend behind the hoof about two inches; they're possibly the strangest shoes I've ever seen. Just looking at them I would expect the horse to have an extreme lameness issue but he still works grand prix movements in them. 

It's extra sad that Magnum is off, because he was warming up wonderfully today, we started with the same exercise that TGT had us doing yesterday, although we never even made it to transitioning between trot and canter, but he was giving the base of his neck both directions with a soft jaw and a low neck in what could almost be considered a stretchy frame. I feel like an idiot talking to him so much when he's good, but everyone here is a chatty rider and big on vocal praise. I heard him clip himself hard, so it's probably time to invest in a pair of bell boots - although none of these velcro on kind that everyone here is so fond of, he can where pull ons like the rest of the horses owned by lazy people. Plus, I think velcro on's make everyone look like a western gamer less the neon. He never went lame, he just lost power; it felt the same as the few days before he abscessed just before Thanksgiving, not quite lame, but not quite right. I really want to enter the Ocala show in mid January, I still need to switch over his USEF and USDF, but now I don't even want to send in entries until I know this isn't going to abscess or do something awful - entries are due on the 2nd, so we have a bit of time. 

I also took my new jumping project pony out on the trails today, which is really a 20 minute field loop. I'm amused that I came to a dressage farm and somehow managed to acquire the only jumping horse here as my project when I'm really not brave at all over fences. Then I rode Tantz, in draw reins, who was the softest, nicest creature to ride. TGT gave me a short lesson on him, we warmed up in a stretchy, very round frame transitioning trot/canter/trot often and switching directions regularly throughout our warmup, the goal was for him to get deeper in his transitions. Then she had us collecting through our corners and going into a medium canter down the long sides, then we spiraled in around her, haunches far in, taking his nose to the outside for the thought of counter bend when I didn't get enough haunches in, and collecting so much that I felt like we could have moved into a pirouette. We spiraled that back out and TGT says very casually to go for three changes across the diagonal, and he did four time changes like a schoolmaster. We also half passed at the trot and canter from the corner to X and back, doing flyings on X.  We also worked a bit of medium trot up the long sides and across the diagonal and ended in a stretchy frame.  I definitely want to ride him again, he was great under saddle - even if he is a monster on the ground. 

As to the automatic waters, they've been shutting off the water at night to the barns since the pipes aren't insulated, today they couldn't make it come back on to one of the barns so we had to haul water to fill their automatic waters since the barn doesn't even own enough buckets to hang in each stall. I've always wanted automatic waters; I generally think dragging hoses and watering is a giant waste of time and manpower. However, after a week of having no idea how much my horse is drinking and then dealing with them when they break (which I hadn't even noticed, because the waterers are in the back of the stall and are not very visible), I no longer think they are the greatest invention ever and perhaps the money spent on them is better spent on paying someone else to fill up your buckets. On a high note about them, Magnum can now take a drink and not follow it up by throwing himself across his stall as it makes its filling up noise. Baby steps.

This is how they pipe all the water into each stall - nothing too fancy but it gets the job done as long as its warmish.