No Big News

Today has been a very crappy day and I now no longer have any big news to share with you, so please disregard any mention of it.  Tomorrow is Chrome's fourth birthday and I'm just looking forward to that.  Tomorrow will be a better day.  :)

Ride 29 & Hoof Pictures

Since Faran hogs all of the hay I let Chrome eat his while tied to a tree (he has to be tied or he tries to eat grass instead) so that he gets enough.  It's convenient for grooming, cleaning hooves, taking pictures, tacking up (I rode bareback today though), etc. He's so shiny and the picture above is in the shade!

I rode for twenty minutes.  I cut the ride short because I thought he was sore from his trim on Wednesday.  It felt like he was short stepping when going down a slope, but when I got off and led him he was walking fine.  We've had a lot of rain though and his toes were digging into the dirt which made it feel like he was short stepping.  It's possible he is still sore, but I can't see anything when hand walking...

I also figured out why he's acting balky.  I thought it was because he wanted to try to eat grass, but he was balking on the driveway too.  After watching him for half an hour (while he ate his hay) I finally realized what it was.  It's because his legs itch!!!  I inspected his legs and they are covered in bug bites (or maybe sweet itch).  He was literally chewing on his legs every minute or two.  So you can imagine why he kept trying to stop while I was riding.  When I wouldn't let him lower his head (because I thought he was trying to get grass) he would walk on and stop again.  Poor guy.  Anyone have any suggestions for his itchy legs?  I'm going to start his Neem oil treatments again since the gnats are apparently back out already (normally this doesn't start bothering him until July or August!).  That will prevent new bites.  I need something to stop the itching from his current bites though.... it might be time to buy an antihistamine....

Anyway, back to the ride.  In the above picture we were standing in the grass and I left the reins on his neck.  He did not once try to eat grass or walk off.  Good boy!!  A+  It's good practice for standing still and patience though.  I bet you can't guess what happened next.... I put my camera away, picked up the reins by the buckle with my left hand and took my cell phone out of my pocket to check how long we'd been riding and.... he spooked!! This was the first time he's spooked with me on him.  Something from the neighbor's yard behind us spooked him, but all he did was jump forward (and boy does he have some JUMP when he wants to!) and trotted off.  He stopped when I told him to and everything was fine.  It startled me though because I wasn't paying attention, had the reins by the buckle and we were bareback... good reminder to pay attention while on horseback!!  He is such a good boy though.  :D

Now, on to hooves... I probably should do this in a separate post since I've already asked one question (about the itching), but I am sharing the big news tomorrow and Chrome's birthday is Sunday, so it would be Monday before I could post about them, so you just get one huge post for today.  :D

Here were his hooves before the trim...

Now you can see why I was practically begging my farrier to come out!  That's a LOT of growth in less than eight weeks!

 

Look at how much hoof she took off!

 

And these are from after the trim...

 

 

 Sorry about the grass.  I meant to get some on the driveway and forgot.

 Sorry the pictures suck and I only showed the left front.  I will try to do better pictures soon.  Anyway, it may not be obvious in the pictures, but my farrier does very little rasping at all and won't bevel the hooves (even though I've asked her to), so I bevel them myself (but haven't yet because I wanted to get pictures).  So what is you opinion on the trim?  How does his hoof look afterward?  What does it need (besides a bevel)?  Thanks for any advice!

Ride 28

I talked to my mom about Chrome and she thinks I need to exercise him everyday instead of giving him days off, but not necessarily riding him everyday because sitting around for a whole day is causing the stifle to get worse.  So yesterday I hand walked him around the property for thirty minutes, up and down the dirt pile, over all the fallen limbs/trees in the pasture, up and down the driveway, etc.  Mom was right!  After the walk he was moving MUCH better!  :)  So I'm going to keep riding every other day and hand walk him on the other days.

Today was ride day.  It was hot (well hotter than I'm used to after winter lol) and I haven't been sleeping because of my allergies, so I was feeling really lazy.  In fact I didn't want to ride at all.  So I rode bareback around the yard and I'm glad I did because we had fun.  He was being awesome... well he was still balky at times when walking through the grass (he walks out great on the driveway, it's just because he wants to graze, but he still doesn't try to dive into the bridle, so it's okay), but we worked through that.

We walked around for ten minutes and then did some trotting.  He trotted the length of both driveways (my grandparent's driveway branches off of ours) and did so well!  He LOVES trotting!  The great thing is he happily comes back down to a calm walk when asked.  And he was doing whoa perfectly!!  And standing patiently for fairly long periods of time (I was chatting with my mom and being lazy lol).

We also worked on backing a little and yielding his hindquarters, but I didn't want to do too much because his stifle is still locking.  The ride was twenty five minutes long.

My farrier finally came out and trimmed him.  She took off a good three quarters of an inch of hoof!!!!  I can't believe how quickly his hooves are growing.  I asked her several times to come early and she wouldn't so I guess I'm going to have to start trimming him myself between trims.  I don't mind doing it, but I just have to be very careful with my back.  I'll post hoof pictures when I can.  I didn't take before pictures of all of his hooves (just left front) because.... once again I was being lazy.  Sleep deprivation sucks lol.

Anyway I have big news soon.... I'll post when I can.  :)