Mom Mom sent me a link to a new product from Platinum Performance, called Platinum Metabolism Support. The ingredients, Magnesium and Chromium, are common in metabolic support supplements like Quiessence. Platinum has good research info available, including a study of Glucosamine in metabolically challenged horses. I didn’t...
A friend of mine just bought her first Arabian mare. A fine bay Arabian mare with white socks and a star. She asked me to help her with choosing a saddle for her mare, Sarafina. Sarafina is currently ridden in an older Wintec dressage saddle (the type...
She was fantastic even though we had a lot of crazy stuff going on. The neighbor (who lives in a rental trailer behind the two back pastures) decided to start shooting practice just when Kasane and I were starting ground work. We ended up doing a series...
Tack shop sale was dangerous. Picked up some gorgeous, comfy Stubben reins. They are rubber reins but the rubber is soft like silk and no thicker than the half-inch reins. The ends of the reins have clips on them: perfect for training rides (but not something you’d...
Farrier came out today. The weather has been so dry all of the bits of foot crud (thrush) that the mares had were gone. Their feet looked great. Isis and Prize were very well mannered with the farrier. Isis rubbed his head with her lip, which the...
Stella had her regular appointment for fluids this morning. She is still down 4 ounces from three weeks ago. She now weighs 4 pounds, 4 ounces. I don’t know if there is anything I can do to help keep weight on her. She’s lost a lot of...
A while back, I wrote about Isis’ odd lumps behind her front legs. The vet came out in mid-July and biopsied one of the lumps on the right side. Test results finally came back last week: the lumps are granulomas. In other words, the lumps are scar...
The vet said that the lumps on Isis’ sides might be three things: allergic reaction that turned into hard bumps, sarcoids, or lymphoma. The vet gave Isis a local pain block so the lump on her right side could be biopsied. The test results should come back...
Last weekend the weather was gorgeous and Isis, who has trouble dealing with the heat, was feeling frisky. I free lunged her in the big ring and after a few minutes, the tail came up and she started snorting. The snort, the prance, and the bounce in...
Isis has always had skin issues: rain rot, fly bite allergies, scratches, etc. For the most part, these things last a little while, are treated, and then resolve. For the past two months or more, Isis has had lumps under her legs, right where the girth goes....
Just before I started this blog in 2004, Isis had a record year for Bad Things. Okay, not as bad as later years, but up until that time it was Bad. Laminitis, rain rot, sprained tendon, and dew poisoning. A reader asked a question about Isis’ February...
I had a riding lesson up at Mom’s on Saturday. I rode Piccolo (Hanoverian warmblood schoolmaster horse) in a dressage lesson with Lauara, one of Mom’s new instructors. She was very good. She explained how to do a half-pass properly by pushing with my inside leg every...
After over a week of being away from the barn, I finally got back out there on Sunday. Sunday morning I realized just how much stress I’d been living with because I felt shaky and off kilter. The best solution when I feel like that is to...
I’ve had a riding lesson for the past two Saturdays. It has been a roller coaster where my riding skills fluctuated from newbie to advanced. Had my skills degraded? Muscle tone wasn’t as good as it had been in 2008 when we were able to ride more....
Yesterday I did an experiment: I lunged Isis and Prize together in their paddock (which is also a backup ring). A few nights ago, I did a similar experiment except I lunged one horse at a time and swapped between them with both of them loose in...
