One of the perks of having a good buddy that is a pro equestrian, is getting no holes barred yearly evaluations of your beloved ponykins. I wasn’t sure what she would originally think of Mr. Simon pants because she is not always a super huge fan of Thoroughbreds. It’s not that they are bad horses, but she’s surrounded by the top hunter/jumper horses in the world and that’s pretty much warmblood nation. Even us OTTB aficionados can admit there are…
Simon got his first adjustment from the Chiropractor yesterday. It’s something we’ve been meaning to do for a while, but the schedule was never lining up. When my trainer texted me yesterday and said the chiro would be out and she thought it would be good for Simon to get done, I agreed with her… even if I will be eating peanut butter and jelly for a bit. Gotta love the timing of paying things for the pony! I wasn’t…
My horse has put me on the equine sex offenders list, and I’m not very sure I can argue with him. Here’s my confession… in 18 years of riding horses I have never cleaned a sheath. I know, I know… you may cast your stones at me. You may call me an awful horse owner…. but it’s true. See, the place I learned to ride taught me excellent horse care. I could muck a stall and cold hose a leg before…
It’s hard not to want to “supplement all the things” when you go to a supplement manufacturer’s website and they have all these amazing claims about different ways to fix your horse. I recently cancelled my SmartPak and decided to switch strategies a bit, only to find myself back again to SmartPak… but let me back up and go to the beginning. When Simon came up lame in January 2013, I decided a joint supplement was in order. I knew…
I’ve been sick for over a week, and am kind of over it. I’d also be lying if I said this sickness had no affect on my mood. I’ve been a little bit more short than I normally would, and when I drove the long trek to the barn and rode even though I didn’t feel good – I needed my horse to be good. And he so wasn’t. To be fair, he was really fresh because I hadn’t been…
When I first acquired Simon, I made a deal with my husband that I would only have a horse if I carried insurance on it. We’re both hard core animal lovers and bleeding hearts, and we knew that if it came down to the choice of saving my horse or going into large amounts of debt… we’d probably go into large amounts of debt. That scared him, so I assured him that insurance was the answer. Now over a year…
A few months ago in late May, I noticed a scab on the outside of Simon’s front right fetlock. He must have nicked it being Simon (because he’s constantly covered in various skin ailments and scabs and bites), and I gave no thought of it. A few days went by, and the scab was still there as well as was hard to pick off. Weird, but it’s better not to go digging into my horse with my fingernails. He probably…
As mentioned yesterday, for the purposes of my research I was pretty much only interested in Simon’s siblings from the same dam. It’s not that his sire isn’t up to snuff, but we all know that most stallions will have gazillions of foals and it’s more common for the foal to have more characteristics of the mother. To find out this info, I pulled Simon’s dam’s pedigree up on pedigrequery.com. It turned up 4 results (including Simon), so I had…