Darkness

I've been missing my horses.  I've spent the last week at home, but I'm gone all day on my latest externship and I leave early and don't get back until after dark.  So it's been over a week since I've seen my horses in the daylight.  Without a barn with lights, it makes it hard to really check on them...but they are all there and upright for every feeding.

And this weekend marks the last cram session for an exam that I hope I'll ever have to do.  I take my national board exam tomorrow.  Wish me luck!

And I'm going to post the transition collages I made for Chico and Catlow that show their progression since I adopted them as yearlings until now.  Can you believe they are 9 years old already!?

Together at last (2)!

 

Cody trots to catch up with Catlow, who moved down the valley to graze.

After separating Stormy out, Chico hurries to catch up with Cody and Catlow.

Stormy makes it back down to the others after I shoo her away, and Chico right away sets in to chase her.  She's not to happy about it...with a swish of her tail.

All the activity gets Catlow riled up too, so she launches into a gallop!  If Catlow is going to run, the whole herd will run!  I love the power in Catlow's launch!

They are all feeling a little sassy!  Well, Catlow and Cody are...I think Stormy is just trying to stay out of Chico's way!

 

 Catlow is really digging in!



Sassy!

My dogs think they should chase the horses as the horses run past and my poor cruciate ligament tear/repair dog, Jasper, trips himself up in the grass and goes head over heals!

Don't worry, Jasper is okay.  It just hurts to see him so debilitated.  I'm pretty sure catching Lyme disease set off his cranial cruciate ligament tears.

The horses get separated.  Stormy ran into the lower pasture and whinnies pitifully to her separated friends.

So they all head down to be together.

Once together, they are still riled up!  I love the tails in the air!

 

 Then they settle down, with Chico and Cody standing side by side, like they used to.  Stormy looks on like she'd really like to be next to her Cody.



I do think that Cody missed Chico.  She touches him affectionately here.

Stormy decides she's had enough of them for awhile and trots up to visit me again.  Sure, maybe she thinks I'll feed her, but she really does seem to be bonding to me!  Every time I come outside, she looks up and stares at me with this penetrating look.  None of my other horses do that!  Griffin used to always notice me and acknowledge me too.

Together at last!

This will be a two parter, just because I have lots of photos to share.

And because I know that it is probably hard to tell all my dark horses apart , especially since they all get darker when their winter coats come in, I'll describe them all quick before we get into it.  Catlow is the easy one...she is the sorrel with the big blaze face.  Then Stormy is the only other horse with any white - she is dark brown (seal brown) with a small crescent on her forehead, a snip, and a white right rear pastern.  Stormy has the darkest coat color and true black mane and tail.  Cody is very similar in color to Stormy except she is more of a smokey color (due to the cream gene on seal brown) and her mane and tail are very dark chocolate.  She is also bigger than Stormy and has no white.  And Chico is the simple bay with no white.  He is actually a little bit of a sooty bay, but compared to the others, he is quite light.

Chico's wound is really healing nicely.  It's hardly even thickened around the fetlock anymore.  It has a nice scab over the ever-shrinking granulation tissue.  I'm so pleased at the stage it's at.

 

So I decided to turn the horses back out together.  It's easier to manage them when they are together.  As it was, the two out in the big pasture weren't getting any mineral because the mineral feeder is in the barn.

 

I knew there would be drama, and of course there was, but not nearly as much as there was the first time I turned Chico out with them all.  That time he was also full of energy from being cooped up in the barn.  This time it was much less excitement, but still a lot to see in the herd interactions.

 

Stormy has this disgusting habit of peeing at horses when she is kicking at them.  I thinks it's a bit of submission thing, but she also tends to show extremely strong heats, especially to horses she hasn't been with.

 

Here she is kicking at Chico and peeing at him at the same time, as he threatens to kick her.

 

Chico tries to go down and chase after Stormy, again, but Cody (dark chocolate colored horse) steps in front of him and cuts him off, threatening to kick him.  Remember, Chico and Cody are usually best buds.

 

 

I love Cody's face in this and Chico's reaction.  She is clearly telling him to back off. 

 

And he does.  Cody is the boss mare afterall.  He behaves himself for a few minutes, following Cody apologetically.  This picture is good for showing the colors of the "dark" horses.  Stormy is furthest in the background here, then Cody (you can really see her smokiness), then Chico last.

 

But that doesn't last long.  He's back to chasing Stormy again.

 

He tries to keep her on the outside of his herd, while Cody looks on with a watchful eye.  Catlow couldn't care less what was happening.  She was just happy to be out in the big pasture grazing (she was the one in with Chico in the little pasture).

 

Chico succeeds in isolating Stormy and she looks at me hoping I might save her.

 

Chico takes off at a strong trot to catch up with Cody and Catlow.  You can see his leg really doesn't hinder him much at all!  I'm so excited that I might actually have my riding gelding back when he's all healed up from this.  I don't think this ruined him!

 

 He's catching air here.  Someone said that he probably is okay because mustangs are tougher than other horses.  I sort of had to giggle at that because really, Chico was just one lucky horse.  Lucky that he happened to miss all those important tendons, joints, and everything else down there!  And I like to think he had good care.  Without all the bandaging, he certainly wouldn't have had this good of a cosmetic effect, and it may have scarred bad enough to hinder motion in his fetlock.

 

After Chico isolated Stormy, she came right over to hang out with me.  She just stood next to me and walked beside me in the pasture as though I was leading her.  I finally shoo'd her away telling her to go interact with the others, and as she left, she stopped and looked back at me with this expression "Do I really have to?"

 

I'm really becoming quite attached to the newest member of my herd.

Foxtrot

It's been confirmed with video.  Stormy does the foxtrot, a gait where at the trot (a diagonal gait), the front foot hits the ground just before the opposite hind foot hits.  It results in an extremely smooth feeling "trot" since the concussion is spread out rather than on the exact same point in time.  It's been described as sounding like "a chunk of meat and two potatoes"...if you say that with rhythm, the foot falls will fall into that time.  The following video shows her doing her thing, and while it looks like her hooves may be hitting at the same time, when I advance the video one slide at a time, you can clearly see that her hind foot lags and hits the ground just after the opposite front.  And you can also see how smooth she is and easy to see...I'm hardly moving at all and I'm bareback!

I rode Stormy bareback today and even at a fast "trot", she was extremely easy to sit...very smooth and no bounce.  She doesn't seem to get air with her trot.  We also cantered.  She was a very good girl.

Still healing, and a LOT of wine!

The healing on Chico's leg is still going slowly, but this weekend, for the first time, I can't detect the cleft in the granulation tissue!  And the seepage from the wound is suddenly remarkably less.  I'm taking that as a great sign that we are finally closing up, but he still has a ways to go.  Starting last weekend, I've been taking the bandage off during the day and on at night.  During the week, that was spotty, as my Dad had to change his bandage, so I just had him change it everyother day and not worry about off in the a.m., on in the p.m.  But I started that back up this weekend.  His leg still swells up just a bit when it is not bandaged.  With a bandage on, it stays much less swollen.  So, we are trying to get the best of both worlds (air to the wound and decreased swelling) with our current methods.  I just don't want Chico's leg to heal up all thick after all the work we've put into it.  Chico has also been out in the small pasture (no longer cooped up in the barn) for the last couple weeks.

Chico is such a good boy though all this.  When he sees me enter the pasture, he comes over to greet me immediately and stands stock still while I check out his bandage and remove it.  To put it back on, I always take him out and tie him near all my supplies.  He seems to enjoy all the attention.  Nothing has been a bad experience for him.  He comes right up to me for scratches and love.  I think a lot of that has to do with being separated from the rest of the herd.  He's with Catlow now, but he REALLY wants to be with his best bud, Cody.  He's lonely for the whole herd.

And I must show the pictures from my wine exploits.  I got into wine-making over the summer.  So far I've done Black Raspberry, Peach, Peach/Blueberry, Elderberry, Grape, Grape/Apple, Crabapple, Cranberry/Elderberry.  They are in 1 gallon carboys (each gallon makes 5 wine bottles full), but some I have between 2 and 4 gallons of.  I think that's about all I'll tackle for this year.  The wines need to finish fermenting and aging.  My first ones are supposed to be ready to drink around Christmas.  I've been sampling them along the way during the whole process and I really like most of them (in the beginning they didn't taste the greatest but they did change as the fermentation proceeded).  Some have required some tweaking, but I won't go into it...I could spend a whole separate blog writing about wine-making!  All I'll say is it is so fun, and I'm so glad I got into it.  The most fun part is I get to harvest wild fruit (most of what I've picked grows wild around our land), and tweak it all to the tastes that I like.  I don't like my wine sweet, like most fruit wines are made, so I get to make it just the way I like it.

Some of the wines in this picture are cloudy because they are really young and still actively fermenting.  From left to right: Black Raspberry (the deepest darkest color I've made so far), Elderberry, Grape, Grape/Apple, and Crabapple.

 

 

Not all the wines I've made are in this picture.  Some have been bottled and but away in my cold room.

Beautiful Fall

Well, it is that time of year again.  The time when all the maples turn brilliant shades of yellow, orange and red.  Right now they are at their peak, soon to be followed by the slightly duller oak trees.

It has been beautiful riding weather this fall.  I haven't ridden much, but I've been able to take Stormy out about 5 times. 

I gotta tell you, I got myself a good horse!  I underestimated how solid Stormy is.  She really just doesn't know refined leg cues, but she really did have a good start on her at one point in her life.  Then she fell into the hands of inexperienced owners, where she sort of took over.  That they were successful with her is a testament to how good-minded this mare is.

 

Maple-leaf viburnum

And the added bonus?  She is gaited!  Kind of!  Well, some Standardbreds are pacers and can rack and pace with ease.  Stormy is not a pacer.  She is a trotter, but she can do a "fast walk" and also I think she is doing a "fox trot" when she trots in a collected manner.  During a "fox trot", the front leg hits the ground just before the diagonal rear leg.  I need to video her trotting so I can slow it down and really see what she is doing, but she is very smooth.  My Tennessee Walker owning neighbor is impressed with her as well.

She is fun and I'm really bonding with her.  She still has her stubbornesses, but we are quickly working through them and she is starting to respond to me without hesitation.  She is also just so darn un-spooky.

Cody makes Stormy look small, but really Stormy is a nice height for an aging woman such as myself.  She is about 14.2 hh.  Cody is a good 15hh.

 

The wild grapes have had a bounty year.  I've picked about 45 pounds of wild grapes so far!  In the past I've made the most wonderful tasting jam with them, but this year I'm trying my hand at making wine.  A friend tried making wine last year, but it was quite unpalatable.  I have higher hopes for this batch, which so far is tasting better.  This picture is sideways and I can't figure out how to make it upright, since it is upright in every other program I view it from...

And last but not least, Chico's wound is still healing slowly.  It is still draining a bit and that alarms me, but I've been assured it is normal and to be expected and it should heal fine.  I will be happy when that last little bit of cleft finally fills in.

 

This last picture shows how much drainage still soaks through the 4 layers of tefla pads I apply for every bandage change.  Thankfully, the tefla pads are the only thing that I throw away every time.  I got some washable bandage material and it has saved me a ton of money.

Unexpected herd behavior

I played with Chico a lot today since he's so bored locked in the barn.  He got to graze in the yard and I took more pictures of his wound.  I'm pretty disappointed in how slowly it is healing.  Here is a picture from the 29th (+ 27 days).  I'm consulting with the vets at school about further things to do.

 

This picture and the following one show how much the bottom part of the wound moves.  This is the part with the deepest cleft where I worry that there is something in there preventing closure (more serious issue that is causing drainage).

Because Chico needed a new round bale moved into the barn where he's being kept, and he has been so bored, and I was also a little frustrated wondering how much longer I was going to have to keep him confined, I decided to let him out into the pasture and see how he did.

I was hoping he'd take it easy and just mosey around eating grass, but of course that is not what happened.  He hasn't been in with Stormy yet.  The day she arrived was the day I noticed his big wound. 

Now, Stormy settled in with just the mares really well.  There was only a little bit of violence and that was almost always centered around them getting some pellets during Chico's medicine feedings so they didn't all feel left out.  Stormy is a little pushy around feed and so would get in Cody's face and that's never a good thing to do when there is food involved.  Cody would kick her a few times and they'd be back to being friends.  Cody even lets Stormy snag feed from her bucket as long as she doesn't want her head in the bucket at that moment.  Catlow too showed Stormy that she is the boss.  She often turns her butt to her to threaten with kicks and Stormy gets out of her way quickly, but Catlow rarely actually kicks her.

Out in the pasture, the three mares are almost inseparable.  And interestingly, I often see Cody and Stormy grazing more closely together now than Catlow and Cody (though Catlow is usually the outsider and watch mare in any herd). 

Now, throw Chico into the mix.  He seemed to ignore Stormy at first.  He has of course met her before on rides and for the last several weeks has gotten to know her over a gate.  Once he was settled into the fact that he was back with his herd, he had to immediately show Stormy who was the number 2 horse in this herd and remind her that she will in no uncertain terms be the bottom!  He was very aggressive about it, much to my dismay after hoping that he wouldn't race around on his wounded leg.  He walks with no limp, but trotting, I can see that he is off a bit.  However, he will race around at a canter and gallop with no worries.

At one point, Cody trotted into the round pen (I've left the gate open from the pasture side into the round pen so they can keep the grass grazed down and play in the sand since it is not being used much this year).  Stormy followed Cody, and when Chico saw Stormy following her in, he raced in there to get after her.  That was when I saw the most amazing thing.

As Chico would get after Stormy, Cody would get very aggressive and get after Chico.  So it was really mass confusion as Chico was trying to be all aggressive toward Stormy and stay out of Cody's way.  They all left the round pen and moved out into the big pasture.  There, the same sequence of events was repeated.  Chico would aggressively chase Stormy to bite her on the butt, and Stormy would double barrel kick at him with her heels high in the sky and run away as fast as she could.  Then Cody would run in and bite Chico and spin to threaten to kick at him.  In between attacks, Cody would stand sort of all puffed up and calm.  Stormy very quickly realized that Cody was protecting her and would try to keep Cody between herself and Chico at all times.

I was really just floored.  I never would have expected that kind of behavior from them.  Cody was so obviously protecting Stormy and telling Chico to knock it off with his behavior.  Catlow through all this seemed to get after Stormy a little more than usual but not really aggressively.  I think that Chico was very confused at first.  Here he thought he was chasing this new mare away from his main companion (Cody and Chico are usually the inseparable ones in the pasture), while Cody was telling him that Stormy was not to be treated like that and was Cody's new companion too.  In between attacks, Cody would graze head to head with Chico, but she absolutely would not tolerate his behavior toward Stormy. 

Poor Stormy was pretty confused.  She wanted to be near Cody, but being near Cody is what set Chico off in his aggression toward her.  Cody was her protector, but she couldn't prevent the attacks all together.  For part of the time, Stormy just stood on the outside of the group to stay out of Chico's way. 

Shortly after this, we got the new round bale in the barn and I put Chico away.  He really doesn't need to be running like that while we are trying to treat him and his wound.  I'm sure with more time, they'd sort it out completely, but they really didn't have the time to.  Next time I'll be ready with my camera to document this amazing behavior among my new herd!

Wound healing

Chico's wound is healing very slowly, but it is healing.  It still has quite a deep cleft in it despite debriding a little excessive granulation tissue and I'm starting to wonder if there is something deeper impeding the healing that will eventually require a visit to a more experienced equine vet than myself.  I've been sharing photos and advice with vets from school, but it just might come to taking him down there one of these days. 

Here is a photo series of his wound over the last few weeks.


This is the from the day I found it.  I'm going to estimate that the wound was 5 days old and completely uncared for to this point.  So, this photo is +5 days (9/7/13)

This photo is from 9/12/13, so is +10 days.  For this stage it was getting scrubbed every other day and bandage changes every other day.  He is also on TMS oral antibiotics.

This is + 17 days (9/19/13).  This is the wound I was greeted with when I came home from a short 5 day vacation during which I had my dad and our neighbor caring for Chico and changing bandages.  I suspect maybe he needed tighter bandaging to prevent the movement...or maybe this was inevitable because of where it is.  After I took this picture, I debrided the granulation tissue down to the level of the epithelial tissue and tried to remove the edge of the cleft formed in the middle.

Now we are at +19 days and post debridement (9/21/13).  It's looking better.  I then debrided more from the edge of the cleft.

This is at +22 days (9/24/13), and is also taken before I cleaned the wound after unwrapping it (hence the little bit of gunk accumulated).  The cleft is smaller, but still present.  It seems deeper at the ventral aspect now.  When I found it, it seemed deepest at the dorsal aspect where I could touch bone.  Looking at how it has changed over time shows me that is it getting smaller, but it just seems to be happening so slowly.

Through all this, Chico has remained comfortable, but he is pretty darn sick of being confined in the barn.  He loves his time out to get his bandage changed and some green grass.  He's been a great patient and lets me do whatever I want to him, including debriding tissue without resenting it at all.