Saturday, May 3, 2008

Wow! What a difference!

Wow! What a difference here!! Today the recovery horse is firmly a CS 4+. You can see if you look closely that she is still hanging onto some of the crummy survival/winter coat. As of this morning, we got the huge knots worked out of her mane and forelock. And quite a lot of a healthy, shiny coat is starting to show now that she is getting some grooming.
She has gotten another hoof trim, too. I am sure some of you are thinking-hmm, thats an awful lot of hip joint showing there. And you'd be absolutely correct-she has a very wide, protruding hip and even when plump, they were still sticking out. That's just her conformation and no amount of feed is going to correct that completely. However, she does have quite a bit of muscle to replace....so it's time to start some free lunging. As soon as it dries out, of course!

I've made a slight diet adjustment, and that is to start including a few small flakes daily of very high quality brome hay. I have reduced the alfalfa to once per day in the evenings, and have just started the gradual change over from senior to more appropriate maintenance rations. In about two weeks or so, I will be dropping the twice daily soaked beet pulp, I think.

I am really happy how this horse looks-just compare to the original photo taken on April first!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

She looks great! Hard to imagine its the same horse. Wow, Is right!

blondetherapy said...

Congrats! Great job!!! Can't wait to see how she is in a couple of months.... she will be struttin her stuff this summer.

suvalley said...

blondtherapy, she is already strutting, trust me! When I went to feed last night, all the horses were romping around. Boy howdy, she was dashing up and down her run, bucking, head tossing, blowing, kicking out-really blowing some steam!!

She was always an active, playful horse and while it was great to see her do her "airs above the ground sideways spook/kick" it was a tad intimidating, haha Yehaw that's a lot or horse when it's airborne!

Saturday afternoon she started dropping her survival coat. By the handful. It was so bad and so odd that I asked Lori here if she had any lice powder. It's not coming out in the right locations to be either rain rot or lice, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to dust her a few times-just in case.

And no, we could not see a thing moving anywhere...it is actually rather similar to what happened with another horse in my care a month back-he too, dropped a survival coat by the handful seemingly overnight. Now his coat is as shiny as you can imagine for a black horse. Just blooming with great health, really.

And before anyone thinks of it-nope, no shared brushes and no contact between them either.

Anyhow, I am now starting to move the feeding schedule back for the summer. Need time to work lardbutt in the evenings, dontcha know ;)