Back to life

I have been busy and very neglectful of this blog.  I don’t think I have ever let so much time pass since posting.

It has been a strange winter: long, Spring creeping up and catching me by surprise.  And storm lashed.  We lost six trees in hurricane force winds, one of those trees crashing on my trailer so I am now without transport for Ben and Cloud (and for emergency trips to the Mart for hay).  But we have got off lightly here.  Generous friends have offered loans of their trailers when needed.  I have neighbours who have had to reach their house by crossing three fields for weeks now.  The west of the county has been badly battered by the sea.  Houses have been damaged by flooding.

But there has been very few opportunities to take Ben and Cloud out.  Cloud has been stranded with post-laminitis recovery and with a teenager who has a full life of exams, music and friends and a diminishing interest in a pony who requires such careful management.

So Cloud is mine now.  I have to put it that way and embrace this pony who is so different to Ben and somehow find a way into his heart and mind.  I remind myself that I struggled with Ben in the early days.  Easy to forget when communication between us seems to be telepathic now.  We have managed a couple of nice Spring rides, or rather rides and walks as Ben is not fit enough for riding of any length.  But he has enjoyed them, rewarding me with a lick on the cheek afterwards.

A couple of weekends ago I drove north to attend a workshop given by Nic Barker (of Rockley Farm blog fame) which was very interesting and encouraging in allowing horses self trim.  She made the point that we should never judge hooves on photos alone, but to take videos, slow them down and look at the footfall.  I did just that when I came home.  Both Ben and Cloud had heel first landings!  (Ben’s slow motion was gorgeous – such hairy legs clopping down majestically on the yard.)

Some things stay the same – each year, no matter in what manner Spring has approached, by the end of March the primroses appear and the hairiest cob in Ireland sheds wheelbarrow loads of hair, day after day after day.  I become slightly obsessed with currying those long silky slides of hair, and no matter how much I remove there is no discernible difference; and yet there will be, suddenly the bones of his legs will reappear, his belly will seem higher off the ground and his face will be beardless once again.  But for now, he rolls and covers the ground in his hair, rubs and leaves hair caught on the bark of trees, and is starting to walk away when he sees me approaching with the rubber curry comb.

Cloud’s hooves

I thought I had a difficult journey in Ben’s transition to barefoot.  I did not.  What made it difficult was the absence of expertise.  As Dermot and John lived far away, beyond their first few visits, we were on our own.  I read as much as I could, trimmed as I understood I was taught and trusted to nature.  Ben is a cob, with good hooves, and he is rock crunching right now.

Since June 2013 I have had the benefit of consultations from Maureen Tierney.  Currently I am having monthly consultations to guide my trimming of Cloud’s hooves and am learning how much I did not know.  I am also seeing big progress in Cloud’s hooves.

Cloud’s mild bout of laminitis in October forced me to pay great attention to his hooves. I was too sanguine about his recovery from this and allowed him turn-out too soon.  I had some days and nights where he was clearly in pain, hating me touching his hooves and confined to his stable.  He watched miserably as Ben had the happy task of chewing down a small section of the paddock.  Once most grass was gone, Cloud and Ben were turned out on it.  Cloud walked happily on the soft muddy ground and, seeing this, I made a firm resolve to stop worrying and trust in nature.

I had tried: vet’s visits – anti-inflammatories and suggestions to put shoes back on; hoof boots and pads – boots walked out of in no time at all; and every suggestion a helpful tackshop assistant could make.  (One suggestion is well worth passing on: put Staysound on the sole of the hoof overnight, packed into the sole with a cut out section of a feedbag put on top.  This tip from her time in a racing yard was very effective in bringing down heat and pulses in Cloud’s front hooves after I had turned him out on the track too soon.)

After a few weeks, Cloud’s energy started to increase, he started to become pushy with me and with Ben over his hay.  When I stood my ground he circled me with a most beautiful springy trot.   A few days later I decided he was ready for the track again.  As extra insurance I put on hoof boots and EVA foam pads and out he went.  He trotted around the track, out of these boots as well and I watched as he walked over stones and tackled the steep descent of the hill.  He stayed sound.  He looked happy again, energy up, in charge of his world and proving to me that the track works as a space for him and Ben and that time does heal.

Cloud and I opened up to each other through those few weeks of pain.  He hated me touching his hooves, and, even with pain gone, was clearly anticipating more as he would snatch a front hoof from me as soon as I picked it up.  I found no easy way through this.  Time, lots of patience and help from Ben all played their part.

Yes, Ben helped.  Clearly aware, one night he drew near me in the yard as I cleaned Cloud’s hooves.  Snatch, snatch, snatch.  It was wet and cold.  I became very aware of Ben’s presence.  I put down Cloud’s hoof, straightened up and looked at Ben.  “Ben could you ask Cloud to bear with me.  I need to do this.”  A pause; call me crazy but I had a strange sense that something passed between Ben and Cloud.  I bent down again and picked up Cloud’s hoof.  He rested his hoof in my hand, brought his head around over my shoulder and licked my cheek.  He stayed relaxed as I finished his hooves.

Cloud’s left front hoof, 23rd June 2013.

Cloud’s left front hoof, 18th December, 2013.

Two different equines

One thing that became very clear to me last winter was that Ben and Cloud do not co-exist ideally on my track system. Cloud’s rate of eating impacts on Ben. Ben’s slower rate, punctuated by rests, does not fit with Cloud’s non-stop and rapid eating. The result has been that Cloud became overweight (far too overweight) and Ben became underweight and looked bad. His coat looked dull, his bones showed and for the first time he looked old.

Having the use of the field this summer reversed this for Ben. Ben’s coat gleamed, his top-line improved (I was also riding most days which I am sure helped) and he gained weight. Cloud’s weight held until the second half of August, when increased grass growth told its tale and he became very round again.

Since coming back, my ad lib experiment has not worked. I have abandoned it a couple of weeks ago. Cloud also got mild laminitis due to the flush of Autumn growth and I have had to face the obvious: they are two different animals and need to be treated as such.

I do not understand this insistence some proponents of track system/paddock paradise have for ad lib feeding. The most I have been able to stretch this for Cloud has been three weeks. I was told (on the facebook paddock paradise group) that it can take six months for a horse to self-regulate. How can this be right? How can this be the right thing to do to a pony like Cloud? I certainly have not been prepared to take this risk.

Feeding ad lib hay worked for Ben and Rosie. Ben set the pace of eating and resting. He may have looked a bit too well-covered but I was not worried for his health. Now Cloud sets the pace.

I do not know Cloud’s breeding, but that he is a native type is obvious, in both character and make-up. He responds so very differently to Ben, for instance, when it comes to loading. Ben, you could say, is more “trainable”. For Cloud, it was clear that he was prepared to resist in every possible manner and a different way to reach him had to be found. I have found Hempfling’s writing on “The Origin” very helpful in helping me understand Cloud. And as regards his make-up, well I wonder about insulin resistance, I wonder also whether he could be leptin resistant which (if I understand correctly) would make him unable to self-regulate. And even if neither of these apply (the test for IR resistance is very expensive so I am holding off for now) I cannot see how a native type, whose ancestors lived on sparse forage over rough ground, could thrive on ad lib forage 24/7.

This morning, I let Ben into grass and spread Cloud’s hay around the track so that he circled Ben moving from small pile to small pile again and again as he foraged for the last remaining wisps. I am still working it out. I have been reluctant to abandon my system which worked so well for Ben and Rosie, where both could share everything day and night. But my big realisation has been that they are two quite different equines and I have to treat them as such. “Keeping it natural” is not quite so easy for this pair.

This ad lib hay experiment

Hmm. I have to hold my nerve: fat pony, rapidly vanishing hay; very rapidly vanishing hay. Cloud has not been able to get into the haybarn since and they are eating from all the haynets. There is only a very little left in a couple of nets after 24 hours. My idea is to put out 24 hours worth of hay at a time. I may need more hay stations.

Back home

Ben and Cloud are back home and I have reorganised the track. I have widened one corner and made more feeding stations:

one big haynet under the trees:

three haynets attached to this tree in the next corner (widened):

a haynet at the top of the track:

and two here near the arena where they have often been before:

I am going to experiment with providing ad lib hay and see if Cloud will start to regulate his intake. Today however, they ate hay only from the two familiar areas and then broke through the electric tape in front of the hay barn creating their own feeding station:

Cloud looked rather round. I must say, when I came home from work today and saw Cloud’s belly, I had to steel my resolve to try this ad lib experiment. I wonder how long it will take him to eat less – or will he ever? He is a pony after all.

Dream time

June sunlight streams through the trees lending a dreamlike quality to ponies cropping grass. Shadows and light play on their coats, Cloud’s sienna dapples somehow making him shimmer in the afternoon light. Such is the dream: ponies at home, a dream scene.

As they move I watch their confident heel first landing, relieved that the latest attack of thrush has been defeated. I had missed it – and a cold, mud-laden April and May had done their damage. Cloud in particular hated having his hooves treated and the first time I scrubbed them I resembled a cross mother, alternating between scolding and praise as I held each kicking-out hoof. He seemed to take it in the spirit it was intended, coming up to lick my hand once it was all over.

Today’s dream scene belies the reality – that this has been the hardest and longest winter I have experienced since keeping ponies at home. Cloud arrived during a brief Indian summer, which followed a long, wet summer and preceded an equally long, wet winter. Eighteen months of winter, the farmers said and there has been a fodder crisis, with this green country having to import hay. I ran out of hay, my regular hay suppliers had none and I braved a chaotic farmers’ mart early one morning after a wakeful night to pay a silly price for a small amount of hay. But today, hay is being baled and I await the first of my deliveries of next winter’s hay.

I feel that we have barely contained Cloud on this small track system. I have not managed to regulate his eating. Everything I have read says that if you supply ad-lib hay they will eventually learn to self-regulate. Well, for three expensive weeks I did just that. And then, fear for Cloud’s health and for my budget made me stop. I could not look at his alarmingly round waist and equally could not look at my rapidly depleting stores of hay. Ben got thinner this winter and, for the first time, looked old. During the wettest months, I separated them at night, shutting Cloud in a stable and Ben into the stable yard, Ben not coping well with being shut in. At least I knew that Ben got his fair share of the hay during those nights.

I also think that Cloud’s constant eating wore Ben down. Ben has always liked to take breaks but, keeping up with Cloud, he never could. What I found interesting is that whenever I appeared, Ben would immediately stop eating and rest. I started to feel very protective towards Ben and he has adapted to this and, I think, challenged my awareness more than ever, demanding that I stay strong and alert whenever we are together.

Cloud’s non-stop capacity to eat has dominated my winter. Besides breaking into the haybarn on at least three occasions, he has eaten through hedgerow never penetrated by Ben and Rosie and practically ended up in our neighbours’ yard. And yet, he has won me over. Somewhere along the line, he decided that I was worth following around and I can weave in and out, walk around, stop, back up and he does the same, head at my shoulder with no training or ‘join up’ at all. I have ridden him as well, as he has been putting in stops on the road for my daughter and he has responded beautifully to my aids. Unlike Ben, who insistently demands strong energy from me, stronger often than I feel I have to give, Cloud seems to say ‘oh, is this what you want? I didn’t know. No problem!’

I am renting the well-grazed field behind us for July and August and they will share that space with cows and sheep. And I will look for winter grazing. Much as I love my track system, I need to find a way to allow Ben a fairer share of the forage and also find a way to ease the physical burden on me next winter.

I wander among the ponies and Ben drops into stillness, drooping his head in the sunlight. Cloud comes up to me and gazes steadily across the road to our lake front. The grass indeed seems greener over there.

“I didn’t break into the hay barn – honest”

Rain and a hairy cob

It is so Irish to talk about the weather. We have so much of it and we do love it as a topic. It’s a great day, a fine day, a soft day, a windy day, a wet day, a wet day, a wet day…And here I am talking about it too.

Ben, bless him, grows a grand winter coat – a rug in fact. I curry it, I brush it, I put the saddle on and off we go. We do not do the kind of riding in the winter that necessitates a clip. I run my hands along his back, marveling at the dense, thick mat he has grown, which will grow thicker yet. I feel a lump. A bite? This time of year? Then I feel another and another. Quite a few in fact. How could I have missed these? I search for them. No more. I feel relieved but keep probing. Ah here are more, and more. It requires quite a search, pushing my fingers through the dense hair, brown at the tip and grey underneath (for Ben is officially a roan).

Rain scald.

This is his fourth winter here. Winter one: I gave him a chase clip, not yet adjusted to the fact that horses can really regulate their own temperatures rather well. That winter proved unusually cold. I got some great photos and very little riding. Ben spent it in his cumbersome turnout rug and, I had to admit, looked a bit ridiculous, his coat growing about 4 inches proud of the clipped lower half.

Winter two: he was barefoot and woolly with no rug. Another frozen winter and he came through it well.

Winter three: was milder and wet and as I used our neighbour’s exposed winter grazing I put a rain sheet on him despite having no clip. He did not like me putting on that rain sheet.

Winter four: so far a few frosty nights, some sunny days and, since late autumn, a lot of rain. I thought about the rain sheet. But he hates it so much and we have good shelter here. Does any horse like a rug? Ben does not and he so loves to roll, pushing his neck along the ground making satisfied grunts as he does. I left him without the sheet and compromised by keeping both ponies in the stable for a few hours in the evenings to dry. Only of course Ben never dried.

So now outside it is dark and cold and rain is relentlessly falling. I am treating the rain scald and Ben is wearing that rain sheet. He shot his head back to bite it when it was on.

My husband asks ‘but what would they do in the wild?’ Good question. Maybe Ben would be fine. He is not bothered by it and it does not seem to be infected – yet. But neither Ben nor Cloud is in the wild, much as I like to keep them in as natural a way as possible. They do not have freedom to roam as they want, they have different nutrition, different exercise, such totally different lives, despite the wild ponies who so definitely live within. In fact they are in captivity and their generous and cooperative natures allow them to adapt and thrive. But with that captivity comes a duty of care which makes my hesitations over a rain sheet laughable. Except for the fact that it is against Ben’s will.

Cloud from Lithuania has less problem with our Irish rain. Cloud came to us with two rugs – stable and turnout – and I have had to use neither. He has grown a nice woolly coat that is nowhere near as dense as Ben’s and seems to dry much faster.

We’ve had some great skies and wonderful light with all this weather. I love it, I love it all, even the rain. I have to steal myself to leave the warm house but outside is where I feel most alive.

After all that…

Ben is rock crunching again. Last Saturday the clocks went back and we had only time for a short ride. So I thought this was a chance to ride without boots. He strode out across the roughest area and trotted over small loose stones with no difficulty. So we have ridden without boots since.

This is obviously huge progress since September. It could be due to being kept off grass all autumn. It could also be due to the track drying up once again – I am pleased with how quickly it drained once the torrential rain stopped. (Although as I type we are having icy showers.) So his frogs visibly improved. And it could also be due to the increased exercise he has been getting since Cloud has joined us – lots more riding.

At least I have hoof boots I can use when I need them. There is very definitely a need for a reliably useful pair that can be pulled out when needed; carried with me, perhaps, for a longer ride in the forestry or waiting in the tack room to provide reassurance when he becomes footy again.

He is looking great – getting hairier by the day, more muddy than one could possibly imagine, with a soft, bright eye and such a soft coat once the mud is brushed off.

The vexed question of hoof boots

Barefoot woes. I remember my old riding instructor telling me she thought I was mad for going barefoot and her farrier boyfriend stating that you need shoes for the roads and “whatever you do, don’t use those awful hoof boots.”

But we have been rock crunching, we really have.

Last summer we rode flinty forest trails truly barefoot. Sometimes Ben steps out on the very rough and stony roads here quite confidently without any boots. But not right now. Despite a track system, heavy rains have meant a lot of mud. Ben’s frogs are softer than they were a month ago. And the amount of exercise I have time to provide cannot combat this. So I need boots.

But which boots?

We started originally with Renegades and, while they came off a couple of times, I was generally pleased with how they performed and how Ben went in them.

(A very hairy Ben in his new Renegades in winter time two years ago.)

He started with a size 2w, but after a few months needed a 2ww. I have never been completely happy with the boots since. They can come off in trot and they rub the outside heel bulb on his right hoof. I first discovered this as a small blister and since then I have played with the cable adjustments but with no great success. We have been riding regularly recently and I kept watching for rubs. One day Ben was snatchy with his right hoof after a ride and did not want me to touch his heel bulbs. I felt very bad and that was the end of those boots for me.

Finding a replacement has not been easy.

We have no supplier of hoof boots in this country. I have been in e-mail correspondence with Liz from Hoof Bootique in England who has been incredibly helpful. She suggested a larger sized heel captivator for the Renegades. My husband cast his engineer’s eye on Ben wearing his Renegades. He pointed out a dark patch towards the edge of the heel captivator on the right boot which seemed to correspond with the rubbing spot. He also suggested trying a bigger size heel captivator. But I have lost faith in those boots for Ben. Too many “ifs” and I want to boot I can be sure about.

Cloud wears Ben’s old, size 2w, boots with great success. They also look quite different on him and this has made me think of the different conformation of a cob. The shell of the boot also does not come up as high on Ben’s hoof as it does on Cloud’s.

So I tried Equine Fusions.

I really like the concept behind design of these boots and, as Sandra is successfully using them on Minnie, I thought it would be worth trying them on Ben. Ben took a size above Minnie and when the boots arrived I went for a short hack. Ben over reached, which is not like him, and over reached so badly that he kept stumbling. I tried again with the same problem. Comparing them with Minnie’s, the size bigger has not just a bigger shell, but is also higher and it is obviously too high for Ben’s pastern. So the fabric bunches out behind. So they were returned.

So next I reached for a rejected pair of Cavallo Simple Boots which I bought in the early days of transitioning Ben. I had not even ridden in these as I really did not like how heavy and clunky they were. They fitted Ben, but I still was not happy with their weight. Liz suggested Easyboot Trails.

These are better, much lighter than the Cavallos but similar in shape. Ben seems happy in walk, trot and canter. But…

I am now quite worried about heel bulb rubs. The boots are soft and flexible around the pastern so I do not think they will rub there. But they have a serious design fault – there is a seam and rough part just where the outside of the heel bulbs would sit.

It seems a ridiculous fault for these boots to have. So I have tried out the pastern wraps that came with the Cavallo boots. It took a bit of trial and error to get their position right so that they would not ride up on Ben’s hooves. But they seem to be working. Hopefully after a while I will not need them any more. Ben moves well in the Trails however they do not seem very robust and I would wonder how long the stitching will last.  But I aim to use these boots until they either wear out or fall apart.

The Glove Back Country would be my preferred choice, without having tried them. But they do depend on a very regular trim cycle which I do not have. And do not even want. I am happy to give a tidy up rasp and we have a good farrier now who understands barefoot trimming and who can cast his expert eye over the ponies about every 2 months. That should be all they need.

On a positive note, Cloud is stepping on the loose stones in our yard without a problem now and his thrush seems to be gone. He also strides out well in his Renegades (and looks quite smart too).