early tea

because molly's on her holidays and i was home, we had actually had our tea - including pudding!!! - by 7pm!!!!!

Molly's wound is doing really well, barely needs a dressing, and she was really good stood like a rock when it was changed last night - a vast improvement on tuesday morning, when she nearly knocked philip over, so a change for the better already!

trying to find a 12' rope - you get the halter but not the rope - and the price variation is interesting, from 24gbp + postage to 30gbp + postage...so i've got my eye on some on ebay....

longlining

these were off the digital camera; Max took some pics whilst i was longlining; no video of me doing this on this camera though and i haven't wrestled with the camcorder yet.

and the word is that her injury is healing very very well, philip's very pleased with it and thinks we'll be able to take the dressing off by the weekend when she comes home!

i think i forgot to say

I left Molly there for the rest of the week. They have a small injury paddock and friend's now fiancé (they got engaged Friday night.....) a horse vet said she'd be fine out, and they offered to keep her to the weekend. That is so much better for her, as at home there isn't that option - she either goes out with the herd, or she stays in, and she gets bullied sometimes so....

I suggested during the work that some of molly's issues may be to do with the few months box rest she had to have at 6 months old, thus missing out on the early socialising with other horses she should have had. Others will be to do with the fact that she is generally at the bottom of the rung in the field, is bullied, and therefore possibly thinks if she's bullied there, she'll bully me/people instead in a gentle sort of fashion (she's never been nasty, but never kept out of your space...). Max, i think, thought that was possibly right. Also agreed, I think, that there's something in her history I don't know...

anyway, i've bought the editing software - came in less that the price tag on the box! - so will slowly get to it all.

and my friends horse

which was rescued from someone's front garden!

this was her second session with max, and he was there for a refresher and work on some ridden issues.

she had a minor battle at the beginning, but the real revelation was something no-one knew was going to happen.

whilst my friend went to get her tack, max was just playing and got his lunge whip out ... and the mare went ballistic. had clearly been thrashed in a past life (and she's only 7). by the finish, she was accepting the line over her back, whirling round her head, being cracked on the ground beside her and not twitching. it sounds nothing written down, but it was a hell of a lot to see. no one hadknown as my friend doesn't use the lunge whip lunging so hadn't had a thought about it...

and it was all done without physical force.....

wow....

right left and centre....

yay ... she now goes right, left, back, forward, stands in her own space .... did throw her toys out very scarily at one point, but part of that was memory of the last time she was on the longlines ....longlining with the Dr Cooks BB, a new one for Max (her lip hadn't healed ...)

When throwing her toys out ... she threw herself to the ground ..... aargh..... then got up and got on with it properly! another advantage of a treeless saddle; the horse can do this with no harm to either itself or the saddle (or, if the rider happens to be on top, the rider either....)

lots of homework to do

and loads to digest, and HUMUNGOUS amounts of video to edit....(and thanks max for your help with that whilst i was working!) (my friends all left me alone when it was molly's turn, they'd all had to go back to work...)

I've got 2 1/2 CD's of yesterday morning, a teenager & her horse; 1gig of molly plus 1 1/2 hour of analogue video. i put the video on the mounting block, and the digital on the top of a jump post, and just essentially let them both run. so sometimes there's just a view of grass...

when it's all digested it'll all end up on here....with links to photobucket, but i think i need to buy some video editing software that will also take analogue

should have done this within my first 6 months of owning molly

yay!

thanks max....

max

this is such a worthwhile visit. Molly is being seen tomorrow, but I watched today; I said to him later, had I known then what I know now, he would have seen molly ages ago.

and Molly is realy chilled; she was a bit gobsmacked last night when she got puton the wagon at 21.50, but settled really well once she was offloaded and has been out inthe small injury paddock today .... and didn't have a radge that she was on her own... to be fair she could see other horses and some cows, but still.... well pleased.

and i've filled two 1G XD cards with movies so far. trouble is, there's not going to be anyone to film me!!!!!

longer walk out

set partner to take molly out for her bit grass; whenshe got back, she said she'd taken her down the hill! EEEK. but no harm done, still sound as a pound, and a bit happier i guess..

jean, you asked about my leg .. subsiding slowly!
partner reckons i should ride monday if needed. i'm not sure.... see how i am.

neighbours

are good to have.... julie and her husband (with suzie, the old mare with the nearly repaired tendon..) offered to take molly out .. thatlet allison off the hook, and molly got longer out.

the small holed haynet had collapsed on the floor... this is why i have small holed, when they rot, they can land on the floor with no damage to anyone or anything except themselves...

she's still sound.. shame about me!!!

nice walk out

apparently molly got to walk along the front of the house ... not what i'd planned, but partner had spotted a horse being fed outside the field (one of the geldings from the field opposite the mare's field, the normal place for grazing is along the grassy track between mares and geldings field...) so sensibly took her the other way. and apparently she was very well behaved.

we've been talking some more about nedt week, and think that the bandage can go between the fetlock and the hock to protect the wound... which should be a lot better by then... and we should be ok. i just hope i'm not expecting/trying for too much.... but if the vet says she should be ok, then one can only go with that!!!!

edited to add ... small holed haynets, jean.....! i do know that one........actually many years ago saw a friends horse caught up, was horrendous to get her out as she kept panicking.... nightmare.

partner came to help...

to walk molly out whilst i mucked out.... thus, one hopes, reducing the amoutn of walking i do ...not sure about that, but doubt if partner's mucking out skills would be wonderfull......may be doing an injustice there.

but that worked, in that i didn't have to do both things. Molly wasn't out as long as i'd perhaps thought, i said, did she volunteer to come back? no, had been brought back as partner was worried that she was being a bit frisky and didn't want to lose her of course....

she's defnitely gone off the haybar.

and as for feeding off the floor... there was a dreadful mess ...

so it's haynets....becuase that way shecan eat and look out of the door at the same time!!!!

good news

we were really pleased with the look of the wound when the bandage came off; it had bled, as you would expect, but had stopped, and looked really clean.




as usual wiht a photo doesn't look quite as nice as it did inthe flesh; this camera phone does take good photos!

anyway, redressed. There's a bit of swelling but nothing exciting.

he says, if she's still sound on saturday and nothing is looking horrid, she can go on the wagon - the reason is, my mate's partner is a really goo dhorse vet, to all the trainers in middleham (well, a lot of them!) and he can change the dressing when we get there. if I'm not totally happy, then my vet will come next monday and change dressing; and if it starts going tits up, ring vet before....

as for her eating. ... turns out she's gone off the haybar, because she can't see out and ofcourse she knows its summer and everyone else is out. so the hay is back on the floor by the door...

oh, and antibiotics in her feed, breakfast and tea.....

the problem is going to be me

i went to teh gp on a walk in basis on my way home from the yard, saw another gp ... he said, it's cellulitis andi shoudl be resting it. i said,no one's said that before! so essentially i've spent 2 1/2 weeks doing things i shouldn't have been doing...

my partner thinks i should go anyway, and my mate rather agrees. .. max can do molly and my mate can do the biz .. the point is for molly to get the work, and although he likes to work with the owner, i'll be there if not upright!

she's sound

took her out this morning for a bit of grass .... when she'd finished marching up and down! didn't want to stand at first (she really wanted to be in the field, but tough) and didn't stand and eat until Julie with Suzie appeared up the hill - and as I suspected would happen, when Julie started taking Suzie back in, molly followed (by going ahead LOL). anyway, she was sound as a pound, even the slightly puffy knee wasn't a problem, so I'm really pleased about that. Hope it's as good when the vet takes the dressing off tomorrow...

then I found she'd moved one of the rubber mats... i'd only two left down anyway as I'd been in process of taking them up to clean it up over the summer; so i've put another one down, hopefully will then prevent that happening again as there is a line of three down the one side of the stable...so molly had to stand in the yard in front of Suzie's stable (there's a pen....) whilst i did that....

she's really hacked off at being in though.

and all that haylage I'd left for her? mostly still there. clearly she was only having me on when she started eating it last night....she'll eat when she's hungry, but i wish she'd do her normal, and just eat!

eating....

She likes the new haylage.... in preference to her tea.....



i did think about taking her out for a walk, but it was blowing a howling gale, i was frozen and my leg wasn't happy (not that it's cold, just me....) and she wasn't that fussed once i put the haylage in.



hopefully the leg is starting to heal under all this bandage.....

but mum i want out....

is basically Molly's position....

She was fine in herself when i went down this morning, there was more than sufficient to muck out so clearly nothing going wrong with her innards which canbe an issue with antibiotics

A friend gave the jab (i'm useless at them, TBH)

if it stays dry ( had rained overnight and this morning) i'll see about walking her out in hand for a pick of grass, but on the drive to avoid the bandage getting wet...

when i've had my breakfast and sorted myself out will go find supplies....

reboot phone

I thought I'd lost all my photos, but then found the phone wasn't taking photos at all, weird, to restarted it.... and lo and behold

So, the access to the mare's field



The gap she went down

Showing the space between the hedge and the wire
and this is molly as i left to go the first time, still recovering from the sedation and decided this was a good place to prop her head.... i was a bit worried she choked herself, but it would have been exceedingly difficult to move her...

I guess the wire is there to keep the horses off the hedge ..... previously it hasn't been an issue, but this is a new gate, they've fenced off the original as they've reseeded the entire strip and are letting the new grass grow......

we always said this new access was dangerous, i think we were expecting one of us to be kicked if anything went off at the gate, since there's nowhere for a horse to go whilst you shut the gate and if you haven't got a really long lead rope it's a pig to shut behind you ...

i so nearly

didn't work molly at all ... and i wish i'd gone with that.

She got away from me on the long lines .... tanked away... stopped to talk to her friends - i nearly got a hand to the lines .. she tanked back the other way and into the gateway where the gate to the mares field is ... i had a horrid feeling this would go pear shaped .. it did .. she went down the gap between the hedge and the wire fence, then got over the wire fence into the field, was chased round .... one of the lunge lines broke ... when we finally got them calmed down and caught her .. her off hind was bleeding profusely .. had to have the vet .... sedated, flushed out, all bandaged up ...



very lucky it wasn't a lot worse though ... she'd chested the wire before going over it and we're very very lucky she didn't totally do her front leg in as well.

she nicked the artery lower part of off hind; vet thinks we'll be lucky - he didn't stitch it ..I have to jab her in the chest muscle tomorrow and Monday and the vet will be back out Tuesday to take the dressing off and see how she is...

i had some photos on my phone but have managed to lose them all as the phone didn't connect properly to the pc and when I disconnected it, they obviously all went... pc lying when it said there wasn't a drive at the end of that lead....edited to add.... i'd texted it to a friend and she's texted it back to me ... horrid...

and i have to go back in an hour or so, to see how she's doing and give her some haylage. and will have to go to feed store tomorrow for haylage and shavings.... had to borrow...

more groundwork again

after I'd wrestled with the fact that the road from home to the yard was closed; it's a nasty bendy lane which people regularly take too fast and go over the centre line, and tonight a car ended up under a transit van. police said no one hurt .... I guess what they mean is, no one seriously hurt. at least it wasn't' one of the horses, the main yard of the estate is at the bottom of that lane on one of the worst bends.....

so molly did a bit of groundwork again, much better than earlier this week in terms of going right, but I can't teach her to stand in her own space, so really looking forward to the session with Max ...

and the friend who organised it came back from York sales yesterday with a 7 year old Dutch warmblood working at medium level and jumping at a bargain price; vendor put it in last minute, no one hardly left to bid on it, perfect for friend's partner. vendor was in floods of tears at having to part with him anyway .... she'll be kicking herself more for not putting a proper entry in. My mate hadn't even taken her wagon as she hadn't been looking for herself ... another friend was looking for a shetland! So I'm all green eyed, as you can imagine. the bargain Price? £1,100 (that'll be about $2,200 US).....

antibiotics

more, lashings more ....2 weeks ... hate to think what they'd have done if i were allergic to penicillin. and an appointment with dermatology, and a lecture on sunbeds in case i get skin cancer. i want rid of the psoriasis again ....the sunbeds work, and i am not going mad with it like some people do...

huge black rain cloud overhead when i got to the yard so i just fed and flysprayed .. and of course when i got home, the raincloud dispersed. isn't that just typical.

long reining

round the 20 acre. She was generally very good, apart from a tantrum as we got to the bottom of the hill going away from the yard, that involves going through a gate and first she didn't want to go and came round back to me then when we got through, she decided turning round again was good... but after that, she walked on really well, didn't tantrum at all going through the gate out again at the other end, and when we got back along towards the house didn't tantrum at the helium filled birthday balloon that was going to leap out and bite her from about 200 yards away ... just turned to look at it a couple of times, thought about tanking back the other way, but didn't, and gently passaged away from it towards home.

i was quite impressed, really (and if we keep this up, i'll be a lot fitter as well,...)

long lining

just a little bit (if only because i got a huge amount of the arena in my boots!!!)

had to set it all up before we left the stable, given her propensity for failing to stand still in the arena whilst i'm trying to adjust tack! got round there ok, got her going round the outside both reins in walk, then some trot circling both reins, changed direction without too much protest

i'd left the gate open (a bit difficult to close it behind me) so when i was trying to stop to dismantle everything and stop, she decided leave the arena was good - that'll teach me for stopping at the gate end, but it is a lot shallower in terms of the depth of arena - so we finished up longlining through the yard and out along towards her least favourite place.

think i might try longlining her out along that track tomorrow if the weather stays ok.

my leg is improving i think and my elbows certainly are - psoriasis there as well but at least it didn't get too badly scratched!

and the fresh air is helping of course..... short sleeves as well - but i don't know how i'm keeping warm really! just keep me away from chilly breezes!