A horse owns me, though, and there's really no way to dispute that. Her name is Seven. She came with that name and everyone knows that changing a horse's name is bad luck. At least it's classy. A classy name for a classy lady.
The other horse is Coco. He also came with his unfortunate name, bestowed upon him by the previous owners 6 year old daughter. It makes perfect sense...he is really brown after all.
Don't panic if they look concerned about wearing people clothes, they were both just worried they looked stupid.
So, I'm a new horse owner. Really, really new to this whole thing. I worked with horses a lot when I was a teenager... groomed, mucked, and showed. The whole thing. Let me be the first to say that it's a whole different ordeal when you're personally responsible for the well being of one (two) of these animals. Holy crap, I had no idea.
Admittedly, I don't think Mike and I went about buying our horses the right way. We weren't even allowed to ride Seven and Coco looked like a walking skeleton, but what's done is done and we're actually really happy with them over a year later. They both kinda wormed (horsed?) their way into our hearts so I guess they're here to stay.
Just to get this blog set up, let's talk about their health. Seven: came to us super overweight with potential Cushing's (turned out negative). And Coco was around 200lbs underweight with really shitty feet (he still has shitty feet).
That picture doesn't even really show how skinny the poor guy was. It was awful. After a few months though, he was looking like this:
That picture doesn't even really show how skinny the poor guy was. It was awful. After a few months though, he was looking like this:
And all we had to do was give him food every day. Anyway, long story short Coco still has bad feet and also has a bad back and Seven needed stifle injections. But! We're working on these things and that's what this blog is going to be about. We just met with an incredible vet and have a really solid plan for getting them both back into riding shape.
Coco is being made to suffer a strict routine of cantering over poles five days a week. He does not like this at all, no sir. He'd rather just stand there and stare at you or drink out of mud puddles. He's also on a diet of Bermuda hay for breakfast and supper, Alfalfa for lunch and one feeding of 1lb Safe Choice, 1 scoop hay replacer, 1lb Black Oil Sunflower Seeds, and a maintenance dose of Adeptus hoof supplement.
Seven had to get a steroid injection in her stifles to reduce the inflammation there so she can work on healing. She gets two weeks of very light work while the injection takes effect...turnout (she doesn't run around, so it's light work) and hand walking. We're also trying to put some weight back on her with so she eats Bermuda hay for breakfast, Alfalfa for supper, 1/2 bucket of OatMo (about 2 gal for now) for lunch along with 1lb Safe Choice, 1 scoop hay replacer, 1lb Black Oil Sunflower Seeds, 1 lb rice bran along with her supplemental Quiessence and Four Flex.
Basically I want a log of what we're doing with these guys so I can have it to reference when I need it. My goal is to try and keep this updated with pictures and what we do every day and record any changes that we may make along the way. Yay, horse rehab!
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