Time

Or lack thereof. I think days need to have about 30 hours rather than 24. Can we just redo the amount of time it takes the earth to spin?



Been getting home too late to do anything with Cody, but hopefully next week will be better! So tonight I have been playing with images in Photoshop (okay, I was trying to do something like what Tracey had done with an image of Steve Holt!). Not sure how successful I was, but it was fun playing, although now it has somehow become 12:30am. I think I overdid the sunflare part.



I really like this profile shot of him, his face just looks kind and his ears are up and his mane is somewhat brushed.

It was supposed to rain...

...but it pretty much held off!

Something to add to my to do list with Cody, get him used to having a rope snug up under his tail. We had worked a bit inside his pen first, and things were going fairly well, so I thought we'd go for a walk outside again. We did lots of stopping and smallish circles but we hit a snag when I wanted him to walk past my uncle's old trailer. So I thought I'd just loop the rope around his rump and not put up with his silliness. Well, that didn't go so well. He zipped forward when he felt the rope around his rump and turned quickly and got the rope snugged up under his tail with a loop around it and when I put a bit of pressure on it he didn't much care for that... So, once again I had a loose horse. I think the whole idea of whoa has been getting through to him because when I said whoa, he stopped and turned toward me and I was able to walk up and step on the end of the rope and then pick it up. It may seem long sometimes but I am really liking my 18' long rope. We continued on and past the trailer and then I thought we'd go for a walk in the field. I'll have to get some pictures next time. The field, once you get past the blackberries is covered in weeds. I have a picture that I will scan soon of grandma's property. It is an aerial shot from 1988. Will have to compare it to the current state of the field. It's awful :( I have a lot of work ahead of me!

Here is video attempt #2. I tried adding sound this time. It cuts off at the end, but I'll figure out how to end it better next time

Process time

The sun was shining today! Too bad it was while I was at work. Cloudy by the time I got home but it was calm and dry, so I call it a pretty good day.

Just for the heck of it, I wanted to see what my english saddle looked like on Cody. So I brought it out (and brought Mom with to take some pictures). So when I went to set it on his back I showed it to him, touched his shoulder with it and then set it on. He didn't move, he didn't even flinch. So I took it off and back on a couple times before girthing it up, which he also didn't care about. Walked around a bit and then he trotted a few circles before I figured, what the heck, and let the stirrups down so they would bounce against his sides. This also didn't phase him.



What was a bit of an issue today was just plain leading, lol. After having the saddle on, I took it off and we were going to go for a walk around the back yard since we haven't had time to do that for awhile. Started out by making him back out of the gate (which we've done a couple times before) which he does nice and calm, even has to step over a board that keeps the sand from spilling out into the grass too much. Then onto the walk. It started out okay, but then he was being a bit of a pill and wouldn't go forward. Thinking back on it now, I should have just looped the rope around his rump and kept going, ah well, hopefully I'll remember that next time. I still kind of worry that if he gets too bouncy he could get loose again and so I hesitate to do as much outside his pen (hence my desire for a round pen which would give us some more space but still have those walls).



Back in his pen we go and set out to work on just plain leading. There were some not so pretty moments of protest, but I just kept his feet moving and going where I wanted them to go as much as I could. We ended on a decent note so I took his halter off and went inside to eat dinner.

This is where the process time comes in :) There was probably about an hour between the time I took his halter off and then went back out. He was sooo much better! Not perfect, we still had a couple "moments" but not like earlier. And we even did pretty good practicing leading from the off side! So hooray for giving him time to think and hooray that I went back out after dinner instead of just leaving it until morning. Hopefully the "moments" will be even less then :)

Late night

So I'm back to not having much time again this week. Yesterday when I fed him in the morning, it seemed like the day was going to be decent so I took his blanket off so he could roll and itch if he wanted too while I was off to work. When I got home that evening, I went out with some brushes and his blanket to tuck him in for the night. I brought a halter just in case he didn't want to stand still. I didn't need it. He was in his stall munching dinner and turned around when I walked in. I set his blanket and the brushes down and went to pet him. He just stood there with his head up but relaxed, not eating, while I brushed him all over and then tossed his blanket on. It was just a nice quiet time with my horse :)

Plastic

Okay, so plastic bags are scary when they are above you. Spent awhile last night after work with a plastic bag on the end of my stick, after we had a nice grooming session where he just stood there and relaxed. He was also really good about his feet.

I'm not sure if I am missing a piece here, but is there something I could be doing to get him used to things in general, rather than trying to desensitize him to everything I can think of? It seems to be things that make rustling noises that he's not fond of, like plastic or paper. Things like rope or a saddle pad were never really a big deal. Does anyone have any insight on that?

On a good note, he likes his toy! Yay, was hoping it wouldn't be one of those cases where he just completely ignores it.

I was also wondering opinions on making a 5-foot high pen and using my 6-foot high panels (plus a few more) to make a round pen where we could have a bit more room to work. They have some 64" high powder coated Behlen "utility" panels on sale at Del's this week which got me to thinking about doing this.

New toy

Let's see. Today is Sunday, right? I've kind of lost track of the days. Got home from work in time to work with Cody in the twilight. He seems bored, by himself all day, so I got him one of those Jolly Ball toys. He seemed interested in it, was sniffing at it and pushing it with his nose. Didn't really care for me bouncing it towards his feet though, lol. I also broke down and bought him a pair of blue SMB3 boots. I got a good deal and he looks good in blue.


Have your horses started shedding? I don't know if it's because of the blanket or what, but check out the hair just falling off of him.


I decided I wanted to try and get him to trot in hand. He's not so sure about that just yet. Going from a walk to a trot gets me a halt and a look like, what are you doing?!? So we modified things slightly to where I was trotting with him as he went around in a circle, which I think puzzled him a bit too, as he just went faster at first. We need a bigger enclosed space so we have some straight room to move. Hopefully we'll have that to some degree when I am able to get his paddock extension built.

One thing that just, well, falls into the category of ick, are ticks. As I've brushed him and run my hands over him, I have found them and carefully removed them. And then tonight I brushed his mane over to the wrong side to brush it down to the roots good, and I found a few more of the rotten things all hunkered in the roots of his mane. I've never really run into an issue with ticks before, didn't even really think we had them in western Washington (neither did my mom) but when I started searching online, guess we do have them. I want to give him a bath and scrub him clean and for those rotten little bugs to find themselves someone's dinner, instead of having Cody for dinner. You know how when you find a bug or something, and then keep feeling like something is crawling on you? I've felt twitchy like that all evening now. I wonder if a few chickens would hang around, more than one place I read suggested free range chickens or guinea fowl to snack on them.

I know how I've been stressing about him growing and how old he is and all that, but I was looking at pictures of 2 and 3 year old mustangs on the BLM internet adoption site, and I noticed that if you measure fetlock to elbow and compare to elbow to withers on the 3 year olds, they pretty much match, and on the 2 year olds, elbow to fetlock is longer. So I'm going to go with him being 2 sometime this year until the vet tells me different.

First video

Okay, this is my first attempt at video. It has no sound, will figure that out next time (I had to mute my talking as I'm laughing at myself while videoing!). We had gone for a walk and discovered a newspaper ad that had blown into the yard. Turns out, newspaper ads are very scary. Like, shaking it's gonna eat me scary. But we worked through it :) His pen isn't really big enough for him to get moving a whole lot, so this will do for now.

Deworming

I started a 5 day double dose of Panacur last Friday. He was such a good boy about taking it! The last three days of it he stood there very well, took the whole tube, and then just stood there while I pet him for a bit after.

I am hoping to be able to schedule an appointment with the vet for sometime within the next couple of weeks for him to be gelded and have his teeth checked. One thing I am really curious about is how old he truly is! After Tracey at Mustang Diaries found out that Steve Holt! is a year younger than his BLM papers say I am back to wondering if Cody is a coming 2 year old or a coming 3 year old. I'm still hoping for the not quite 2 yet because then he'd have more time to keep growing...

His BLM papers list him as being about a year old at capture and being approximately 15 hands. I'm sure it's hard to get a good idea of height when they are processing them, because with the height/weight tape I have, the last time I measured him, he's about 14.1 hands. I was looking for a horse that would be around 15.2 hands, give or take an inch, when full grown. It could still be possible, because when I measure from fetlock to elbow and then elbow to withers he's got a good 4-6" to go. So I guess, I just need to be patient, lol.

The Horseguard fencing I ordered has also arrived but I've just been so busy I haven't had time to get fence posts or move the burn-pile or any of the other stuff to get this fence installed. Hopefully soon though!

My plan for tomorrow includes working with Cody, maybe I'll even manage to find a couple poles he can walk over or something.

Oh! Tarps. It was windy the other day and a tarp managed to escape and blow up against the fence panels. I happened to glance out the window and saw Cody playing with something in the corner, so I go out to investigate (in my robe with a jacket on, I had been sent home sick from work and had changed into cozy clothes, lol) and find him trying to tug the tarp further into his pen to play with it. So I think we may dig out a tarp to play with tomorrow. Hopefully with pictures!

Slacker

I feel like such a slacker lately with not having posted for over a week. And during that week, only had time to work with Cody a couple of times. Been crazy busy working too much and it has now landed me with a miserable cold. Hopefully next week will be better!