Yes We are Halfway there. Halfway through the 2023 Top Barn Winter Challenge. Doing the Silver Challenge has been a little tough, but it IS meant to be a challenge. We haven't had much rain, but its been pretty cold. Plenty of mornings breaking ice off the water butts and persuading the tap to thaw. My dodgy lungs and dicky ticker don't like frosty air. It literally hurts to breathe. And I run out of power around 2pm. In a ideal world, I'd go home to sleep! But who has an ideal world. My Mum is 85, so I have to run her about, shopping, hairdressers, chippy lunches. And I have a little business to attend to, and there is the never-ending household chores. I often fall asleep after tea. Or sometimes during it! The house is incredibly cold downstairs.......11.6 - 14c generally. A lovely temperature outside, but not so good for watching TV. So I generally retire upstairs around 8pm (and its getting earlier). Upstairs is warmer (due to no carpets and the hot water pipes making it feel like underfloor heating). The bed is warm and comfy, TV lulls me to sleep (I never see the end of anything). I have been sending my OH weekly pictures so he doesn't forget what I look like!!!
But Charlie and I are thoroughly enjoying the Challenge. As well as working on our Agility stuff, we have been working on Clipper Training ( I WILL get those hairy legs clipped), Picking out feet (Its a NO from Charlie), Being tied up (Another Big No), and Tacking up (Scary Horse eating equipment) and Mounting (Where has Mum Gone? Oh No. Panic!!! Everyone Run Away). We have also been doing Rhi's Very Difficult Randoms. A couple of the GW Randoms are based on long-lining. Charlie has spent over half his life being terrified of not being able to see me. I put this down his partial blindness and a hideous foal-hood. And so we have had to build up very slowly to this long reining stuff. Certainly a challenge Rhi!!!
I certainly wouldn't be able to do Silver hours if it wasn't for my Yard Partner in Crime, Jo Moore. We share the grazing and the work. Jo has 4 ponies. The delightful Daisy, who I ride (a 23 year old Rescue Highland), Lulu (The Diva Blonde Haflinger), who I also sometimes ride, when friends ride Daisy (and I can't bribe them to ride Lu) and 2 Shitlands (say no more). Charlie lives with Lu and Daisy. The Shitlands live together because they are Shitlands! Jo has been emptying The Shit Trailer.....Oh! Its not a Shit Trailer at all. In fact it's rather good, but full of Shit after we have done the daily poo-picking. And filling it with Hay for the next day, so I can get on with working Charlie. So huge Thanks Jo!
Anyway back to Agility. And more precisely Pool Noodles!!! This month in my Agility classes I need 6 Pool Noodles. I only have 4. Have you seen how much they cost????? In this cold cold Winter, I can't afford to buy any more. But. Bingo! I remembered i had 2 blow up Pool Noodles. Sorted! After a couple of days one went a bit floppy. So I went to blow it up. Charlie, ever helpful, decided to hold it for me! Sadly his bite is not far off the power of my dog (one of them highly dangerous Belgian Malinois) and the little sod has now punctured it....in several places. I spent a good half hour the other day, patching it up with tape, blowing it up, only to watch it deflate again! (Reminded me of an ex haha) Eventually I taped it to another noodle to hold it up. This meant contact breaks the tape and the noodle hits the deck. So in came the Noodle Scrambling Walk (think trying to avoid light beams while stealing some precious diamond from some precious museum) so Charlie had the full 6 Noodles to push through. Although I'm not entirely sure Charlie has the Full 6 Noodles!
So last Saturday was horrible! Daisy was laying down when we arrived. Not odd. She likes a snooze. Rob, Meg and Nancy arrived to help. I told them to go say Hello to Daisy. She loves a cuddle while laying down. However, she didn't get up when we put the hay out. She loves food more than anything. Instead she lay flat out. There had been a fair bit of sun and the ponies had been picking grass so there was a chance Daisy had laminitus. Meg picked her feet out and Daisy remained prone. My Colic Radar was going off at this point so I checked her out. Her feet were cool and no radial pulse so I ruled out Lami. However her breathing was fast (19 breathes per minute) and her nostrils pinched. By now Colic Radar screaming like a siren. Jo brought her a mash loaded with Buscopan and Bute. But she wouldn't touch it. Definitely Colic.
Jo called the Vet, who was only 15 minutes away. In that time Daisy did the full text book colic symptoms, up and down, rolling, sweating, panting. She was breathing so fast I thought her heart would give up. We had a fantastic Vet. The first problem was getting rid of her polar-bear coat so the Vet could find a vein. Daisy doesn't do clippers. The Vet only had dog trimmers. Daisy was quite a handful so we didn't think my Full Size noisy clippers an option. Scissors worked and the Vet was able to inject Buscopan and a pain killer. Daisy produced a couple of balls of normal looking poo. It looked like it might be gassy colic rather than a blockage. But the fantastic Vet did a rectal to be sure. Dodging the kicks, she decided some of the intestine felt dislodged and she would like to tube her to be sure. We quickly decided she needed to be sedated. Daisy decided she did not want another injection, and suddenly felt well enough to rear up and plunge about. Highlands are quite hard to hold when they decide to go somewhere at speed. Out came the Twitch. Only option. Eventually twitched, The Vet got the sedative in and we were finally able to Tube Daisy. For those who have never had a horse tubed.......Its basically a long tube, shoved up their nose, which they swallow (the danger lies in the fact that the Windpipe is right next to the Stomach Pipe). Daisy tried very hard to cough it up, but eventually swallowed it. Again for those that are lucky enough to never have had their horse tubed.....Once the tube is in the stomach, its held up in the air and a bucket of warm water with Epsom salts and liquid paraffin is slowly poured in, thus flushing the stomach out.
Huge Thanks to Rob, Meg and Nancy for completing the day-to-day chores while Jo, the Vet and I wrestled with a very distressed Daisy.
Having worked on large yards and owning a worm damaged colicky mare in the past I have seen and assisted in this procedure many times. But its still not a nice experience. My old mare sometimes needed tubing twice, and eventually died of colic as did my Paddy Pony. And so I was worried. Daisy was put in with the Shitlands, where the anorexic Coco is out on 3 Acres of reasonable grass, while the over-weight Mini is penned at night. Coco immediately went into protective mode. Squealing and charging. Daisy just went to sleep. Having spent some time sitting with her, I eventually went home. 2 hours later, I went back. Daisy still laying down. So I waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually she got up and started munching on Hawthorn bushes so I went home.
Next morning I was so relieved to find Daisy grazing!! I was also relieved to find droppings caked in and threaded through with sand. So it was a sand blockage after all, which at least explained things. We are on sandy soil and sand colic is a thing. We use Psyllium to clear out sand, but we usually use it when it rains and its easy for the ponies to pull the grass out from the roots. But we have learned to keep a closer eye on Daisy now! And we are very grateful to The Vet for tubing her, otherwise she would have been back. We have also decided to use the Psyllium monthly.
So what idiot designed horse guts? Had they cut all the intestines to length already? Then they found out it was too long. But, It was obviously Friday afternoon. Solution? Oh yeah, lets fold it round here, no-one will ever notice. Oh and in the hurry to get to the Pub, they forgot to add a back flow valve. So the horse has to live with a spare piece of folded gut, and no way of throwing up anything bad. So anything that goes in.....It has to navigate it's way around a maze with a useless fold and push its way out of the back door!
Meanwhile the owner of said horse is wondering if anyone would like to buy a kidney to pay the Vet bill. Or an I-Joy Vibrating Fun Machine? Or Rugs? Leg Wraps? Feed Buckets? Anything? We have Bits galore! Various bits of leather!! The odd Shitland? Ah no. They are not for sale!! I have 2 books for sale on Kindle. They might not be any good, but they are cheap!! Or how about subscribing to Charlie's Youtube Channel? Charliethetrickpony. It doesn't cost anything to subscibe. And back to that Kidney......Good Working Order. Only one owner.
So, Jo and I will be busy in the future, but keep it up Top Barners. You can do this! See you on the Other Side.
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