It Started with a Text

A former boarder at my barn, KP, texted me on a Saturday out of the blue asking if I wanted to buy or know of anyone who did her 4 month old filly. She's out of an imported Hanoverian mare by a Oldenburg/Trakehner stud.  The stud was who she used to board with us last year when he was 3 coming 4, until the testosterone really kicked in and she gelded him and took him home to recover. This is his first kid; KP has the same mare and another mare in foal to him for next year.

Hello world!

I really, really like Rogue, the stud/now gelding. He was a sweetheart on the ground, and you would have never know he was a stud till this spring.  He was the one Peebs was in love with last year. I was briefly toying with breeding Tia to him instead of Yorke, but physically Yorke was a better match for Tia.  Rogue is bigger boned than Yorke, and Tia needed Yorke's refinement.

Not to sure about this whole hatler breaking thing

I jokingly texted my mom, who was helping to pay for Tia's breeding expenses, and asked if she wanted to buy me the filly. She replied with "Ok, how much" and after I picked my jaw up off the floor and responded and said KP would let us do payments till she’s weaned.  So the next day my BO and I went off to meet her.  She is a beautiful foal.  Very well put together, great manners, friendly and best of all, a gorgeous mover. Seriously, all the things I want in a cute red package. KP's plans for her were dressage, but hopefully she'll take to jumping.

Baby's first selfie

She's not weaned yet, and probably won't come home till late November/early December but it looks like I'm buying a weanling!  I'm hoping I can make it over to KP's a few times before she comes home to play and get to know her. They mostly call her the baby, and the name they gave her I don't really love, so I'm trying to come up with names. I'm thinking Cinder for her barn name but I'm not 100% yet.  I think I need to get to know her more before deciding. The one downside is that Rogue isn't registered, so she can't be registered in a breed registry.  So I have some time before I need a show name for her to be registered with USEF. I need to double check what the dam's registered name is, but I think the name I had picked out for Tia's foal will actually work as well. 

Evolution of Peebs' Poop Problem

Back when I bought Peebs I was told that he had occasional soft poop and watery discharge down his butt and hind legs. I've had a couple different vets look at him, and tried various supplements, feed, probiotics, and what not. It would kinda get better, then kinda worse and was basically a constant thing.  I learned to deal with it and so did Peebs.  He wasn't colicky, kept weight on great, and was otherwise completely fine.

We're gonna need a bigger bucket

Over the summer I had the chiropractor, TS, out to work on him a couple of times.  She's a vet, and had also offered advise on our poop problem.  She has a client in the Bay Area whose horse had the same problem and they did a full work up at Davis.  They switched the horse to a completely pelleted diet, no hay, no grazing. And that worked.  The plan for that horse was to leave him on the hay pellets for a while (not sure how long) and slowly try adding hay back in to see if he could handle it.

The second time I had TS out this summer Peebs was having a bad poop week and had actually lost some hair on his butt and hind legs.  TS read me the riot act and told me to either try the pellets or take him in to the vet school for a work up. Since taking him in for a work up sounds expensive I started him on the hay pellets.  I slowly switched him off the beet pulp he was getting to the pellets, then started adding more pellets and less hay.

Approximately 6lbs of soaked timothy pellets in a standard water bucket

We got up to 6lbs of soaked pellets and one flake of grass hay twice a day, and our poop problem stopped. It was amazing.  His butt and hind legs looked normal for probably the first time in the year and half I've owned him.  It made me sad thinking of how long I let this go on before doing something about it.  Since he was doing ok on half pellets/half hay, I left it at that and never fully put him on straight pellets.

Thank god he's an easy keeper

So Peebs is currently on the 6lbs of pellets and a flake of hay twice a day.  Once a day he gets his Horse Guard vitamin/mineral mix and Omega Horseshine. No other grain, no grass, just some cookies or carrots. The theory is that for whatever reason, his GI tract can't handle too much long stem fiber, but is ok with short stem, aka pellets. We did have a relapse a couple of weeks ago and I was pretty upset until I found out a barn mate was trying to be nice and feeding him a flake (or two) of hay at lunch when she fed her mare.  I felt like a bitch when I had to tell her not to do that, that he can't have any extra food. Knock on wood this keeps working and we can officially end our poop problem!

Stress City

The past month has been Stress City.  We had a big accreditation site visit for work and have spent every moment getting ready for it.  And of course, the week before, our internal review board said they wanted to their biannual inspection before the visit, instead of during the visit like originally planned.  So our time frame was suddenly shortened.  But both are over now and hopefully things can return to normal.

Still as cut as ever

To keep my sanity, I've mostly managed to keep riding during Stress City. Peebs, for the most part, has been good.  We've started putting the jumps up a bit to a whopping 2'3" and even a 2'6" fence.  And added in oxers.  I'm nervous about them, but Peebs don't care.  As long as I don't get handsy, and keep my hands down, he just goes with the flow and jumps from where ever I put him.

One of the easiest horses to ride through a gymnastic

We did our last show of the year at the end of September and while it was a bit of  a hot mess (apparently Peebs doesn't like waiting in the rain for his classes to go and got a bit spicy) I'm happy with how I handled it. He wanted to run, but at the same time was spooking at whatever and trying to go sideways.  We mostly trotted fences and I tried to keep my cool and not let it affect me.  Which I did, and we did improve with each round. In the past if Buddy or Phoenix pulled something like that I would have been in the fetal position crying and not able to push through and keep going.  So while we didn't have the show I wanted, it was worth it in terms of showing how far I've come as a rider. And the mental victories like that are worth more than ribbons any day.

I swear I'm not that pale in real life

There have been a couple big splurges, because we all know Stress City is best dealt with booze and retail therapy. I dropped my GPA on the concrete tack room floor a week or so before International Helmet Awareness Day, so of I made lemonade out of lemons and took advantage of the sales.  CO's and Samshields don't fit my head and the tack shop I went to didn't have any GPA's in my size and I was wary about ordering another with out trying it on first.  I liked how the Kask fit and it's pretty comfy so we went with that.  You'll have to wait for another post to see the other big purchase.