Do You Ride Horses? V.4

[Faded...]

@ Rainbowhorse - nice looking horse, what do the brands denote?

I had some fun and games yesterday. My partner currently has a rotator cuff injury so is off work and can't do a lot with her horse, so I get to do 90% of the horse work... yay. They still both need exercising though, so a friend came over to ride Ollie (mine) and I got Prophet (my partner's Arab), only the second time I've really ridden him. Another friend wanted to come out with us on her allegedly Dutch warmblood mare Connie. Connie isn't getting enough exercise and is an excitable type anyway, and she and Prophet were just winding each other up. Have to say her rider made a much better show of staying in control than I did! Luckily it was up a fairly steep and long hill and he ran out of puff before the end (and I made him go on then anyway, just to prove a point). Ollie, bless him, behaved impeccably and we all got home safely.

Also Ollie (now 27) has just been diagnosed with very borderline Cushings. Anyone got any tips on managing it?

His brands are just his former owners brands.

[Hime]

@ayomi: How long have you been riding? Do you ride him alone in the arena or are there other horses around? Firstly you really need to be careful with your aids when turning. Too much rein can cause the pony to slow down when turning, so you'd need to up keep the speed with either little extra leg or your voice if that's easier. As for speeding up, could be balance issue (or another aid issue). I'd make sure you have both reins on contact, half halt and set him, then ask him to turn. Keep the reins on contact through the turn, so that A) you can balance him little more and B) if he tries to speed up you are prepared to slow him down. You also need to make sure your own balance is in check when turning, since that also can effect the horse's speed and pace. Like for example my mare always slows down on her own if she feels like I'm loosing balance when I'm riding bareback, and I've also ridden horses that speed up if the rider is too unbalanced.

@middle earth: When I was younger I basically read every single horse book I could get my hands on to learn more (fact kinds, also the fiction kinds but those are super unrealistic and glossed over to be honest). Now days I suppose internet is the place to look for information, but unfortunately there's also lot of wrong/bad information online so you really need to be careful on what source you trust.
Taking lessons is first step in practice, if you want to learn different styles of riding then trying them out is usually the best way to go. After you have some experience and the stable owner trusts you, you can ask if you can help out a bit around the stable. Like mucking out, bringing horses in, feeding etc. Leasing and owning are also options to learn more, but those are definetly more riding oriented. Though you also usually learn heaps more about horse care on the side as you are responsible for the well being of the horse even if you are boarding.
There are also schools that teach you horse stuff, but how useful/available they are is another story plus unless you want to make a career with horses I wouldn't recommend spending time on formal education on the subject. Working student is same type of deal to be honest. You really need to be serious about getting into horse industry to get into that type of arrangement as well, since they usually require lot of efford. Not only you need to find a place that suites you and has the credentials so to speak of as well, but the actual amount of work is usually pretty big, as usual in horse business.
Basically if you don't want to go to school about horses, but still want to learn more you can read stuff on your own or network and make contacts that will teach you more about horses.

@Favorite breed: Icelandic horses, hands down.
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3 more days and I can finally see my horses again. <3 4 months has been waaay too long time without them and riding (can I just say exam season is not fun without stress outlet). There's also apparently tooon of stable gossip that I need to catch up to according to L. XD Like there's a new boarder and I possibly know the horse from the past (if he is the same, then he's super sweet gelding).
Also it's Tý's birthday today (still for 20-ish minutes, thanks to time differance) and Feykja's birthday was just little over week ago as well. So 'babies' turned 5 and 2 now.

[.:shiver:.]

-snip-
Also Ollie (now 27) has just been diagnosed with very borderline Cushings. Anyone got any tips on managing it?

My 17 year old hanovarian has Cushings :) I know it sounds super stressful and bad but we feed him a decent feed that helps him to gain weight without putting him at risk of laminitis (cushing's horses are prone) and he's on medication to manage it. He gets annual blood tests to check the medication is working, but other than that he's like any other horse :)

[Hime]

Also Ollie (now 27) has just been diagnosed with very borderline Cushings. Anyone got any tips on managing it?

L has two horses with Cushing and both are on medication. Though I think one is boarderline case as well and you can't really see huge difference in the horse. But the other one with more 'severe' case does clearly better with medication and his blood values are now totally normal. His never been the best when it comes to shedding his winter coat, but this year it's coming off super well. He does seem to have some issues keeping weight on currently, but that's not necessarily due to just Cushing. The milder case pony got random mild laminitis few years back, which caused the cushing suspicion, so he's no longer allow in the pasture (he's also quite chubby case anyway).
But from my understanding the medication is very effective in most cases, and you need to be little mindful about sugars and starch in the diet, but not necessarily to point of trying to get all down to 0. Cushing horses tend to loose muscle more easily, so easily digestable proteins are good. If needs extra energy then adding oil is good option over grain, due to the low sugar/starch recommendation.
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I'm home and I got to go to the stable and ride and spent basically the entire day there! <3 All my ponies are doing fine.
Heta is in really good shape and her summer itch hasn't kicked in too bad yet. She's still shedding some, but I think I got rid of good amount of hair today when grooming. She's super dusty though, so I think tomorrow bath will be in order. R has been apparently riding her a lot on trails as leading horse and has really liked her in that job. She also has managed to dig up some nice clean tolt from Heta on the trails, so I guess I can't ditch my clean tolt dreams just yet.
Tý has definetly lost weight since winter (good thing as he was kinda fat), as they are now off free fed hay. But now he is almost little too skinny for my taste. So that will need to be adressed, he's also in weird shedding stage where he's not really shedding, but he's still kinda fluffy coated, it's just not that long. Riding wise, I feel like he hasn't gotten worse and in some parts he has gotten better. Obviously M hasn't been working him super hard like technique wise, so I didn't think they would have been massive improvement anyway. But he definetly feels little more comfortable and confident on the small trail nearest to the stable and generally has matured some mentally. R did tell me he had really bad reaction to a car one time on trails, but that was partly due the driver being idiot. M had mentioned this incident to me, but never told me about the driver and actually how bad it was... But he has also behaved decently when the cars have also passed nicely. So we really need to work on getting him used to cars somehow (my suggestion was to drive around him on the arena ).
Feykja is looking pretty good. She's kinda akward 2 year old, but has matured quite a bit and looks fairly nice. L just says she has been bit of a nightmare as she wants to be the one getting picked up from the paddock to the point where she tries to follow or stop other horses being taken away... ^^; I think tomorrow she'll get her extra attention and maybe little run around on the arena as well. Today she just had to settle for looots of scratches and cuddles.

[Brynmala]

@ shiver and Hime - thanks both, that's really helpful information. Ollie is 3/4 Hanovarian, so interesting correlation. I need to talk to his owner (technically he's on loan but I doubt he's ever going home) and see what she thinks but my feeling is that it would be better to start him on a low dose of whatever the tablet is, as per vet's recommendation. He does shed slowly, here we are in June and he still has a fair amount of winter coat left, but I gather he's always been like that. He could do with a bit more of a spark too, but that might have more to do with the arthritis - he's on daily bute for that. Our grazing is very poor and we are feeding hay all year round so I've no fears about laminitis.

I took him out this morning by himself for the first time in a long time (I'm not bold enough to try a ride and lead with both of them). I feel a bit stupid having to sneak out of the yard so that Proph doesn't notice his mate is gone! We were out for an hour and a half, which is longer than I'd intended, but Ol wasn't moving very fast, and I give him the benefit of the doubt. We did also have the farrier yesterday, so his hips are probably a bit stiff. It will be interesting to see how long the same ride takes with Proph tomorrow...

I'm sorry Ty had a run in with a thoughtless driver, I hope it doesn't have a lasting effect - there's far to many of them around. We have no option but to ride on the roads to get to the bridleways and the stupidity of some drivers on country lanes has to be seen to be believed, even without adding horses into the mixture. They are even more stupid around a driven horse, because obviously having a cart behind them makes a horse suddenly not subject to all the stupidities their brains can conjour up!

[.:shiver:.]

@Brynmala that's a crazy coincidence lol the medication can work really well in my experience so long as his owner is good with it, obviously it's down to the advice of the vets etc! The shedding is an absolute nightmare, I totally feel your pain. My boy gets clipped like three times a year because he's so fluffy - he's a 17hh Hanovarian that looks like an overgrown shetland pony in the winter haha. With the medication it gets better and i always find that the clipping helps it grow back thinner and less of it.

As far as the arthritis goes, have you tried those magnetic bands? I know it's super tricky to manage and im sure the bute does a good job but my boy is also pretty damn stiff and achy (not diagnosed arthritis but i wouldn't be surprised) and we use those magnetic fetlock bands on him. they don't work for every horse (didn't work at all for my other gelding who tore his suspensory) but they work great for him and seem to help him with his stiffness. He's an old dressage horse and he deffo takes a good warm up to get into his stride, and before we bought them he could feel really uneven when I rode - not lame, just not quite sound. It'd disappear as he worked, but with the magnetic bands he's a lot lot better and we hardly ever get those slightly uneven steps. they can be pretty expensive but we've had ours for like a year and they're still absolutely perfect, and the resale value is decent i think, you could even look at getting a pair second hand or borrowing from someone at your yard? i probs sound like im sponsored lol im not but it might make a difference?

[Luzien]

@ shiver (and Brynmaia too)
this bands, where do you get this? back on track?

and do you use a exercise sheet when you ride, to keep back warm? warm up and stretching bevor you go into saddle ?

and do you use herbs-bark- and different oil and such? special mineral feed for cushing-ems-laminitis horses?

there are some interesting sites where one can learn a lot about feeding, natural meds, or perfect warm up and training, slow feeder for hay, what to use for clipping the fur and such^^

[.:shiver:.]

@Luzien these are the bands we use

i use an exercise sheet on cold winter days but he sweats up very quickly (due to the cushings i believe) so try not to use it that much as we don't really get particularly cold here in England. as for warm up i try to do as much as possible on a nice long rein to give him a stretch, but he's absolutely terrible at stretching - god knows how a dressage horse could do what he did without being taught to stretch... he's almost 18 and still doesn't understand it when i ask him to stretch... he's very spooky so i give him as much rein as possible but i am cautious as don't want him to do anything silly...

he gets fed chaff and this to help him put weight on without the high sugar and starch, and when it comes to hay he gets a slow feed net. we turn out because he'd go crazy in a stable 24/7 but the grass isn't particularly lush and we monitor him for laminitis - he's never actually been prone, its just something we watch out for.

our clippers have been an absolute lifesaver at keeping him cool and comfortable, we finally bought our own not long ago and they were well worth the investment!

here's him pre and post his most recent clip in april :)

[Brynmala]

Got to laugh - the resemblance between your boy and Ollie is uncanny (still, a chestnut horse is chestnut horse...) Do you know the breeding of yours? They sound similar characters too - Ol can be very spooky, he's definitely better to ride than handle from the ground. He did dressage in his younger life though just at low levels - jumping was never his thing, he needs to risk assess every jump before he'll consider it!
Ollie June 18 by brynmala

I took this this morning, just after we'd got back in so he hadn't been properly groomed yet. He's looking old, and lost a lot of muscle mass across his back over winter. You can see the fluff still on him over his barrel and quarters.

He grows a very thick winter coat, always has apparently, so I don't use a quartersheet in winter because he gets too hot (and as you say it just isn't that cold in the UK). I don't clip him because he really isn't in enough work to warrant it, I am just very careful that he is properly dried off and kept warm. Also he'd have a blue fit if I tried to clip him!

He's on safe and sound and D&H pasture cubes, with added milk thistle just in case it will help his liver against the bute, and a general vitamin supplement that has some MSM etc in it. I haven't tried magnets, but I will do some research

[.:shiver:.]

ahh your boy is so sweet :D
yeah I do know his breeding actually xD it's here he was owned by someone else on our yard who's uncle had a big dressage yard, training and breeding and all sorts but something happened and he ended up giving him to his neice, who owned him for a while, but then when she finished uni her dad said he wouldn't pay for his keep any more and as she didn't really ride him that much and the sharer of my other boy had been riding him loads for him so she offered him to us, horse, tack, rugs everything for a pound. we couldn't say no really, he was just so sweet, and the money was only really so we could draw up an official bill of sale haha i wish i had the money to buy a horse with breeding like his, we just got lucky tbh

charlie's dumb and spooky but god does he love to jump. dressage was his thing, but he used to hunt quite a bit with his old owner and he can refuse and be stupid sometimes but he really loves jumping! he gets so excited by it, if we're in the school doing a grid session with a couple of others he'll literally stand and shake his head impatiently whilst he waits until it's his turn xD he's so silly haha

he's in a rubbish state though, he's got no muscle on his bum at all and he needs work on his topline :( with my exams sneaking up on me i've just not had the time to ride him regularly enough to bring his condition back (can't wait until the summer) had the most amazing ride tonight though, dad was watching me so pointed out my weak spots and we really worked on them, and he felt so good when we finally got working together and he did the most beautiful trot and half pass :D i'm so proud of him, especially the last time i rode him he ended up tripping up over his own feet and we both went down... one of the nastiest falls i've had in a while ngl