Musings on Horse 'tude, a visitor, and signs of Spring!!

Well, well.  Dax has re-grown an attitude.  It’s not surprising really.  All she’s been getting is lots of feeding and lovin’-on.  No work, no exercise, no being bossed around by me.  Without regular bossing around, she gets the sneaky idea that she can start bossing ME around.  Obviously this is not ideal. Exhibit A:

The perosnal-space Invader

Nom-Nom-Nom

This morning I take her feed out to her.  She eats, I take her blanket off while she eats, I put hay out and she starts to nibble.  I notice some peeling skin where she had her injection, so I scratch at it and pull a little to see if it’s loose.  Yeaaaa, it’s not loose, and clearly this takes Dax by surprise.  Her head whips up; she takes a jump to the side and then gives me the tiniest cow-kick. 

 "Ow Mom!  That HURTS."  

She barely brushed me and I don’t even have a bruise, so it really was the tiniest cow-kick ever.

Ok, to be fair she’s happily eating her breakfast, un-tied and had just been petted when suddenly I cause her unexpected and uncommon pain.  I don’t normally do things to her that are painful….and when I do, she is usually carefully held and/or twitched.  (For those of you unfamiliar with twitching, it’s basically a hold form that causes discomfort to release endorphins that dull pain, as well as distract from the pain you have to cause, like an injection.  Twitches usually are on the nose, but you can also do a neck grab that acts like a nose twitch.)  She’s totally used to me picking all over her when she’s eating.  It’s my Dax-inspection time, and she’s rarely tied up.  I’ve pulled ticks off her udder in the middle of a pasture.  She’s not insensitive, it’s just that she’s a good girl and knows to stand still.  When she had to get joint injections to identify the lameness this past fall, she didn’t kick at the vets once.  And she got more than 20 injections into every joint in her hind leg.   Of course she wasn’t happy, but for the most part she was VERY good.  The vets were impressed :-)

Today’s little cow-kick was clearly demonstration of her growing ‘tude.  She is a chestnut mare after all (chestnut mare = redhead woman = fiery personality).  I can’t let stuff like that slide – it’ll grow into a bigger problem and KICKING IS UNACCEPTABLE.  The only option is to work her, have her acknowledge me as boss and be pleasantly submissive.  This sounds harsh to non-horsey people, but it actually stems from natural-horsemanship and how horses relate to each other.  Here’s a quick breakdown:

Horses are social climbers.  Being top of the herd means getting to eat all the good grass, calling the shots on where the herd goes, and in the wild gets you all the hot dates.  So horses are hard-wired to try to be top of the totem pole all the time.  Domestication has had the effect of convincing horses that we are part of the “herd” and thus can potentially be pushed around.  Add to it that we control food and are much smaller than horses and you have a recipe where most horses will push respectable limits unless those limits are consistently enforced.  A good example would be walking into a pen with food.  A respectful horse will wait at a distance.  They might follow you like a shadow, but they’ll respect your personal space (Horses are ALL about personal space).  A horse that is less respectful will crowd up on you, trying to stick their nose in the bucket, possibly step on you, etc.  You get the idea.

It might seem like a stretch, but Dax standing still and tolerating me causing her a modicum of discomfort is her being respectful of and submissive to me.  Facts of life are that I will need to do things to her/with her that she won’t always like, but for my safety and hers she needs to tolerate it.  She needs to trust me that it’s for her own good, that I’d never do something truly painful or that would really hurt her.  Vaccines are a good example.

Back to the story.  So I put her on a line and ask her to trot (work) in simple circles – once she shows signs of submission to me (lowering her head, licking and chewing, generally relaxing her body) I let her stop moving, come towards me, get a pat and we’re done.  I’ve worked with her this way MANY times, so she knows the game.

WELL….she bucked and jumped and reared and RAN around me. Full display of horsey ‘tude.  I wasn’t completely surprised, and of course I would have rather her NOT be doing that crap, but I didn’t have much choice and she needed to work it out.  It drives me nuts tho b/c she’ll really get herself moving and do the most beautiful extended trot….she can move out when she wants to!  After about 10mins, she finally lowered her head and began to lick, so I invited her in….but on the way she decided she’d rather stop to eat a bit of hay.  So it was back to work…

Eventually she worked it out, came around and was a good girl.  Meanwhile, I got a good look at her movement.  She’s not 100% sound, but boy was she WAY better than she had been pre-injection.  This might just be due to all the time off, but it was still really good to see. 

I know her running around is totally against the rehab plan BUT my rational is that 1) it’s over a month out, so we’re not aggravating a recent injection site 2) it was immediately clear she wasn’t super lame – if she had been, I would have stopped her 3) I’m going to give her a gram of bute (like horsey ibuprofen) to nip any inflammation in the bud.  4) I’ve gotten her to eat the super-expensive supplement, which has all sorts of joint lubricating properties and anti-inflammatory stuff so hopefully that’s helping. 

By the way, my sis asked a while back what I was doing about getting Dax to eat the supplement.  Well, mixing it with molasses, apple sauce or maple syrup all with pellet feed made no difference - she wouldn't touch the stuff!  The solution was mixing it with senior feed.  Senior feed is like horsey-crack….she’s probably eat ME if I were mixed with senior feed.  And the good news is that the senior feed is very safe in terms of not a ton of simple carbs that make her hyper, fat and prone to laminitis.  She only gets ½ lb once a day…it’s really just carrier for the supplement.  ½ lb might sound like a lot to a person, but remember we’re talking about a 1200lb horse. 

The horse-crack

As for dealing with my hairy social-climber, I’m anxiously awaiting delivery of some clickers and have got a book from the library on clicker training dogs.  I figure I can get some basic ideas from that, play around with it and see how Dax does.  If all goes well, I’ll pick up a clicker training book for horses (will have to buy, none at the library) and go from there!  Hopefully the clicker training will help re-enforce good behavior, respect and also give her some mental activity.  I know she’s just a horse, but c’mon, she’s got to be bored stiff!  She’s alone, in a small pen all day and all night.  Her interactions consist of two 20min visits from me just feeding, grooming and blanketing - not exactly stimulating interactions.  I’m hoping to avoid any more “work-outs” but keep that growing horse-ego in check.

In other news, we had a visitor yesterday in the form of a super cute brindle & white pitbull.  He was just laying in the cow field, clearly lost and confused.  Zack gave him the usual warm welcome ( Grrrrrr….) but Haley was quite polite.  He had a collar with his name and phone #.  He wasn’t a puppy, but was young and unfixed.  I called the number, found where he belonged and had to take him there b/c the owner was at work until 1am.  He was an AMAZING dog – totally polite and submissive to Zack and Haley, reading their body language and being cautious but not scared.  He knew sit and lie down, was very gentle taking treats, loved being scratched on and gave the cutest little kisses.  He was also underweight and kinda dirty, but had a very nice collar on.  He was quite hungry so I indulged lots of treats.  He listened to me almost immediately, played with Haley a little (she has a hard time playing since she can’t see the other dog…) and was happy to just chill in the living room while we waiting for the return call from his owners. 

Not exactly a perfect lock on that ball, eh?

I’m sorry, I’m going to be judgmental here, but owners who won’t fixed their dog, don’t feed it enough, exercise it enough, or even bother to keep it from roaming DO NOT DESERVE TO HAVE SUCH A SWEET NATURED DOG!!!! I soooooo could have kept that guy….it’s a really good thing he had a collar other wise it would have been straight to the SPCA with a hold under my name.  And yes, I probably would have been threatened with divorce by the hubby for getting yet another pet, but I’d bet a lot of money that this pup could have won him over – he was that sweet!  I know this dog’s situation is a small tragedy in a world full of tragedies, and there are many dogs way worse off.  But it still gets my hackles up.  Sorry I didn’t get a pic of him….he had a double brindle mask on his face with white all over and large brindle spots.  Sooooo cute!

In more pleasant other news....spring is clearly around the corner.  Look at the green!!!