Personal and Pony updates

I'm slowly re-joining the land of the living.  For those of you who don't know, I had minor surgery on Wed. It was no big deal, except that Tuesday I came down with a head cold.  Major stuffiness, sinus congestion, headache, all that fun stuff, but no fever or chest involvement.  So it was up in the air as to whether surgery would go ahead.  However, I still had to follow the pre-surgical rules of no food/liquids after 12midnight the night before and obviously no medications.  The surgery was scheduled for about 3pm, so you can imagine I was feeling great  - thirsty, hungry, tired, totally congested and generally feeling sick and facing anesthesia & surgery for the first time.  Good times!!  The surgery did go ahead as planned, all went well and the head cold is on its way out.  It's like killing two birds with one stone in a sense, as I was going to be stuck on the couch for a couple of days one way or the other!

The couch time has also coincided with some seriously nasty weather - lots and lots of cold rain!!  I'm sure most folks have heard about the tornados in the south and flooding all over the place.   Here in Crozet, we've got pretty good mountain drainage so flooding wasn't an issue, but everything is pretty soggy.  Like standing water in the fields soggy.  That being said, we're way behind in precipitation so the soggy it not a bad thing...I'm imagining underground aquifers re-filling as I type :-)  Pony squishes where ever she walks like she's got wet tennis shoes on, and there are a lot of doggie foot prints on the kitchen linoleum.  The grass is greening at a ridiculous pace....I see a grazing muzzle in someone's future (and a lawnmower in mine).

In pony news, I rigged up a toy a little while back to try to entertain her hairy-ness whilst she was still penned up.  It led to some serious concern and an interesting discovery.

The contraption is very simple, just an old apple cider jug with large holes cut in it, hung by the handle at pony-nose height.  See:

Stuff treats in those holes, and Dax gets to bop it around to get the treats out....it really does take a bit of bopping to get them out, and I watched her mess with it for a good bit of time the first day I put it out.  I'm thinking "Great!!  She's bright enough to figure this out and will hopefully keep herself busy messing with it for a bit each day!".  Horsey people are probably thinking "Yeah right, she's going to figure out she can grab it and pull it down with her teeth in about two seconds."  And we're both wrong.  Second day out, I put treats in it, and she completely ignores the contraption.  I come back that evening, and they haven't been touched.
Seriously....fresh cut carrots and Mrs. Pasture's horse cookies....untouched.  
My god, is she colicking?!??!?
No, she's just fine. I get a friendly nuzzle and she dives into her evening hay.  No signs of distress what-so-ever.  Hmmm.
This goes on for a few days.  I shake it, let her eat what drops out, she snuffles my hand as I put the cookies in the jug....and proceeds to ignore it.

I get the worried suspicion that my horse is, well, stupid.

As I've mentioned before, she's trusting to a fault, thinks pretty much the world is her oyster, all humans are good and she has the least play drive I've seen in any horse, ever.  Play in animals is often considered a sign of intelligence....it's often the first step in learning.

Oh dear lord, I think my horse is simple.

OK, can this really be true?  How does one tell??  Generally when one thinks of a stupid horse, we think of one that doesn't understand simple riding cues, or is scared of every thing, or is easily overwhelmed to the point of emotional melt-downs.  But these all depend on the horse having a functional fight-flight response, right?  (And I want to note that often these "stupid" horses are just very sensitive or simply high-strung and need a calm leader they can trust to excel.  It's really the people who are stupid and don't see what the horse needs.)  Anyway, the above described horse has to be smart enough to be scared of things like a normal prey animal.  What if my horse is so simple-minded that she isn't even scared of things for her own good???

I'm mulling over this possibility when my training clickers arrive.  Right, here's a test - will she get the click-equals-treat thing and can I mold a behavior with her, or will she fail miserably and prove to me once and for all that I actually own a special needs equine?

I have tried to teach her to bow previously by tempting her with a treat between her front legs - this is a no brainer, because her nose/mouth just follow the treat as I lower it to her knees.  But I wanted to see if I could get her to do it without the lure, and on command.  I follow the basic instructions of simply introducing the clicker "click" followed with a treat.  Let's see if she can figure out that the click means "at treat is coming".
Click, wait a second, treat.  Dax loves this game.
Click, wait 5 seconds, treat.  Dax thinks the treat must be in the other hand.  Tries to eat the clicker.  Finally gets her treat.  "Geez, what's with the 5 seconds mom?"
I do this for a minute or two  - it's pretty clear she gets the click and treat connection.  That or she can detect treat molecules on me and won't leave my side till she's inhaled every one.

Ok, time to up the stakes.  I don't do anything, and wait for an interesting behavior, something like a bow.  This is as simple as her dropping her nose to the ground or her leg.  As it turns out, nose to the ground is the first thing she does.  I click immediately and shove a cookie in her mouth.  Her ears are glued on me and I can almost hear the gears spinning behind her bright brown eyes.  She tries gently nudging me, looks around, then drops her nose again.  I manage to click while her head is dropping (you always click while the behavior is happening - timing is key).  'Nother cookie.
I swear she smiles at me.
She drops her head.
Click - cookie.
She drops her head again.

She learned to bow in three clicks.  A few more, and she was basically doing it on command.

I'm not worried Dax is simple anymore.  I'm now worried that she's so smart, she thinks the treat-jug is boring and frustrating, and will likewise ignore any of my other home-made toy ideas.  Crap.  

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!!!