Archive for August, 2010

Some accidents are just one in a million freaks.  The stars and the moon are lined up just right, like snake eyes coming up on the roll of the dice.

Jessie’s salt lick holder in her stall is held on the pole with sturdy zip ties about six feet off the ground.  One of the zip ties had broken so the top of the salt lick holder was leaning to the inside just a bit.  The bottom of it was still very secure to the pipe.  (Mental note:  “Fix the broken zip tie on the salt lick holder”.

A few days later, while diligently scratching her butt on the pole Jessie flung her beautiful, long, tail up and around the leaning salt lick holder and her tail was absolutely stuck behind it.

Bucking and pulling to free her tail was scary.  I dove over the fence into her stall and I could not free her beautiful, long tail.  Finally the last foot of her long, beautiful tail just ripped off and was hanging behind the leaning salt lick holder.  I could tell that it hurt her because she kept hunching her back up and displaying various signs of distress.

After a long, cold butt rinsing and two grams of Bute, she was just fine, minus a foot of her tail hairs.  The tail bone was just fine.  I gave her a wet, oily, bran mash just in case.

Her tail is still now at her fetlocks but it is no longer dragging ten inches on the ground.  I tied it up so she couldn’t step on it and it will grow back in a year or so.

Our lesson?  Fix stuff now, not later.

On our recent Blog entitled A Dog Tragedy the story has a message and a lesson.  As a horse rider you should be prepared for dogs, scary balloons or drifting plastic bags (those darned off-leash plastic bags).  That was the message.

We have come to find out that this tragedy happened in Anza, CA not in Yorba Linda, CA. We are sorry for the mistake.

Thanks for your comment

We always say that good horsemanship is 80% common sense and 20% knowledge.  Common sense is a gift and not everybody is given this gift.  Our belief is there are many more people that are book smart than there are people with common sense.  This is very apparent in the horse world.  Trying to teach someone with no common sense is like trying to teach a tone-deaf person how to play a musical instrument…it is impossible!

Following are some lack of common sense situations that will establish that that you do not have the gift and that you probably will never be a good horseman.  For you good horsemen out there this should give you a laugh.

1. If you see a horse with a fly mask on and you have to ask “Why is that horse blindfolded?”
2. If three or more people have tried to teach you how to longe.
3. If you are thinking about buying an orange stick.
4. If you don’t want to ever take lessons.
5. If you ever ask someone “Is it OK to tie my horse here?”
6. If your horse has broken more than one halter by pulling back while tied.
7. If more than two people have tried to teach you what a “lead” is.
8. If, for the life of you, you can’t see that a horse is cross-firing, or 4 beating.
9. If you think that “collection” is only for people who show.
10. If you think that a harsher bit will make your horse behave.
11. If you always blame the horse for being “naughty”.
12. If you can’t tell if a horse is limping, or for that matter any animal is limping.
13. If your horse is in a pipe stall and it is “not” boarded-up around the bottom.
14. If a fellow horseman, or a trainer, has to tell you more than once “not” to do something.
15. If your riding instructor tells you that maybe this sport is not for you.
16. If you do not own a pair of polo wraps, or splint boots but you do own a horse.
17. If you do not a fly mask but you do own a horse.
18. If your horse sits in its’ stall for a week when it is not injured, sick, or raining.
19. If a horse shakes a fly off and you can’t figure out why its’ skin twitched.
20. If you constantly have to ask “why is the horse doing that?”

If you find yourself in any of these situations, maybe you should buy a bicycle instead of a horse, or start to take riding lessons.

What do you think?

(Originally posted June 14, 2010)