While I am so thankful to still have Yosemite Sam with me, I do not ever want to forget all the great horses I have been blessed to know in my life. Of course not all of them were mine, and I probably don’t have any pics to share of a lot of them, but I can still enjoy the memories I do have of them. On the plus side, I do have some pics of some horses, and I really like pics. I guess they help trigger my ever-ailing memory skills.
| So, this is Pria and Red. She was Arabain, Pure Polish, with Bask on both sides. The munchkin is Red. |  |
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She is in full Mom-mode here, and a very good mom she was. Although you cannot tell it here, I actually had trouble keeping weight on her mid-late pregnancy. Despite getting a gallon of high-quality grain 3x a day, she was not maintaining. All signs said the baby was fine and developing normally, but she was not getting what she needed. Of course we didn’t start out at a gallon 3x a day. We added gradually assuming more feed would take care of it. Once we got to the 3 gallons a day, and it still wasn’t working – time to try something else. On my vet’s advice, I started adding yeast culture (Diamond V Yeast – used to come in a big bag, I think 5 or 10 lb.) to her feed. Voila! Problem solved. Apparently her body wasn’t able to efficiently process the food, no matter how much we crammed in there, in order to get the needed nutrients. As I remember the reasoning from the vet, the yeast didn’t actually provide any nutrition per say, but it worked with her digestion to help her get more out of the feed. The yeast helped to break down the feed faster and more thoroughly, you know with all those fizzy enzymes and stuff, so then her body could squeeze out the good stuff before it all popped out the back end to make room for the next batch.
Yes, she was on fescue the entire time with no adverse consequences. No, not just lucky. I gave her ten of those little miracle pills every day, during the last three months, I think. Wish I could remember the Rx name of the pills, but alas I cannot. I kept the bottle for a long time. Actually, probably still have it SOMEWHERE. Problem is, where? This was at the old wooden barn; she foaled there. At that time, I had no place to move her – with or without fescue! This was it, and it did have fescue, so we had to work around it.
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See, she got her girlish figure right back(right). She was mad that I didn’t give her time to primp for the pic. That was way after baby, and at HHF.
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Excellent example of Red’s personality. “I don’t know who chewed on the fence, but it wasn’t me. Oh, that pic – I wasn’t chewing, I was just resting my head on the fence.” He never touched the hood of my blue Ford either, if you asked him. However, the hood said otherwise. On the right he is being Pokey (Gumby’s horse) at a John Lyons Symposium in Asheville. This would be the one where we had to pay for the stall. No, I don’t mean stall rent, that was included in the cost of the symposium. I mean to repair the stall. Let me ‘splain, Lucy. The ‘Pokey’ epithet was not in any way related to speed. Remember Gumby? The little clay-mation cartoon man. Well, in case you’re not a Gumby fan, Pokey was Gumby’s horse. These characters were reproduced as toys and were usually made of rubbery-plasticy stuff so that they were infinitely flexible. It was the infinite flexibility that earned him the Gumby-Pokey label. I will have to say he did very well at the clinic. They prefer the attendees to bring their most well-broke, steady mount to this type of clinic. This was not one of his “start your colt” clinics, which he also did. This was to be where the rider learned techniques for groundwork and under-saddle work. The idea for the well-broke horse was that the rider could concentrate on learning the techniques rather than focusing on staying alive and remaining on the horse. Picky, picky. Well, when the opportunity came around for me to attend this clinic, I was starting Red. I had done lots of ground work with him. I had sat on his back in a saddle, but had never actually ridden him at all. We were right at the stand-still-while-I-get-on, stand-still-while-I-sit-here-quietly-for-a-mere-second, now stand-still-while-I-get-off stage. We had just graduated from the monotonous(although tremendously beneficial) phase of stand-still-while-I-step-up-in-the-stirrup-AND-step-back-down. So, I took him to the clinic. Sounds wise enough, right? Well, it was really great. No big wrecks or anything like that. It was awesome fun and I learned SO MUCH. I for one learn so much more in a hands-on situation than I do from watching and listening.
A few more memories from the clinic, the stall bill, and a lot more of Pria and Red will be coming soon.