Donnerstag, 27. September 2012

Farewell Zorro!

Yesterday, I had to let Zorro go. It was no surprise. I'd seen it coming. Her teeth were very bad again and she couldn't eat anymore. I had to hand feed her. She was always a fighter so hand feeding was no problem she even gained some weight. But not being able to eat by herself is no life for a guinea pig.

I took her to the vet to get her jaw x-rayed. Sadly, it turned out that there was no hope for her of ever getting better. Due to arthritic changes in her jaw there was a lot of bone growth. Amazing that she was able to eat with it as long as she did, little fighter, and so I let her go.

Good bye, Zorro, I'm going to miss you.






Samstag, 15. September 2012

Shoes

Not for me, obviously, but for Crispin. Like most horse owners I much prefer a barefoot horse if possible, but after the coffin bone incident I decided to give up and try shoeing him for a while. Just in the front. The footing at the new barn is just a little too much for his feet and I do want to go out with him more. But even after 8 weeks of just turnout there wasn't much hoof left to trim, so I decided to give shoeing him a go.


I picked a farrier who might not excell at shoeing (though, I do think he did a decent job!) but seemed to be willing to take his time with Crispin. And he did! I have to say Crispin wasn't half as bad as I had expected. I knew that fitting the hot shoes would be an issue, but even that wasn't too bad. He's not quite comfortable with the shoes jet, no pain or anything, but they seem to have thrown him off balance a little again (like that wasn't an issue anyway!).


Samstag, 1. September 2012

We are a Zero again!

It's been a while. I was a very good girl about not doing anything with Crispin for the 6 weeks and then needed another week to get the vet out again. But everything is fine, vet said there's no lameness at all so back to work we go.

Of course, what little back muscle he had is gone again. So back to square one again. I started working him from the ground. We introduced the long rein to make things a little more interesting for both of us. By now (about 2 weeks into work again) we're doing 30-40 min mostly walk (starting with 15 min groundwork) and a bit of trot work under saddle thrown in at the end.