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Horse Troubles

In searching for what to do for Ace, I suggested meeting with a trainer. Frankie has  helped Morgan for several years and we decided to give her a try. She ended up taking Ace to her home for 3 nights. She did some therapy on him and riding. Unfortunately the first night, he cut his foot in the stall somehow. My heart sank when I heard this and I was really worried. She put ice boots on morning and night, super glued the wound, wrapped it, gave him antibiotics, and treated him like a patient. She had new shoes put on his feet and hauled him to Dayton for the Sunday morning rodeo. She really enjoys training horses and coaching kids.
As Ace has been recovering from his wound, he remains in a stall with medicine, bandaging, and ice wraps. Joker has been lame and we suspected it was related to his recent horse shoeing. Today Jayden took him to yet another farrier to check his shoes. THis is the third farrier we have tried since Kyle quit us. Its the scenario you hope never happens. Your horse is lame from a farrier error. Sure enough it was discovered that Joker got a nail driven too high and may create an abcess. He is definitly sore.

I have been keeping track of our horse expenses this summer with vets and farriers. It just keeps adding up. I think back to my days of barrel racing and owning my great horse, Joe. I had him from 1995 until 2011. In all the years I owned him, I gave him his shots myself, had his teeth floated twice, never saw a chiropractor, pulled his shoes in the fall and put new ones on in the spring, and went to the vet maybe twice for minor things. Was I lucky? Sometimes I wonder what on earth we are doing. These horses seem to be a constant expense with unlimited problems. I am starting to feel like our lives are revolving around the horses. How do you keep a good balance between having horses and letting them consume you?

Jayden is good at procrastination. In the Young Horse Development, there are lots of deadlines. I had to keep after Jayden to get things done in time. She had to have a video bathing her horse and loading. She waited until the last minute for those. I had been reminding her to get her last assignment completed with Tiny and the  trail course. She set up the course with only a few days remaining until the deadline. She had to send in a video of her walking Tiny through a specific course.  She thought it would be simple, just set up the course and walk Tiny through. In fact she was trying to set up quick and make the video before people were coming to use the arena. It didnt go so well. We told her she had to get the video made and go through the course before we would let her go to North Dakota. The next morning we set up, she took her time, I lunged some of the extra energy out of Tiny and he did just fine. At some point I have to just step back and let her figure it out on her own. I can't always be there to remind her, help her, and push her. Sometimes the hardest lessons are the ones you learn on your own.

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