Diet

There is a lot of research that has gone into Katai's current diet and I am very happy with how her she is doing on it. I haven't always cared about diet as much as I do now though.

At one point my family owned seven horses which were all healthy, mixed breeds that were easy keepers. They had great hooves weren't being ridden that much or shown so as long as they were healthy we weren't too concerned about how shiny their coats were. They were all extremely healthy and had great feet and their only diet was grass during the summer and grass hay during the winter with maybe some sweet feed if it got really cold.

I'm sure it never did them any favors since their grass would have been deficient in certain minerals but they never seemed to be suffering any poor health so I didn't thing much about it. In fact, because they seemed to do so well with so little I had very little belief in supplements or fancy feed until I got Sora.

I started off simple enough with her and when it became apparent that she needed more than just grass and hay I added Safe Choice. It quickly became clear that it was not a safe choice for Sora when her attitude changed drastically so I researched other options and switched her to Purina Senior which, looking back, probably wasn't the best choice but I was working with what I knew at the time.

I continued to feed Sora Senior for quite awhile until I ran into some other horse owners who were talking about ration balancers and they sounded exactly like what she needed. Vitamins and not much else and just enough to balance out the hay or grass that she was eating. 

That is when I found Nutrina Empower.

Nutrient	Level
Crude Protein	30.0%
Lysine	2.2%
Methionine	0.6%
Threonine	1.2%
Crude Fat	5.0%
Crude Fiber	max. 8.0%
Dietary Starch*	max. 8.0%
Sugar*	max. 6.0%
Calcium	3.0% - 3.5%
Phosphorus	1.5%
Copper	250 ppm
Zinc	750 ppm
Selenium	2.5 ppm
Vitamin A	18,000 IU/lb
Vitamin D	1,800 IU/lb
Vitamin E	600 IU/lb
Biotin	1.5 mg/lb

I first started feeding it just because it was an available ration balancer but the more I learn about which vitamins horses need the more I realize that this feed is perfect. Everything from the level of Protein to the lack of Iron (which we already have too much of in our soil and interferes with the absorption of Copper and Zinc both of which are extremely important in hoof health) to the small amount you can feed and the extremely reasonable cost.

I had just started to feed Sora Empower before she left and then when I got Myshla and Katai I continued this feed. I was extremely happy with it and not really looking for anything else but when I got Katai and was worried about her feet and Founder risk I started to look into some of the reasons for those issues and found that Magnesium is very often lacking from horse diets. The lack of Magnesium can make many horses tense, jumpy and tight through the back but it also can affect insulin resistant horses and if fed in the proper quantities it can reduce fat deposits and help to reduce the risk of Laminitis.

Currently I am feeding Quiessence to supplement Magnesium mostly because the balance of vitamins and minerals is supposed to be especially helpful with horses (or ponies) that are prone to Founder but also because it comes in a pelleted form that is very palatable which is something that is tough to find in many Magnesium supplements especially when you are trying to feed it with a very small amount of ration balancer and not something sticky like a sweet feed.

 Active Ingredients Per 1oz:
Magnesium Oxide 7g
Magnesium Proteinate 1g
Chromium Piccolinate 1.25mg

Quiessence® provides 4.2 grams  of elemental Magnesium (4g from Magnesium Oxide and 0.1 g (100 mg) from more bioavailable Magnesium Proteinate) per 1oz serving.

 All in all I am very satisfied with Katai's diet right now. She gets about half a pound total per feeding which is not much more than a double handful. Just enough to make her happy and to make her feel like she is special but not too much :-)

Yay! Boarding!

I found a place!!!!

I really love where Katai is now but with no arena, a sketchy pasture (used to be an alfalfa field 0_0) and nobody to ride with I have been seriously considering moving her. The problem is that the closest boarding stable and the most reasonable is also over crowed and has poor pasture spaces with many, many horses per field plus it is way more expensive just for pasture board.

This barn is slightly further away from home but almost exactly the same distance from work. It has a huge indoor coverall arena, an outdoor round pen, trails and a nice outdoor riding space, arena with grass footing. There aren't too many boarders and the woman who owns that place has exceptional horse keeping knowledge. She only deworms if she knows what the worm count is, rotates pastures and is willing to dry lot and manage turnout which is so huge for Katai!

















 Best of all the board is exactly what I will be paying now where she is for winter and only a little more expensive then I have been paying for the summer plus I can move in soon! It looks like I may be able to move her as soon as next Sunday although it will depend partially on Dan since I know I didn't give him much warning.

I can't wait to be able to ride her inside a nice safe space, ride with other people and be able to ride during the winter.

I was going to get more pictures but it was getting dark and its always a little weird taking pictures as the owner is walking you around. Next time I will get arena pictures :)

I can't wait!!!

Blanket Review

Unhappy pony face thinks that blankets are stupid but I really like this one!

 It is fully lined with that slippery lining material so that it doesn't catch on her fur and rub. It fits her great with plenty of room and all of the buckles are just what I would expect from a good blanket. I continue to love Saxon blankets :-)

















Plus, isn't the color just adorable on her!

I also received the really cute pink blanket liner hat I ordered but it was much too long so I pulled it apart, cut off a chunk at the end and sewed it back up. Its all set now and as good as new but I still need to add the hardware to the back corners so that it stays under the other blanket. I plan on using it with this sheet so the color combination may be interesting lol.

You can also see in this pictures that she has graduated to her leather halter. I bought it several months ago for her but I wasn't going to use it, its a really nice one, until I knew she wouldn't pull back and break it. I now trust her enough to stand tied that I've started to use it with her. I think she looks so adorable in her gear and like such a big girl :-)

Blanket Season

Well, blanket season is fast approaching and this year that means shopping! I had three different weights of blanket for Sora plus a dress sheet and she was a huge blanket baby. I have never had a horse that loved blankets so much and she would get extremely tight backed and sore if she got cold without her blanket.

However, not only was Sora quite a bit bigger than Katai, she wore a 72 and that was nicely fitted, but I also sent all of her blankets with her when she left because it felt like the least I could do. I did keep one of her blankets from when she was still growing and that fits Katai fine although it’s just a bit long but it is a heavy weight blanket and since Katai is a fuzzy pony its really only appropriate for the coldest days.

Now I’m not much of a fan of blanketing when it’s just cold out but even with the nice shelter that Katai now has I will blanket if it is extremely windy, wet and raining and below 60 or if the temperature is in the low teens or lower. In those cases I have no doubt that a horse can stay warm but it burns so much energy and compromises their immune system to the point that I just don’t understand why we wouldn’t use the tools available to us to make them more comfortable. Sure the blankets do lay down their haircoat which means that you have to be careful about which blanket you are using for which temperature but I think that if you are educated on blanket use it is only a good thing.

Because of that I just have purchased two blankets from State Line Tack. My favorite brand has always been Saxon and I was happy to find a cute Saxon sheet, no fill that will hopefully fit Katai on sale at SLT. Saxon are fairly cheap blankets, at least as far as price goes, but I have yet to have one that has torn or fallen apart in any way. They are extremely water proof, I used to put Sora’s on in the pouring rain when it was cold out and even hours later she was completely dry under her blankie, and have all of the features of a much more expensive blanket. Plus they just fit well. I also bought a blanket liner for the first time and hope to use that and the Saxon for the in-between weather before it gets cold enough to use the heavy Weatherbeta. 

 

I will do a review and pictures when they get here! Hopefully they will both arrive before we get too much more cold rain so that I can keep my girl warm and toasty J

Fall Update

It has once again been an extremely long time since I updated this blog. This has mainly been because this dating thing takes way more time than I thought it would but is also because while our HR department at work is finally staffed there is a lot of training and still some stress that I’m just starting to get rid of. Feeling like a normal human being again is great!

Despite the lack of updates things have mostly been mostly good with Katai. She has always been so tender footed and with every change in living or diet or anything her feet seem to become sensitive. I was concerned that she was very insulin resistant and I was dealing with laminitic episodes so I had changed her diet completely and was monitoring her very closely including taking her pulse and recording when her feet were sensitive and everything from the weather that day, cold weather brings up the sugar levels in grass, to diet such as how many treats she had. I was having a really tough time finding any type of pattern and she continued to be sensitive randomly.

Finally about three weeks ago she started to shed her soles. It was a scary thing to see and I knew that I needed even more help so I got my previous barefoot trimmer/guru involved through email and text. I sent her a bunch of pictures and she said that the sole shedding was due, in this case, to the fact that she had really bad deep Sulcus Thrush. Her frogs have always been beefy and dry so I’ve never even thought about thrush but deep Sulcus Thrush is usually much more painful then the Thrush that most people hear about because it goes deep into the heel and even the hoof itself. Because of this infection her whole hoof has been compromised and that is part of what was causing her to shed her soles, as well as the dry weather we’ve been having.

                                                         Like this photo that I stole off Google

My previous trimmer than gave me a treatment regime that involved cleaning out all of her hooves, since it is in all of them L, every day followed by scrubbing them out with either just water or Dawn dish soap depending on how dirty they were. Then I was supposed to flush them out with a Clorox/water mixture and finally fill the middle crack and each side of her frog with a mixture of triple antibiotic ointment and athlete’s foot cream otherwise known as Pete Ramey Goo.

I have been doing this every day and so far the difference is amazing. Her Sulcus are going from tight cracks to much more open valleys, she is shedding off pieces of frog that were infected, and is already much more comfortable walking and trotting. Basically all of the changes that my trimmer said would occur have been happening on schedule. Slowly I have been weaning her off the Clorox flushing and just filling her Sulcus with medication after carefully cleaning her feet out. As soon as her Sulcus’s open up a bit more I will start to just clean them and then spray them thoroughly with Apple Cider Vinegar which kills bad bacteria while not damaging the good.

Overall, while I’m not happy that she has had thrush for so long, probably since I got her, and I didn’t know about it I am happy because it is something I can fix and it means that once it is better she will stay better as long as I follow some preventative care to keep it from happening again. It is a much better outcome than the laminitis that I’ve feared. It will take awhile for her frogs to literally regrow healthy tissue and as that happens her heels will continue to widen out and she will start to land heel first rather than toe first since she will be more comfortable.

When my trimmer told me what was wrong I asked her why I didn’t know to look for this. I told her how bad I felt that my pony had been uncomfortable and that I didn’t even think to check for Thrush. She said that almost nobody even knows about this type of Thrush and that she has found countless horses with this infection. Some are more stoic than others and it is only because my pony is very honest with me that I even knew that she was uncomfortable. She said that I had been going above and beyond by researching and changing diet, controlling her environment and recording all changes. I also asked why this would happen when she is never in a stall and has been living on sand that drains well for the past year and she said that she thinks that Katai probably had the infection when I got her and that it can happen even in dry, healthy conditions if their immune system is down. The best prevention, according to her, is to clean feet EVERY DAY or at least every other day and to not just pick them out but scrub them out whenever possible. They also need to move around as much as possible and work their entire foot in different surfaces. Finally, if they are out in the wet, or standing in manure or anything that could increase their chances you can help them out by following a good cleaning with a coating of Apple cider Vinegar.

This past weekend I was gone way up North for a wedding and had Dan, the person boarding her, clean her feet out for me. When I got back they looked even better and she was so sound! I decided that a little light riding would be good for both of us so I took her out in the beautiful sun to ride around the field. She felt great and we behaving so well that I decided to work on trotting. So far I’ve only trotted her a couple of steps just to build her confidence and keep things happy and calm. This time I pushed and ended up with four great, long, trots! She was brilliant for all of them and did nothing naughtier than toss her head.

Hopefully I can do some more soon!

Finally Some Photos

I have been completing missing out, and missing, the horse blogging community recently. Work has been nuts but we are finally fully staffed in HR so my work load is finally getting back to normal. 

The other issue has been the weather and while I am glad that we are finally getting some rain, I'm not happy that it has been interfering with my riding.

Overall though things with Katai have been great! I just started to introduce trotting under saddle and I'm taking it slow because of the cool weather and the fact that I'm stuck in a huge open field that at times make the pony feel like she has wings. She has been excellent though and I have no complaints about her behavior. In fact she had her feet trimmed for the first time by someone other than me last weekend and she was a complete angel, just nervous even though I kind of thought she might be naughty.

Our other project has been getting her to work through her back. For one reason or another, either breeding or conditioning since shes a shorty and always has to stretch up to do horse things, she has developed a very high headset when trotting. She is nice and relaxed and swingy through her back at the walk but the trot is a whole different kettle of fish.

I'd had side reins on her quite awhile ago a couple of times but it was clear to me then that she wasn't ready as she started to curl a bit. Since then she hasn't worn them at all but since recently she has been trying to root the reins out of my hands I thought that I might be able to work on two birds with one stone :)

Here is what I got. She was obviously still tight through the back and trying to avoid the side reins but she also balanced herself sooooo well and started to really use her hind end. You can see from these pictures how tight she is through her shoulder so that is certainly something we will be working on but her natural balance had me grinning the whole time.

She was really starting to get it at the end and was working nicely through her back so we ended on a good note.

I think the plan is to work her in side reins again next time for a short time in both directions and see if she remembers what she learned this time and then we'll go from there. I want to work more on trotting under saddle and while I know it will take her awhile to become comfortable and balanced with someone riding her it feels like I'm riding a giraffe right now so I need to do it in combination with this to help her learn to use her muscles correctly.

Weekend Activities

This weekend was all about me :-) The boy was running in a Ragnar so I was all on my own and I made good use of the time to myself!

I had ridden Katai on Sunday and Tuesday so far this week and she had been excellent both times. On Thusday and Friday I worked on her hooves but then rode again on Saturday and Sunday. She has been soooooo good and is developing a nice, forward, relaxed walk. As you can see from the photos I'm riding her in a LARGE open field and she hasn't tried anything funny at all. 

She is going to be SUCH a great little riding horse as she gets some more miles on her. Shes just so calm, relaxed and obedient. I love this picture of her because you can see the custom browband I had made for her. Its in her colors, Navy Blue and Pink, and it is nice and big so that it doesn't squish her pony brains. Ponies certainly don't need their brains squished lol.

Craaaazy pony face picture,

and proof that yes, I do ride her sometimes haha.

On Saturday I decided to check out the new Dover Saddlery that opened up in the Twin Cities. It's about 45 minutes away and I didn't really NEED any tack but they were having a tent sale and that was a good enough excuse haha.

My sister compared these bridles to art and I think thats pretty appropriate :-)

I ended up with a waterproof turnout sheet, breeches (which I LOVE), cute argyle socks, crocheted gloves, a magnesium suppliment that I'll write more about later and some Swat. It's been an awesome weekend :-)

Goal Oriented

I’ve always been someone who sets goals for myself. It started with my mom pushing us when we were little and learning to play the piano, she wanted us to all be professional musicians and two of my sisters will be, and has carried on from there. I’ve always had goals around my career in HR, some assumed and simple, others more difficult that I have to work towards, and I’ve met or surpassed them all so far. However, things with horses have always been different for me. It started with the fact that we had so few extra resources as we were growing up, I got my first horse when I was 12 years old, that even owning a horse was difficult and there was no way we could afford a trailer, lessons, or appropriate tack. Because of that they always had to be just fun and that carried on as I grew up partially because after being pushed so hard by my mom to compete and be competitive with music I had lost my taste for it with the horses. They were my escape, my fun and the best therapy ever.

Now though, things have changed. I chose to change my career from music to an office job so that I could have horses and be more serious about riding, owning and training them. I have always wanted to be more competitive than I was and now that I’m making a better living it’s something that I can actually pursue in the way I want. Because I changed my career at least partially for horses I feel like I have almost an obligation to myself to pursue this at least for awhile.

I do have realistic expectations though. I’ve been riding since I was 12 and I can stick to anything, have shown a couple of times, had some excellent lessons and trained three ponies, before Katai, that all ended up as children’s’ first ponies. I am great with groundwork and making horses/ponies into safe, excellent citizens that are safe to ride while not teaching them any habits that would be hard to break for any discipline. However, I do still consider myself an intermediate rider and know that to reach any goals with Dressage I will need lots of lessons and hard work. I’ve had so many hurdles in the past such as the lack of resources and time that I haven’t made it as far as I would have liked but I’ve also always known that as soon as I could get a good job it would be completely within reach. When I acquired Katai I looked ahead and knew that I was getting close. I had my dream pony and a new job was within reach.

I took a couple of Dressage lessons that winter and although I couldn’t afford many I learned a lot. I had already lost some weight but during the course of the winter I lost more and brought my total to 45 pounds. I started running, something I NEVER thought I would be able to do, and now run over a mile consistently with the goal of doing a 5K sometime this fall or next spring. Most importantly, at least to me, I started working with Katai. That fall was a huge battle dealing with a pony that was somehow spoiled and scared of people at the same time. She would run right into you and walk all over you but if you approached her first she would spin and run. She was tough to catch, didn’t respect fences, and had no idea about what a halter was much less any other piece of tack. She caught on quickly though and last fall I sat on her for the first time. During the winter she sat mostly because I didn’t have any place to work with her in the snow but right away in the spring we started working again. Now she is doing excellent and would be even better if not for all the other little distractions I’ve had this summer such as taking on a new job, being short a person at the job and doing twice the work I should be, starting a relationship J, and moving myself to a new apartment and Katai to a new facility. However, even with all of these distractions and all that change she has mastered a lot of important skills. She now will tie, hard tie or cross tie, can spend time in a stall, is easy to catch, will pick up all four feet, lunges all three gaits in both directions with side reins or without, trailers beautifully J, and is riding nicely at a walk.

My next hurdle is to move her to a different, bigger facility that has an indoor or at least an outdoor arena and an instructor since there is no way I will be able to afford a truck and trailer anytime soon. To be able to move her I need her to be good at a couple more things first. She has to be able to be ridden walk and trot and safely enough that I don’t feel like she’s going to buck or take off at any moment (she feels great at the walk now but the trot will be a whole different story), she needs to be able to be trimmed by a farrier, and she needs to be more comfortable in a stall/barn. The last part is almost set and after this winter she will be fine in a stall. I just emailed Dan yesterday asking when his farrier would be out next so that I can have her professionally trimmed for the first time. The only part left is up to me and should be easy to achieve by the end of fall. I also plan on continuing to work on myself this fall and will keep running, would like to lose a couple more pounds and will be taking some Dressage lessons.

Why do I want to compete at all? Honestly I’m not sure how much I want to compete. I’ve always thought that it looked like so much fun to be at a show with a horse, to talk with other horse people, show off a bit of what you’ve learned, and have people admiring your cute horse. It’s something I’ve really wanted to do since I first got a horse. For me it’s never been about ribbons or winning, its more about doing better than last time and conquering all of the tough tasks that a horse show embodies for your horse, being around other horses, trailering, being in public, standing quietly, and being around other horse people while getting to ride which is something I truly love. However, there are many things about showing that I don’t love and I don’t know if the wonderful things will outweigh those and I won’t know until I try.

So Proud!

Today was the first day that I feel I can call what I did with Katai "riding". Up until now it was sitting on her, training, working with her or something along those lines but tonight I rode.

This morning my parents drove up to see my new apartment and I showed them where I work. Once they left I went to the local tack store which is now only about 15 minutes away. Scary how easy it is to go there now haha. I needed a dressage whip since my old one was lost and it had actually kinda needed replacing anyway because it was falling apart thanks to poor care. I'd had it as a teenager and it had been left outside and driven over in the law mower a dozen times. I picked out a cute purple whip with nice balance and some fancy treats that I knew Katai had liked since they were part of her Christmas present this last Christmas. This is the first time in my life, well since i was about 8, that I've had only one animal and so she gets to be spoilt :)

Then I went out to see her. She got one of her new treats when I caught her and I don't know if it was an incredibly effective bribe or if she just wanted to be on her best behavior but either way she was perfect for everything.

She was very calm so just got lunged for a couple of seconds in each direction and then I mounted up. The new whip was perfect to endorse my leg and follows the same idea as when I ground drive her so it helps her understand the leg cues. I rode for about fifteen minutes and during that time she went where I asked and was nicely forward compared to how she's been in the past. Now I can't wait to ride again!

I actually took some pictures today and in blogger app fashion they are all going to be stuck at the end but it looks like I may be getting Internet!! It would be awesome to be able to blog from a computer again, it's been about three years! At any rate the pictures are of the tack shop and then the incredibly spoiled pony's fan which runs anytime the temp is over about 75 0-0 they were actually sleeping under it when I got there :)

Finally are pictures of my new saddle pad, I'm officially a Mattes fangirl! Yes that is a Navy blue pad with pink fur, binding and piping and a blue strip of piping. Katai's official colors in a pony sized Mattes and I things it's completely adorable :)

Bad Blogger

I have been an extremely bad blogger recently and it's not because of the weather or lack of horsie, pony, stuff to report. It's actually all because of work.

When I started at my new job I was warned that the other generalist (I was going to be one of two for a company of over 500 in an HR department that consists of manager, assistant and two generalists) was going out on maternity leave and when she got back she would be promoted to the education manager. This meant that it would be me and only me while we looked for a new generalist.

We actually found someone fairly quickly who was extremely qualified but fast forward two months and she had failed to learn even the basics of the job so was let go.

We are now on the hunt again and that means that since I started I've basically been running the generalist show. I'd had very little experience on a lot of the issues I'm currently facing when I started but I'm starting to feel like a pro. The problem is that I'm also getting burnt out, like really really burnt out.

Instead of having 10 managers and 240 employees relying on me like I should have, I've got 20+ managers and over 500 employees relying on me for every single thing that requires HR. I'm recruiting for over 20 positions at a time, dealing with employee relations, terminations, legal, paperwork, orientations, paperwork, trouble shooting, time cards, paperwork, complaints, many computer issues, complaints and paperwork.

Rant over....

Seriously, I love my job and all the people that I work with. I'm learning a ton from my boss and have been pretty positive and able to cope but this week I feel like I hit a wall. We NEED to get someone capable in that position ASAP so I can concentrate on stuff outside of work and not feel so tired and stressed all the time.

I did get moved into my new apartment last week and while it didn't help my stress levels at all I LOVE it here. It's great being on my own and not living with two huge dogs and four cats has made life way better :)

I've also been working with Katai who continues to adjust to her new home. She has been so relaxed and happy and I think she really likes her new buddy who is much less neurotic than her previous herd mates were. I rode her for the first time at the new place, if you count mounting and dismounting a bunch, lots of flexing and a couple of short walks a ride, and she was great. She is starting to relax and I could tell that she was feeling naughty today so I kept is short and ended positive.

I should have time to ride on Saturday and I hope that since I'll have a little more time that I'll be able to get more pictures.

Riding the OTTBs

After checking on Katai yesterday Lisa invited me out to ride in the new arena. She's asked me to stop and ride with her even once I'm fully moved out and I happily accepted. It will be good for me to ride a fully trained horse and fun to still spend some time hanging out with Lisa.

Last night I started out riding Missy who is a small, at least for an OTTB, Bay mare who is in her late teens. She hasn't been ridden much and is stiff but after 15 minutes of warm up and some very concentrated leg yielding and proper circles she was moving extremely nice. It was really fun to really RIDE again and to feel the difference in Missy after some correct riding.

While I was riding Missy I noticed that Lisa was having some trouble with Liv, who is an awesome 2nd level Dressage horse, and I asked if she would want to switch. She did so then I climbed on Liv and worked on getting her to slow down and not blow through the aids. She had cantered the day before and was hot and could only focus on cantering. It took about 10 minutes to get her to actually listen and stretch out softly into contact rather than lifting above it and running through all aids.

Overall it was an awesome ride even if I'm extremely sore and I really look forward to doing it again :-)