We’ve certainly been busy around the farm lately. But I guess we are always busy! We’ve had a couple of visits from our wonderful dentist getting annual floats done on everyone. We’re not done yet as we always break it up into a few visits. While the horses are sedated I also take advantage of this time to clean sheaths.
I always find it fascinating to look inside the horse’s mouths and put my hands in to feel before and after their floats. It is also interesting to me how well some horse’s teeth do with age and others not so much. For example Clay and Chili were both floated today. They are both 31 this year and neither of them is even missing a tooth. Their teeth are in great shape and every year Sally always makes me verify their ages.
On the other hand Ogie is in his late 20’s, just a couple of years younger, and he is missing a lot of teeth. We’re really careful about how we handle his mouth. As Sally said there is so little left in some places she wants to be very careful about maximizing his comfort and ability to masticate while at the same time not taking anything way that is not absolutely necessary. She typically does a combination of a power float and hand float on each horse. On Ogie she also tries to minimize the hand floating because she doesn’t want to rock a tooth loose (or I should say loosen a tooth even more than it already is!) with the vigorous rocking motion with the hand tools.
On a different topic I have a couple of horses here that are quite fascinated when we clean the water troughs. A couple of times a week each trough is dumped, sprayed with a 50/50 solution of bleach and water, scrubbed and then thoroughly rinsed. I don’t know why but Elfin is obsessed with bleach. He will be nowhere in sight and I will start working on his trough and suddenly he seems to appear out of nowhere.
I spend as much time swatting him away as working on the trough. He is obsessed with the bleach. He wants to lick the bleach water. He wants to grab the spray bottle with the bleach solutions. And then when I am refilling the trough he frantically licks the sides of the trough just above where the water line is hoping to get a taste. I’ve asked around about this and other people tell me they have or have known horses that love bleach as well. Quite frankly I find it odd but to each his own!
Hoffy is obsessed with Cuff Links; he stands by the fence for hours waiting for Cuffie to come over and play with him. Sometimes Cuffie obliges him for awhile but then he leaves to go graze or join the mares. Hoffy calls to him frantically. Cuffie ignores his pleas. Poor Hoffy.
Elfin and Hemi; note the grass sticking out of both sides of Hemi’s mouth
Hoffy and Thomas
Leo
Elfin and Hemi grooming each other
Lily and Levendi in yet another grooming session. She also grooms a lot with Thomas. We joke around here that Thomas likes to trash talk with the mares.
Lily, MyLight, Missy and Cuffie hanging out
I got over zealous with Chance’s mane job and ended up giving him a mohawk; I didn’t think I went quite that short! Thankfully after a couple of days it is no longer standing straight up.
Homer, Hemi, Chance, Thomas, Levendi
Ivan, Spike and Slinky having a pow wow together about something
Elfin on the run joined by Bella the dog
Lightening and Lucky were just hanging out and half asleep
Sebastian
Jason and Jo playing on the gravel pile
Thomas, Hemi, Levendi, Trigger, Ivan, Homer, Chance, Grand, Apollo
Spike, Lucky and O’Reilly
a very faded Hemi showing off his beautiful trot
Asterik
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