Weight target reached

Thanks to bad weather and a day and half on box rest (of which more in a minute), Merlin weighed in at 451kg today and since he's about right on the fat scoring front (I can finally feel his ribs but can't see them and nothing else has gone too skinny) we'll try to maintain from now on.  Without going back over all the posts, I think he topped out at 511kg (though he was chunkier than that when he first arrived), so that's 60kg gone since last summer or 9st 6lbs which is only 5lbs short of a whole me!

I came over all May-ish and started a new fitness regime this week.  Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are Merlin exercise days, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday are running days.  I'm taking it very gently, so I'm doing Couch to 5K from the beginning again to break me back in, aiming for the Aviemore half marathon in October, and Merlin is doing 20 minutes' walk in hand around the village.

Or that was the plan.  We managed the walk Tuesday and Thursday, then on Friday evening I thought he was moving slightly oddly when he walked up the field for his supper.  Sure enough, when I got closer I saw that his left front pastern was so swollen that if you looked at his leg from the front it looked straight between the bottom of his fetlock and the top of his hoof.

Since he seemed reasonably happy walking around on it, there was no cut and it was fluid rather than hard, I sloshed it with cold water and shut him in the field shelter overnight to make sure he rested it.  The next morning it had filled up further, but drained almost immediately as soon as I led him out and sloshed it again, leaving a slightly less swollen pastern. 

We were heading into Thurso anyway, so I called in at the vet to check if there was anything else I should be doing.  As luck would have it, Bridget-the-eventing-vet was on duty.  She nixed my idea of giving him a little bit of turnout on the flat area behind his shelter, advising a short walk in hand on Saturday afternoon and then a restricted turnout area on Sunday if it continued to improve.  Plus stable bandages overnight to stop his legs filling.

A quick trip to the tack shop later and Merlin met his first cold water boot.  What a brilliant idea, especially for those of us who don't have hoses or mains water available at their field shelter/stable!  Merlin wasn't entirely convinced by the feel of it going on and the first one went sailing through the air and landed in the mud (now I know why they sell them in pairs...), but once it was on he decided it was A Good Thing and I had very little trouble when I did it again last night and this morning.

The stable bandages were a slightly different matter.  I'd only bandaged a horse's leg once; I was about 11 and the leg was plastic.  Still, I knew the theory, I'd found some videos on YouTube to refresh my memory - how hard could it be...?  As it turned out, the bit that flummoxed me was wrapping the bandage round in the correct orientation to end up with the velcro tabs on the correct side of the bandage, the first one took me three goes to get right!  I was concerned that I hadn't got the tension right, so popped down a couple of hours later to check they weren't in a tangle round his ankles. They looked fine, so I fed him an apple and went to bed, relieved I didn't have to worry about him tying all four feet together overnight.

This morning I went down to find the gate half off its hinges and no horse!  He'd lifted it off the top bracket so it swung off the bolt and the bottom bracket, jumped it and taken himself off to graze on a ledge on the near-vertical part of the hill in the bottom field.  The stable bandages had stayed put - result!  He allowed me to catch him with reasonably good grace and when I unwrapped him, his leg looked completely back to normal :o)  I stuck the cold water boot back on for 20 minutes as a precaution while he had his breakfast and I mucked out and wondered, given his overnight antics, whether it was worth restricting his turnout or not, but decided better safe than sorry and gave him an L-shaped area of flat field to potter around.

This evening his leg still looks normal, he's still being ever so slightly careful with it over the rutted areas, but he's definitely nearly mended.  If nothing changes overnight he can go back on normal turnout tomorrow and we'll pick up the walking round the village again on Thursday.

Merry Crimble

Weigh-in day was a day late this week, but the tape this morning was right on the top of the 498kg band, which I'm happy with.  I've had a nice horsey Boxing day - this morning I spent an hour gently working through his mane and tail with a comb.  His mane still looks like a bad David Bowie wig, but at least the dreadlocks are gone.  Then this afternoon I'd planned to go and poop scoop the bottom field, but the wind was so strong it snatched the shovel out of my hands and flung it half way across the field, so I abandoned that idea and went and had half an hour of scritchies in the shelter instead.

I asked for Kelly Marks' Perfect Manners and Perfect Confidence for Christmas.  I've read Perfect Manners today and it's made me realise that we've made some quite large steps forward this year - a lot of the exercises that she recommends are things we do now that he wouldn't do at the beginning of the year, like respecting my personal space, moving his feet when asked, yielding to pressure and so on. 

I've been thinking that it might be an idea to do some long reining and work in hand to gently start building up his muscles rather than just plonking a saddle plus 10 stone of me on top, so I've got the two in-hand schooling books by Hinrichs and Hilberger on order from Amazon as well as the new Enlightened Equitation book.  The idea is that we can walk down to the beach, which will give his feet some road time (they're going to need a trim next month unless I start getting some tarmac miles in), do a little bit of work on the sand and then walk back home, gradually increasing the length of time I ask him to work - and if I can eventually long rein him down and back then I *hope* that will translate to less/no napping when I try hacking out again.

It's a good theory...

Clippers

I thought it would be sensible to check with Merlin's previous owner whether he'd ever been clipped or not and the answer was not as far as she knew. So this morning I borrowed Mick's beard trimmer, took it out to the field and switched it on while Merlin was standing next to me.

There was a lot of ear waggling and he took a couple of steps back, but after 20 minutes of switching it on and off randomly while I was shovelling muck he was ignoring it and he didn't seem bothered when I put the hand with the trimmer in against his neck so he could feel the vibrations, though he did step away after 15 seconds.

All good anyway - if he has been clipped in the past it certainly wasn't a bad experience for him. I'll keep the trimmer in my pocket and hopefully come next Thursday he'll be completely unbothered when they shave his legs.