Golden Days - Adventures With Indy

Wednesday, October 30th
Golden Days

All The Help You Could (N)ever Want

Some people say good help is hard to find. They never met Indy. Take yesterday for example…

Even though Indy and Ami are out 24/7, they do have access to bedded stalls should they want to make use of them. Fortunately, both of them are extremely tidy in the stalls, so keeping them clean is usually not a serious problem. Twice a day -or even more -, we pick up the poop, if there is any, and muck out the wet spots. We use baled shavings and add more as needed.

Yesterday morning we decided to add a couple of bales to each stall. Ever since I had my hip replaced, Mike has insisted on doing this because he feels I shouldn’t handle that much weight with the hip. Hey, who am I to complain, right? So, Mike wheelborrowed a couple of bales into the front stall as I was mucking the back one. Suddenly he said, “Look at this!” Indy was pawing at one of the bales. Finally, he got it open and started pawing at the shavings inside, spreading them all over the stall. I GOTTA get a picture of this! It won’t be hard. All I have to do is put a bale in a stall, show it to Indy, and have the camera ready. Indy absolutely LOVES to do this, and it’s something that has to be seen to be fully appreciated. Indy insists he’s just trying to help. Uh huh. Right.

Yesterday was chilly and breezy with snow/sleet showers and an east wind that I just cannot STAND. I don’t think Indy hates it like I do, however, because he was Ready To Rumble. While Ami and I watched from the shelter of the barn and its “back porch,” he went thundering and bucking around the perimeter of the pasture all the way down to the lower gate. He paused for a moment, then came thundering and bucking back, obviously having a total BLAST. Coming from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as he does, Indy thought yesterday was downright balmy. He said he’s waiting for some REAL snow. Oh boy…
suzym on 10.30.02 @ 08:01 AM CST [link] [1 Comment]

Thursday, October 24th
Golden Days

Aaaaaaand It’s Indy By A Knockout!

We took Indy in for his scheduled four-week checkup at Purdue, and the results were better than I even dared hope. Dr. Lescun could hardly even FIND the masses, either on palpation or ultra sound. He was surprised and VERY pleased - and we CERTAINLY were jumping for joy.

Dr. Lescun also said that they looked more like just scar tissue now on the ultra sound. He was so pleased with the results of the exam that he told us to discontinue the antibiotic and gave Indy an unconditional discharge. He said if we wanted, we could bring him back in six months or so, more out of curiosity than anything else. We do plan to do that, but we all consider Indy to be 100 % :o) Dr. Lescun gave me a print out of the ultra sound picture as a souvenir LOL! We both agreed that Dr. Conley would be extremely interested in seeing it too. I’m planning to show it to him next time he’s out.

Things were extremely busy at the hospital yesterday, and we were considerably later than our appointed time before Dr. Lescun got a free examining room. I took Indy out to graze for a while, and we also walked the big hall. I got lots of comments on how beautiful Indy is :o) I was asked again if he was a Rangerbred. I also had one lady say she had never seen a horse with so many dapples! I gotta agree with that - I’ve never seen so many either.

Needless to say, Miss Ami was VERY glad to see Indy when we finally got back. She was even happier when she discovered she was going to be allowed to stay OUT over night :o) Hopefully, it’s late enough in the season that the grass won’t cause her problems. I’ll keep a close eye on her, but I’m pretty confident that all will be fine. She certainly was moving okay this morning when they came running up for breakfast! God, what a breathtaking sight.
suzym on 10.24.02 @ 08:50 AM CST [link] [4 Comments]

Tuesday, October 22nd
Golden Days

Natural Horse-Manship

I just can’t express how much I love the trend toward using “Natural” training methods. For instance - Indy has taught me a rather complicated series of movements without using force or even pinning his ears. Only now that I’ve got it down pat do I realize that he’s even been working on a lesson, so subtle were his methods.

Indy LOVES to be scratched, so, he taught me how to scratch exactly where he itches the most. It starts with a general scratch - which he taught me to do right away - then, he bites at the point on his body he wants scratched next, and I scratch there. Then he indicates the next spot, and so on. Now, the uneducated might think he intends to scratch these areas himself - which is what I thought too, at first. That is NOT however, the case. He’s indicating to ME where he wants me to scratch next. I only realized this yesterday as we progressed around his body for almost an hour, with him leading me from one spot to another, and my giving him that “conditioned response” that’s the goal of this training method. Well done, Indy!

Matt was here yesterday morning, and Ami was actually GOOD! Matt pronounced her feet as being good as well :o) He was very pleased at how her white line is normalizing. She hasn’t taken a lame step since she got over those abscesses of last winter. Matt also had lots of comments about Indy’s feet as well. He was even pointing out things about them to his apprentice - like, “Just LOOK at that foot! Wow!” He said Indy had feet like marble. It is my fervent hope that Indy NEVER has nail holes in those perfect feet.

I’ve been letting Ami out all day for a couple of weeks now, and all is going well. Hopefully, I can soon start letting her stay out over night as well. We will be taking Indy to Purdue tomorrow to his follow-up ultrasound exam. My plan is to keep Ami in the large paddock while we’re gone, then let her stay out all night with Indy. We’ll play it by ear from there. Of course, I already KNOW what she thinks. She’s not a bad trainer herself :o)
suzym on 10.22.02 @ 10:07 AM CST [link] [3 Comments]

Monday, October 14th
Golden Days

So, How Is Indy Doing You May Ask

How is Indy doing… Where to begin? Last week we had extremely unseasonably warm weather. Poor Ami was puffing just standing in the barn. Indy? He was romping all over the place like it was cool or something. One evening he got on such a tear, I delayed giving him his dinner - small as it is. He finally stopped galloping to graze with Ami for a few minutes, but when I called them to dinner, what did he do? Raced up the field at roughly Warp Factor 9. Oh well, as I said, I don’t give him much grain anyway.

Yesterday, however, it was windy and very chilly. I could tell Ami liked it LOTS better. And Indy? I think he went to Warp 10. It was around 30 degrees overnight, and Mr. Indy was hopping and bopping waiting for his breakfast. While I was watching him out the kitchen window, he started to race down the front fence line, then, after apparently seeing something strange looking in his path, he came to such a sliding halt he almost sat down LOL! What did he see? As near as I could tell when I got out there - nothing. Maybe the frost on the grass looked different to him or something. Only Indy knows for sure :o)

At the moment, I have a bunch of barn cats that evidentially have NO sense of self-preservation. They drive me CRAZY getting underfoot - and I don’t mean MY feet! They have no respect for Indy’s feet at all - or his head for that matter. The other day, one little cat was sitting on one of the large rocks along the front fence line. Indy came up and started nuzzling her. He kept ON nuzzling, and she never moved a muscle. When I saw her head disappear into Indy’s mouth, my horror reached a crescendo and I started running over to them. Meanwhile, Indy lost interest in the head, and started lipping the tail. Then he lost interest completely and walked away. The kitty continued to sit on the rock - she was barely even wet, and she looked at me like, “What?” Yesterday I was trying to shoo another one from under Indy’s feet, and the Little One ran the wrong way and slammed into his leg. Fortunately, Indy didn’t care and kept right on grazing. They are all TRYING to drive me NUTS!

Then, there was the grooming session. Earlier in the day, Mike has set a bucket of alfalfa cubes over near the outside base of Indy’s hay feeder. We put our alfalfa cubes on old StrongidC buckets for convenience and to keep them fresher. We already knew we had to keep the buckets out of Indy’s reach, and Mike thought that surly was. WRONG. While I was grooming on Ami, Mr. Indy reached through the rails at the end of the stall where he was tied. I heard a noise and came around to see what he was up to. At first, I just saw the bucket lid. Then I saw where the lid had come from - the bucket of alfalfa cubes from which Indy was now munching… Sigh. I moved the bucket.

Indy and I have been continuing with our groundwork, and Indy is doing SO well :o) He now comes to me when I call him - even if I don’t have food LOL! And he is just SO light in my hands on the ground. I intend to school him in a snaffle - partly because that’s what I am most comfortable and experienced with. But I really want to trail ride in a hackamore. That’s what I did with DJ, and he LOVED it. With Indy though, I want to use a REAL hackamore, not a mechanical one. Indy is SO light; I know he will work great in a bosal. Especially now that I know how to KEEP him light.

For years and years I thought about all the things I would do differently with DJ if I had it to do over. Well, now I have it to do over. That’s the way things turned out, and I intend to make the most of it. Indy will get the benefit of all the things DJ taught me in our 20 years together. I think that will be a happy thing for ALL of us - Indy, DJ and Me.
suzym on 10.14.02 @ 09:59 AM CST [link] [4 Comments]

Saturday, October 5th
Golden Days

It Just HAPPENS - Okay!?

We had Dr. Conley out yesterday to check Ami’s mouth. We had been noticing for a couple of weeks that she was chewing extremely oddly - especially her carrots. She would turn her head to the side, stretch out her neck and attempt to chew it, dropping most if not all. She wasn’t off feed or anything like THAT - EMERGENCY!!! - but it did appear that she needed to be checked.

Dr. C didn’t find anything in particular, but he went ahead and floated her anyway even though she’d just been done in May. He said sometimes there might be just a small point that wasn’t really obvious, but could still be bothering her nevertheless. So, hopefully this will take care of it. She does seem to be chewing her carrots more normally this morning, getting used to the new “feel” in her mouth.

I also had him check Indy’s left upper incisor. It’s obvious that the permanent tooth has not yet replaced the baby tooth, and I wanted to make sure this was normal and not a retained cap. Dr. C said that, at Indy’s age, this would be expected, but if the cap isn’t gone by the next time he floats Indy, he will just pull it. I could tell that Mr. Baby Teeth was VERY glad that was all for him. I think he’s had enough of vets for right now!

Dr. Conley said he wouldn’t be at all surprised if he saw Indy’s case written up in some Journal soon. It seems NONE of the vets have EVER seen this type of abscess as a complication to castration. Just like none of them had ever seen anything like what happened to DJ. I’m getting a rep for strange cases - Dr. C was teasing me yesterday, said he’d been discussing it with his staff about how in the WORLD could all this happen to ME. As he left, he told me not to do any more weird stuff. Hey, I’m trying! I’m TRYING!

Indy seems to be doing fine. Dr. C remarked that it was VERY fortunate that Indy presented some signs that caused us to investigate and do something while we still could. He said often deep abscesses aren't discovered until they’re the size of basketballs with adhesions to the intestines and body cavity. He said most of those do not survive.

We won’t know exactly what is going on with the abscess until we go back to Purdue in a couple of weeks, but Indy feels great and has never spiked a fever. Also, he hasn’t had any side effects from the high dose of TMP/SMZ that he’s on for this month. There was always the chance that he could colic or develop diarrhea. Thank goodness, that hasn’t happened. I’ve got him on a high dose of Ration Plus, and that may be making a difference in keeping the good gut bugs happy :o).

Both he and Ami are getting quite fuzzy now. I’m NOT a winter person myself, but the horses like it, and, since there’s nothing I can do about it, I might as well enjoy it for them, right? I’ll try…
suzym on 10.05.02 @ 09:25 AM CST [link] [No Comments]

October 2002
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