First Frost

Brrr, it's cold outside! I'm typing this while wrapped in a nice warm blanket. Winter is almost here, as is evident by the weather. These last few days have been busy as usual, but good.

Jetta got her bath on Monday. Amazingly when I went out to the barn yesterday she was still clean! Absolutely astonishing. I was sure she was going to punish me for giving her a cold water bath by laying in the filthiest corner of her stall possible. Though it's still soon to tell, she may just be biding her time ;)



Still loving this cooler - it looks so snazzy on her!



Noms. I'm trying to make up for giving her an
 icy bath by doing some grazing in the sunshine!

Yesterday we had a pretty nice ride in dressage tack. After being such a brat on Sunday I expected a little more resistance in our ride, but she was totally fine. I think it's just the whole cross country thing that gets her a little too excited... She's actually been super good lately. I forgot to mention this, mostly because it was a nonissue, but Jetta's been in heat the past week and it hasn't been a problem. Shocking I know. She's usually a complete witch when in heat, throwing hissy fits, overreacting to my leg, bucking, running away with me, etc. But not this time! Hmm, could it have to do with the Mare Magic she's been getting? Someone gave me a ginormous bag (I can't remember why they gave it to me, but I think it might have been because they sold their mare) and since raspberry leaves can't hurt I've been feeding them the past few months. Interesting thought.

Today I'm going to go ride Jetta after all my classes and my volunteering at the Large Animal Hospital. I think we'll do some more dressaging and do some jumping on Thursday. It's been kind of a mixed bag volunteering at the Large Animal Hospital. Well, really, "volunteering" is the wrong word to use - it's more like "spectating", though I hope I'll get to do some hands-on stuff eventually. The first day was just a little disappointing. I show up a few minutes early and they just told me to sign in, grab a scrub top and go find a group to follow around. Okaaay - I don't even know where to start. But luckily a group of vet students were standing right outside the office so I just kind of hung around and saw what they were doing. Turns out they were in an exercise science class so they had a cute little stallion that they hooked up to ECG monitors on a surcingle and they put him on a treadmill to show how you can monitor their heart rate and make sure everything's normal at faster paces if you can't hear anything wrong at a standstill. It was really cool. The horse was completely fine with walking on the scary treadmill and responded to cues to walk, trot and canter. Super neat. When they're cantering, they usually run from 15 to 20 mph on the treadmill. They can even make the treadmill incline. They said that they always pull shoes before going on the treadmill so that they don't come flying off or get caught on any machinery. There's also a crash mat in case the whole horse comes flying off - scary! Another interesting fact that I learned - did you know that a horse on a high starch diet (high grain diet, such as corn, oats, barley, etc) makes a horse have pule of 10 to 15 bpm faster than a horse on a diet consisting of more fat for energy? That's something they've found using this type of research with the ECG monitor and treadmill. Very neat. No wonder horses are more hyper when fed like that!

So what was the bad part? Well, I'm supposed to volunteer for three hours and the exercise science was only 30 minutes. The next class was a bandaging lab... for two and a half hours... It was pretty neat though seeing how they make splints and casts, etc. But two and a half hours is a little long just to be standing there watching and not doing anything. Then I messed up and broke my personal rule: Whenever at a vet hospital, do not touch any of the animals because I will get in trouble somehow! Seriously, whenever I pet an animal I get in trouble for some reason or other. No body else petting animals gets in trouble ever, just me. It's a talent. This time I was petting a teaching mare in her stall, she was a little nervous cause her buddy was leaving so I had found her itchy spot on her neck to distract her and was giving her some scritches when one of the vets came up and gave me a lecture about how dangerous that could be because she could squish my hand in the stall bars. Oops. That upset me because 1) I knew I shouldn't have touched that horse! But I was so, so bored! And 2) I have been around horses a long time, I can read body language, I know when they're about to body slam the stall wall. I'm not (that) stupid. So that made me pretty bummed that on my first day out there I managed to get in trouble.

The second time out there was so much better!! This time the vet that was on duty was super nice, and when I arrived, she even had the other pre-vet volunteer helping out by clipping the surgical site. Awesome, we actually get to do something! I didn't get there in time to help, but she did tell us that we could come watch the surgery. They got us outfitted in gloves, hair nets and masks, stuck us in the corner and we got to watch a laparoscopic ovariohysterectomy. It was the neatest thing ever. I found it absolutely fascinating and had no trouble standing there for the full three hours, I would have stayed longer if I didn't have to be somewhere else! They only removed one ovary in that time! And it was the normal ovary, not the diseased one. That was seriously interesting to watch because they had the little camera go inside and you got to watch it on the tv screen.

So I'm hoping that today is a good day!

I've been riding Katy while her owner is still out of the game due to her broken finger. And now Katy is lame. She was lame before her owner broke her finger, got adjusted by the chiropracter, was totally fine, was ridden for three days (I rode one day, ML the other and her owner after that) no problem, then came up lame again. She isn't as bad as the first time and is actually getting a lot better by the day so her owner just asked me to take her for some walks along the trails just to stretch her muscles. We're hypothesizing that she may have gotten a "hitch" in her shoulder from running around bucking in the arena and was brought back to work too soon, so we'll see what the vet has to say this Friday. But I still love riding Katy even at the walk.

Yesterday evening's ride on Katy. That's some long-legged horse!

As you can see - no more riding in the field :(
It's been tilled so our gallops are no more.