Measuring for Socks

Knowing how blotto I can be at the end of a ride and how incapable of performing simple tasks* ("Simple Tasks" ≠ Poulticing and wrapping legs with standing wraps), I was quite excited when Equiflexsleeves (available from SSTACK.COM) showed up on my radar. These are basically compression socks for horses. All you need is a ziploc bag to put over the hoof to drag the stupid things on, and, voila, your horse is "wrapped".

I can do that.

(* I could barely figure out how to get Fergus' T-clips on his blanket fastened at the end of NASTR 75 I crashed so hard)
--

So yesterday morning's exercise was to run around the paddock, measuring legs. Luckily, Sally is visiting at the moment, so I enlisted her as scribe and proceeded to chase the horses around with my tape measure.

This is what I found out:
(the measurements are in inches, the letters after the
measurements correspond to the Equiflexsleeve sizes)

	Size Needed	Front			Back
		Height	Cannon Circ	Fetlock Circ	Height	Cannon Circ	Fetlock Circ
Roo	S/XS	10 (M)	8 (S)	10 (S)	12 (M)	9.5 (S/M)	11 (XS)
Uno	S/XS	11 (L)	8 (S)	10.5 (S)	12.5 (M)	9 (XS)	11 (XS)
Hopi	S/XS	10 (M)	8 (S)	10 (S)	12 (M)	9 (XS)	11 (XS)
Fergus	M/M	11 (L)	9 (M)	11 (M)	12.5 (M)	9.5 (S/M)	12 (S/M)
Jackit	-/XS	8.5 (-)	7 (-)	9.5 (-)	11 (S)	8 (XS)	10  (-)

First, the exciting part - for once, it would appear that Roo, Uno and Hopi can all wear the same size, both front and back, meaning I only have to buy four socks instead of 12. And hopefully they won't ever need them at the same time. If they do, probably Uno gets dibs, since he's more prone to filling than Roo is.

Second, it looks like they still haven't come up with a size small enough for Jackit's legs, although an XS may work on his backs. I did hear a rumour they were working on smaller sizes, so maybe there's still hope. One of my goals for next year might be getting Small Thing to do some distance, so I'm planning ahead for him.

Regardless of that, just lookit Jackit's measurements - not too shabby considering he's 12:3 hh and the others are 14:2/15:2 hh. Go Small Thing!!

* * *

These are the sizes currently on offer:

Things I Learned at Virginia City 2013

• You can get in at least a half-hour nap after the start and still make it to the highway crossing (19 miles) in time to see the front-runners. Take that 30 minutes - you will feel so much more human.
• When applying sunscreen, try to avoid inserting it into your eye. It's quite hard to spot your rider with only one eye.
• You will need sunscreen, hand lotion, and lip balm. Apply often, otherwise you will return from your weekend with peeling face and lips, and cracked fingers (I knew this, but still failed to adhere to this simple rule of visiting NV).
• You have time to get from the hwy crossing (19 miles) to the first vet check (24 miles)—via Starbucks.
• Rides that have Starbucks within accessible distance of the first vet check are very civilised for both crew and rider.
• Always try to park your vehicle so that horse and rider are blocked from the wind.
• There will be wind. (I knew that. Why should this year be any different?)
• Kody can consume astonishing amounts of fud (OK, I knew that too, but I'm still always astounded by just how much he can get down in one sitting).
• Bring binoculars to spot your rider coming across the sagebrush several miles away from Washoe Lake trot-by (especially when one eye is still full of sunscreen).
• Despite numerical evidence to the contrary, you will not have time to sit/knit/read a book while crewing.
• Three headlights aren't enough when you're crewing - they can and do fail.
• You can never have enough fleece blankies (I knew this, but as usual, it was proven to me once again).
• When you see them, buy many pairs of those $2 stretchy woolly gloves and then stash them in every nook and cranny of truck and trailer. They will get used.
• Treat the first 50 mile loop with extreme care. It's tough, but not nearly as tough as the next loop and you need as much reserve in the tank for that section as you can muster.
• Yes, that 51-76 mile loop will wipe you and your horse out. Even if it goes relatively smoothly, you'll come in from it feeling physically and emotionally on the edge. Do your best and this too shall pass.
• Your rider will need extra special patting and propping up at 76 miles.
• Horses that don't look quite right, gait-wise at 76 miles, can and do look fine by 92 miles.
• Horses that don't look quite right, gait-wise at 92 miles, can and do look fine by 100 miles.
• The hours between 1 am and 5 am pass much quicker when listening to Jamie Kerr telling stories
• Enjoying the barrel stove inside the Ice House building is a wondrous thing between 1 am and 5 am.
• Hot water bottles + tired riders = A Good Thing

Getting My Ducks in a Row - Fergus

Fergus

In reality, I haven't actually got this duck in a row yet, but I'm working on it. Up until now there hasn't been any real hurry because Fergus has been on break since February (a product of having too many horses to ride, rather than not wanting to ride him), so like many things around here, it has been on the back-burner. Given that I hope to start him up in 100 milers again next year, I need to get the problem sorted out.

* * *

Unbeknownst to me, Fergus developed a couple of rubs either side of his withers during Tevis last year. At Foresthill, my vigilant crew distracted me ("look! Elephant!") while applying Desitin, and off I went again, blissfully unaware.

Keeping in mind I can't actually see Fergus' back from the ground, it wasn't until pre-Virginia City 100 prep six weeks later during the washing/primping/obsessing phase that I noticed that he had scurfy callouses on his withers and Crysta admitted "oh yeah, he got those at Tevis and we deliberately didn't tell you about them". This is what crew is for - to prevent you from obsessing over which you cannot do anything about.

The day before Virginia City 100, 2012. You can see his newly-minted wither callouses

I put his pad on and felt around underneath and concluded that in my efforts to protect his back and pad his Skito appropriately, I'd probably overstuffed the pad and it was causing bulges right about where he didn't need them. So the pad got destuffed and off we went and did VC100. No back soreness, no obvious rubbing.

Fast forward to 20 mule Team 100 in February - Mr Mild Manners became an overachieving GIANT HORSE and proceeded to move out as BIG as I've ever felt him move before. He rubbed the cr*p out of my legs in the first 12 miles (trying vainly to keep him to a subdued dull roar) and I knew that if he didn't calm down, my crippled body wasn't going to get close to finishing the next 82 miles. Luckily he did calm down and returned to his normal self, but not before skinning the insides of my legs.

What extra-special-BIG movement can do for you - the insides of my legs 50 miles into 20 Mule Team.
If it did this to my legs, what might it be doing to his back?.

Again, he finished with no back soreness or obvious holes, but the callouses were definitely still there. Come summer time, his fluffy winter coat shed out and, voila, two large white patches either side of his withers, a rear left-hand white patch, as well as some "frosting" either side of his spine. Not what I wanted to see.

Photo taken standing on the hay pile above him:

• Pretty sure the wither spots are my fault from overstuffing the pad and two-pointing a good deal. 
• Think that the patch in the left-rear was from when pft was still riding unbalanced from his broken leg. Now that he's more balanced and lost 20 lbs, think that problem has been remedied. 
• The frosting along the spine - not sure, but wondering if it's heat-related from him building up friction from his BIG movement?

So I concluded that although I've been using Skito pads almost my entire endurance career, apparently it wasn't cutting it for Fergus and it was time for a change.

From looking at his back, I don't believe he's suffering from a 'saddle poking' issue - I don't see any atrophy of back muscles:

Curiously, the area that is "frosted" also has raised hair along it.
I didn't notice this until I was taking these photos.

Another problem is because his back is so long and there's SO MUCH real estate available, my saddle tends to slide back off the raised part of his withers onto the flat part of his back, causing the front of it to sit too low and tilt me forwards slightly (I don't have this problem using the same saddle with either Roo or Uno - where the saddle sits closer to their raised withers). So whatever pad we end up using, it needs to be able to be shimmed at the front to raise up the front of the saddle.

Instead of sharing a pad with the other horses, it looks like Fergus will have a special one of his very own.

Using Sensation treeless saddles, it made sense to go to the source, so I emailed Kate in the office and sent her some explanatory photos. She suggested either replacing the foam padding in the Skito, especially if it was more than three years old (...er, that would be a "yes"...); or getting one of their new endurance pads made with Eco-Gold padding ("Ultimate impact protection with a combination of shock-absorbing technology; Reduced friction, rubbing and pressure points" - yup, that would be what I'm looking for).

Since I'd like to try something different for Fergus—particularly with a view to the idea that his big movement may be causing some heat friction—the Sensation endurance pad is the route I'm going to take.

(as an aside, another thing she mentioned was the temperature sensitivity of the foam used in Skitos - that it tends to become "mushy" and loses some of its support when riding in heat. I'm thinking that if I like the Eco-Gold padding, it may be that I replace all the foam in my existing Skitos (in need of overhaul) with this kind of foam).

(and as another aside, Christoph Schork used one of these pads during Tevis this year and said he really liked how cooling it was).

Today I emailed Kate at Sensation to set the ball rolling so that Cinderella will be set up ready for Fall Training (if we ever get organised enough to start such a thing)(right now I have three horses lined up in my head for "Fall Training", so we'll see).

Getting My Ducks in a Row - Uno

Uno

Quite how Uno's feet degenerated into their current mess is distressing to me. He's always been a "bar" overachiever, but his feet got away from me without me realising that they had. During his last trim less than two weeks ago, it dawned on me that nearly the entire back of his front feet was now bar material ("bar pooling") and the seat of the corns had vanished underneath it. His feet were solid blocks of dense material. No concavity. No sole shedding. Just blobs of hard stuff.

My problem is that he grows a lot of toe, but very little heel, so it's a balancing act to try and not take anything off the back, while keeping the front under control. As a result, he tends towards spatula feet at the best of times.

I don't like to get too aggressive with sole trimming - which is probably also part of the problem - I suddenly realised it had all built up and it was time to get serious about getting it back under control. Not pretty.

Yesterday morning I put his front feet in boots and filled them with water (... and then went and fetched a third boot when I noticed the water trickling out of a hole in the toe of the boot). I topped up the water again last night when I fed.

So he wore his water boots for 24 hours and this morning I set to doing a hack-job on his feet. It's scary digging around in there like that, and I imagine he'll be a little footsore until things even out, but I think I got the job done. Sorta.

(Note I took the following photos with my iPhone so there may be some distortion due to it being close up. I know his heels aren't super-healthy, but don't believe they are quite that contracted.)

Left front, post-hack job. Talk about dubbed toe. :(

Right front, post-hack job. Not quite as extreme...

I don't love these feet, but need to avoid his toes getting long to protect his suspensories from over stretch

(Yellow outlines show the area of bar that I removed) The soaking in boots actually made it possible for me to peel the bar material away, sliver by sliver with my hoof knife. Towards the end it got harder and harder to tell what was bar material and what wasn't. I suspect I could have taken more off, but chickened out.

He had what appeared to be slight bruising either side of his frog near the front. 

I also spent some time opening up the central sulci (in his case, deep slits) to let air in and get No Thrush powder down in there. And did the same with the space between heels and frog.

Left heel: example of what happens when Uno decides to wriggle at the exactly the wrong moment as I'm nipping. The good thing is, even though this was only two weeks ago, by the end of this morning's trim, the rest of the heel had been rasped down to match the missing part (see next photo).

Towards the end of the trim, after I'd liberally powdered his feet, I noticed a black crack near the front of the frog on the right. Gentle poking with the hoof pick cause it to chunk off, so I got busy pulling off sole and revealed quite a bit of new sole on that right side. Like I said, normally I wouldn't touch this stuff - just let it come out on its own, but clearly in Uno's case, his dry, rock-like feet had opted to retain everything, resulting in flat, solid feet.

So the hour and 15 mins spent chiselling away at his two front feet seems to have been relatively successful. Certainly he wasn't lame at the walk and didn't show any discomfort while I was performing the hack-job. I'm hoping that the lessening of bar material will cause his feet to be able to flex more and in turn be healthier. And if I can eliminate the thrush in his heels, hopefully he'll start to land heel-first and grow more heel.

I may repeat this soaking again in a week and see if more sole material seems inclined to come off.

And if I can find somewhere non-smoky to ride this weekend, I'd like to take him out and see how he feels - hopefully more willing to move out once I get boots on.

Getting My Ducks in a Row - Hopi

Hopi

In the last few weeks, Hopi started to look a bit funky - he's not thin exactly, but his hip bones were poking out, ribs peeked through, and his top line started looking very prominent. In addition, the hair on his rump got peculiarly tufty.

To complete the picture, he seems to be having an all-out war with "someone" (thinking Small Thing) and is covered in scuffs and bite marks. He's not bottom of the pecking (biting?) order - that spot is reserved for Uno who just wants the quiet life - and Hopi and Small Thing regularly eat together, so it doesn't appear to be that he's being chased off the hay. Hum.

The strange thing is, during this time he has become the most relaxed and cheerful I've ever seen him. He's talkative, friendly, and plays a lot.

Hopi's Tufty Butt:

After eyeing him for a while, I concluded maybe he needed a worm purge, so duly purchased 1,000 ml of fenbendazole (10% suspension) - enough to purge four horses should I feel the need to do so. Otherwise, enough to treat my five horses for about the next decade.

'Course, as soon as I ordered the stuff, Ann pointed out that I should probably get him a fecal exam to make sure that's what was really going on. She even gave me a kit* to do the deed.

(*Kit = small pill bottle with a pokey spoon attached to the lid. Instructions were "Take some poop off the top of the pile, keep refrigerated".)

Thursday was the day and I set about getting Hopi to poop on command. This used to be a simple matter of looking at him or putting a halter on him. But apparently nowadays that wasn't going to cut it. He ambled along behind me, quite happily, looking around at the world, totally relaxed.

Hopi acting like the highly-strung arabian he is...

Ah hah, I thought, and loaded him in the trailer. 

Most self-respecting horses, at this point, will poop within four seconds of getting in the trailer. Nope. Loaded and unloaded him several times and took advantage of the situation to impress upon him that leaping out of the trailer as soon as the door was opened wasn't appropriate. Manners about jumping out were instilled, but still no poop. 

I ran him up and down a bit. No poop.

Finally realised it was getting late and I needed to get to work, so tied him in the barn with a hay net and ran indoors to get ready. 

Wondering what to do now - to alarm him sufficiently into production,
but not enough that he wonders what he did to deserve such treatment.

Now nice and tidy, but still no poop in the barn, I decided to try and load him one last time and - voila, finally he produced the much desired substance. Put him away and then squatted in the dust in my work clothes with the pill bottle and the pokey scoop and retrieved a sample.

At Auburn Animal Medical Large Animal, I handed over my prize. Apparently if you send your poop sample to the lab, they will charge you around $200 for the privilege of inspecting it under a microscope. Auburn Animal Medical realised the stupidity of this - who's going to test for worms when you can pick up a tube of wormer for less than $10? So they purchased the necessary equipment and now do "fecals" in-house for a mere $25.

And here's the rub. The vet office called that afternoon - Hopi is negative for worms. 

So now what? I should test him again in a few months to make sure they aren't at the encysted stage. But in the meantime, this morning Hopi got stationed in front of a large pan of sloppy feed - Elk Grove Pellets and Ultium feed, with a helping of E-Se-Mag (Vitamin E, Selenium, Magnesium) and we'll try that for a month and see if it helps. And I'm waiting to hear from the vet as to whether I should go ahead and administer a five day fenbendazole purge anyway.

* * *

Edited to add 08.26.13:

Hopi tucking into his enormous pan of goodies. Note offending ribs in the background. He's been gobbling this stuff once a day for ten days now, and I'm not convinced it's done much so think that a worming purge is in his future. However, I'm going to wait until after we get back from vacation so I can supervise in an obsessive manner. 

Dreams (in which I do too much of it)

Despite evidence to the contrary, once I'd made my decision take Fergus (lumpy legs and all) to 20 Mule Team 100, I felt fairly relaxed about it. I was even sleepy and dropped off to sleep quickly at around 10:45 on Friday night. Love that new memory foam mattress.

Two hours later I was wide awake with a churning stomach and a fretting head.

• Had we done enough conditioning?
• Was Fergus going to crash and burn the next day because of the forecasted 72°F? [hah, we froze practically all day - they didn't mention the "brisk" wind in the forecast]
• Were his legs going to drop off?
• Was the fact that I'd not had a chance to do a short pre-ride on Friday going to bite me?
• Would his glue-ons stays on?
• Would I be able to eat properly or would I get lack-of-food-stupid?
• ...

Finally, I slept again and had an interesting and delightful dream about visiting a bat sanctuary and needing to draw pictures of the little bat tails to identify what kind of bat they were. No idea what that was about, but it was a bit of light relief from the fretting.

At 4:30 a.m. the alarm went off, and sadly, I was already awake. It seems that the worst part of doing 100 mile rides isn't the riding, it's the fretting ahead of time and resulting lack of sleep.

* * *

My commute is 600 miles a week and to stay sane I listen to audio books.

A LOT of audio books.

I can either get piles of audio CDs from the library or I can download digital audio files. The latter requires some caution to avoid bumping our internet usage over the monthly 10 GB limit and incurring a $10 overcharge, so CDs are a better option. Except that – of the three cars available to me to commute in – only one has a functioning CD player - and of course, it's the one that gets the highest gas mileage. :(

So the latest "good plan" is to buy a portable CD player that I can use in any of the cars. Yesterday I took a quick look at prices and availability. You can spend $30-$200, and judging by the reviews, it won't make a lick of difference. Most units had over a 100 reviews and half the people said "great unit! great sound! love it!", while the other half said "useless/broke after three minutes/fritzy".

My brain's way of dealing with this was to dream that I went shopping, bought 3-4 items, and when the lady rang me up, the bill was $10,456. And rather than say "uh, never mind", in the dream, I was trying to figure out if we had a bank account with that much money in it that I could use. Turns out the lady had mispositioned the decimal point and the bill was really $104.56 (lucky I'm on top of things and can do maths, right?).

Does this indicate a guilty conscience over spending $30 on a CD player?

Or was it that, in planning my purchase, I realised that I would probably go to the Republic of Walmart to get it - and in doing so might be able to pick up a new white/red-bulbed headlight to replace the one I already have that you have to bang and poke to get the light to stay on?

Big spender, me.

Cripes (in which I gag over hay prices)

For the last few months we've been buying hay from the local feed store in Garden Valley. I say "we" - actually pft has been doing it. It's just a couple of miles down the road, so he can easily nip out, fill up the hay trailer and be back home before he even notices he left.

Unfortunately, the last batch of orchard grass/alfalfa (usually a 90/10 mix) had gone bananas and the ratios were flipped. Of course, the pones thought this was most wondrous and proceeded to gobble the sweeties hay down in large quantities, adding to their already whale-like proportions.

But with Fergus being prepped for 20 Mule Team 100, eating calcium-laced alfalfa wasn't going to fly. An excellent way to develop an unhealthy dose of thumps half-way through the ride when his body tries to resupply and wonders how to do so (apparently the body gets stupid about such things if you provide large amounts of calcium from an outside source and forgets how to make its own).

So on Saturday off we went to Auburn with the truck. We weighed the empty truck, we had them half fill it with fine orchard grass (and it better be fine at $22.99 a 115 lb bale) for the working good pones (Fergus and Jackit), reweighed truck, and then had them finish the load off with "diet hay" (meadow grass at $16.99 a 115 lb bale) for the fatties. With 28 bales on the truck, this is probably the most expensive load of hay I've ever bought.

Yikes.

Back again

In a fit of fickleness (is that even a word?), I'm going to try blogspot again...

Back to Ponyhill.Org

Sorry - if anyone liked this format better - I don't, so I'm going back to Ponyhill.org...

Click Ponyhill.org to get there.

Magnolia/Equestrian Way; Ramping Up for VC100; Camera First Aid

It's no good. I just can't warm to this format. It's supposed to be all easy - everything automated and at your fingertips... but it still seems to cold and impersonal. I have to resist the temptation to just list "things that have happened", which makes for dull reading.

So what has happened? (OK, I couldn't resist).

• pft, Fergus, me n' Uno went on a long ride from Magnolia towards Salmon Falls and back to get in some "long trotting" practice. We took a detour up to Equestrian Way to find a short loop someone had told pft about. We found "a" short loop, but not the one we were actually looking for. However from the GPSed track we were able to look on Google Earth to figure out where we'd been and where we should have gone. So next time we'll be able to cut through the woods, across the (no doubt downed barbed-wire filled) meadow, and accomplish our 'sploring mission.

• Before we rode, I'd hoped to get away with "A quick rasp" on Uno's toes. Not. So an hour later, I'd performed a full trim on him in the parking lot and as I went to nip that last heel, I did it too deep and he ended up with a wonkly, too short heel. Luckily he's growing foot faster than a fast thing right now, so hopefully by the time VC100 rolls around in three weeks (two now, as I write this), he'll have grown it all out again [gulp].
• When we got back from this ride, Uno had somehow scraped a chunk of hair off his fetlock and said leg swelled up like a melon the following day. For the rest of this week he's been getting twice daily icings and I've concluded he's just teasin' with his poorly leg impersonation. I'm not thinking about it. I'm not thinking about it. I'm not thinking about it.
• Uno is now in full "you shall be fed everything good under the sun" mode and gets shut up to eat his Special Fud. Fergus is miffed.
• I am going into obsession-mode about the 100 mile ride and enjoying every minute of it. It makes me feel like I'm accomplishing things in my life.
• Having thought about my crunchy knees (they aren't that crunchy, but get a bit cramped over long distances), I tried out pft's longer-seated Sensation saddle for the above ride. Although it's very close to mine, it still seems worth trying out in more depth - I can shift further back in the seat on downhills and give my knees a break - so last night I spent an hour switching all the bags, covers, stirrups off my saddle and onto his - and vice versa. Pft's only complaint about using my saddle was "all the crap on it". I prefer to call this "essential equipment"; pft couldn't get on or off the saddle with all the stuff on it.
• I mended my camera with SuperGlue. No really. The top fell of the shutter button, revealing tiny wires that bend backwards when you thrust it into the pommel bag. Apparently these cameras aren't designed for this sort of treatment. Wimp cameras. So the "new"one is mended while my "old" camera - the one who's LED display got crunched... possibly when someone rolled while still in his saddle - got sent off to hospital where, for a mere $80, its LED display would be replaced and it would be Good As New. Oh yes!
• I worked another week of ridiculousness at work.
• I didn't get to bed at a sensible time, instead staying up late to do important things like string new blue beads:

• I didn't plant the two remaining lavender plants that have been sitting in the way at the foot of the front steps for about three months.
• I did, however, order Chili some magic pills from SpringTime which are going to turn her into a youngin' again. In theory. And I snipped her toenails twice in a row in the same month. Maybe I'll actually get them under control again? Maybe. Life continues to tick.