Horse Maintenance Day

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Horse maintenance days are a necessity if you want to keep your horses healthy and happy.

Just a word of warning…this is going to be a looooonnnnnnngggg post.

So grab a cup of something yummy and hunker down.

When you have horses, or any animals for that matter, in order to keep them healthy you have to periodically do a little maintenance. The most frequent maintenance for horses is de-worming.

So, on the coldest day of our brief winter, the head wrangler decided it was the day to worm the whole herd of horses.

Of course, it would have to be freezing. Things like this are always much more fun when it’s freezing.

I can guarantee you one thing, I had on my new thermal underwear for Wyoming and they worked good!

The menfolk rode to the back forty to bring up the big herd, while I slithered down on the side of the road so I could get a good shot of them thundering up the hill.

 

 

 

As you can see, there wasn’t much thundering going on. They came up the hill like they were just going for their Sunday afternoon picnic.

Oh, well. At least I tried.

 

 

 

We got them all corralled into the pen and I started catching. Most of them are pretty good, but some of ’em can be downright ornery when it comes to being caught.

 

I have to admit though, the most fun came from the orneriest one. There was a especially hard to catch and rather wild-eyed mare in the bunch that came to us wearing a halter and it was rubbing sores on her head.

Do you want to guess why she had been wearing that halter for so long? My guess would be once her former owners got it on there they couldn’t figure out how to get close enough to her to get it off.

So, with not many other options, we pulled out the only rope we had on hand and did a little ole’ fashioned cowboyin’.

 

 

It certainly didn’t help matters any that the only rope we had handy was a kids rope that is much too short for practical purposes.

But did that stop us? No way! What fun is it if there aren’t a few flying-by-the-seat-of-your-wranglers moments to keep things interesting?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gotcha!

 

She was none too happy about it, but we did get the halter off of her.

Everyone turned out for the excitement. We had the pharmacist whose job was to dole out the wormers.

 

 

 

And the secretary who kept up with which horses had already been wormed.

 

 

 

 

 

There was a momentary cause for concern when it appeared a self misdiagnosis had been made.

 

 

 

I guess he saw that it was green apple flavored.

 

Some of these horses could really benefit from spending a little quality time with a toothbrush.

The perfect time to get a good look at your horses teeth is while you are worming them.

 

 

Unfortunately, when some horses get old, their teeth wear down badly or they just lose them outright. I think Fancy would be a good dentures candidate…what do you think?

 

 

 

After perusing all the photos of the day, we concluded that sticking out tongues could be a genetic family trait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Needless to say, the horses were much more enthusiastic about leaving the pen than they were about coming.

 

 

 

About half the herd had run past when they decided…whoa, I think that thing is gonna jump up and EAT us!!!

 

 

 

All in all, we got all the horses de-wormed and nobody got killed in the process. That’s always a plus.

 

Adios,

Rachel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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