Mud Fever Season

I had heard through the grapevine that both the boys had been enjoying some time laying and rolling in the mud so I planned a longer grooming session than normal. And I was right to. When I got to the barn everyone was standing around napping and there were at least two horse-sized body prints in the mud next to the round bale on a bit of a hill. It's been a while since I've not seen the horses with their faces shoved as far in the round bale as possible but I guess warm weather + sun means more napping and less stuffing their faces.

Axel has been brewing a nice batch of mud fever (scratches) since there was snow on the ground. I'm guessing since he hadn't been moving around much higher up on his feet have remained wet for a longer period of time. So I pulled him out of the pasture first and put him at the hitching post for some outside grooming. I like grooming outside because it means not having to sweep hair from the barn aisle. Though it does mean wearing more horse hair all over my face and down my shirt. Axel is on round two of massive amounts of shedding. I still haven't figured out what makes me start chewing on the lead rope. It might just boil down to time spent standing around.

So when I finished the bulk of the work and got the tornados out of his mane I set to work on the mud fever. It's kind of a hard thing to deal with since I can clean him up to perfection and then I have to turn around and put him back out in the mud. So it seems kind of silly but I suppose it's good to get it cleaned up, aired out, and treated. He's fussy about his back left still, when I go to pick out that hoof or touch him he yanks that foot high up in the air. I can't imagine my barely touching it hurts especially since he's back to putting full weight on it but he's still protective of it. And woe is the person who puts water or betadine on either of his back feet. He raises one up and hops around like I stabbed him with a hot poker. So I scraped with a hoof pick for a while to get some mud off, then I tried to put his foot in water, then I dumped the water over his foot, then I sprayed him with betadine, then I tried to scrub more mud off with water, then I donned the rubber gloves and really tried to rub the mud off with a rag (note: get more rags). When I had it mostly cleaned up and as mud and scab free as it was going to get without reinforcements I got out the hibiscrub and went through some contortions and experiments in application until I finally had scrubbed all of the offending parts. Let's hope this stuff works as good as it's supposed to (it's antibacterial and antimicrobial which is a much better option for the nasty mud fever bugs and it's supposed to work for up to 6 hours after application, betadine actually fails in the presences of bodily fluids so kind of pointless once you pick the scabs, sadly the hibiscrub is spendy).

So after all that we went for a walk down the road, just a few more minutes of not having to go back into the mud to give his legs a chance to dry off a bit. Maybe I need to get Axel an antibac rag from Norwex ;) He was calm on the walk, looking around and back at the pasture. We didn't go far but at least in that distance he hadn't done his oh-so-fun head tossing. So yay Axel, I can't wait to get him back to work and in shape again.

Then there's Cody. Old man Cody is back on his "OMG I can't leave my pasturemates" kick. The barn seems to be an okay place but the hitching post was a little bit scarier. There were things to look at, other horses, and whatnot and apparently that leads to realizing you aren't actually in the pasture with your friends. The extent of his display of dissatisfaction was just pawing and a bit of pacing but still, get over it already! I scraped a metric ton of hair and mud off of him and inspected him for any signs of mud fever - none thank goodness. And then I decided he needed to walk down the road too. Since our first ride down the road was a less than fun one, let's try walking in hand.

First we rushed a bit and tried to get ahead of me and turn around. I fixed that by asking for "easy" and putting my hand with the bite of the lead rope in front of his nose as I said it and redirecting him back to walking a straight line. Then a car came. Oh but not any old car, a truck pulling a horse trailer. Cars don't actually faze Cody, cars are just a good excuse to spaz out and bolt for home. Or in his case, try and bolt for home and then get really mad that he can't bolt for home because I'm at the other end of the lead rope. I'm hoping whoever was in the truck with the trailer saw how nice and calm I was as I let Cody freak out while I pushed him forward into a circle as the truck got out of our way. "Fine, horse, have your hissy fit and then we will circle and circle and circle and when you are calm again maybe we'll move along." We made it back to the barn and we did some more circles in the drive way, you can't just get off scott free without work! And then Cody got to go back to the pasture.

So I think it's time to get back to work in the arena and out of the arena. It sounds like it won't be very nice tomorrow so we might be in the arena but arena work is better than no work.