Ick ... mud

Okay the mud is in full swing.  Up over my ankles and totally disgusting.  The horses kind of looked at me like, "help me please."  Heh.  I was going to just go out and try out my new grooming tool in the paddock but the other horse was trying to help so that wasn't going to work.  A horse was in the arena for some reason.  I suppose I could have put her in a stall but that just seemed like more work than I wanted.  So I took the boys out and tied them to the rail by the other barn.  Not really out of the mud but that's next to impossible at this point.


I did end up spraying both Cody and Axel's feet since it was so horrible out there.  Though I just sprayed right over the mud.  Heh.  I couldn't quite see if Axel's scabs were worse or better or otherwise but they didn't *seem* any worse so I suppose that's a good sign.

So I ended up ordering a giant dog short hair Furminator for the horses.  The horse one is super spendy and I found this one on Amazon for 20 bucks.  As far as I know they are the same thing just a different size and the reviews said the horse one was too wide.  I had to brush off as much dried mud as I could first but they were still pretty dirty, hopefully I didn't dull the blade at all. So at first glance it didn't seem like it was getting off that much hair but when I was done I went back over the horses with the regular brush and it didn't fill up with hair nearly as fast as it usually does.  Probably would have been nicer had I gotten the thing a couple weeks ago before they were so nasty.

So when I was done grooming I walked each of them down the driveway.  I've come to one conclusion.  If we end up with a TB (or even any other horse) I'm going to need to pay closer attention to what the horse is doing.  I'm sort of spoiled with my more or less bomb proof horses.  Axel was on his toes the whole walk down the drive way.  We walked back and forth a tiny bit on the road and then headed back up the drive way and Axel got behind me and decided to let off a little steam and jump around.  So my back was turned to him while he did this and it could have been a really dangerous situation with most any other horses.  Cody wasn't quite on his toes til we got to the road then he did his usual trotting thing getting himself all worked up a bit (not really all that bad but more energy than he's had all winter).  I backed him up the first part of the driveway with success and some actual speed so that was nice.  But he still wanted to trot his way back to the paddock.  So I guess taking the boys down the road first thing in the spring (aka flying kites) is good practice for handling a less than bomb proof horse.  I should probably wear a helmet when I'm doing that too but I didn't have it with me since I didn't intend on riding.  So my rules for myself when we get a new horse is to 1. wear my helmet even doing ground work and 2. pay better attention at least until the horse is settled in and we know his personality a little better.