In Which I Shake My Puny Fists in Rage

Just when you think you have a system that works. That's effective. That's manageable. Something changes. And you have to start over.

My barn features stalls with rear doors that access two good-sized barnlots. The barnlots feed into the pasture. This give the option of in, and/or barnlot, and/or pasture. Since I've been keeping the ponies up to prevent them from overeating, they've had free access to one stall and both the barnlots. They can walk around (or canter/buck/act like fools if their little pony hearts so desire), sleep in the sun, hang out under the overhang, go in the stall and stand under the fan, lounge and groom each other in the shade under the tree and generally freely interact and be horses. I have to clean the barnlots every day, but that's not too bad and there's no shavings so it's great soil amendment. I get that they would rather be on grass, but limits have to be set.

This was fine. Until recently.

Pancake has decided that contorting herself under the fence to nibble tiny mouthfuls of grass is totally legit. She kneels down on her left knee and reaches her stumpy little neck as far as she can to grab pitiful tiny tastes of grass.

Fine. You want to be an idiot, go for it.

Except ... she's bruised the heck out of her neck. It's hot to the touch and obviously sore. She's rubbing her mane. Her right shoulder's sore. And the final straw, her left knee has a huge bubble of fluid sitting on it.

So now I'm hosing. And icing. And using the butecort rub. But as soon as she's out in the barnlot and her (soaked, slow-feed netted) hay is gone, she's back out there kneeling on it again.

So she's in the stall. And she'll stay in the stall other than when she goes out for two hours in the evening. And I need to clean the stall. And buy more shavings. And hose. And ice. And rub. And, despite it all, she's still really, really fat.

This weekend, maybe I'll rig up an electric wire under the fence. Or add another board along the bottom. Or obliterate all grass within reach with Round-Up. Or maybe I'll put the muzzle back into service. Right now, I just feel totally defeated.

"Easy" keeper. Yeah, right.


On the bright side ... 

When you have a baby, the nurses give you really great ice packs (if you don't know why, that's a topic for an entirely different blog). The kind you snap and they get really cold really fast and stay cold for hours. They're long and super pliable and have a strip you can pull off to stick them. Anyway, they work really well for icing horse knees.

So I got that going for me.