Stop Nipping me!

I am now trying to walk Titch and Uncle Patches out twice a week.  Titch's front end appears to be levelling up a bit with his rear end as he grows.  And uncle Patches is in danger of getting too fat and laminitis in the spring if he doesn't wiggle off some pounds now.

Titch has now decided it is sort of fun to try to nip my elbow as I lead him. NO! I make chicken wings with my arms and send him backwards to spell it out to him.  Now all I have to say is 'No' and he is already backing up, but as yet it has not stopped him trying to nip me!  Maybe he is now at the stage where his nuts need to come off.  But he is not aggressive about it.  It is more like what a baby does when they are exploring everything with their mouth.

I am getting the distinct feeling that he might be a sort of 'nappy' pony when he is full grown.  If he decides he wants a bit of that green grass over there on one particular route, he plants his feet and will not budge! In the early days, to let him rest his brain when I first took him out on walks, I let him eat at this particular verge once or twice.  Now he thinks he can always stop there. WRONG!

Food Time Manners and Snow

We are now refining Titch's manners a bit.  He can follow me in to the stable without hassling me for his bucket of tea, he parks like a statue next to the wall and waits (10 seconds today) for me to say he can have his tea.  This was a hard lesson for Titch as his belly rules!!  I had to be consistent and make him go back to where he had come from if and as soon as he made the very first step towards me uninvited.  I am still working on this with my big horse!

He can also walk back to the word 'back' and a bit of arm flapping.  I am hoping to make him respond to a wiggle of one finger eventually.

He is a fairly low reactor (which is a good thing!) so I had to force the issue to make him charge about in the snow, but I think you'll agree the photos I took are great.

Treating Horse Lice

I have undertaken LOTS of internet research yesterday and today on the subject of lice and have come up with a summary of what to do.

If your horse is itchy, has lots of scurf,has rubbed bare patches in his fur, suspect lice.

If you have a hairy monster, as a precautionary measure you can dose with louse powder at the beginning of winter and spring.  This may repel the lice, but not eradicate an infestation.

If you have a lice breeding programme happening on your much beloved ponio, it can take many months to sort, so the consensus is to hit it hard with something more potent and expensive, rather than fanny around with organic lotions and potions which end up costing you more than if you had gone in with the hard stuff first off!!

Sulphur powder (for preference Flowers of Sulphur) can be dusted into the fur and put in the food (2 table spoons a day for a week to 10 days, then drop to maintenance dose of 1 tablespoon a day) to sort out any skin problems and has been used for hundreds of years (hence the use of pig oil and sulphur on feathered horses legs to repel mites.  But I didn't find any convincing proof that it will kill off a current lice infestation.

The British agents most often in use seem to be Coopers Spot-on, only licensed for cattle and sheep, but seemingly recommended by many a vet for use on horses, under their supervision.  You need a herd number to buy it on the internet and more than likely at a farm supplies outlet, like Scats, but it will be cheaper than buying it from the vets. You just pour a small amount along the mane, back and top of tail area.  It lasts for a long time but can cause hairloss or bleaching, so possibly not the first choice for show animals.

Deosect, which is some sort of petrochemical related product by the smell of it (and by the instructions to don chemical warfare garb!) is what I used today on both Titch and Patches. Easily bought at Scats and possibly online, but I wanted it TODAY!  You make up a dilution of it. For my ponies it was 2.5ml in 125ml of water and either spray or sponge on. One bottle is going to last a very long time!  Apparently it takes minutes to work and you reapply in 14 days to catch any eggs that have since hatched.

If you have a really bad infestation you should chat to your vet as he may think it necessary to inject Ivermectin, but this carries risks.

There is advice to treat anything that has come into contact with your horse, rubbing posts, brushes, headcollars, rugs, etc, but I was not sure what to treat it with.  As a cattery I have and indoor flea killer that I happen to know kills all sorts of creepy crawlies in there, called Indorex also from Scats.  So I will be using that. One vet also recommended putting any items in a plastic bag and freezing it for a few days, then washing it on a boil wash.  I dusted Patches rug with lice powder as I have not seen any evidence on him, but thinking about it I will spray that with Indorex tomorrow when I get a moment.

Had this problem occurred in the warmer sunnier weather of summer (?!) Dermoline Insecticidal shampoo would have been my first port of call.  Funny how they suggest a shampoo for a problem that occurs on hairy monsters in the cold weather (well warmth, under said hairy winter coat or turnout rug)!

I also read about one lady that felt the only thing to do for her miniature hairy shitlands was to completely clip them out and then treat.  I think that would be very effective, but I'm not sure what my baby pony would think about that!

UPDATE: after 3 treatments of Deosect at 14 days apart, Titch is now not at all itchy, so it must have worked.

Itchy Titchy.

Yuck, yuck, yuck!

I noticed that Titch was a bit scurfy soon after I bought him and assumed it was perhaps because he hadn't had the best nutrition and his skin was not so healthy.  Then recently I really started studying the scurf and found it all to be exactly the same size and attached to the hairs on his mane.

After a bit of internet research I have now convinced myself that the scurfiness and the fact that he is itching himself every few minutes can only mean he has ... lice. :(

I have liberally doused him in louse powder only to find it is as much use as a chocolate fireguard.  What seems to come out tops is a product for cattle and sheep called Coopers spot on (for which you apparently need a holding/herd number) or Deosect or Ivermectin wormers.  Also suggested was lice shampoo and rather organically, Sulphur powder.  So until I can get hold of the vet I will try the sulphur powder as well as the louse powder.

I thought I was over all the creepy crawlies when the children started secondary school!

I will be consulting the vet as soon as they open on New Year's Eve. Great timing Titch the itch!

Trot On

I'm not doing a great deal with Titch at the moment, except all the things I normally do with him.

I have my daughter home from uni at the moment and she loves coming out for walks with Titch and I, so I made good use of her the other day.  She walked behind Titch while I was leading him up a hill and I asked him to trot and clucked, whereupon she shooed him mildly from behind and he did indeed trot.  We did it again and then I tried it when she was walking in front of us, saying trot and clucking with my tongue and sure enough he trotted.  I tried it several more times and he has never not responded by trotting, so I now feel we are another step closer to being able to take him to a local show next year.

He has been out for a walk with me and 5 teenagers laughing, shouting and being, well, teenagers, and coped fine with it.  I would now like to set up a situation where a stranger wearing a hat walks up to him as if they were a judge, while he remains standing still.  I cannot believe how fast he learns, even without food rewards.  He does love a good scratch as a reward and pulls the most comical faces of ecstasy!

Yesterday we went out for our longest walk so far - 50 minutes.

Titch spent the next hour like this...

He is learning to stay a few yards away and wait while I put his feed bucket down.  I have always done this with our dogs and it seems a good idea so that he respects my space and doesn't rush at me.

He is excellent when we meet horses coming the other way and is quite happy to let them walk away without him. This will be useful for when he goes hunting and maybe has to leave early, or for showing when the other horses leave the line to do their individual show.

Foal measurement at 6 months

We did it we did it! I loaded Titch in the trailer, shut all partitions and doors, and we went up the road and back.  He was whinnying a bit, but was fine when we got back home.

He has definitely decided I look like fun to play with when I am poo-picking.  I must stamp on this heavily as it is kind of funny now he's a foal but will be very un-funny when he is a strapping 3 year old.

Look away now if you are squeemish...

YAY! He finally has two nuts, so he could have his op, the simpler version rather than a full anaesthetic.  I will probably wait till either early spring before the flies get too bad so they do not bother the wound, or Autumn for the same reason, but saying that we are so wet here that I would have to chose a week or two when it was not at all warm for the flies to stay away.  I will wait to see what his behaviour is like as that may influence when I make 'that' decision.

This evening I spent some time sacking him out with a lightweight rug again in his stable, where he is confined and can get away but not get away entirely.  He had forgotten that he was totally ok with it last time.

6 month measurements

middle of knee to coronet band15 " = 15hh

point of elbow to ergot + point of elbow to floor = 55" =12h7" = 14.3hh

current height of whithers 124cm = approx 85% of his final height = 124/85 x 100=147.6cm= =14h2 1/2

current height of bum 130cm = so if that was 85% of his final height= 130/85 x 100= 152.9cm=15hh

So I think it is fair to assume he will average out to be 14.3hh

And if he could make it just one more inch, to 15 hh then I would be an extremely happy lady.   I always said of Spice that if only she was just one hand taller, ie 15hh, then I would be a very happy lady!! Just got a few years of watching and training before I can make sure of this with Titch!!

I have read in a few places that if colts are left a while before gelding they tend to fill out and be broader (the effect of testosterone I guess), but if they are gelded earlier they tend to grow taller and less broad.  So do I go for broad because it will give more surface area on which to put my long legs, or go for tall so that I am riding a 15hh-er rather than a 14.2hh -er?

The other day in the field he trusted me again to crouch near him as he lay on the ground.  I was bolder this time and gently encouraged his neck and head to lie down, so he was flat out in the winter sun, looking all fluffy and totally at ease with me touching him all over and standing up next to him, walking round him.  Lovely to have that trust.

Whilst cruising about on Youtube I found an inspiring video of a woman training a mule...to lunge in self-carriage and perform Passage.  For those of you interested, many horses never get to be taught this and for a stubborn old mule to do it has proved to me that with the right training any equine can have a go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82Nz702CvUM

More Loading Practice

Still resisting the urge to put a rug on him, but don't want to spoil him...

Over the last few days I have been taking Titch for walks with our dogs and on his own, and getting him happy about loading onto the trailer. He has been really happy to load with all doors open.  He always has his breakfast in there. Yesterday I closed the back door up and he was fine. Today I put his 'travel boots' on, closed the front divider, loaded him and closed the back door.  He managed to turn himself around in that space to look backwards.  He couldn't work out how to turn around again and any other horse would have panicked, but I managed to fling the rope from his head collar over his head and lead him to a bit where there was more space and turned him around.  Phew! Once he was facing forward again I closed the front door too and he was fine, but I immediately went around and opened it again and unloaded him, whereupon he ate grass.  Good boy!

First time standing in trailer with both front and back doors closed and front partition in place

I did a bit of rug training with him in the field, but I think the fact that he had so much space to escape worked against me. I circled him many times dragging a rug on the ground.  At first he turned away from me, but when he realised I was just circling him he settled...until I got a bit nearer.  So I repeated the circling until he was ignoring me and eating grass again. When I went to lift the rug up even slightly towards his shoulder though he moved away, so I changed it to just my hand stroking his shoulder - fine with that. Here I ran out of time.  So at least I had ended on a good note.  Maybe I need to go back to touching him with smaller pieces of material in the stable till he is soooo bored of it, then try again in a bigger space.