A chilled Filly

Wednesday 17 November 2010

Filly getting very bored

Poultice change delayed until 9:30 am today to give me a lie in ! I have a night flight tomorrow and need to shift my body clock a bit to cope.
She was very very difficult today. All the other horses in the barn were being taken out and she clearly wanted to follow them. I had to get really really firm with her, which I hate doing but sometimes "leadership" has to take over from "love". Finally I managed to get her to stand still briefly and we found that the poultice had come off again. We knew this was very recent as Rick had just checked her and she had it on earlier. My guess is that it fell off when she started getting agitated in the stable as the others left. Anyway with no infection barrier, however briefly we felt that a quick salt bath was required. I was left to try and accomplish this alone, so wound up spilling most of it. Second attempt went better, by which time she had calmed down considerably. The poultice was applied with no problems at all.
Rick and I then spent about 4 hours erecting new enclosures in the hay barn so that finally Billy and Spider (his field mate) can have some overnight accommodation. This is really good news as it means that I can play with Billy in the school without the worry of leaving Spider in a field on his own.
After lunch I returned to the yard to finish the enclosures and play in the box a bit with Filly. Today I concentrated on being able to handle the udder area, but was met with fierce opposition. Mainly cow kicking and teeth.
We had a few good battles, all of which I won but that did not stop Filly coming back for more. Basically as long as she is calm and gentle I play friendly game, but as her energy comes up I increase my phases to keep her out of my space. If she really comes for me with her teeth I wave my arms, block her with my forearm whatever it takes not to retreat. I make a point of trying not to move my feet at all (he who moves the feet away first looses the game) and if I do move them I make sure they move towards her and drive her away. After about 20 minutes of this there was a glimmer of a change. She now tried to seduce bits of me into her mouth with gentle licking and mouthing, but I have adopted a zero tolerance approach to this for the moment so as not to give mixed messages.
She still showed signs of discomfort in her bad hoof, but only mild, and according to Rick the poultice pulled very little infection out. We are leaving the current one on for 24 hours to see how much infection we get out then. Once it is cleared up we will return to iodine and sugar to dry the hoof out prior to putting her shoe back on. 
I hope this is soon so she can be let out again for the sanity of all at the yard including her !!

3 comments:

Parelli Central said...

I'm sorry to hear about Filly's foot troubles... Have you considered a boot? Also, I have had good experiences with Arnica, giving internally, to heal infections.
Sending good thoughts for Filly!

Petra Christensen
Parelli 2Star Junior Instructor

Tim said...

Thanks for the comment Petra. I did not know about arnica for infection control, I'll try anything to help fix it. As for the boot we are going to let her in the indoor school when she has a shoe on and will use a boot to stop sand and muck getting on the foot then. We don't want to leave it on permamently as we are worried about trapping moisture on the split

Parelli Central said...

It's a tricky thing in your part of the world... Here in Colorado it's so dry... Hopefully, things will work out fine...

Petra Christensen
Parelli 2Star Junior Instructor
Parelli Central