Blood test results for Mag

Mag had his blood tested yesterday based on your recommendations. The vet just called me and says his testosterone levels are too high. He'll need to come back and do another test before we send him to the clinic for the operation. 

Well that explains it! 

I told my one German horsey friend and she told me it would be wrong to destroy his spirit, to steal his identity. Screw that, I bought a gelding and that's what I want! All this time I thought he was just very strange, but lately the stallion behavior has intensified. 

Thank you for all your advice, and if anyone has gone through this I'd love to learn more.  

 

Stallion behavior in a gelding

It's been 10 years since I got Mag. I've never met a horse like him. He's Jeckyll and Hyde. 

More submissive behavior than I've witnessed; he "gulps" vocally if I move too quickly by him. 

More dominant behavior than a gelding should have - sheath dropped, neck arched, nickering to humans. 

I have only seen him flirt with Bellis once when she was in heat (and I have a huge YouTube following in South America from what should have been an innocent video). 

We have no baby mules here. He cannot be proud cut.

My trainer wrote me a report of her time with him this week, how he continues to display stud behavior after the lesson is over. He's fine at the start and during the lesson, but on releasing him into the pasture, he starts posturing and nickering and stomping. 

What is up with my strange horse? Here's a video of some of their liberty work together: Liberty Work 

More horsey things you can buy cuz people sell them, and the hunters converge on our property

Amazing. I love the creativity but laugh at some of the weirdness of the products Facebook shows me. 

But first, an update about the muzzle net Mag wears during lessons. He isn't the brightest bulb on the tree (or maybe his cleverness eludes me?) so he keeps trying to eat with the thing on. The good thing is, he gives up immediately once he remembers it doesn't work to snatch grass/branches/cigarette butts.  And we found out he will drink from a stream with it on. And the trainer can still give him the lead rope to chew on as a reward when he's good. Which brings me to the first product I found this week:

A chew toy for a horse, another calming aid, and apparently from the comments it works for impatient horses. I'm pretty sure they designed it with Mag in mind. What a cute idea! I am not going to buy it, but I approve. It's marketed for horses who paw while tied, or figet during farrier work. Whatever helps, go for it. 

 

The second product of the week was something I cannot comprehend. Please enlighten me, if you know how this could be helpful. Like in that Next Gen episode, "State The Purpose!" LOL 

This is the second spur-guard wrap thingy I've seen in Germany and I'm wondering if there are sports where spurs are *required* to necessitate it for people who cannot operate spurs without wounding their horses. 

Also, I hope it was designed to go over the saddle pad/saddle cuz if it's underneath, it's gouging your horse in the saddle area. 

***

Yesterday was the yearly Treibjagt in our village which is much more exciting for my animals than New Years fireworks. A Treibjagt (no English equivalent) is when the hunters go through the woods and try to flush wildlife out with dogs and loud noises (lots of yelling!). I think it was in the first episode of Game of Thrones. At least I know that the prey animal is the same, wild boars. 

I have a good relationship with one of our local hunters (he will come get the remains of whatever dies here - last time an Eagle Owl!). He helped me figure out what foxes sound like, and answers any quesitons I have. They pay us 9 bucks per year to be allowed to hunt on our property, and they give us plenty of warning. They don't want horses going through fences, so I appreciate it. 

 

It was like being in America again - non-cops with guns. Big ol shotguns! A little sentimentality for me, my old life had people with guns in it. 

They crawled under our gate and walked with their 4 dogs across our field. My horse and donkey were very worried, and I stayed with them for a couple of hours. The neighbor's horses were trotting circles, even more upset. The hunters were so close, I could see the whites of their eyes. I flipped off my electric fence to help them out when they eventually exited down by the creek. 

They had 4 dogs (also in hi-vis) but on leaving our property, only 3, LOL. Cuz the loudest mouth dog of all (Dachshund, of course) apparently found some wildlife and went running after it, barking that high pitched yap the entire way. The hunter kept shouting HIERHIN! at it (come) and its yapping got quieter and quieter as it made its way to the next village.  I had to laugh. They always seem to lose a dog, which is why the dogs wear ID on them with phone numbers printed in big font. 

They split into teams of 2 and spent a good deal of time here. 

Finally at 3pm they were done and I could let my animals loose again. 

Sometimes they give us a portion of the animals they shoot, but I cannot seem to get deer or boar meat tender. 

***

Poganin, Mag's father, died this year and I found this photo in a tribute to him. I love it cuz he's doing Mag's signature move, "I don't wanna" and rearing. Mag's trainer has a good sense of humor about it, saying things like, "He just gives a little hop." 

 

Here's a pic of my animals during greener days, lookin' good! 

Today I came across yet another donkey-made trail on our wooded lot. The third this year. I love it. Bellis is saying, "This is our area, I'm gonna use it, blackberry brambles or not!" And sure enough, Mag has a big old blackberry vine in his tail today. I left it. 

Calming placebo mask

Do you want your horse to calm down with a piece of tack? This is something new to me! A face mask that brings the horse's nerves down. 

I've heard of thunder blankets for dogs during fireworks, heavy blankets for people with autism, and I know swaddling helps babies. So it's only logical that we can calm horses with some sort of wrap.

Now you can buy a spandex (titanium) mask for riding for 120$ . Some are calling it the placebo mask. If you feel it's helping your horse calm down, you'll be calmer.

You can get them with or without padded ear coverings, to further block out stimuli.

 

Linda Tellington-Jones, who I've respected since 1987 with her TTouch work on my horse Baasha, has lately employed medical wraps around a horse's head and body to simulate physical awareness during groundwork. I put Mag through a wrap session and see no problem with it. Now I wonder if this mask thing was based on her body wrap work. 

However I'm calling this the placebo mask cuz....I just can't call it anything else: )  

 

Do you whistle to your horse as a verbal aid?

My trainer has always done this with Mag. She whistles a tone that lowers to request him to slow down. I thought it was just her but I just watched a video of a German trainer teaching a horse to trail ride and he did the exact same whistle. (Here is the link to the video, at :53 he whistles and brr's the horse. He explains he's letting the horse go for demonstration purporses, to show that this horse will just go faster and faster to get away from stress.) 

I asked AI and it said it's not just Germany. Link explaining it. 

When I moved here I noticed there is no German word for "whoa/ho." They blow through their lips and make a brrr sound. It sounds silly to me but the horses know what it means. 

Now I guess that whistle is also a cue. 

Have you ever done this in the US or Canada, or heard anyone do it? Curious!

Here's a pic of me today enjoying the sunlight shining on my yarn, warming it up. Such a pleasant sensation while crocheting!

And here's Bellis today doing what she does on every sunny day in Winter - lining herself up to the sunshine sideways to get every bit of warmth into her body. 

 

 

 

Do horses have vanity?

"J, someone was wrong on the Internet again. More than one person." 

"How?"

"They said that letting children paint hand-prints on a horse is demeaning, dominating, and strips them of their dignity." 

Horses don't care if they have colorful paint on their bodies, in my experience, they don't understand the concept of looking ridiculous/silly. 

However, from Baasha, I learned that horses can feel insulted if you laugh at them. If I put something ridiculous on him he didn't care. But if I laughed, he crumpled and turned away, suffering. 

J retorted, "Your horse rolls in the mud every day, proving he cares what he looks like. He wants to be mud-covered." 

 "What!? He doesn't know how awful (or cool?) he looks, he rolls cuz of bugs or whatever."

There are horses who despite mostly clean stalls will make a pillow of a pile of poop, they have no concept of how they look afterwards. 

I'm sure that the therapy horse in the image was at best amused, at worst patiently enduring so many little kids touching him. But was his dignity insulted?  I don't think so.  

Flashback to 2005, riding my horse in downtown Seattle. My friend put a riding-diaper on her horse to catch poop. I said, "That's not dignified!" So I brought plastic sacks. Later, on my kneees on the sidewalk, trying to get the poop into the sack, she said, "You look real dignified down there.": )  

This is not the image of the hand-painted therapy horse, I lost that one. But this one popped up an hour later in an advertisement for riding therapy. Is he thinking, "Dear Lord don't let the other horses see me!"? LOL. 

It's what made my favorite part of The Horse and His Boy, "Do I really look ridiculous when I roll? I never thought about it. Do Narnian horses roll? What if they don't!?" The author really didn't get horses (proven on many other points) but I still love the vanity of Bree. 
 

Sunrise

A mosquito wouldn't let me sleep so I got up and took a walk. I was rewarded with the prettiest sunrise of my life. Normally a cell phone won't capture the colors correctly, but this came pretty close. 

Mordor's ocean! That blue part at the bottom was actually teal, a gorgeous green "wave." 

 

This is one of my favorite trees in the neighborhood, swaying in front of what looks to be the horse-head nebula.

J drove by me and honked on his way to work. A friendly neighbor stopped with her dog to say hi. The dog didn't jump on me so I pet it and said "good dog" in English.

J said I should submit my photos to the local news station which puts an image on air every evening. I was too late and someone else got to them first. Her photo was not nearly as good as mine, dangit!