My horse is difficult to pasture with other ponies because he's, hem, special, and has a history of unforeseeable suicide-attempts on top of his already busy schedule of being lame. Here is a list of things I have to try to avoid when figuring out a place for him to live at our barn:
Pasture should
-have no mares (unless there is also a bossy--but not too bossy--gelding)
-not be fed alfalfa (super great when you live in California, but we're trying to phase out things that may trigger his spastic, suicidal state of mind)
-have no hotwire (because he just walks through it & takes a tour of the property :( )
-have no overly bossy gelding (because he gets ulcers and colics)
-have no playful young horses (because he will die)
-Fences that won't break when he occasionally decides to run through them? LOL.
The list goes on, but I'm getting depressed--you get the gist. Basically, our barn is FULL right now and my already difficult-to-place horse's housing options are even more limited. He was temporarily in a retirement pasture when I left to India because I'd been planning on retiring him, due in large part to the management nightmare he posed. He was just getting the shit beat out of him there, though, and between the stress/ulcers and crappy retirement hay, he lost a TON of weight. He doesn't look like my horse anymore. :( I am NOT putting him back out there again, no matter what anyone says.
I was scoping out the pastures today and I found 3 potential spots to talk to my BO about--not sure if people have already reserved them but we'll see. Unfortunately each breaks a rule on my no-no list and, thus, tempts fate, but alas, such is life. One contains a borderline homocidal gelding (ugh, no!), one at least one mare, and the other a young horse (plus may feed a bit of alfalfa). We are treading a fine line here, guys. For now, I've thrown Spartan in a stall, but we'll see where this goes...
On the riding/re-conditioning vein--another slightly depressing experience. Spartan had more energy today, at least, and was also covered in dried sweat when I went to get him, in a resurgence of his shenanigans of old. But when I turned him out in the round pen, him moving out more also showed me some pretty consistent (but only slight) shortness in his left hind, the dreaded limb with the (possible) fetlock fracture we treated and bone spur in the pastern. This makes me sad, because at this point I'm wondering if he's always going to be only serviceably sound, which would pretty much sound the death knells of my dream to ride with Will Coleman and Kim Severson in Charlottesville. Also, my vet is casually telling me to inject/Pentosan/whatever if he keeps like this once I get him back into regular work, but I have severe doubts about taking that course of action with a FOUR-YEAR-OLD. Imagine what he'd be like at 20 :( But okay, enough, one day at a time from here! Right now we will focus on fitness and help him carry his hot-mess self. I sneaked a little stretch of trot to see if he felt lame at that gait undersaddle, but he seemed fine thankgawwwwd! :) On to tm!
He's a total ham.
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