So, the mud fever got a lot worse over the past week and we ended up calling the vet out. Poor boy, he was so sore he couldn’t *bear* anyone touching his legs so I couldn’t get cream on and it all got a lot worse. Goncalo came out on Thursday and advised that we put a warm poultice on the legs for a few days to soak the scabs off and the sedate him and clip off all his lovely feathers! 😥 So that’s what happened today.

Here he is with his new legs:

Once the hair came off it was found he has some mud fever on all four legs – we had thought it was just the back two :cry:.

Fronts:

Backs – left side

Backs – right side

Poor baby. Hopefully it’ll heal pretty quickly now we’ve uncovered it and he can get back out in the field soon! I’ve been riding a bit more this week – with lunging first so he can let off steam – which is good. M watched me today which was helpful. He’s been pretty silly about contact still and it’s going to take a while to get back to where we were but we’ve agreed a plan of action so hopefully things will turn a corner soon.

Without much else to do Pico has been teaching Dino to neigh properly. There was quite a conversation going on whilst I lunged Dino within eyesight of a boxed Pico yesterday. Dino usually neighs like a cross between a teeny tiny pony and goat. It’s quite funny but not what you expect from 560kg (560kg! That means he’s lost about 30kg since he arrived! Thank goodness!) horse. He was practising neighing like a grown up horse following Pico’s lead and it was all going quite well until he started to neigh and interrupted himself by snorting. He’s such a doofus :db: He’s cute though! :wub:

Random thing – someone made him into wine! Italian, bit odd since he’s half Spanish :laugh:

Pico shouted for Dino when I bought him (Dino) back into his box today. Dino was pissed off about a bunch of things and didn’t really want to talk to him which was a bit sad. I was going to write a proper update but it’s a bit of a brain dump. Sorry :-[

I’m feeling a bit unsettled about things at the moment. This past few weeks seem to have been pretty hard. The weather has left the schools unusable for weeks at a time and the indoor school booked up. It’s also meant Dino has mud fever. Again. I got a good look at it today and it’s horrendous…what I thought was just one side of the near hind cannon bone is actually both sides. It’s obviously really painful as he won’t let me near it! Which means it’s not being treated properly 😥 Poor baby. He tries really hard not to kick me but he can’t help himself. It’s also on the off hind, and he won’t let me close enough to see how bad that is. When I’m up on Wednesday morning I’m going to have to enlist a member of yard staff to help hold him and try and get the scabs off and some cream on but that’s going to be horrible 🙁

All of this, with the snow and being in and me doing extra days after he incapacitated M *and* he’s got all silly about the particular girth we’ve been using as it’s obviously uncomfortable in some way so he doesn’t like having it tightened means I’ve mostly been lunging him, sometimes in side reins and working in hand. Whilst this is a perfectly reasonable way of working a baby horse it feels like we’re going backwards. I feel miles away from where we were around Christmas and early Jan before the previous bout of mud fever set in 🙁 He’s been very reluctant about going ‘back’ and since the Unfortunate Event (which was while he was no going out due to mud fever – he’s get *stoopid* when he can’t go out) he’s very unhappy about the reins being tight and has been more silly about going ‘back’. I know this will come back eventually but it makes it hard to balance him ‘cos he won’t get his butt under himself. And he was doing ‘back’ really well just at the start of January after being silly about it initially so it feels like an important achievement we’ve just lost….

Anyway, today I stuck him on the lunge in the indoor as I have been avoiding riding him in this girth whilst I source a different one of his preferred make and style (No, no, they’re not spoiled at all….) and he was having a quiet, low energy sort of day as opposed to yesterday’s galloping around like a loon day… So we did that for a bit and then I walked him back to his box and thought ‘F**k it. I’m going to ride my damned horse’ and tacked him up (much to his annoyance – he could not believe I was tacking him up *after* he’d already been lunged!! ‘Dinner comes now, no :cc_confused:’) and then went back to the school and he was *awesome* :D. No back, didn’t argue with him, but a few steps of haunches in, half a step of shoulder-in, some reasonable circles and a lovely trot with his head down and low for a bit.

So I’m feeling a bit better and I know we have all the time in the world and things will be better in a few weeks when spring gets its behind in gear but, you know, things just seem a bit hard right now with the slightly nagging worry about Pico and now this mud fever being worse than I thought. Horses!! Who’d bloody have them!!

Anyway. We can never have too many cute Dino pics! My current favourite :wub:

The brothers are getting along quite well now that Dino lives next to Pico. (Though we did get some definite cross looks and hmmpfh! paying attention the baby horse are you? reactions from Pico the first few days especially. I’m always careful to make sure Pico gets the last goodnight cuddle and treat from me, so he knows he’ll never be replaced in my affections no matter how fond I may also be of his baby brother)

It’s good that Pico really likes Dino now – it means while stuck on box rest he’ll actually appreciate visits from Dino over his door.

Pictorial evidence of their friendship:

Pico stealing hay from Dino – right from Dino’s mouth. Well, Dino did have a very big mouthful of hay (he regularly will grab a big mouthful and then stick his head out, thereby dropping hay outside the box). Dino didn’t seem to mind, or even notice that he was ‘sharing’ with Pico :laugh:

The boys having a nice mutual grooming session while Pico’s leg dries after cold hosing. Getting all that itchy moulting hair out for each other!

Dino moved boxes today so he’s now next to ‘big brother’ Pico 🙂 Happy to have them next door to each other. No longer will I arrive on one side of the yard with the wrong horse’s stuff!

Here they are next door to each other:

He’s been pretty good this week after the, incident, with M’s knee on Monday. Sounds like there is lots of de-spooking training in his near future!

“Awwww Muuuuuum… I’m still sleeping! No I’m not getting up!” 🙂