Watch 'er Go Video :)

It's done!
Sorry I added some extra, unnecessary stuff; I couldn't help myself. This was fun :)

And if you don't like the music, just turn the volume down. I just didn't want it to be silent in the back round :)
I like the ending, in case you want to know.
And if it says "still processing" check back a little later.

Post #193

Hello, all!

I ended up not riding in the parade on Saturday...Considering how Daisy wasn't completely fine with the last parade, my mom and I didn't have good "feelings" about this one, as it would be a much longer, larger parade, so I opted not to ride in it...turned out that it was fun, anyway, and I was glad I was there to help out.

Our club still attended the parade, and it was a good thing! Without us, there would, again, be NO horses! What a shame! :-P

I arrived and promptly started braiding tails with ribbon; I did one pony, and then another club member wanted it, too...then I did 2 or 3 forelocks. I'd just like to say, I LOVE our club; the majority of the members....well, actually, all of them, are younger then me, some a lot younger, but it's so fun that way. I never had younger siblings or younger relatives living near me, so it's kinda fun to hang out with the "little" kids. :)

The parade finally started, after getting everyone mounted on ponies and moved out of the way as our club's three trailers were taken away to the place where the parade would end, to pick us up.

We did a lot of waiting in the beginning because traffic was still going on down one side of the street, so we had some waiting to do to get onto Main street. One of our club members was riding Maggie, a Standardbred that Jean recently rescued. Maggie looks awesome now, and was a former Mennonite buggy horse, so she really shouldn't have been nervous at all, but her rider was a little nervous, so I stood with them for awhile...by the time we got going, Maggie was fine. She's a beautiful girl now....maybe one of these days I"ll so before and after pictures of when Jean got her; she's awesome now!

Once we got going, Scout, the pony I rode in a show in May, started getting a little excited, so I lead him and rider for a little bit...then they went alone again, then he got super excited as we passed by a mini-stage playing music, so Jean and I both held him...it's so...sad and annoying. We passed that stage playing music, and the music was loud and jumpy; no wonder Scout was nervous! I wish they'd have turned it down...

The rest of the parade was uneventful; I saw some friends of mine, and it was fun listening to the crowd "oooh and ahh" over the ponies; two of our ponies, Mouse (far left pony in the middle picture) and Biscuit (last little buckskin pony in the last picture) are small and ADORABLE, and you could people all of the place saying "Oh, look at the horsies! Look at the little ones!" :-). At the end of the parade we passed a McDonalds, and we joked that we should ride through the drive through...maybe if I ride next year, I will :-P.

For those who are interested in the horses, left to right in the middle picture are Mouse, Phoenix, and Mari (Samaria is her full name, I think)...Last picture left to right (that you can see; the three ponies) are Bella, Biscuit, and Scout.

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The GREAT news is, I got a natural trimmer!!!!! I'm SUPER excited! I found the name and number for one "through the grapevine" and made and appointment for yesterday afternoon...it was awesome! (did I already say that?) I'm completely thrilled. If you've read my blog from the beginning, you'll know that since I got Daisy I've had problems with her hooves; bruising, getting cut, her being lame, having to soak her hoof, not riding for a week or two at a time, etc. Last year, I had her shod. To put it plainly, it was horrible. She reared, she wouldn't stand still, she obviously hated it, and though I didn't admit it mostly because I thought there was no choice but to shoe her, I dreaded the farrier coming. I read The Soul of a Horse: Life Lessons from the Herd by Joe Camp (gifted to me by my awesome uncle :)) and was completely convinced. Shoeing is terrible.

What I realized yesterday was that the natural trimming gives the horse's hoof actual shape. Normally, the hoof is trimmed so that it's flat the way it would be if it had a shoe on. That's fine, if there's a shoe (which are bad anyway), but if they're just flat and there's no shoe, the parts of the hoof that are NEVER supposed to touch the ground do and that's what causes the horse to go lame and people to say that the horse needs shoes. I found it completely incredible yesterday to watch and listen to the trimmer as he explained the way the hoof should be shaped, and how many problems he's solved with his natural trimming. Horses that were lamanitic so bad that they would be put down were saved because of his trim. The trimmer studied in Canada with Lisa Huhn for awhile, and he said at the end of his studying he had to dissect 16 horse hooves. He said that it was terrible what he saw; the coffin bone in hooves of horses that had shoes was completely deformed and twisted because the shoes were SO bad.

All I can say is, PLEASE, read up about the natural trimming and try to find a trimmer near you; it's not simply having a horse go 'barefoot'. If you go barefoot but still have a farrier trim their hooves, they are still in pain because the hooves are trimmed wrong. Check it out, it's a fascinating subject, actually.

I mentioned to the trimmer that I have Daisy on Smarthoof, a hoof supplement, and he said right away that the supplement was a waste of time. He explained that there are so many excess ingredients in supplements that it really just makes a horse more anxious than need be, and it ends up not using half of the supplement. He said he switched his horses to just plain rolled oats and black oil sunflower seeds and that the sunflower seeds make the horse's coat shiny and give the hooves all the "supplement" they need, naturally. I'm SO going to try that! He also said that sweet feed, which I feed Daisy, is actually too sugary, and just increases the chance of thrush in a horse. I'm almost disappointed with myself for not having questioned feed and supplements before; it all makes so much sense. Really makes me motivated to question everything. Just because the majority of people do something and don't want to hear otherwise, does not mean that it's right.

Daisy evidently LOVED the trimmer; he patted her and even gave her a hug in the beginning, and was one of the few people to ignore her angry ears in the beginning. She seemed to like him from the start, and was so still and quiet, we barely held the lead; sometimes it felt like we could have dropped it right there on the driveway and she would have stood still. It was awesome.

The natural trimmer is holding a seminar in our area soon, and I'm hoping to go; I'm completely intrigued. Makes me want to go into natural horse care when I'm older! That would be a cool job!

Alrighty, sorry this was so long! Hope it gave you something to think about...

Catchin' Up on Life-_-_-The Subject of Shoeing

Sooo...I haven't posted anything about Daisy lately so I have to do some sharing.

I was sick last week, which happened to be February break from school. I was also sick the week before, and came to the barn on Sunday, didn't go back until Wednesday, and then came on Friday again. That Sunday that I came, the farrier came as well. I recently read a very interesting, thoughtful book called "The Soul of a Horse: Life Lessons from the Herd" by Joe Camp (director/producer of the Benji movies I believe...) that my Uncle Gregor gave me for Christmas. All I can say is, if there is just one book you should read about horsemanship, it's that one. What an amazing read. It was an eye-opener completely. Remember the "roundpenning" video post I did awhile back? Normally, when I round pen (or I'm assuming other people) they put themselves in the position of the horse's "leader" as the do the join up. However, once they leave the pen, they go back to acting the way they did before. Joe Camp brought the join-up OUTSIDE of the pen, and it sounds amazing. It seems to take quite a bit of work and dedication, but I want to try what he did. I would HIGHLY recommend this book, please read it if you own a horse (and otherwise...it's a pretty heart-warming book for anyone who likes animals).

He also had an entire chapter devoted to horse shoeing, and mentioned the topic of shoeing throughout the book. I learned some pretty cool stuff. I myself shod Daisy last season and I would have this season, but this book changed my mind. Please don't be offended, I just want to share what I learned.

Did you know, that shoeing a horse's hoof makes it impossible for the hoof to flex naturally? Read this paragraph from the book, please:

Have you ever crossed your legs for such a long time that your foot goes to sleep? It's because you have cut off the blood circulation to your foot. Essentially that's what's happening when a metal shoe is nailed onto a horses foot. The hoof no longer flexes. Which means a substantial loss of blood circulation in the hoof. Which mean the nerve endings go to sleep. And the ill health the hoof is suffering from lack of circulation is no longer felt by the horse. In other words, the "ouch" never reaches the brain.

Is that powerful or what? I thought it was. It sounds pretty bad. Besides what that says up there, the shoe's nails make the hoof wall very weak. And the hoof can't flex.

Throughout the book, Joe will write one chapter about his own experiences, one chapter that he makes up about a herd of horses in the wild. He uses that herd to prove a point:
Horses weren't created to have certain things. They weren't meant to have shoes, blankets, barns, perfect little pastures, leg wraps, stalls, etc. I'm not saying I agree with everything he says. I'm going to continue to stable Daisy. I'm still going to use leg wraps. I'm still blanketing Daisy when it's below 15 degrees. But I don't want to keep shoeing her.

I feel kind of stupid. When I had Daisy shod last summer, she HATED it. Totally hated it. She reared, and she was just obviously uncomfortable. Partially that was because of the farrier, I admit. But it was also because she didn't like it. So WHY did I keep having her shod if I knew she hated it, and it became so stressful to have her shod because I knew she didn't like it? I kept doing it because I thought she needed it. I thought the ground was too hard for her hooves, and we were riding on the road, etc. Other people shoe because they jump, or rein, or barrel race, etc. But in reality, most horses don't need it. The first summer I had Daisy, I didn't shoe her. And her hooves got bruised and she was lame for a bit. I rode her through it, though, and within the 8 weeks between farrier visits, her hooves HAD hardened up, and she wasn't bruised anymore, and she could be ridden anywhere. Unfortunately, her hooves soften during the winter, and I don't want to go through her being lame and bruised again and waiting for her hooves to harden. Soooo...I'm not shoeing anymore because it's bad...But Daisy does have flat soles, and she has pretty sensitive feet. So I'm going to order (as soon as I can be sure of the size) Old Mac G2's. I originally read about them on the blog "7MSN". They are, in short, tennis shoes for horses, produced by EasyCare Inc. They slip on the horse's feet for when you go out riding, and are like shoes except that the horse's hoof can still flex naturally. Sounds good to me. They are kind of expensive, but if you think about it, you spend about $70 to have shoes reset anyway, and the shoes should last at least half a year. I've also ordered SmartHoof from SmartPak (Good quality, smartpak...if you ever plan on getting supplements, check SmartPak's version of it...it's cheaper and many times, better.)

So that's my story...I had a little drama with my new idea of not shoeing, so I just had to share. That's my reasoning. In any case, I still highly suggest Joe Camp's book, it's a cool read.

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Sorry this post was so long...I've been sick a lot recently, so I haven't really ridden much. I've still been at the barn, but just doing groundwork. I've been pretty happy with that--I've taught Daisy to side pass (to the right) over a pole, which is good because before side passing and poles just didn't mix with her. We're working on the left side now. She seems to enjoy it...we're both getting a little sick of the arena, and can't wait to get back out on the trail.

I'll talk to all you bloggers soon...this post could take awhile to digest...well, as in, read, so....but in the meantime, read The Soul of a Horse! :D

Bloggin' Out,