This message is from: Kim Manzoni <kim.manz...@yahoo.com>
Steve - you are so right, many horses will severely injure themselves trying to get free. My sister had an American Cream Draft when we were kids. At the time we didnt know very much about horse keeping and we boarded at a hack horse riding stable. They had nothing but barbed wire. Apparently over night Goldrush got caught up in the barbed wire. When he was found in the morning he was still alive but had stripped off every piece of meat from his knee to his fetlock on two legs. The vet was amazed he didnt bleed to death. She said he has somehow cauterized himself by trying to get out of the wire. He had been taken to a hospital and had extensive surgery to replace as much as possible. But a month later, xrays showed that his bones had begun to deteriorate from being exposed to air so long. We had to put him down. My sister never got another horse after that. It was too much for her to lose Goldrush. So please, if your horse is not naturally patient, please teach him patience. I follow Clinton Anderson's Downunder Horsemanship and he said he likes a horse that will fall asleep when stuck in a fence. We built a "patience pole" similar to his and try to teach our horses to just stand and fall asleep if they cant "get away". Its a lesson that may someday save their life. I hope my boy Titan will be such a patient Fjord when he grows up. : ) Thank you for sharing the story Steve and I am happy that Tank was fine. Horses are marvelous smart beings. Last year my horse Toby coliced. He was waaaaay out in our back pasture and could barely be seen through the trees. I was coming home from grocery shopping and unloading bags into the house when something caught my eye. It was Comanche (our TN Walker baby) running frantically in circles out in the pasture. It made me stop to look because he is a calm steady eddy type. Nothing bothers him or scares him. I noticed he was running in circles around Toby, who was rolling. Normally I wouldnt have thought twice at Toby rolling because he does so often. But because Comanche was running in circles, it made me take note. I ran (and it was a long run) out to the pasture in a semi-nervous fashion because I knew something had to be wrong. When I got there, I found that Toby was colicing. If it were not for Comanche getting our attention focused on Toby, he might have twisted a gut and died before we could have noticed/found him. Ok, one more smart horse story.... When I was a kid we boarded at the big stable as I mentioned above. We were out in the pasture and on our way back up to the stable. We (my sister, mom and I) were crossing a bridge (could fit a tractor over it) to get back up to the barn when suddenly we heard thundering hooves. We turned to see about 50 horses headed our way. Something had scared them and they were running up to the top too.... and we were in their path. We would not have made it across the bridge in time. All of a sudden we see Goldrush break out of the herd and run toward us. We thought he was going to plow us down. Instead he started to throw his head and ran around the three of us in a small tight circle. He protected us. The horses couldnt get past him and they turned and ran a different direction. I have no doubt that he saved us from severe injury or death that day. He was an amazing horse and he is missed tremendously to this day. Thank you for letting me blab about my stories of wonderful horses... -Kim in Maryland where its hot and humid. Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw FH-L Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/8yky94l
