What always happens to the good ones?

They get hurt, that's what!  Our prize spotted butt decided that in his almost 1 acre sized paddock that has been there for years, he was going to discover an ancient, rusted roofing nail from who knows what/when, and proceed to step on it.  He came into the barn three legged lame, upon further inspection, a nail was discovered lodged in his sole, near the frog and heel.  He let Mark pull the nail out with his fingers.  I called the vet, afraid if we just let it go, it would result in infection.  By the time the vet arrived in the evening, he wasn't sore on it at all.  However, the vet pulled out the tools and scraped away the sole around the puncture, and it was quite deep.  He gave us iodine powder and antibiotics, as well as two antibiotic injections into the neck, and orders to pack and soak the foot daily.  Hopefully we can ward off infection and stop anything bad before it begins.  He said to expect him to be more sore in a couple days than he is now... poor little man.  :-(

The only plus side of the experience was that the vet commented on Durango's great disposition.  Our brave man stood with his foot up for 15 minutes, letting the vet poke and scrape at the tender puncture site, and standing perfectly still for his shots.  It takes a pretty notable occurrence to have our vet comment on a horse, so I was pretty proud.

A few days ago, I was lunging Durango, and decided to take it just a bit slower.  Because he is so big, and great minded, it's easy to forget he was a May 29th baby and a good 2-3 months younger than the other babies, so he needs to be on a lighter agenda than his older siblings.  I would like to show him in longe line this year, however, to preserve his body, I decided to make the later fall futurities and ApHC World Show in November my goals.  So, my agenda for him is a light longe once a week just to keep him going with the concept.  The rest of the time I will work on him with hunter in hand, since that's a class I can show even now without pushing him physically.  Trotting in hand and setting up will be his main lesson for this portion of the year.  For the earlier longe line futurities, I'm focusing on Denver, his sister, for the HUS, and Aspen, his yellow girlfriend, for the WP.  Either way, our hands are full with all the baby training this year, but so far those three babies have been rock stars!  All three stand quietly for baths, tie quietly in their stall (although our mischievous spotted butt manages to untie himself constantly), stand to be brushed, pick up their feet, stand to be fly sprayed, and are lightly longing out of the round pen on the line.

The next project baby is Parker, Durango's brother and former nemesis.  They are just going to have to grow to like each other, because soon, being the two stud colts, they will not get to go out with their filly friends any longer, only with each other!  Durango is getting bigger now, so might be able to stick up for himself better... but then, the bigger he gets, so is Parker!  Parker is quite large, not the biggest baby of the year, around middle of the pack for height, but already bigger than his dam and looks like he's going to be the good sized horse I was hoping for.  He's wider and bigger boned than the rest, and a darker bay that will probably be very similar to his sire in color.  He is a bit more shy than the rest when we brought them in, since he had a horrid recip mare that did nothing but chase him away from humans for the first portion of his life.  However, is IS by Chance and out of Sendy after all - the two best minded horses in the history of life - and he is already coming around and his curiosity is getting the best of him.  We've been pretty lucky with how these babies are learning so far, and I hope he is no exception.  He has some pretty big shoes to fill - his little sister also out of Sendy - Aspen - is probably the biggest rock star of the whole year on how quickly she is coming along, possibly even surpassing Durango!  She is lunging on the line after only two sessions ever, and stood statue still for her very first bath, where I was able to even scrub her all over and get to work on her filthy tail!  I've never seen anything like that with a baby.  I love these guys!

So I guess it's a good thing that I decided to take it lighter on Durango since he decided he wanted to make sure I stuck to the plan by incapacitating himself.  Hopefully I won't have any bad news to report on his healing progress.  I guess for the next week or so, I'm just going to focus on brushing out the 50lbs of hair he is letting go of, and getting rid of the permanent green poop stains on his butt that never seem to come out no matter how much I wash!  I hope he doesn't decide to make a habit of hurting himself so he can just be pampered!

Also - we are officially on mare watch now.  Golden In The Dark, "Hannah", our 16 hand buckskin daughter of Dynamic In The Dark, is due for our elusive buckskin Chance foal (one can hope)!  She is on marestare cam and is at 338 days now.  Very progressed but no wax/milk streaming yet, though we've had them foal without so still having to keep an eye on her.  She's very tender and won't let us milk her to test the pH to see when she's ready, so we're having to do it the old-fashioned way of sitting and watching!  Not too long now before Durango's mama is on the cam with her full sibling to D-man!  http://www.marestare.com/fcam.php?alias=oakfieldacres

And now for random photos after that long rant!

Durango untying himself, one of several times:

Who, me?  Nothin' goin on over here!

Aspen after her first bath ever, finally shedding out the white fuzz to reveal the golden color underneath!

Denver's first time on the longe line out of the round pen, in our brand new awesome arena!

Hannah banana, largely in foal to Chance!

Here's to healing hoofs and bundles of baby for my next post!  Fingers crossed.