MyHoofPrints

Hobbes' gun initiation: Officer takes shot at mountain lion

FORT COLLINS, Colorado -- An officer took a shot at the mountain lion next to our arena where Hobbes was being ridden early this evening, according to his owner, Gregg Doster.

Hobbes, a 4-year-old Quarter Horse purchased at the CSU Legends of Ranching Sale last year, flinched at the shot, but held steady. What a horse!

The shot came after somebody shouted, "There he is!", according to Gregg. The officer had climbed on to the dirt levee running parallel to Shields Street and our arena, as an intense hunt for an errant mountain lion sighted earlier continued.

The mountain lion, which crossed paths with Gregg earlier when he found it in his driveway next door, was not hit. "It was big, fully grown," said Gregg. "Its tail looked like it was five feet long! It was beautiful."

The mountain lion bounded away when Gregg pulled up in his car, turned a sharp right

Let the (World Equestrian) games begin!

One of the downsides of most major television programming, at least for me, is that it has nothing to do with horses. I get so desperate for horses that I start critiquing the horse parts in movies. (I’ll write about some of those funnies later.) For now, you CAN get your horse fix this month with the World Equestrian Games, which believe it or not, will actually be (somewhat) covered by NBC. More fun: You can also log on to the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) network site or the World Equestrian Games site and watch live. NBC coverage starts Sunday morning, November 26. If you own Dish Network, or any of the other satellite providers, go to your account and search for “Equestrian”. This should give you all the possibilities for scheduling the games on your home television. I’ve attached what I got from Dish Network for the World Equestrian Games schedule here as a .pdf file. (To get an exact schedule, be sure to search for your regional schedule. This is for our zipcode.) Happy viewing!

(Karin Livingston is a career 4-H leader specializing in horses. An ad-free version of this blog is available on the Amazon Kindle and other e-readers through the Kindle store.)

Nail puncture: What NOT to do

 
Today my daughter found a nail in the cleft of her gelding’s hind foot, and we knew what NOT to do, thanks to an episode from my childhood:

Six months after buying my beloved first horse, a blood bay Morgan-Quarter cross, my mare went down in her stall one morning, with a high fever, hardly able to move. The cause? A few weeks earlier she had stepped on a nail, and an uneducated horseshoer, not ours, pulled the nail out right there, trying to help the rookie horse owners.

That nail hole healed on the outside first, preserving a pocket of infection inside my mare’s hoof, which abscessed, and sent inflammation throughout her body, making her sick enough to go down.

Six weeks later, following antibiotics and three-times-a-day soaks in Epsom salts with hot water trucked from home, plus flushing with betadine, we were lucky that my horse lived and had no permanent damage. We were also lucky that none of us got killed because normally the soul of gentleness, my mare hated the treatments with a passion, and kicked, lunged away, and bit, trying to get rid of us.

Note: IN A PUNCTURE SITUATION, NEVER PULL THE NAIL OUT OF THE HORSE’S FOOT BY YOURSELF. Call your vet, who will bring medicines and tools to possibly cut a bigger hole around the wound, so it heals from the inside first, and drains properly. If your horse is showing pain, the vet may x-ray the nail before removal to see how deep it went.

Today? We were very lucky. Our vet pulled the nail. It turned out to be a short roofing nail from who-knows-where. The nail was barely in there, and never hit anything sensitive.

Chalk one up for the school of hard knocks. You might want to keep this handy reference, above left, from Nancy S. Loving, DVM, on your bookshelf for the next emergency.

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Animal disaster planning: Tornado - a tough call

(April 28, 2011 -- Our hearts go out to our fellow Americans, and all the animals caught in today's tornado disaster.)

In 2008 a tornado whipped through a stable near Windsor, Colorado, destroying buildings. Flying, collapsing debris seriously injured horses inside or near their shelters.

We are not supposed to have tornadoes this close to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, but in June 2009, we survived another close call.

The sky turned black, the wind developed an odd wail, and sudden waterfalls of rain thought about turning to ice. Television and radio broadcasters announced a tornado warning, with funnel clouds sighted south of town.

The wind wailed louder, and we began getting calls about our horses spending the day outside in daily turnouts with no roof over their heads. People wanted their horses in, period.

I asked our vet, Dr. Allen Landes of Equine Medical Services, what to do under threat of a tornado. His reaction? ... 

Good night, sweet Duke

“Mom! Duke reared and he’s not getting up!”

I put down my hairbrush late Sunday afternoon, about half an hour before we were due to sing in church. My daughter’s words sent a chill down my spine. I ran down the stairs from my attic rooms, pulled on my MuckBoots, and dashed out the back door to the group turnouts. My daughter followed.

“What happened?” I tossed the question out as we ran.

“I was putting Billy away, and Duke was prancing around, and he reared and fell over,” she said. I wondered if Duke had somehow slipped in the snow in the next pen and knocked the wind out of himself.

We arrived at the gate and opened it. Duke, an almost black Thoroughbred gelding, lay on his right side. Two of the other horses stood around him, nudging him with their noses. A back leg quivered.

Courage to get up and ride again

Imagine getting up after a bad fall, your body hurts, fear-induced adrenaline pulses through your body, and you know you should get back up and ride right now. If you don't, who knows when you'll get back on?
Some people never do get back up and try again, and I believe they let something valuable slip away. They will never know whether they could have done it. Eventually, not knowing will haunt a little corner of their lives. 
One man however, roper Ryan Rochlitz, "got back up", and took it a step further.
After nearly dying in high school, Rochlitz received a heart transplant, and is now among the elite rodeo athletes competing at the National Western Stock Show. Click here for the full Denver Post story and photos by Joey Bunch. Thanks Ryan, for your example to all of us!

Vet 'miracle' on short list for NBC's Hometown Heroes

FORT COLLINS, Colorado -- Colorado State University teaching hospital veterinarians who saved two eggs from a mare killed more than a year ago in a nearby tornado -- and produced two healthy foals from surrogate mothers -- will be NBC's "Hometown Heroes" if they get enough votes.
Dr. Pat McCue, director of the Equine Reproduction Laboratory, and other reproduction experts at CSU pulled off the local "miracle" as a way to help the community of nearby Windsor recover emotionally from the devastating May 2008 tornado, according to a CSU press release. If the veterinarians win the award (and we hope they do!), the $10,000 in prize money will go toward helping critically ill newborn foals and educational programs about new foals. Click here and then look for the words "Pat McCue" under "Hometown Heroes" to cast your vote!
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NEWS FLASH! ... and if you have not already done it, take our opinion survey on the Larimer County Horse Facilities rules. (The survey does not collect personal data.) Results will be published before the next meeting! 

'Christmas past' gobbles up Thanksgiving

Just before the mashed potatoes needed to get started this Thanksgiving, my daughter’s phone jingled with a text message: “Leslie fell off Duke (names changed to protect the innocent) and they can’t find him on the trail.”
Another client on Leslie’s emergency list had sent the message, and was out searching for the missing horse. Had “Christmas past” returned on Thanksgiving?
We raced out of the house, my daughter running to get bridles, me grabbing my erstwhile pocket halter, and slipping on my Mucks (the world’s best bad-weather, cold-weather, wet-weather boot).
Dell, my gelding, who has no plans to become a heroic movie star, backed away when he saw me coming with the pocket halter dangling off my shoulder. He sensed were having a crisis, and thought he was it. A couple of seconds later, Dell grudgingly lowered his head, and allowed himself to be bridled. I ran with him trotting alongside, to our personal gate to the bike trail.
My daughter waited at the gate, and as soon as I unlocked it, she gave me a leg up. (At 16.2 hands, Dell is one of the tallest Morgans around!)
We cantered down the Poudre River bike trail and soon found the husband of our client leading Duke. Someone on the trail had found the horse, riderless. The husband did not know where Leslie was.
We cantered down the trail another quarter of a mile, and discovered Leslie, limping, but walking, thank goodness.
Everybody gathered and headed back to the stable as an equestrian caravan, Duke in the middle.
The story: Duke spooked and spun when a fisherman, kitted out from a horse’s perspective in odd-shaped, threatening, dangling gear, approached on the trail. Duke reared and Leslie leaned forward to keep Duke from falling over backwards. When Duke hit the ground and spun, Leslie was still in the forward mode, and fell off. The poor fisherman felt terrible.
Leslie’s pride and her hip took a hit in the fall. Otherwise she was unhurt, thanks no doubt, to the fact that she was wearing a helmet. Also, luckily, Leslie had thought to ride with A) her husband as a buddy, albeit on foot, and B) with her cell phone.
Since then Leslie has considered the possibility of a bridle tag for Duke that reads: If found call: xxx-xxx-xxxx. (Good idea!)
And if anybody is up there listening – we are done with the historic holiday shenanigans, thank you!

Deadly impact: Skull - 1, Helmet - 0

The Thoroughbred gelding had been jumping the green and white, two-foot flower jump for days. This was just another routine schooling. As the horse cantered the line, his rider balanced over the balls of her feet in a classic two-point. She shortened the reins for better contact, looked ahead, and prepared herself for liftoff. The horse pricked his ears toward the jump, boldly cantered forward, then skidded to a halt, swerved right, then left, then right and, feeling his rider come unbalanced, scrambled away from the jump. She hauled on the reins, but the gelding continued his mad scramble. The rider slammed to the ground, head first. She didn’t move. Others in the arena ran to help, but seconds later, she stood up on her own. She was shaken and covered in the mud of the puddle her body hit.

Except for a bad case of road rash, and later, a stiff neck, she was injury free. Somebody started laughing. Pretty soon everybody in our arena started laughing, partly in fun, partly in relief. As the rider tried to pull muddy strands of hair out of her face, she unstrapped her helmet. She stopped laughing. A six-inch spiraling crack fractured the helmet’s surface. (Click on picture to enlarge.)
Those of you who think you don’t need one, think again. My daughter’s helmet saved her life today.
Read also:
Traumatic brain injury survivor Courtney King-Dye opens helmet conference
Fractured skull: She vows to wear helmet next time
Check out this life-saving video: Every Time, Every Ride
SmartPaks video: How to properly fit a helmet

(Karin Livingston was a career 4-H leader specializing in horses, and is the author of the young-adult horse novel, Winning Bet.)

El Bayo: A love story

Timing is everything. That was especially true the day Juan Rael saw the horse in the sale yard.
Blood bay, tall and powerful, the gelding had the look of an eagle, the body of an athlete, and high-stepped like a parade horse.
Juan Rael loved horses. Juan Rael hated horses. They drove a practical man like him crazy sometimes with their unpredictable and demanding ways.
People remembered long after Juan died that the day he switched from ranching with horses to ranching with tractors, Juan also quit swearing.
Juan went out window shopping for ranch stock that day in the 1930’s. He took one look at the bay and knew the animal carried good blood.
Juan timed his bidding perfectly and went home with the horse they later called “El Bayo”.
El Bayo soon made it clear that he would not work for everyone.
“He was highly-spirited and he loved to prance,” said Juan’s youngest son, Nicholas Rael, who lived through what he calls “a strange love story”.
Nicholas grew up working for his father on Rancho Uraca (Magpie Ranch) in a valley at the foot of Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
“El Bayo was very, very big.,” said Nicholas. “Not just any person could ride that horse.”
One man fell in love with El Bayo, and that was Luciano Jaramillo, Juan’s dashing, part Ute Indian brother-in-law and partner. Apparently the feeling was mutual.