That isn’t afraid of anything.
Since we’ve done most other things I decided to work with Alex on more basic desensitizing last Tuesday. I keep forgetting to take a tarp with me but I had an old blue nylon saddle cover that looks like a small tarp and it also rattles quite a bit. I took it out and hung it on a fence post expecting Alex to at least shy away from it a little. Ha! She walked over and lipped at it then looked at me as if to say “So what?”. I rattled it and she stood there, I made it bounce on the fence and she stood there, I took it off the fence and rubbed it on her side and she stood there. After a few minutes I was rubbing her all over with it, draping it around her legs and over her butt, laying it between her ears and letting it hang down her face, and spreading it out over her like a saddle pad and the only time she flinched was when my son sneezed a few feet away.
After that I brought out an actual saddle pad and repeated the process with it and got the same results. She had her head down eating hay and I laid the saddle pad on her neck so it slid forward and touched her ears and she never even raised her head. I pushed the pad so it fell off beside and behind her and got no reaction. I flopped it on the ground under her belly and she couldn’t have cared less.
I’m sure the look on my face would have been amusing to see, Alex was totally at ease and I was completely bewildered at her lack of concern about anything I did.
Wednesday I only had time to toss her feed out and give her a couple of quick kisses. Yesterday she was acting kind of ornery so I just gave her a good brushing. She didn’t really seem to even want that so I didn’t try anything else. I think it was probably because she sensed a change in the weather. It’s been pretty decent all week, some rain and it hailed once but then it cleared up and was sunny. I woke up this morning and it was snowing again, ugh!
Her cough is completely gone. She’s finished up two of her medications and only has a few days left of the last one. I keep forgetting to take the camera with me to get some new pics. She’s shedding out to her bay coloring now. She still has a lot of white hair on her but there are patches of bay with just faint roaning in them. I’ve been working a little with her hernia every time I brush her and am pleased to see that it is slowly shrinking. I’m hopeful that I will be able to get it to go away without surgery.
Her hooves desperately need trimmed but I’m having trouble getting a farrier to return my calls. Over the last three weeks I’ve left four messages for the farrier I always used and he hasn’t called me back. This morning I got the number of a different one from my vet. I’ve left him a message and hope he will call me back sometime today.
We’re going over Sunday to spend Mothers Day with mom and while I’m there I will be walking the fence again and reinforcing any spots that need it. As soon as that is done I will be turning Alex loose in the pasture. She’s spent long enough cooped up in the corral and I know I won’t have any trouble catching her. Plus I’m down to 6 bales of hay and after the last fiasco I don’t want to buy more until after this years first cutting so turning her out will ease that worry.
I probably won’t spend much time there tonight, the weather is too cold and I have to go switch cell phone providers but I should be able to play with her quite a bit on Sunday.
