Fat mares and skinny geldings.

It's been quite a busy month since I last posted here. I've been doing as much as possible with Sara even if it is only 40 minutes walking and trotting round the cattle shed. We've been building up the time spent trotting gradually.

Here she is ready to face the flies when we went out for a hack on Thursday. We were out for an hour and covered about 4 miles. She felt really settled and we trotted all the uphill bits. I was really looking forward to going a bit further on Saturday but she had other ideas and I spent all morning trying to catch her. It got to the point were neither of us was going to give in and I ended up having to take the other 2 into the cattle shed, leave the field gate open and let her follow. She still didn't want to be caught in the shed and I had to box her in the corner and slide the lunge line over her withers and round her neck before she gave in. She's never behaved like that before I think it must have been the thunder storm we had had in the night which upset her. She certainly used more energy than she would have done if I'd taken her out. 

The week before we'd had a visit from the R.S.P.C.A as some do gooder from the caravan site had decided Imshi was in poor condition and had foot rot! He is actually 30 years old and has a touch of arthritis. He dropped condition at the end of the winter when he had a plague of super lice which. were resistant to louse powder. He had a supplement from the vet in case they had made him anaemic, spot on treatment for the lice and the vet recommended Readymash extra to mix with the sugar beat and coarse mix he had been on all winter. 

Imshi 2 weeks before the R.S.P.C.A visit. He still had quite a bit of winter coat making him look a bit thread bare. 

A week after the visit. Most of his winter coat has gone but it is still clinging to his stomach. 

The R.S.P.C.A inspector was very nice and said he was in very good condition for his age and if anyone else said anything he would tell them that he knows the owner and there is no problem. He told me that due to EU regulations you aren't allowed to kill anything now and louse powder is only meant to deter them from getting on the animal, in his words every thing has to be nice and fluffy! I don't know about fluffy but they were certainly fat. 

We both agreed that it was more of a problem keeping the weight off Sara and Bobby than putting it on Imshi.