It's that time of year, spring is coming.  Along with that comes widely fluctuating temperatures that will affect our grass.  When the temp is below 40 degrees at night, then warms up during the day, beware!  Our horses that are prone to laminitis must be watched carefully.  Turnout early in the morning, bring in off the grass by 11:00 am.  Sugar in the grass increases throughout the day, with afternoon being the worst time of the day for high sugar content.  Grazing muzzles are a good tool to avoid horses getting too much of this sweet spring grass.  Dry lot paddocks are a good way to keep them from laminits and founder. 

Winter is upon us, a foot of snow and temperatures in the 20's!  Be sure your horse has water available at all times.  Heated buckets or tank heaters keep water thawed and even a little warm encouraging horses to drink enough and avoid dehydration.

And of course this is the best time to have barefoot horses, snow doesn't stick to bare hooves!  It can compact in shoes causing big snowballs creating all kinds of hazards for your horse.

Happy New Year to one and all.  I had a great year in 2011, meeting new clients and their wonderful horses.  Here's looking to an even better 2012. 

My thoughts for this blog are to post tidbits of subjects that might be helpful to you.  Please feel free to comment on what you might like to see.  Information on laminitis, equine diet, thrush... the possibilities are endless.  I will be working on my photo gallery in the near futurel as well.  

So we are coming to the end of another year.  Have you achieved all your goals you set at the beginning of the new year?  Have you thought about resolutions for upcoming 2012?  I have a long list to choose from, time to start thinking about what is most important.   I am hoping to be able to get a little farther in the PHCP program, more clinics and mentorships to get through towards graduating.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Just starting a new website that is a little easier to create and maintain.  I hope to post on here as much as I can.   Comments are welcome and encouraged. 

I will start this with a fabulous phone call from a client yesterday.   She bought a young QH gelding, brought him home and has been battling lameness issues with him ever since.  It's been almost a year, and she has not been able to ride this horse yet.  When I first started working on him, he was a mess to say the least.  I called him "6 legged lame", people would look at me funny.  He had abcesses on 3 of his 4 feet, the left front is clubby and had abcess blow out in 3 places on that hoof alone.  The club foot has been our lone issue now for awhile.  Owner called me just to thank me for extra effort put in on this horse, extra trips to check on him, and he is ALMOST better now.  She got there yesterday and the horse was out in the pasture on his own, he usually doesn't venture out there without being led out.  She was very happy, I love those phone calls.  Those are the ones that make this adventure so worth it.