I have finally come to a solution for Tori. Well, I hope it is a solution anyway! As you know if you’ve been reading the column for the last year, I have always struggled with Tori while riding her. She’s very hot and I find it hard to be consistent enough with her to improve.

I also had trouble getting her in foal last year, which you may remember if you were reading along last spring and summer. In order to get her in foal this year, I was looking at a lot of different options, all of them costly and time consuming.

Those options included shipping semen, which was costing me close to $450 per insemination - this was collection, packaging and courier fees, insemination fees, trailering costs, time off work, and boarding out.

Another method was to take her to the vet in Prince George for an ultrasound, or a series of ultrasounds, to confirm when her ovulation was pending, thus giving me a better chance of conceiving on the AI. However, that meant even more hauling costs, time off work, and vet fees on top of the insemination and shipped semen charges.

Still another method was to take Tori out to Calgary myself, which would mean roughly $500 in fuel for the round trip (in a truck that I don’t trust anymore for long hauls), several days off work, mare care while she was there, PLUS a return trip to pick her up.
I was getting dizzy thinking of how much getting her in foal was going to cost me - and I’m already out several thousand dollars with no foal coming this year!

Photo credit: Chris Hassell

After adding in my frustrations of not coping well with her under saddle, I was actually considering putting her up for sale.

Instead I have hit on a solution that I hope will really meet my needs. I will be leasing Tori out to the people who own the stallion I have the breeding with. They will take her in March, and breed her in the spring to one of their stallions. The following year, if all goes well, they will foal her out and breed her back to Peppy, the stallion I have booked her to. I’ll get her back in the fall, after the foal is weaned, and she’ll be confirmed in foal. That will save me considerable costs and headaches, while at the same time allowing them to breed one of their stallions to a well bred, money earning mare with a show record.

It’s hard to think of Tori not being here, but on the other hand, there are lots of changes happening in my life right now and until I get them all under control I don’t have a lot of time for her anyway. As an added bonus, if I do have time, I can spend it working with Karisma, who will be two on February 11th and is ready to start lightly.

So with the first month of the new year nearly behind us, I’m certainly looking onward and upward!

‘Til next week,
~ Kristi :)

A new feature...

Would you like to Share a Trailer Ride? View the rides offered here... or submit your offer for a ride here
Foal Announcements View the latest or...
If you have a Foal Announcement you wish to submit, click here

Is your horse hard to catch? Does he turn and sidle smoothly away whenever you head into his field? Or does he blatantly run as far and as fast from you as he can when you approach with a halter and lead? Or worse - does he tease you by allowing you to almost get the rope around his neck, and then dash away, sometimes leaving you with bruised toes?

If your horse fits any of these profiles, we’ll try to give you some helpful hints over the next few weeks.

For starters, you may want to consider just WHY your horse is hard to catch. For instance, the stallion that was boarded at my place was usually just a little bit hard to catch. Think about it from his point of view - the only time I caught him was to deworm him, vaccinate him, or tie him up and have his feet trimmed. Hmmm, doesn’t take much to realize that all his experiences were not exactly encouraging him to be easy to catch!

Other horses have had far worse experiences in their history - being roped and choked down for castration or branding, and so on. Some of those horse’s only experiences with mankind have been negative, and those horses will benefit greatly from the October 8 to November 19 columns on halter breaking. While they may already have been halter broke, they need to time spent on catching and touching procedures until they learn not to be upset by them.

Consider an ill-fitting saddle, or a bit that pinches or otherwise hurts a riding horse. Both will contribute to the horse not wanting to be caught to be ridden. Check your tack from time to time and make an effort to clean your saddle pad, cinch and bit to prevent sores caused from built up dirt. Be kind to your horse when tacking up and don’t force the bit into his mouth or his ears into the bridle, and don’t cinch him hard and tight right away.

Some horses are just plain herdbound. For them, the only solutions seem to be to keep them alone (you’ll need good fences and a deaf ear), or to keep them with a horse that is easy to catch. Simply halter the quiet horse and lead him away and the hard-to-catch horse is sure to follow.

Next week, we’ll cover some of the ways to turn your hard to catch horse into a horse that meets you at the fence!

If you have comments or suggestions along the way, please share with me at kristi@hiway16.com

Have you ever tried to dose your horse with some medication the vet sold you? It seems that the more the stuff costs, the more that ends up on your jacket and in your hair than down your horse’s throat where it will do the most good!

While we’d rather our horses never got hurt or sick, sometimes things just happen that we can’t avoid. For instance, many castrations are done in the early or late winter months. With our muddy fall seasons and bug-ridden springtimes, a winter castration may provide a cleaner environment for the horse. However, the colder temperatures often make efficient wound drainage less likely, and infection is a possibility. Many vets will routinely prescribe oral medications for a winter gelding.

There are several ways to help make your horse’s medicines a little more palatable, and we’ll share them with you this week.

Tablets of antibiotics can be crushed into a powder and dissolved in a little hot water (you can also put them in hot water and then crush them). Add a little honey to the hot water, suck the whole mixture into a syringe, and dose your horse much the same as you would when deworming (make sure the mixture cools a bit first!). If the mixture is still too thick to force through the end of the syringe, try cutting the end off and making the opening the same width as the syringe. Be careful not to leave any sharp edges that might cut your horse’s mouth.

Homeopathic medicines can usually be carefully inserted through the lips and under the tongue without too much fuss. You should try not to touch the tablets with your skin - usually a small plastic sandwich baggie works well. When regularly dosing one horse with arnica, I used the softer tablets and dissolved them in a syringe with some water. I believe you can also obtain tinctures (liquid forms) of most homeopathic remedies - check with your local health food store, naturopath, or other supplier of alternative health care products.

You can also make use of a larger syringe and use soft foods that the horse will like the taste of. Strained carrots from the baby food aisle or canned applesauce make great carriers for yucky tasting medicines, vitamins or oil. This can be especially helpful with horses sick with strangles, which can make it very difficult for them to swallow.

You may find horses resistant at first, so consider trying a non-medicated syringe from time to time to let them get used to the feeling and taste first. I used to own one gelding that would actually open his mouth for you as soon as you got the syringe near his lips - he was sure easy to deworm after he had been medicated for a while!

Northern BC Horse is sponsored by local businesses who support equine sports in our area including:

• Baerental Ranch
• Burns Lake Building Supplies
• Griffin Crick Ranch
• Hoskins Ford
• Northern Horse Supply
• Ridennoure Paint Horses
• The Tack Store

Do you have a horse or equipment to sell? Want to buy a horse or equipment? Check the Free Classified Ads