SAFE Update — Apr 17, 2011

Yet another busy couple of weekends at SAFE, and the weather was as crazy as we were.  Today we saw some rain, some snow, some hail, and finally some much-needed sunshine!  The pastures are still far too wet to use yet, but the grass is growing like crazy, which means by the time the ground is dry enough to put the horses out on the grass without turning it to mud, they will be knee-deep in it!

So let’s see…Annie and Zanadu were the stars this weekend!  Annie had a potential adopter come and ride her on Saturday as did Zanadu, who was ridden in a lesson with our trainer.  Both rode the horses really well and would make really great matches for them.  They both plan to come back and ride again so we’ll see!  Zanadu also attended a Parelli clinic with another potential adopter, the same clinician that worked with Dexter a few weeks ago.  That also went really well, so we will cross our fingers!

We had an emergency call with Dr. Hannah last week when Corona managed to crib a board  so much that it broke, and then somehow Lucky managed to gouge himself on the pointed end of the board.  He’s fine, but wasn’t too happy about it being touched for a few days to be cleaned.  By the weekend he was fine and it was healing nicely, and Victoria even managed one more ride on him before he goes off to Pilchuck tomorrow for his surgery, which is on Tuesday.  After the surgery, he will be headed to NWESC for his rehab.  He will be resting for about 4 months…hopefully he won’t be too much of a handful!  He does like to paw with his front feet like Zenyatta does when he is feeling full of himself, so I am thinking stall-rest and hand-walking should be interesting!

Dexter has been doing really well at home.  Last weekend, he gave Sara’s daughter Angelique her first ride ever on a horse, a lunge lesson with Andrea and was very patient as Angelique was learning to post.  Yesterday, Sara rode him in a lesson and worked on starting to teach him to give to the bit instead of brace against it, and he was really starting to get it towards the end of the ride.  He is very defensive of the bit, as well as a bit stubborn about it, but as you can see from the pictures he is coming around.

Corona has only one small area of his penis that is still healing and is doing really well.  On Thursday he is going to a foster home to finish his rehab.  He’s such a sweet boy and is going to make someone a fantastic horse.

Charmeon is also coming along well in her training and is much better about steering.  She starts out very forward but runs out of steam quickly as she’s not very fit, but she remains very level-headed, sweet, and easy to work with.  She’s a powerful mover and a fun ride!   Photo below was taken today.  I brushed her tail out and banged it and it looks so cute.  We have had quite a bit of interest in her as well, it’s easy to see why, she’s a beautiful mare.

Romeo is healing well after his castration and will probably be ready to leave NWESC in a week or two.  At this point we are just waiting for him to realize he isn’t a stallion anymore and settle — he is still very fixated on other horses right now.

Not so good news on Sinatra - Dr. Hannah was able to replicate his lameness after several days of lunging and using nerve blocks localized the issue to both front legs, in the area of the fetlock down.  When she blocked out the right, which was the one he was visually limping on, he went lame on the left.  She took xrays which did not reveal any issues, so the prognosis is strain to both front deep digital flexor tendons.   He will require some rest time and then hopefully can return to work in a few months.  Later this week he will be moving to a foster home in Bothell who will manage his rehab and care.  Hopefully he will be a great patient! I’ve included some photos of him from Bonnie and I’s visit with him at NWESC last weekend.

Next weekend, Nadia will be returning from training.  She has been doing really well, and finally learning how to be a proper arena horse and not just having two speeds (“dead run” and “whoa”).  She is learning how to give to the bit and has not had any issues with grouchiness about being ridden since those first couple of rides.  When Nadia comes back, it will be Aiden’s turn to go to training!  Now three years old, he is ready to start his next adventure.  I can’t wait to see how Andrea enjoys working with our sweet little Aiden!

In addition to the horses on our site, we have two horses that we took in from a King County Animal Control situation in late February and one gelding and two minis that came in from two other cases last week.   All five of them have come to us in very bad shape, with Body Condition Scores ranging from 1.5–2.5.  As they are all part of active cruelty investigations we are not allowed to post pictures of them.  Needless to say we are quite busy and quite full at the moment.

Lastly, I hope you will join us at the upcoming Pins for Ponies Bowling Fundraiser Event (there are still a couple of lanes open!).  And if you didn’t catch last night’s post on Facebook, we are selling tickets to the “World Famous Lipizzaner Show” on May 28th.  We have some really great seats at a really great price, and included in the ticket price is a special pre-show event to see the horses up-front and personal and hear about how they are trained and prepared for a show.  $10 of every ticket sold goes to SAFE so I hope you can join us!