Crazy busy weekend, no time even for pics, unfortunately.  Lots of staff meetings and planning meetings and a lot of great ideas in the works!  We have a really great events and fundraisers coming soon so stay tuned!

Zanadu was a popular girl this weekend, having two potential adopters come and meet her this weekend.  She has been a little grouchy lately on the ground, not sure if it is related to coming into heat or what.  She’s fussy and overly sensitive about being groomed before she is ridden, but after that she is much happier and more settled.  Holly also had two visitors this weekend, so hopefully we might see a pending adoption on at least one of them soon!

Charmeon also arrived at the SAFE facility on Saturday afternoon.  As part of our commitment to Char’s owner, we had placed her on a waiting list for when we had an opening for Char to come into our program, and meanwhile she had kept her in training until the end of March.  Char has apparently done extremely well with her training, and she goes English and Western, has been out on the trails alone and with another horse, and has worked on sidepassing to open gates as well.  She is not for an inexperienced horse handler, because we have been told that if she gets nervous or scared on the ground that she will spin and bolt away from her handler.  This is a relatively easy problem to fix, although a little more difficult with a horse of her size.  However, some groundwork for Miss Char is definitely in order.  So far she has settled in well, although she was very tired today from the trip yesterday and dozed most of the afternoon.  She is eating well though, and seems relaxed in her new environment and is very sweet.   Char came with a ton of donated tack, farm supplies, supplements, and blankets.  We are still sorting through it all, there was so much!

Sinatra has been lunged the last several days to see if his lameness issue got any worse, and to make it more easy to detect with nerve blocks because it was very mild at best and not sensitive to hoof testers and not positive on a flexion test.  So far, he has remained completely sound, so he may be fine.  He does have someone interested in him as a possible foster to adopt situation, so cross your fingers!

Romeo is doing very well after his castration, and tolerating his forced exercise well.  Dr. Hannah reports he is still somewhat agitated and pacing in his stall, which is actually helping keeping the swelling under control.  That should go away in a couple more weeks as the hormones completely leave his body.  In other news, Dr. Bryant reviewed his xrays and was pretty impressed by the remodeling that had occurred.  He was more of the opinion that this was a fracture to the distal metacarpus and one of the sesamoids at some point.  While surgery is an option, it is a pricey one at $7000-$10000, and I am not sure how much it would buy him.  That will be out of what we can justify spending for one horse, and as he is comfortable as he is now, he will probably be adopted out as a companion horse once he is healed from his castration.

Corona is doing well, but still not completely healed.  He remains very tolerant for his treatments, however. He is also doing something we have seen with a few starved horses, where they come in with a thick winter coat with a top layer of really long, wiry guard hairs on top.  The winter coat sheds out, but the guard hairs don’t right away, and because of a lack of nutrition or their bodies being out of whack, the summer coat doesn’t grow in right away either.  It’s an odd phenomenon, but we have seen it before and I feel confident that his summer coat will come in and the long hairs will eventually shed.  But right now, he looks pretty bad, with his long wiry hairs and bald skin visible underneath.   Otherwise, he’s gaining weight well, and we wrapped his tail up as he is still having intermittent diarrhea issues.  He’s also quite a bit food aggressive, so he has to be made to back to the back of his stall before he gets his food.  He does crib as well, but not obsessively, only if there isn’t food to eat or he is feeling a bit stressed.  Otherwise, he’s very sweet and easy to handle, and extremely low on the totem pole with other horses.  In fact, we are still trying to find the right turnout partner for him, because all the horses we have tried him with were pretty mean to him and chased him.  You’d think with his size he’d have some advantage, but they sense his weakness and vulnerability.  Poor guy.