10 minute walks and paddock

I have been woefully delinquent in my duties as a blogger. I am just not cut out for posting regularly! Especially when there isn’t that much to post about….. since my last post, Picasso has increased his walk time to 10 minutes, and he now has a medium sized paddock! It started as a 12 x 12 paddock, but since he has been good and Tere, the vet, cleared him, his paddock is now 12 x 20 or so.

This was him in the original 12 x 12.

Still seeing the Zapper Ladies once a week.

So December 16th is the day he is allowed to have a slightly bigger paddock, and come January 1st, he gets to start the hydrohorse treadmill!!!!

I have no documentation, but last week Picasso decided to try and see just how many caprioles he could squeeze into a minute. I think he may have made a record. He just couldn’t take one step on his handwalk without striking or bucking or caprioling! It was insane! I was laughing out loud at him. He just could not contain himself! Poor guy! Luckily the Zapper Ladies saw him soon after and said he was fine. Goof ball!!!!

How to entertain a bored horsey

So, understandably, Picasso is pretty bored locked up in a stall all day. I’ve bee trying to keep him relatively occupied.  One of the best ways to do this is to give him food!  But……. he also can’t get over weight. A conundrum….

A solution! I heard about hay bags called slow feeders.  In particular, there is a company called Busy Horse that makes a good slow feeder. These bags are cool!  They have smaller than typical holes for the horse to access the hay.  Simulates natural grazing more accurately than our standard feeding system.  His bags arrived yesterday.  He is getting one this morning and after he is done, he gets a bag with even smaller holes called a Busy Snacker!  This one should keep him occupied that whole day!

In other news, Picasso had a treatment with the Zapper Ladies of North Coast Equine Physical Therapy. They are great ladies and Picasso likes them a lot. They do myopulse therapy where they use ultrasound wands to apply sound waves to Picasso’s stifles to promote healing.

And on Saturday night, Picasso had his first hand walk! He did some acrobatics of course, but not too bad for his first time out in nearly 2 week!